Are you one of those that runs Internet Explorer 8? Even part time, like myself (I’m more of a Firefox guy myself… Love the extensions), you need this new update that Microsoft is releasing out-of-band. In other words, outside of its normal “Patch Tuesday” schedule. So, this isn’t a grab it if you need it, it’s a grab it if you want to keep your PC secure. Do it.
If you
While this is no surprise really, early adopters to Windows 7 have expressed that they were satified with their decision to upgrade to Windows 7. Everyone I know that has upgraded from XP or Vista has loved it. That’s better than what I was hearing when Vista was released. Before release, it was praised. Afterwards, not so much.
Windows 7 hit the market at the end of October so it
An explaination on the recent lack of updates. I’m scheduled for a somewhat emergency lumbar L4/L5 back fusion (remove my disc and insert bone) in mid-April. I’ve been going to Dr. appointments and having a lot of down time. Mixed news for afterwards. Employment is a no-no, as I can’t drive, lift or do much of anything for a couple months. Good news is that I am going to focus on tech support from home (various forums, newsgroups, etc.) and this site. Expect a lot more updates, as well as a lot more in the FAQ’s. Of course, that all depends on my recovery. I’m hoping it goes well!
Even though I run a site dedicated to Microsoft, and use their products, I still use Linux from time to time for certain things (testing, penetration testing, etc.), and one feature I really like in Linux, but is missing in Windows is a Desktop Media like use. What it does is when you insert a USB drive, or a CD into the drive, it pops up a desktop icon shortcut to that drive. When you remove the drive, the icon disappears. It’s extremely convenient and makes life easier. Of course, for those that already have 344 icons on the desktop, it might not be a time saver, but for use organized people, it makes a lot of sense. Check it out and download the free software here.
Desktop Media is small application for Windows (any flavor) that automatically adds drive icons to your desktop. It will detect USB drives, fixed drives (ie. your hard drives), CD/DVD drives, network drives, and even RAM disk drives. For removable media (such as USB drives and CD/DVD drives), it will only add the drive to your desktop if it is present. So if you have a CD/DVD drive, but no disc is present, you won’t see the icon on your desktop.
In a followup to last weekends fiasco with BitDefender, and their Windows OS destroying update, many users are demanding refunds from the company. I’m not sure how this is going to pan out, but it will take a lot to get back the trust.
Some customers stranded by a flawed BitDefender antivirus update that crippled their computers have demanded refunds and compensation for money spent fixing their PCs, according to messages on the company’s support forum.
Microsoft has released the long awaited 250 GB hard drive for the XBox 360, with a generous price tag to boot: $129. This brings the price per GB down to 52 cents from the previous amount of $1 per GB for the 120 GB hard drive (which was the lowered price!). I’m still running the paltry 20 GB drive, and I’m really seeing limits on it as far as demo downloads, and don’t have enough room to rip most, if not all, XBox games to the hard drive.
Not only is the price surprising, but the fact that Microsoft previously stated that it wouldn
While not directly related to Microsoft, I thought this was incredible. Scientists in Japan have extracted images from the brain. It’s not super high resolution, but it is a strong beginning in understanding how the brain works. It could lead the path to helping the blind see, the deaf hear, and Skynet taking over the world!
The scientists were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person by analyzing changes in their cerebral blood flow. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, the researchers first mapped the blood flow changes that occurred in the cerebral visual cortex as subjects viewed various images held in front of their eyes. Subjects were shown 400 random 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images for a period of 12 seconds each. While the fMRI machine monitored the changes in brain activity, a computer crunched the data and learned to associate the various changes in brain activity with the different image designs.
I’ve been watching this mess unfold watching various forums, including BitDefenders own support forums, and it doesn’t look like it’s gaining them any new customers. Apparently, the new update marks needed Windows system files as infected and goes ahead and gets rid of them for you. If you don’t mess up too much, you can do a system restore and disable the AV until a new update is available. Ouch. A lot of people are looking at new clean installs of their OS.
“EVERY file that is trying to run is getting quarantined,” one user, identified as lhmathys, reported. “Windows Explorer and even Bitdefender update itself is being quarantined. Someone really screwed this one up.”
Microsoft Feed has the new download links for the newest build of Windows Live Messenger and a patch to get it up and running on your machine. I’m getting decent speeds from the downloads, and I’ll give it a go to see how it improves on the older version… I’ve always just used Pidgin for my IM needs. One program, many IM clients.
Microsoft has limited the use of the applications to certain beta testers, so you can
To help users to use the XP Mode in Windows 7, Microsoft is releasing an update that allows more PC’s to take advantage of the virtualized operating system. XP Mode, for those that don’t know, is basically a PC in a PC. It isn’t emulation, but a fully running, free license, Windows XP machine to run within Windows 7. If it works in XP but not in Windows 7, it will run in XP Mode. The new update allows PC’s without AMD or Intels on chip virtualization technology to run XP Mode.
We
