My Dell OptiPlex Linux server was getting louder and hotter in its old age. For the past three years it has been running 24×7 as my media server in the closet. The fan in the power supply had started to whine (especially when the CPU was maxed), and I already lost one hard drive to [...]
Archive of posts filed under the windows category.
It was time to upgrade
March 1 is quickly approaching and starting Monday, people who are still running the Release Candidate of Windows 7 will start seeing the expiration message. I’ve been running the RC at home since May of last year and knew this time would eventually come, so this past week I purchased the Home Premium upgrade media [...]
Testing Windows 7 RTM and XP Mode
I’ve been using the release candidate of Windows 7 at home for the past few months but now we’ve started testing Windows 7 at work. This past week I “upgraded” my laptop and desktop at the office to the RTM version of Microsoft’s latest operating system. Actually, both were clean installs since they were previously [...]
Trillian Astra is Gold
The developers over at Cerulean Studios announced today that with Build 117, Trillian Astra (for Windows) has gone gold. You can download the free version here. I’ve been using the beta on Windows 7 for the past four months and am pretty happy with it (I’ve been a paid Pro user since 2004 and have [...]
Getting the most out of your TiVo
I’ve been working on this post for a while. It’s a bit long, so bear with me … A TiVo is much more than just a souped up digital VCR. What separates TiVo from your cable company’s generic DVR (other than the awesome features of TiVo service itself) is the wide range of (mostly free) [...]
At least this proves Clippy is finally dead
Microsoft is really reaching with some of its latest advertising campaigns. Perhaps you heard about the vomiting woman with IMGIGP (oh my god, I’m gonna puke) syndrome commercial that they recently pulled? And yes, that was Dean Cain as the spokesman. Well, check out the latest “ad” for Microsoft Office 2010: I have to admit [...]
Microsoft Security Essentials
Microsoft is getting into the anti-malware market. Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is a replacement for Windows Live OneCare and, I think, Defender. Did I mention it’s free? Paul Thurrott has a good write-up on MSE on his SuperSite for Windows. Since I’m already running the Windows 7 release candidate, I figured why not give this [...]
I hate those fake AV trojans!
Today I had to clean another one of those fake anti-virus programs off of a machine at work. This one was called Personal Antivirus and bore a striking resemblance to AVG Free (which I use myself and usually recommend to others). Here’s the AVG console: And here’s Personal Antivirus: Look familiar? In this particular case, [...]
Windows 7 Problem Steps Recorder
I stumbled across another neat feature in Windows 7: the Problem Steps Recorder (PSR). Run psr.exe from the command-line and you’ll see a utility window you can use to record your session: Click “Start Record” and then replicate the problem. Click “Stop Record” when you’re done and the tool will prompt you to save a [...]
Mint-Eee fresh
How many more Eee puns can I come up with for my blog posts? The Windows 7 release candidate just wasn’t cutting it for me on my EeePC 900A. It looked nice, but Windows is just not meant to be crammed into 4gb of hard drive space. Even after vLite’ing the install I barely had [...]
