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 …
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, …
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 …
I found this interesting article via slashdot that explains the science behind the Folding at Home project. I folded my first workunit almost two years ago on June 19, 2007. Since then I’ve contributed about 580 additional WUs by running the F@H client on my various PCs and servers at home (you can see some …
Don’t worry, they’re making plenty of cash, but Microsoft announced this week that they will no longer be producing their personal finance software, Microsoft Money. This makes me sad as I’ve been an MS Money user for about 13 years! I switched from CA Kiplinger’s Simply Money to Microsoft Money 97 back in 1996 and …
Last week I stumbled on a deal over at Woot!: a refurbished Asus EeePC 900A (1gb RAM, 4gb SSD) for $160. My addiction to shiny things had me clicking on the “Buy” button before I could stop myself. Considering my original 4G Surf cost twice that (albeit over a year ago) it was too good …
This past weekend I decided to jump in and start using the Windows 7 RC full-time on my home desktop. Rather than do a (recommended) clean install, I wanted to try the upgrade from Vista Home Premium. To prepare, I made a full image of my PC with DriveImage XML earlier in the week (which …
I found, via slashdot, this great article on the history of Rogue, a character-based dungeons-and-dragons computer game from the early 80s, originally developed for UNIX. While I had been playing paper-based RPGs with my friends and computer-based D&D games (like the Alternate Reality or Ultima series on my Atari 800XL) all through high school, I …
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Microsoft made publicly available the first (only?) release candidate of Windows 7 this week, so I downloaded the image and then installed it at work on the same laptop I had put the beta on a few months ago. One interesting thing I noticed was the new login screen background, which has what appears to …
Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) was released this week and for the first time included a specific version for netbooks. It took a long time to download (apparently everyone is trying to get it), but once I had the image I created a bootable USB stick and then used it to boot my EeePC into the …