Well Saturday morning I woke up a bit early to finish off some work since it was going to be a busy Saturday of shopping for our impending move into a new townhome.  I hit the power button on my main PC and it sounded like it was gasping for every bit of power it could use, and then nothing on the screen.  Now just a few short weeks ago my video card moved on and I had to buy a new one, an AGP since my motherboard only supports that.  Now what could it be, power supply, video card...

Windows Vista has been officially released, and I am curious how many of our members now have Vista.  Did you go out and actually purchase it, order online, or did you obtain it from beta testing, or something like a MSDN subscription? I know in Orlando and some other places certain stores were opening at 10pm for a midnight launch, did anyone happen to snag a late night copy?  

I was invited a few weeks ago to attend a Microsoft Vista/Office 2007 launch event in Orlando which was being held today.  So I decided to get up early and brave the cold and rain to see what Microsoft had to offer.  It was being held at the beautiful Rosen Plaza hotel in Orlando.  Unfortunately, there was more than 2000 people at this event and parking was almost impossible, but I eventually made it in. Microsoft had a very nice registration area setup with beverages and ...

A couple weeks ago I wrote about how you should use the new year as a reminder to "clean" your PC .  I gave my tips on how to physically clean your computer, such as cleaning the fans, keyboard, and monitor.  Now I want to give you my tips on how I "clean" and maintain the operating system.  Many of these things I do on a regular basis, usually every week or so, but one thing I try to do is keep it consistent.  When backing up files (which we will discuss), I make it a hab...

I always use the new year as a reminder to do a thorough cleaning of my PC.  This "cleaning" refers to both the physical box and the operating system as well.  Keeping a PC clean can increase the lifespan of your box and also help with problems such as overheating. I'd like to share a few tips on what I do in my PC cleaning routine. Clean the fans The fans in my computer get very dirty and very clogged with dust, hair, and who knows what else.  Make note that befo...

I have been reading several articles on peoples tech predictions for 2007, so I was curious as to what your predictions are.  My predictions for 2007 are pretty bland in comparison to some I have seen.  I do think this year will be an exciting one, just because we have Windows Vista and Leopard coming out. Windows Vista:   Will have a mild start, but will slowly progress throughout the year.  I think a lot of people will simply take the opportunity to buy a new PC this ...

Microsoft released its monthly patches and update, so be sure to run Windows Update to make sure you have the latest security updates.  

Well over the last couple of weeks I have been trying to decide if or when I should install Windows Vista. I finally decided I should install, but now I had to make the decision on whether to build a new system, or just install it on the current one I have now. So thats when I started reading countless articles on Vista, hardware requirements, and many users opinions on the matter. I also spent a lot of time pricing a new system, and how much it would cost to build a new one from scratch. The cu...

Sophos Anti-Rootkit finds and removes any rootkit that is hidden onyour computer. Removing rootkits without compromising system integrityis particularly challenging and needs to be done with care.  

Mozilla has released an update to Thunderbird. "Mozilla Thunderbird is a redesign of the Mozilla mail component. Thegoal is to produce a cross platform stand alone mail application usingthe XUL user interface language. The intended customer is someone whouses Mozilla Firefox (or another stand alone browser) as their primary browser and wants amail client based on mozilla that "plays nice" with the browser."  

I recently spent the entire weekend building myself a new home office.  I previously had a small, cheap computer desk from one of the big office supply chains, and it just wasn't efficient for doing actual work.  So I went and bought a nice new glass/metal desk, a few accessories, and went to work.  I spent several hours carefully bundling and running wires, and making them nice and neat with wire ties.  I think I actually did a pretty good job of concealing most of the ...

"Windows Defender is a security technology that helps protect Windows users from spyware and other potentially unwanted software. Known spyware on your PC can be detected and removed. This helps reduce negative effects caused by spyware including slow PC performance, annoying pop-up ads, unwanted changes to Internet settings, and unauthorized use of your private information. Continuous protection improves Internet browsing safety by guarding over 50 ways spyware can enter your PC."

I think this is really great, and a big surprise. I expected the number to be much lower than what it is. A study conducted by Nielsen Entertainment showed that 64% of online gamers are woman. Also, about 8% of that are woman who are at least 45 years old. The study doesn't stay what type of games are played, so it's assumed that this also includes flash based games as well. So if any of your are on Xbox Live be sure to look me up.

I'd really like to know what happens to the people who "lose" these laptops.  "In advance of a House Committee on Government Reform hearing, in which the matter would have come up anyway, the U.S. Commerce Dept. responded to a Committee request by disclosing in a private briefing yesterday that it believes as many as 1,137 laptop computers have been lost from the Dept.'s inventory since 2001."

AMD and Streamload have launched a new service, and they are offering 25GB accounts for free. WWW Link