The first of multiple defendants in a suit from a firm founded by a "patent reform advocate," Google has been asked by a jury to pay $5 million for the infringement.
I’ve mentioned Ninite in “Removing Malware” but wanted to dedicate a post to this nifty site. Ninite has a categorized list of some of the most useful applications and bulks the installation files together to streamline the installation process. Ninite fully automates the installations so you don’t have to click “next”, says no to installing toolbars, chooses the correct version for your PC (32 or 64), installs the app in your PC’s language, and updates the app if it is already installed. The site comes in handy if you have to wipe your operating system and need to re-install the applications; this can save HOURS. I’ve discovered many new apps that i had never heard of because of this site and best of all most of them are free.
On a personal machine this is what i would choose to download on a fresh Windows install:
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A new study hints that the perpetual multitasking enabled by always-on technology may be dangerous, but advocating self-imposed "digital detoxes" as a solution is like putting a Band-Aid on a broken wrist.
Twitter is reportedly in talks to acquire the desktop client for about $50 million--two months after it was (perhaps erroneously) reported to be sold to another company.
The company's first-quarter revenues were slightly better than what Wall Street was expecting, but earnings per share were lower than anticipated.
Virus Total is a site that utilizes multiple antivirus engines to detect if your file or URL is malicious. Upload a file or check a URL and let the scans do their job to see if that file or URL you were unsure of opening is safe.
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One of the most dreaded error messages for a Windows user is the blue screen, or the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) as it is popularly known, which suddenly pops up informing you that something is seriously wrong with Windows. What this screen essentially means is that Windows has crashed and needs to reboot to recover. The most powerful troubleshooting tool out there is Google. Type in the error code you are receiving and try to narrow down the results. Another user has almost certainly come across the same issue you are facing.
Problems causing BSOD:
The BSODs are generally associated with five problems faced by Windows:
-Software or device drivers may have a problem
-A hardware device is malfunctioning , or was removed while Windows was running, or does not fully support Windows. On older machines, outdated BIOS information can also cause errors.
-Hardware or hard disk errors during installation of Windows.
-Corrupted startup files, hardware, and driver software during Windows startup can also be the cause. This type of error will always require troubleshooting before Windows can start up normally.
-Intermittent errors that appear randomly. These can be caused by an overheating processor, a defective memory system, a dying or dead hard disk , or faulty software and device drivers.
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I recently came across a browser add-on called WOT. This application is great for increasing security in your daily web browsing. The application alerts you when you come across an insecure or untrustworthy site. Most notably, it blocks your browser from loading un-wanted pages and pop-ups in return, preventing malware from accessing your machine.
WOT works for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Internet Explorer and is available for download here: https://www.mywot.com/en/download You don’t have to register in order to use the add-on however, select a setting after installation (basic is recommended).
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As a provider of tech support i find screen shots incredibly helpful when troubleshooting a user’s problem. If everyone knew how to do this it would make my life, as well as the clients, a lot easier. Capturing a screen shot can be as easy as using Windows 7’s snip-it tool or simply pressing the Prnt Scrn (print screen) button and pasting it into paint. From there you can upload the screen shot in order to share it with others or save it to your machine. This is all fine and dandy but i find a little program called Jing a step above. Jing can capture a precise screen shot or video, let you edit it in a user friendly fashion, host it online, and then gives you the option to copy it to the clipboard as a url or download it.
Jing is free so give it a try: http://www.techsmith.com/download/jing/
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I’ve been getting asked a lot of questions about SSD’s lately so i figured i would post about my experiences with them: About 4 months ago i put a 60GB OCZ Agility ($110) SSD in my desktop and have absolutely loved it. I put my operating system (Win 7 Pro x64) and programs on this drive and still have 20GB left over. The biggest performance increases are faster boot times (around 20 seconds), programs startup as if they are minimized, and installations are very quick.
After the hard drive failed in my Dell notebook i decided to upgrade to a Corsair SSD based on my experience with the one in my desktop. I use my notebook mainly to take notes in class, browse the web, and check emails so i opted for a small 30GB SSD (Also, because i couldn’t afford a larger capacity). I store all of my data online (mainly dropbox and google docs) so this justified my reasoning behind this decision as well. In the future i plan to replace my optical drive (CD/DVD) with a high capacity hard drive, for a total of two hard drives.
Now, for my recommendation: If you have a machine that you would like to upgrade and have the money, go SSD. The cost of SSD’s is slowly coming down so if you can’t afford it, wait. If you can decrease your dependency on local storage (your hard drive) then you can sacrifice capacity for a cheaper priced SSD. A great program to figure out how much space you are using on your current machine is Treesize free. This will display how much space you are using and where the utilized space is located.
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I’ve been getting asked a lot of questions about SSD’s lately so i figured i would post about my experiences with them: About 4 months ago i put a 60GB OCZ Agility ($110) SSD in my desktop and have absolutely loved it. I put my operating system (Win 7 Pro x64) and programs on this drive and still have 20GB left over. The biggest performance increases are faster boot times (around 20 seconds), programs startup as if they are minimized, and installations are very quick.
