Archive for July, 2008
Be careful of driver update scams
Hardware drivers can be a source of trouble and keeping them updated is not always easy for home PC users. Playing on this difficulty are some Internet scams that pretend to help you update. At Windows Secrets, Scott Dunn gives some advice about checking your drivers.
Best free security software
You can defend your computer against malware with one of the commercial suites and pay subscription fees every year or you can use some of the many free applications. PC World has put together a list, The Security Tools You Need. An even better place to go is the Tech Support Alert list.
Finding those pesky product keys
A lot of PC users seem to lose track of their product keys for Windows or Microsoft Office or other expensive software. This can be a real problem if you need to reinstall something. One of the nice features of the Belarc Advisor previously mentioned is that it provides a record of your product keys. [...]
For DIYers
Every now and then I post some references on how to build a PC for the do-it-yourselfers. Here’s some recent ones:
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
Jeff Atwood
Tom’s Hardware
Extreme Tech
The future Microsoft operating system?
Dribs and drabs about a completely new Microsoft operating system (code named “Midori”) trickle out every now and then. I posted about Midori a couple of weeks ago and today we got another little bit of information about this system from the SD Times. It seems that Microsoft has become aware that Windows can’t [...]
Find out all about your system with Belarc
My experience is that most home PC users have only a vague notion of what’s actually on their computer. It’s a good idea to have a record of what software you have installed, what updates have been made, and what hardware you are running. There are several ways to go about generating a report of [...]
Follow-up on “Cuil”
I wouldn’t bother with a second post on this wanabee Google but “Cuil” attracted so much attention that I thought some additional comment was in order. Today, I tried a few more inquiries using the search engine and I find the results basically useless. Here’s some other commentary.
John Dvorak has a post, The New Cuil [...]
Microsoft Vista Compatibility Center
Want to know what software or hardware will work in Windows Vista? Microsoft finally has a site where you can check if something is compatible with Windows Vista. It would be a good place to visit before you upgrade an existing system to Vista or to find out if your programs and peripherals are going [...]
Another new search engine
Google has shown that the business of search can be very profitable. Naturally, Google’s profits have attracted the creation of a lot of would-be Googles. People keep coming up with new search engines. But as even mighty Microsoft has found out, the search game is not that easy. Still, people keep trying to find the [...]
How to set up a new account in Windows Mail
In a previous post, I promised a slide show on how to set up an email account and here it is. Before you start to set up an account, remember that you need the email address, your password, the email service’s POP3 and SMTP addresses.
How to set up Windows Mail accounts
view presentation (tags: windows email [...]