Archive for April, 2009
Remembering the HP-35 calculator
Recently, the IEEE History Center recognized the HP-35 handheld electronic calculator from the 1970’s with an award as a Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing. I owned one of these and a nifty device it was. eWeek has an article about it:
The HP-35 was HP’s first product that contained both integrated circuits and LEDs. [...]
Video on how to build a PC
Most PC users are not do-it-yourself builders of PCs; in fact, most are leery of even removing the cover from an existing PC. However, here’s something for the intrepid few who are not afraid to take up their screwdrivers. PC World has created a YouTube video on how to build a computer.
Firefox update
The Firefox browser has been updated to version 3.09. If you are already using Firefox, open the “Help” menu and click “Check for updates”. You can also go to the download site (Windows English version).
Watch PBS on the Web
The American public television network PBS has decided to place many of its programs on the Web. Saul Hansell reports at the New York Times:
Nonetheless, the public TV stations are taking more risks, and on Wednesday they introduced a fancy new video portal at PBS.org/video. It replaces a hodgepodge of sites, with different features, run [...]
Post and share files on the Web
Do you like to share music, video, slide shows, photos, and other types of files with your friends and family but find email attachments and embedding too cumbersome? There are various ways to post things on the Web (including blogging) but many home PC users just want some simple way to share their files without [...]
Create your personal profile for Google searches
If someone searches your name on Google, you haven’t much direct control over what is found. However, Google now provides a way for you to create a profile of yourself that will be included when someone searches your name:
To give you greater control over what people find when they search for your name, we’ve begun [...]
Restore the Run line to the Vista start menu
The Start-Run line is very useful in Windows XP but Microsoft decided to more or less supersede it in Vista with the Start Search facility. The Run line is omitted from the Start menu in the default Vista configuration but it can be restored. There are still times when I want to use the Run [...]
Puzzles on the Web
No, I don’t mean the baffling behavior of bankers and politicians doing stupid things but the more entertaining subject of recreational word puzzles. PC World has an article, Great Pencil-and-Paper Pastimes Online:
Crossword puzzles, Boggle, Jumble, logic problems, and more: If you enjoyed tackling it with pencil and paper, you can find it online. Here [...]
Apple tops in customer satisfaction poll
Various polls of customer satisfaction consistently show Apple at the top of PC manufacturers. The latest results are from Forrester Research Inc.’s Customer Experience Index. Gregg Keizer reports at Computerworld:
Apple Inc. beat rival computer makers such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. by wide margins in a recent customer satisfaction survey, an analyst said today.
Of [...]
Oracle buys Sun Microsystems
Having been jilted by IBM, Sun Microsystems went looking for another suitor and found Oracle. ZDNet reports:
Oracle said Monday that it will buy Sun Microsystems for $9.50 a share in cash, or about $5.6 billion excluding debt, in a deal that plunges Larry Ellison & Co. into the hardware market. The company added that the [...]
Microsoft to offer crippled Windows 7 for netbooks
Netbook PCs are priced sufficiently low that Microsoft’s usual price for Windows becomes a substantial fraction of the total cost. In the case of Vista, the operating system wouldn’t run at all. To keep Linux from making any headway, Microsoft was forced to keep Windows XP alive and to offer it at a reduced price [...]
