Archive for November, 2009
When Roxio software can’t find the CD/DVD drive
I went to burn a CD today on my XP system and found that my Roxio software couldn’t find the CD/DVD drive. There was nothing wrong with the drive; it read disks and I burned a CD with other software. A Google search revealed that this is a known problem with Roxio software. There seem [...]
Catching up after a long weekend
Not everybody took the long Thanksgiving weekend off, and there were quite a few interesting posts. Here’s a summary of some of them:
Why flame wars erupt online“People behave oddly on the internet. They cheat, argue, hurl insults and generally behave in a way completely unlike their day-to-day behaviour. To find out why, PC Pro editor [...]
How to copy a picture from an email or Web page
I received an email from someone who wanted to know how to copy a picture from his Outlook Express mail. I assume the picture is in the body of the email and not just an attachment. It’s very simple to copy a picture from any HTML formatted email as well as from many other kinds [...]
Reading for a long weekend
Tomorrow is the American Thanksgiving holiday and many will be taking a long weekend off. That includes me and the blog will resume on Monday. In the meantime, here is a collection of links for weekend reading:
Does Amazon know where it’s going with the Kindle?
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes says Amazon has dropped the ball by not [...]
Disk defragmenters
Defragmenting your hard drives is one of those computer maintenance chores that has to be done now and then. In Windows Vista and 7, defragging is pretty much automatic with a default setting that runs the built-in Windows utility once a week in the background. Thus, most home PC users with Vista/7 no longer need [...]
Beware the 12 scams of Christmas
The holiday season is big business for everybody, including scammers. In an interview with CNET, security firm McAfee gives its list of the 12 scams of Christsmas. Slightly paraphrased, these are:
Charitable phishing scams
Fake invoices from delivery services
Phony social networking friend requests
Fake holiday e-cards
Fake “luxury” jewelry
Hacked or phony holiday shopping sites
Sites with Infected Christmas carol lyrics
Job [...]
Black Friday shopping
In America, the day after Thanksgiving is the traditional Black Friday frenzy of shopping for bargains. ZDNet offers a guide to sales specials for electronics and gadgets. It’s a substantial listing so if you feel like braving the crowds on Friday, take a look. Actually, you might not have to leave your home since there [...]
Quick exits- how to close many open windows at once
It’s easy to have a lot of applications open at the same time. If the time comes when you would like to close some or all of them, there is a quicker way than clicking one at a time on the close button for each. Hold down the Ctrl key and click on the icon [...]
Keep it clean
Many PC users are unaware of the importance of keeping a desktop PC physically clean. I have posted about how dust accumulates inside a PC before. For some step-by-step instructions on housekeeping, there is a MaximumPC article, How To: Properly Clean Your PC.
Laptops are generally closed boxes except for small vents for cooling fans. Make [...]
A roll-up PC
Organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) are a technology that promises to really change displays someday. The technology is currently very expensive so only very small screens have been seen on any actual products. The advantages of OLED are its energy efficiency, flexibility and unmatched brightness and contrast. Recently, Samsung showed a 7” netbook prototype but production [...]
Microsoft cripples netbooks?
Monopolies are rarely good for the consumer and the Microsoft Windows hegemony is no exception. An example of Microsoft acting counter to the best interests of PC users is the company’s efforts to cripple netbooks so that consumers are forced to buy bigger machines with more expensive Windows. Nor are the OEMs and Intel averse [...]
