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By admin, October 24, 2009 16:06

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For those that have been following me since January of this year you may be aware that I took advantage of downloading the open beta version and testing it on a few machines.

I had really good luck with various systems and even installing it in VMware.  My only real hangup was my main gaming rig which runs Windows XP SP3, simply refused to detect the DVD drive.  Which was very strange since it was booting and running the setup from the very same drive.  All the VMware machine I build used the same drive also although I’m aware VMware does use it’s own drivers but that was it.  Every other box, method I tried worked without major problem

Today Saturday Oct 24, 2009 I took the liberty of installing both Windows 7 Ultimate x64 AND Ubuntu Desktop 9.10 Karmic Koala Release Candidate x64 on the exact same laptop a Compaq presario CQ60 laptop which came with Vista Home Basic which I really did not want.  If you want to find out about my Installation for Ubuntu check out the next story.  I’m publishing this one first so it should be the one right after or the newer one.

Continue reading 'Windows 7 Release – Installation notes'»

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By admin, October 12, 2009 14:43

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As part of my constant survey of false and misleading job ads, I came across this interesting one on craigslist at this link.  http://calgary.en.craigslist.ca/etc/1415300999.html

It tells us that if we participate in the “focus group” that we will get paid $100 for this.  Well I’ve participated in many surveys and ‘focus groups’ and enjoy doing so, but many are not all they seem, and some are downright invasive about ‘knowing your personal lifestyle’ or worse, resellers of your information.  So I decided to check it out and reply to the email listed in the ad as Haley.Axel@gmail.com.  My first suspicion about this was when I received a reply almost immediately.  Very rarely do ad responses get immediate replies, and instead of asking for a time to meet, it simply directed me to a ‘screener’ survey via Survey Monkeys.  Well Survey Monkeys is a free online service anyone can use to generate surveys and submit them.  So I’m thinking they wanted to stick me into doing a survey for free.  Well the questions were in my mind serving nothing other than providing a clear redirect to the real company Lightspeed Reasearch, based in New Jersey, to ‘become a member’.  Well membership is free so I’m thinking so far so good right?

Continue reading 'Focus Group Music Survey for $100 – I don’t think so.'»

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By admin, September 20, 2009 18:45

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How many times have you discovered that your hard disk is filling up even though you are not installing any applications.  You think ‘do I really have that much data’, or you store your data on a separate drive from your OS and applications (something we recommend to all clients and friends) and cannot understand why your OS or application drive keeps filling up.

Chances are its because of the applications themselves either downloading content into it’s application directory, or it uses the windows ‘Application Data’ directory to store temporary or cached data, some cases even permanent data remains in these directories.

A good example of this is Google Earth that keeps it’s cache database in your Apps Data directory, and can easily exceed several gigabytes in size.

Or maybe you love the convenience of the “My Documents” directory and accessing it directly from the start menu, but don’t have enough room for your data.

Continue reading 'Moving Directories In Windows — Using Junctions'»

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By admin, September 13, 2009 14:52

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Well I’m now seeing the trend in Driver Cleaner products becoming all the rage.  Buy software to remove old drivers.  In the past I’ve never had issues trying to upgrade drivers UNLESS I changed manufacturer.  Like if I went from ATI to nVidia or vice versa, I’d have problems.  Today when I do this I don’t see the same problems, just uninstall the old and install the new.

Continue reading 'Driver Cleaners – New Snake Oil Products?'»

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By admin, September 13, 2009 14:02

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I usually advise clients that the vast bulk of these tools are simply nothing more than snake-oil products. However many self-proclaimed experts on many support forums tend to get annoyed with me making such statements. I feel their annoyance may simply reflect the fact that many of these products may well support these same sites, which would be a conflict of interest. Regardless, I’ve never seen any substantial GOOD come from these tools.

After reading this article on MaximumPC, I felt that I would quote the relevent sections to indicate that they are simply products to make you part with your money and nothing more. Few if any offer any serious advantage to the average person, and even fewer advantages to the average machine. Frankly I’ve seen a fair amount of work from people who use these tools and break their systems, so I guess I can be happy for the work. I’m positive I don’t know anyone who has anything ‘positive’ to say about these tools. Registry bloat is a non-issue and no one needs to delete dead old entries UNLESS they are relevent to a malware infection. In which case ‘some’ of these tools can be handy in a malware cleaners toolbox, but only if they know what they are doing.

Continue reading 'Registry Cleaners – Do They Really Improve Your Machine?'»