Our computers have more and more USB ports, and we have so many storage drives plugged into them (USB drives, USB thumb drives, memory card readers, etc.) that it is somewhat difficult to recognize them all when they are displayed on the desktop. In the example below, you wonder which one is which among all… Read More
Category: Windows 7
Not everybody knows Bloglines, but this is an excellent RSS aggregator that I have been using for several years already to quickly check and track efficiently a large number of information sources (and efficiency is a key factor when you read 165 web sites simultaneously not accepting to spend your life and nights to it).… Read More
Create your own PDF files for free
Thanks to Print2pdf from Software 602, a free PDF production utility, you will be able to master nearly everything you wanted to do when creating a PDF file without asking Adobe for their expensive software solution. YouTube link There are other tools for this, but Print2PDF allows both production on your Windows PC and on-line.… Read More
You may not know it but all processes and all programs are not running with the same energy in your Windows-based computer. There is something named “process priorities” that manages which program will run first or will run with the most direct access to the CPU. photo credit: Ioan Sameli All this goes quite transparently,… Read More
The list of all security-related computer tools
It is impossible to list all these tools, but didn’t you want to have a list of all the best software security applications (and most of them are free) to handle the security of your servers and your personal computers? Probably the Best Free Security List in the World
I started to use Windows 7 in 2010 when I installed a new PC computer. After not even trying completely Vista, it was time to move forward and I was pleasantly surprised by some of its news features, but some things could be improved. For this I collected a few tips and I share them… Read More
Thanks to Bruce Byfield of Linux Journal, it is now possible to have a relatively fair comparison of the heavy-weight champion of office suites (Microsoft Office or MS-Office) and the young hyper-active challenger (OpenOffice). Obviously, OpenOffice advantage is that it is cheaper than Microsoft Office: It’s free. But what are the other ways to compare… Read More
My preferred Internet browser, Opera, has now reached a new version v10.50. Not only is it still the same nice, friendly and powerful browser, but it packs interesting new features: Faster: I did not try the beta versions so I was surprised: It’s fast, very fast. I am not sure if it warrants the “fastest… Read More
photo credit: nDevilTV The Solid State Disk (SSD) is the new tool for computer performance. You no longer can consider yourself a geek if you did not try these Hard Disk Drives without any moving part because they are made of Flash memory. You will earn the semi-god geek achievement only if you trimmed, optimized,… Read More
Less keyboard, more work
We do so much typing that we tend to forget about it. But there are ways to improve the situation (ensuring that you type less to produce more text).one of the best ways is to identify the texts you keep typing on the keyboard. then, you just have to use a utility program to help… Read More
OpenOffice.org v3.2 available for free download
The excellent office desktop suite, OpenOffice.org (Word, Excel and PowerPoint, in a free form, if you want) just moved to version 3.2 (still free). New features: Faster start-up times Compatibility with MS-Office 2007 documents Better Compatibility with MS-Office 97, 2000, XP documents, encrypted with a password Importation of dynamic tables from Excel Comments are now… Read More
IE6 is dead, says Google
Following our previous post about the evolutions of web browsers, it is interesting to notice that Google just announced that their on-line applications (GMail, Calendar, GDoc, etc.) will no longer support Internet Explorer 6 starting next month. It is time to go to a more recent (and more secure) technology, as mentioned before. Update: I… Read More
This week has seen a pretty exhilarating story develop in front of our Internet eyes. Started as a muddy conflict between Google and the People’s Republic of China, it turned into a Firefox marketing victory. Let me summarize it a bit. In the beginning was Google which installed its servers in China in 2006. The… Read More
Cygnus for Windows 7
The Cygnus name will certainly remind you of something ig you are interested into GNU/Linux, but maybe not more. Actually, this is a software package which has been designed to provide a lot of the “basic” Linux commands to be used from inside a Command-Line box of Windows. Version 1.7 of Cygnus is now available… Read More
The larger our displays, the tougher it gets to find adequate wallpapers. NASA (through a sélection from Chamorro) comes to our resscue with these exceptionnaly beautiful high-resolution images. Our computer will have a hig-technology look even in 4000×3000 pixels. You can notice that these images being free of copyright will allow to produce impressive posters… Read More
There are few things that you can do to significantly improve the speed of your Internet connection. Of course, you can switch to another Internet Service Provider, but it’s a mess. On the opposite, it is easy to have an sub-optimal connection because of the response time of the DNS server of your Internet Provider.… Read More
It’s worth noticing it if you are using Opera. I had a difficult-to-solve issue recently. While playing with the idea of starting to use IPv6 on my main PC, I tested the waters by validating this option in the network configuration of my Windows XP. Unfortunately, Opera is already fully ready for IPv6 but my… Read More
DirectX: 8, 9, 10 or 11?
The arrival of Windows 7 also annonces the arrival of a new updated DirectX to serve the PC gamers’ community. We already knew that Vista did not have the favour of the gamers (who often stayed with Windows XP) and that had (among other things) some significant impact on DirectX 10 that required Vista. Will… Read More
Best PDF reader
With the repeated announcement of (minor) incidents with the security of the original PDF reader from Adobe, I wondered what could be a good replacement. Obviously, it seems important to stay around free or low prices (Adobe Acrobat: Windows/Mac/Linux, Basic: free, Pro: $299), but is it possible to beat the Adobe product to read PDF… Read More
If you want to grab the maximum CPU power for your PC video game (or any other PC application, by the way), there is a free utility that will ensure that the PC CPU does not spend to much time on anything else: Game Booster. It may be bad for a correctly balanced performance, but… Read More