The Computer Geek!

October 15

Windows 7... Vista All Over Again?
I'm sure we've all had our ups and downs with Vista or have heard many a horror story from a friend of a friend of a friend.  Today, I'm going to help dispel many of these "rumors" and give a little insight to the future of Windows.

First thing first-Why is Vista so horrible?   ummm... it's not. I actually find Vista to be quite refreshing when compared to the outdated look and feel of XP. Vista has tons of "eye candy" and it's not just for looks. It's all actually usable and makes the user experience very comfortable. The only thing I don't like about Vista is Superfetch. It's a system service built into Vista that learns the programs you use and the time of day you use them. It will then have those programs ready to load for you each day. Sounds nice doesn't it? Wrong! Unless you have 8gig of ram to spare, Superfetch doesn't do anything to help. If you don't have enough spare ram, then all it does is slow your computer down so much that it's barely usable. Luckily it's easy enough to disable. Simply click your start button, type in "msconfig" in the search bar. Open the program then click the "services" tab. Then scroll down and clear the "superfetch" box. Restart the computer and you have a perfectly usable, peppy, and rather pretty system. Now on to the good stuff:


Windows 7!

So, what's the big deal? Other than the fact that it take all the eye candy from Vista and all the stability from XP and multiplies each exponentially? Nothing! I'm assuming that by now you realize that Windows 7 is quite wonderful. You could say that it's what Vista should have been. Every single little thing about it feels right. What's new? Glad you asked.

Let's talk performance: Uses less memory. Usb devices load faster. Sleeps/resumes faster. On my pc it even loads faster.

The desktop: the taskbar! the taskbar! the taskbar! Should I say it again? The window previews are awesome. Like a cross between vista taskbar preview and Mac Expose`. It's very handy. Also, you can pin any program you like onto the taskbar to create your very own personalized Quicklaunch bar.

Networking: HomeGroup. Makes setting up a home network very simple. Share files, printers, and all you need is the HomeGroup password.

I suggest you hit  up your favorite torrent site or even Micrsoft's own site to get the Windows 7 release candidate and use any Windows 7 product key you find online to get it activated. Just remember that it will start it's automatic shutdowns in March. So you'll want to get a new product key any time from 10/22/09 to 3/1/09. Students can go here and get a steep discount.

Get a move on! 7 is the future!



 


12:23 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

Thanks Apple! Maybe Performance Update 1.0 will work this time
Apple's been busy in Cupertino this week. They've just released Performance Update 1.0 for Mac OS X Leopard users and one for Snow Leopard users. The notes accompanying the update say that Performance Update 1.0 addresses the intermittent hard drive related pauses reported by a tiny number of customer. Hit up Apple's site for notes on applying the update.

Products affected are: MacBook Air (Mid 2009), Macbook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53GHz, Mid 2009), iMac (20-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2009), MacBook (13-inch, Early 2009), MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008), MacBook Air (Late 2008), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2008), iMac (24-inch, Early 2009), iMac (20-inch, Early 2009), Mac mini (Early 2009).

Both updates are available for download from Apple's Site or through the Software Update option in Mac OS X

(via lifehacker)



8:48 AM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

May 07

Firefox to do the multi-process dance!

 

Finally! Just like Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 8, Firefox will be making each opened tab a separate process which makes things much more stable and will make use of multi-processor systems.

What does this mean for you? In theory, no more browser crashing. Instead, each tab would handle the crash instead. It’s great because you won’t lose your other opened tabs and you can always fire up another tab if something isn’t working quite right.

When will we get it? The wiki outline says a rough "bootstrap," with a non-Firefox browser operating the browser "chrome" (interface) and a single tab as separate processes, is scheduled by July 15 of this year. Phase TWO, "Parallel Improvements," would further the work on safely connecting the browser chrome to content, and is estimated for Nov. 1, 2009. Extensions, performance optimization, and multi-process content aren't even on a rough roadmap yet, so it probably won’t be this year.

So I guess it’s better late than never

 

 

(via Mozilla Links)

6:22 AM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

November 06

Q& A Time!
Now's the time for everyone to submit a few questions to me! whether they be related to Windows, Mac, Linux, Networks, or scooters!  We'll be doing this every few weeks to steer this blog and my website in the right direction. Basically, I just want to know what's on your mind and what you'd like to know. Then I'll post the questions with answers a little later so that the whole community can learn. Also, if you haven't checked out the newest release of Ubuntu you should give it a shot. I use it on a daily basis and couldn't be happier. Actually, I'm going to make a links page on my site to give you plenty of resources to get you started.

3:51 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

November 05

How to Improve your search engine rankings
Let's face it. Google's Sandbox isn't making your site any money and it's definitely not getting your name out there. I'll give you a few simple ideas and well documented tips to help bring your site to the top!



1.Write!

Well, don't just write; write well! You've got to have well-written, useful content so that Google and other search engines will love your site as much as you do. Also, if someone finds your site and content useful they will want to link to it and then so will their friends and so on. THEN, when Google finds those inbound links, your page will rise higher in rank. That's good because it will bring you more, unique visitors. Try to use synonyms and plurals so that search engines will track the plural word as well as the singular form and give you twice the coverage. Google uses "latent semantic indexing" and can tell how authoritative and deep an article or post is; so the better you write, the wider your vocabulary, and the more keywords you use, the better Google will like your site.

2.Lists

Specifically numbered lists. Everyone loves lists. They're simple to follow, easy to digest and get passed around quite easily.

3. Link

In-bound links will greatly improve your sites rating. The more links coming in the higher that rating will be. Also, create links within your site. This will evenly distribute the ranking between pages. Make sure that you have very useful external links, too. Only link to pages that are relevant to your content and make sure they haven't been penalized by any search engines or you're guilty by association. Also, make sure you use embedded links, not isolated links.

4. Signal-to-noise ratio

Try to have more content than code. It's the only way appease the search engine gods. And please, whatever you do: try your best to not use flash.  Flash and frames take forever to properly load and won't be indexed by search engines.

5. Craigslist and Backpage

These two sites can be your best friends. If you have any type of service or product to offer then place an ad on one of these sites following this simple guide and your site will climb through the ranks on the success of those sites. It's a very simple tactic that take advantage of their Google rankings.

 
Well, hopefully I didn't waste to much of your time and hopefully you'll get some good use out of this information. Be sure to check back for new updates and also pay a visit to Squidoo for tons of tips and tricks for daily use.



7:20 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)