Microsoft Office will have a 64-bit edition for version 2010. This is a big deal because that’s Microsoft flagship product. More on that in a moment. At this point in the desktop computing world, we’ve easily reached the limits of what 32-bit processing can do. No matter what OS you’re running, there really isn’t any more we can squeeze...

Encarta is Microsoft’s electronic encyclopedia product. It’s getting the axe and will be discontinued this year. For those that remember it, you most likely used it in its offline form on CDs. Encarta is also an online product. But obviously it cannot compare to sites like Wikipedia and the internet in general as an online research tool, which is one...

Over the weekend I had a discussion with a friend who has recently switched to Mac, and he brought up an unbelievably good – and I mean good – point. I’ll get to it in a moment. The friend I speak of is a Mac convert. He switched over, is very happy about it and has nothing but nice things to say about Apple. Granted, there are a few things he...

Fervent Mac users are quick to say, "You get what you pay for" to justify the price of owning an Apple Macintosh computer or portable Macbook computer. Laptops are outselling desktops like crazy right now and have been for some time – and this counts for Apple as well. Their desktop line, like all other computer manufacturers, have taken a huge...

More people these days are getting away from instant messenger programs and using the in-browser way, because there really isn’t too much reason to use an IM app these days. Years ago a large chunk of the IM functionality was provided by the application, but that’s not the case anymore. You can do voice, webcam, manage your buddy/contact list and...

Microsoft released Windows Internet Explorer 8 today at 12 noon EST. I downloaded, checked it out and here’s what I have to report. First I’ll say that I’m not going to rehash what’s going to be on hundreds of other blogs out there. I’m only going to concentrate of the nitty-gritty of what matters to most people in...

The PCMech Premium members have read (and seen in video) in great detail the lengths I go to to instruct how to archive email, be it POP, IMAP, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and so on. This article however is a freebie because it involves now-ancient mail data formats and how to convert them to modern format. And I know there are some poor souls out there still...

I had mentioned this in the PCMech Weekly Newsletter but it definitely deserves an article of its own. If you hadn’t heard, Windows 7 is planned to have six different versions when released late this year or early 2010. Many people did a facepalm when they heard this. To note, this is not a repeat of the way Windows Vista was done. Most of the versions do...

Getting a few gig’s worth of space for freebie online storage these days is not a big deal for most people. After all, Gmail offers 7.2GB of freebie email space currently (which many people use as storage only), so a few gigs is barely worth noticing. However, when it’s 25, you do sit up and take notice. That’s just a tick over five 4.7GB...

Very recently, Yahoo! announced it would limit some (keyword there) of its data retention to a sparse (and unheard of) 90 days. Privacy advocates have been screaming loudly for a very long time that web companies – particularly search engines – hold on to data that can personally identify an individual for far too long. The fact Yahoo has stepped up...

No, not a misspelling. It’s retro t-shirts from Microsoft. I’m not kidding. Would I wear the "THE DOS TANGLE" tee (pictured right) if I could get it? You’re darned right I would. I should bug the boss to buy me one for Christmas should it be available. Check out the official site here. [Source:...

This article covers the following:Setting up a workgroup in Windows XP. Setting up a workgroup in Ubuntu 8.10. How to share out files from your Windows XP computer on your home network so you can access them with Ubuntu 8.10. How to access files shared by your Windows XP computer on your home network in Ubuntu 8.10. How to share files out from Ubuntu 8.10 to a...

An anonymous reader on Slashdot wrote that based on exhaustive benchmark testing, the upcoming v8.10 of Ubuntu Linux is noticeably slower in some areas compared to previous releases (namely v7.04). "Linux" and "Slower" never fall within the same sentence, but they do now. To calm the masses out there, no, Ubuntu 8.10 will not be a crawling...

Using the freely available Terminal Server Client in Ubuntu Linux it’s easy to connect to your Windows XP computer(s) on your local network. See video below for...

SkyDrive is a free online storage service offered by Microsoft. If you have a "Windows Live ID" (i.e. a Hotmail, MSN or Live account) you can try this out right now if you like. This service gives you 5GB of online storage and it works for most that need a quick solution to store stuff online. It also allows for easy ability to share files out as...

On Monday I wrote an article about Office Live and Google Apps. In that article I said: Neither has any blogging capability whatsoever. I was corrected on this concerning the Microsoft offering. By whom? The Microsoft Office Live Team themselves (see comments in that article). Microsoft Office Live does do blogs and rather easily by using Live Spaces. This is...

Over the weekend I finally decided to check out Microsoft Office Live Small Business. I wanted to see what it was all about and what I could actually do with it. Note: This is not to be confused with Microsoft Office Live Workspace on the same site. This is labeled as “an online extension of Microsoft Office” – and that’s totally...

From the "Nobody really gives a flying f*#$" category (but a good watch anyway), Microsoft has already unveiled some new ads which are more on target with what they normally do. Here’s one of them. It’s all about "I’m a PC". Just to show you how bland the above ad is, Microsoft hasn’t really done any decent ads since...

MSFeedSync.exe is an executable file used by the Windows Internet Explorer 7 web browser to periodically update in-browser RSS feeds. It only appears in the Windows Task Manager if IE7 is running. In addition it only appears from time to time and isn’t in "always on" state. If you use the IE7 feature to read feeds in-browser, you need this...

“One Bad Apple“, by Dan Lyons over at Newsweek. In this episode, David comments on this Newsweek piece. Thanks for listening.