Recently I was called upon to load the Windows 7 OS on a PC for a neighbor. I told him what the price of the OS was, he gave me some cash and I purchased a System Builder’s single-license copy of Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit edition. The price was $100, is a full edition (meaning not upgrade) and non-transferable (meaning it can only be used on one PC)....

The driverless car is one super-cool-nifty example of tech. Bear in mind I’m talking about cars that are not on rail. Most of us have gone for a ride on a driverless rail car at least a handful of times. For example, many airports do have driverless train systems, a.k.a. monorail, to get from one side of the airport to the other. The driverless car is...

Many of you shop NewEgg or other like online retail web site to buy things. One of the items they sell is Microsoft Windows 7. For single-license versions of the OS, there are three types you can buy:Upgrade OEM System Builder Full RetailUpgrade is easy enough to understand. In order to install the OS you need a qualifying product such as Windows XP or...

If you search the internet for Windows 7 sucks, the results aren’t what you would expect. Most are old and people don’t seem to be complaining all that much about the Win 7 OS these days. I want to make clear to appease the fanboys, fervent Linux and fervent Mac users that I’m not advertising Windows. But what I am saying is that generally...

Many unfortunately remember the infamous "Vista Capable" logo disaster. A whole bunch of new computers at the time Windows Vista was launched had a little logo that was supposed to indicate yes, they were capable of running Vista. But as we all found out, many of those new computers were barely "capable." Instead computer owners were treated...

This is not a review of Windows 7 the operating system, but rather www.windows7sins.org. I suggest reading thru that web site before reading this article. Some will agree with every point made on that site while others will say, "Um.. I don’t think so." Here’s my two cents on each "sin". 1. Poisoning education I disagree solely...

Microsoft has recently achieved the milestone of Release To Manufacturing (often abbreviated simply as RTM) for the Windows 7 product. This is the last step before the final shipped product arrives on store shelves. As most of you know, Windows 7 will be widely available on October 22, so you can be sure to see tons of deals on laptop and desktop computers. It...

The fact Microsoft is offering Windows 7 free for an entire year to anybody who wants it is definitely a change for the better. It used to be that whenever any software maker released a product, they would do so, wait for the mountain of complaints to come in, then provide fixes. Concerning operating systems, that’s typically how commercial releases worked...

Put simply, I don’t upgrade operating systems. Ever. I install any OS new and recommend the same to anyone else. It doesn’t matter if it’s Windows, OS X or Linux. Don’t upgrade. Back up your stuff, wipe the drive and start from scratch with the new OS. To note, I don’t do this with incremental updates (e.g. XP Service Pack 2 to 3)...

Dumprep.exe is a non-essential (according to Microsoft) process that may be in your system startup. It is OK to remove this but obviously it’s not done by deleting dumprep.exe (that would be bad). Instead we follow these steps: 1. Go to the Control Panel. 2. Double-click the System icon. 3. Click the Advanced tab. 4. Next to Startup and Recovery, click the...

In this series I’m going to covers the ins and outs of using Linux as your primary home computer operating system. It will cover in a realistic sense what you can and moreover cannot do with it. [hidepost=1] This is not going to be a technical explanation of how the Linux file system works but rather it’s immediate differences between it and Windows. The...

From DesktopLinux.com: "gOS Cloud can boot in seconds, into a barebones browser-based environment not unlike the locked-down "kiosk" set-ups at libraries and cafes everywhere. Yet, here, the browser has taken on OS-like features, such as the familiar Mac OS X-like application dock shown in the screenshot below." You’ve used several...

CPU-Z is a freeware application for Windows that is as easy as it gets when it comes to getting quick – and useful – system information about your computer. Let’s take a look (see screenshot below): Above is a screen shot taken from my older Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop. On the first tab, CPU, you’re told what kind of processor you have,...

For those of you out there that run a dual-boot system with Windows XP and Ubuntu, you’ve noticed that Ubuntu is the default OS that loads on each system startup. There is a way to change this so that XP is the default OS instead. Full documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GrubHowto/ChangeDefaultOS What that documentation instructs you to...

I’ve mentioned on the PCMech Live show many times my disdain for the fact that if you’re one of the few running a 64-bit processor, your options for native 64-bit applications are few and far between on the consumer end. Chances are very high that the computer you’re using right now has a 32-bit CPU in it. Here’s the short-short...

I broke into the world of computers and technology at around the ripe old age of 10. Not so amazing really, but remember…that was in 1984…back when most people on the street didn’t know what a computer was. The day my father came home from Radio Shack with a brand new Tandy 1000 was the beginning of what has turned into a passion for...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: APRIL 1, 2008 Apple and Microsoft have finally buried the hatchet, hung up their greedy nature for the bottom line and released a 100% free open source operating system, S.U.C.K.S. This is an abbreviation for Standard Universal Computer Kakistocracy System. S.U.C.K.S. will employ all the best features of both the Microsoft Windows and the...

Some have asked me off and on why I’m not using a Linux distribution full time as my primary operating system. Over the years (yes, years) I’ve tried but never found a Linux that did it all for me. The video below explains a bit of why I feel that...