News and other tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share
Here at the Chad’s News network command center, we’ll give up Windows XP when they pry it from our cold, dead fingers. But for those power users who’ve taken the plunge to Windows 7, we introduce “GodMode” to make your life easier. And for those who really want to explore the intricacies of Windows system administration, there’s even more.
Link: http://news.cnet.com/…
(via Slashdot)
Today Microsoft released an emergency out-of-cycle patch for Internet Explorer. The vulnerability exists in IE6 and above, but so far it’s only been seen in the wild for IE6.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
Firefox has reached a milestone: its market share for October beat that of Internet Explorer 6 (24.07% vs. 23.30%). What I find most amazing is that IE6 still has a 23 percent share. Security holes, standards noncompliance, and lack of features are all good reasons to upgrade to IE8. I’ve heard that much of the IE6 use is from corporate computer systems that are locked down by their system administrators, such that they can’t be upgraded.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
Over at UserFriendly, artist J.D. “Illiad” Fraser lists five movie concepts that will terrorize your inner geek. My favorite is “Windows Me: The Rebirth.”
Lifehacker has posted the ultimate guide to Windows 7. If you need to know it, then the linked article probably has it.
Link: http://lifehacker.com/…
Windows 7 is now available for purchase. Apparently it’s much better than Windows Vista. PC World has a review with things you need to know about the new release, and Kim Komando also has some information. For the power user, Lifehacker has a list of tweaks that still work. If you’re planning to buy an upgrade version, be aware that there are limitations, and make sure that your existing hardware and software are supported.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
According to the linked article, Microsoft has plans to include a 128-bit version of Windows 8 (not to be confused with Windows 7 which will be released next week). Here at the Chad’s News network command center, we weren’t aware that 128-bit CPUs were even on the horizon, so this is somewhat of a surpirse.
Link: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/…
(via Slashdot)
Lifehacker performed some non-scientific speed tests on the latest versions of popular browsers. As expected, Google Chrome completely destroyed the others in the JavaScript category. This is why I use Chrome for Facebook—Firefox just can’t handle it on my underpowered machine. The only reason I stay with Firefox is because of its wide variety of extensions. Note that I was a bit surprised to see that Apple’s Safari also had very fast JavaScript processing.
Link: http://lifehacker.com/…
Windows 7 will be available on October 22nd, 2009. The retail versions (which account for less than 5% of total sales) will be slightly less expensive than the corresponding versions of Windows Vista. There will be at least six versions of Windows 7, but Microsoft is focusing on only three for retail purchases: Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. For those interested, here’s a feature comparison page.
Upgrading from Vista will be relatively painless, but Windows XP users will have to perform a clean install of XP before upgrading. This means you are responsible for saving your data beforehand and restoring it afterward. Clean installs are also necessary when converting between 32-bit and 64-bit versions (and vice versa), as well as when you downgrade from a better version of Vista to a lesser version of Windows 7.
Run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to determine if your system is compatible with Windows 7.
Link #1: http://arstechnica.com/…
Link #2: http://www.maximumpc.com/…
(via digg)
Link #3: http://www.pcworld.com/…
(via The Consumerist)
Last February, Microsoft released a .NET 3.5 service pack via Windows Update. Part of the install process silently adds a Firefox extension allowing the browser to use the .NET ClickOnce feature. (The extension is named “Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant”.) There are some security concerns about this extension, and additionally, you can’t uninstall it without making a registry change. Needless to say, this irritated a good number of people. The uproar was so bad that Microsoft issued a patch allowing you to uninstall the extension normally.
If you can get Internet Explorer 8 to work correctly, it has some nice search abilities.
Link: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/…
(via Lifehacker)
The release version of Internet Explorer is available for download. If you’re not an early adopter, it’ll be available via Windows Update in the upcoming weeks.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
