December 2011 - Mike's Window

Mike's Window

A commonly held 'view.. '

"Well, it worked in Windows 95!"

MVP Award years

2005 - 2006 - 2007

2008 - 2009 - 2010

2011 - 2012 - 2013

The original MVP logo

My Favourite Utilities

Speedfan is a great hardware monitor which can automatically control fan speeds, warn when temperatures are rising in the case, and do a SMART scan of your hard drives. A 'must have'.. http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

Piriform Speccy tells you what is inside the box and with great accuracy.. http://www.piriform.com/speccy

Networx shows download/upload bandwidth used.. http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/

Piriform Recuva is probably the best file recovery utility around and is free too.. http://www.piriform.com/recuva

Treesize shows you what you have got, where it is, and how much space it is all using.. http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml

Windows 8 alternative start menus.. Classic Shell.. http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

Stardock Start8.. http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/

EaseUS Partition Manager is the best free utility of its type.. http://www.partition-tool.com/download.htm

YoWindow, a weather utility which appears to work with the Windows 8 desktop.. http://yowindow.com/

My Favourite Gadgets - Windows 7 and Vista only..

Gas Buddy.. http://www.londongasprices.com/VistaGadget.aspx

NetMeter.. http://addgadget.com/

Network Monitor.. http://samwtucker.com/

Asst'd gadgets.. http://gallery.djinngo.com/gallery/index.html

Weather fun.. http://yowindow.com/

Syndication

Blog Archive List

Sort by: Most Recent | Most Viewed | Most Commented

Tech trends in 2012?

I am using this article as the basis.. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223066/Tech_Trends_You_ll_See_in_2012?taxonomyId=158&pageNumber=1 1.. Dual-Core Processors Become the Norm in Smartphones This is great news, Nothing better than a high...

Published Thu, Dec 29 2011 21:16 by Mike Hall

Filed under: My Opinion
Tomorrow, December 25th..

.. you may just have been given a shiny new computer. After the Windows 7 configuration part finally completes, remember to download ALL Windows software updates first, followed up by an anti-virus solution. I always suggest that Microsoft Security Essentials...

Published Sat, Dec 24 2011 18:17 by Mike Hall

Filed under: An aside, Windows 7
How will we control the computers of tomorrow?

I took the title from here.. http://www.ghacks.net/2011/12/20/how-will-we-control-the-computers-of-tomorrow/ To be honest, I am getting a little tired of being told how I should interact or will have t interact with MY computer. It would appear that others...

Published Thu, Dec 22 2011 18:42 by Mike Hall

Filed under: My Opinion
Tablets.. The Blackberry Playbook..

No, I have not lost my mind and bought one. I was asked if I could get it to connect to a Wi-fi network. The answer.. yes and no. I couldn’t get it to connect at the client location, but it connected to my wireless network in seconds. I have some work...

Published Mon, Dec 19 2011 21:54 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Hardware, My Opinion
Mice for little hands..

I have a four year old grand-daughter who took a shine to computers three years ago and some. She used to watch me fix them, and when she was old enough that she could walk, she would hold a flashlight for me such that I could see what I was doing inside...

Published Sun, Dec 18 2011 20:16 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Hardware, Mouse
Out of the box and ready to run?

Ha-ha. Pull the other one. More like ‘out of the pan and into the fire’!! From the point where the Toshiba laptop started to lay down its Windows 7 –64-bit image from the recovery partition, it has taken over five hours.. yes that is … 5 hours.. and it...

Published Sun, Dec 18 2011 0:25 by Mike Hall
Small screens and low power..

This is an interesting article.. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222756/Dell_pulls_back_from_netbook_market?source=rss_latest_content&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+computerworld%2Fnews%2Ffeed+%28Latest...

Published Sat, Dec 17 2011 19:40 by Mike Hall
No more Kernel power (Event ID 41) errors

The modifications I made to the Styrofoam base appear to have worked. Just to put you in the picture.. The black part is the case, the brown part is the floor, and the white part is the modified Styrofoam. The idea behind it is to keep the case off the...

Published Mon, Dec 12 2011 10:28 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Hardware, Miantenance, PC
When is a desktop not a desktop?

When it has been Metroed. I was walking through the Nuclear Medicine department in one of our local hospitals recently. There was a technician sitting in a large cubicle. She had the task of monitoring two MRI machines, and had two large LCD panels in...

Published Fri, Dec 9 2011 19:55 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows, My Opinion, Windows 8
Badge engineering, but it’s the fan and CPU technology which cut the mustard..

This is a Silenx EFZ-120HA4 .. supplied with one 120mm fan This is what I have in my main system. It works well and I can’t hear it. I like that.. The ends of the heatsink, the sides that you can’t see, are shrouded. This prevents heat falling out over...

Published Tue, Dec 6 2011 23:46 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Hardware, Cooling
AHCI.. yes, there’s more

I have had one ongoing problem with my production machine since putting it together. Every few weeks, it would shut down. There was no indication, and it wasn’t to a time, just purely random. Last week, I decided that I would look in Event Viewer, and...

Published Fri, Dec 2 2011 20:42 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Hardware, Windows 7, AHCI

December 2011 - Mike's Window

A commonly held 'view.. '

MVP Award years

The original MVP logo

My Favourite Utilities

My Favourite Gadgets - Windows 7 and Vista only..

Links

Syndication

Recent Posts

Tags

Archives

Blog Archive List

Tech trends in 2012?

Tomorrow, December 25th..

How will we control the computers of tomorrow?

Tablets.. The Blackberry Playbook..

Mice for little hands..

Out of the box and ready to run?

Small screens and low power..

No more Kernel power (Event ID 41) errors

When is a desktop not a desktop?

Badge engineering, but it’s the fan and CPU technology which cut the mustard..

AHCI.. yes, there’s more