March 2012 - 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

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CoolerMaster CM690 II Advanced mid tower case

If you own one of these, you should know this..I do because I have one. I bought mine in May of last year and I do like it except for the fact that the cabling to the drives can be a bit of a tight fit when putting the back cover in place. I can live...

Published Tue, Mar 27 2012 15:30 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Hardware
Windows 8 CP saves the day..

So I needed to re-install an HP DV9000 and the DVD unit would not play ball. Time to set up a bootable Vista flash drive. It’s all so easy and fast too.. Open CMD as admin and type: diskpart select disk 1 or whatever the flash drive disk number is.. clean...

Published Sat, Mar 24 2012 21:46 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 8
What do I see..

.. when my computer boots to the desktop? This is what I see.. The total view is of a 19” widescreen LG monitor connected via a DVI cable. Starting at the top, under the Start button are nine applications and utilities all pinned there for easy access...

Published Wed, Mar 14 2012 10:59 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows, Windows 7, Desktop
Network messaging..

I may have mentioned in the not so distant past that I use a program called ‘Stickies’ for sending network messages across the home network. Well, most of the time it works well, but sometimes one or more names become unreachable. As a consequence, I...

Published Mon, Mar 19 2012 12:29 by Mike Hall

Filed under: networks, Utilities
Wireless security.. Do’s and Don’ts

SSID: This is the name of your wireless house or apartment, a personal identifier in a street or block of wireless houses or apartments. It has absolutely no security value whatsoever. Just like hiding the street number of your house or apartment doesn...

Published Sun, Mar 18 2012 15:06 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Security, Wi-Fi
Windows 8 – a parting shot.. for now

Do I like Windows 8? Yes and no. I am indifferent to it really. The admin features, easy to install, easy to feed apps into a working image simply don’t apply to what I do and how I do things. While my main machine is the main pivot for what happens...

Published Tue, Mar 13 2012 11:41 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 7, Windows 8
That was ELEVEN years ago..

The date: Oct. 25, 2001. The event: Microsoft releases XP. The bad points: It took up way more space than it’s Win 9x cousins It required way more memory than it’s Win 9x cousins A fair amount of older programs and hardware were not compatible A few Windows...

Published Thu, Mar 22 2012 9:34 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows XP
Why a Rat Rod makes a lousy ambulance..

I booted into Windows 8 again this morning, and then sat and looked at the Metro UI. The more I looked at it, the more I thought that it would be better without the apps. I like the way some of them show info, but the only time that I ever see a background...

Published Fri, Mar 9 2012 22:01 by Mike Hall

Filed under: My Opinion, Windows 8
The quest for an 'M Class' operating system – Part One

It is fast becoming common knowledge that Windows 8 lacks a Start Menu suitable for a desktop computer. I have seen suggestions which revolve around trying to emulate the classic menu style, but it saddens me to think that anybody considers them even...

Published Sun, Mar 4 2012 13:43 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Utilities, Windows 8, Start Menu
An offer I had to refuse..

I received an email yesterday from those nice people at PC Tools. I know that it was a good offer, maybe a reduced purchase price, because the email was headed thus: ‘Restore PC performance with Registry Mechanic 2012’ You can feel your pulse racing already...

Published Sun, Mar 4 2012 9:49 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Utilities, Annoyances
Internet Explorer 9..the best yet..

A great advert, this one.. I have always used Internet Explorer, from version 1 onwards. It became a target for every hacker and whiner, but the other browsers have had their ‘less than auspicious’ moments too. Internet Explorer rulz..

Published Thu, Mar 22 2012 10:13 by Mike Hall

Filed under: IE 9
2020.. Yayyyyy

No, not my eyesight, not even close.. Look at the date in the bottom right corner of the graphic. Aside from the fact that it is 7 days after my birthday, it means that I can stay with Windows 7 for almost 8 years before I have to consider moving to any...

Published Fri, Mar 2 2012 14:04 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 7, Windows 8
The quest for an 'M Class' operating system – Part Two

ViStart A quick note on this one. For sure, it looks like a Start Menu and allows access to all you can see, It also gives search facility. It is better than no official Start Menu. I would like to think that it could be, but thoughts are not enough....

Published Tue, Mar 6 2012 16:33 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Windows 8, Annoyances
Times and dates – and everything in-between

I was in MS Answers just now, answering a query about NeoTrace and Windows 7. It is a utility from the 90’s which traces across nodes between one’s home base and a remote computer elsewhere, but it requires longitude and latitude co-ordinates to recognise...

Published Fri, Mar 2 2012 13:09 by Mike Hall

Filed under: Websites

March 2012 - 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

CoolerMaster CM690 II Advanced mid tower case

Windows 8 CP saves the day..

What do I see..

Network messaging..

Wireless security.. Do’s and Don’ts

Windows 8 – a parting shot.. for now

That was ELEVEN years ago..

Why a Rat Rod makes a lousy ambulance..

The quest for an 'M Class' operating system – Part One

An offer I had to refuse..

Internet Explorer 9..the best yet..

2020.. Yayyyyy

The quest for an 'M Class' operating system – Part Two

Times and dates – and everything in-between