Windows XP service pack 3 and Vista service pack 1 available again

Microsoft just announced that they have resumed downloads of XP service pack 3 and Vista service pack 1 through Windows Update.

We have service pack 3 installed and it isn't anything earth shatteringly new, but it does make sure you are up to date with all the latest security fixes so in that regard it is worth installing.

18 Features Windows Should Have (but Doesn't)

PC World has published an interesting article on what the claim are the top 18 software features Windows Vista (and XP) should have but don't.

I disagree with 3. Back to My Mac: if you were smart enough to keep automatic backups on Amazon's S3 service then you could get the file easily and pay a lot less than $99/yr. A lot of the other features are already handled in windows by free third party software - why should Microsoft reinvent the wheel?

Overall I see nothing in their list that would make me ditch XP on my main PCs for Mac or Linux (even though I also use and like Linux).

(pcworld, via digitalhomethoughts)

Weather superimposed on Google maps

Weather Underground has announced their new Wundermaps feature that superimposes precipitation maps and radar on the familiar Google maps interface.

They go way beyond what weather.com offers by also including all the weather stations that upload data to their service so you get a realtime picture of temperature and wind at multiple locations in the area.

Full press release:

Continue reading "Weather superimposed on Google maps"

Toshiba laptops get facial recognition security software

Toshiba's laptops with "fusion finish" (the U400, M300, A300 and P300) will now come with facial recognition software that won't let you login unless your face (or whatever other part of your anatomy you waved at the webcam during setup) matches a database of stored user images.

In unrelated news police expect the number of decapitations associated with laptop thefts to increase.

"Hand over your laptop or else!, hold on that's one of them fancy Toshiba ones, sorry mate I'm just going to have to decapitate you as well."

(via hothardware)

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 beta

Trusted Reviews took a first look at Adobe's beta of Photoshop Lightroom 2 software for working directly with the RAW file output from high-end digital cameras.

Their verdict?

"This is by no means a full and finished product, but it's coming along nicely thank you very much. Adobe has listened to users and by letting them continue to try the beta is sure to provide a very useful and elegant imaging solution on final release.

It's still not perfect - there's a few file handling issues, I'd like to see more web gallery options and I personally would like the camera LCD display from Bridge to quickly see camera settings in the Library. As it stands now though, I can't wait to get my hands on the final version. If you're a DSLR user Lightroom is proving to be an essential."

(more at trustedreviews)

Windows XP service pack 3 now available

As promised Windows XP service pack 3 is now available for download via Windows Update as a 70MB download.

Not the most exciting update ever but worth installing to make sure you have all the latest bug fixes.

Of course to download it Firefox users will have to start up IE and hope they can avoid spyware and malware while online the Microsoft way.

(windowsupdate)

Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 released

It's April 24th and you know what that means: Hardy Heron!

Hardy Heron is the latest version of the free Ubuntu linux operating system, and it is also the first version in a few years where Ubuntu is promising long ern support for the release (through 2011).

We like Ubuntu as a alternative to Windows on some of our PCs, it isn't for everyone but if you are a bit technically minded it is very powerful and extendable.

Go download Ubuntu now

Ubuntu on a Samsung Q1 ultra-mobile PC

Blogger "Taxman" has managed to get the 7.1 version of Ubuntu running on his ultra-mobile Samsung Q1.

What's even more impressive is that he got it to recognize both the touchscreen and his Sierra Wireless 875U AirCard, and has posted full instructions on his blog.

More from Taxman

(via jkontherun)

New version of AVG free antivirus available

AVG Technologies have announced a new version of their free antivirus software will be available for download April 24th.

We have AVG on all our PCs and have never been successfully infected with a virus.

“With the release of AVG Free 8.0, we are underscoring our belief that all computer users, regardless of their computer usage needs, have the right to a safe and worry-free computing experience,” says Karel Obluk, chief technology officer at AVG Technologies. “However, it is important for users to remember that AVG Free does not protect against the full range of today’s web-borne threats. For complete protection, users should consider AVG’s commercial products, which scan for and block threats before they can infect the computer or disrupt the user experience.”

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Released

Microsoft has announced that Windows XP service pack 3 has been released to manufacturing and will be available for download on April 29th (if you use the automatic update feature of windows if will download it sometime this summer).

(full announcement below)

Continue reading "Windows XP Service Pack 3 Released"

MacOS 10.4 Tiger Launched

Apple really knows how to milk their fanatically loyal customer base with a $130 operating system upgrade every year.

This year's release is MacOS X version 10.4, aka Tiger (Grrrowl), and the main things you get for your $130 are the following:

Spotlight: basically a hard drive search application that is built in the OS to make it nice and fast.

Dashboard: Lots of cure little widgets for your desktop

RSS: The Safari web browser now supports RSS feeds

Compatibility: Plays nicer with Windows PCs

Is it worth the $130?, our verdict is nope, but if you're thinking of buying a mac make sure it comes with 10.4.

Meedio Essentials

We took a look at Meedio and their software last night and it seems to me a good alternative to a Media Center PC, especially if you want to do home automation as well.

Meedio Essentials acts as the home page for your home media, allowing you to view pictures, listen to music, view video, check the weather, and launch applications, and there are lots of add-ins to expand it's functionality.

Meedio TV is PVR software allowing you to view, record, and time-shift TV. It operates asa standalone program or as a plugin for Meedio Essentials.

Meedio Housebot is a home automation server which works with all the standard home automation hardware such as X10 and powerlinc.

We hope to be reviewing their software in the future, and in the meantine you can get more information at meedio.com

Adobe Camera Raw 2.4 Beta

If you have bought one of the newer high-end digital cameras you may have been bummed to find out that Photoshop CS didn't support the RAW image format on those cameras.

Well, Adobe has just released a public beta of their Adobe Camera Raw plug-in that adds support for the RAW format of the following cameras to Photoshop CS:

* Canon EOS 20D
* Canon PowerShot S70
* Canon PowerShot G6
* Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II
* Konica Minolta DiMAGE A200
* Konica Minolta MAXXUM 7D
* Nikon D2X

Time for us to switch to using RAW format on our 20D and see what the results are like.

Download Page for Windows or Download Page for Mac

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Released

The free Mozilla Firefox open-source web browser has at last been officially released, and 10 million downloads are expected over the coming days.

Features of Firefox listed as improvements on Internet Explorer include: tabbed browsing (multiple pages in one web browser window), good handling of popups and cookies, built-in google search, RSS integration, and loads of extensions that add functionality.

Almost 10% of visitors to ShinyPlastic.com already use Firefox and I expect that number to get higher.

Get Firefox

More on X1 Google Desktop Alternative

I have been using X1 since mentioning it yesterday as an alternative to Google Desktop Search and it is a great piece of software.

It has now fully indexed my PC and I have instant search capabilities inside 45,000 emails, 10,000 attachments, and 150,000 files! (I am an email hoarder).

On the email tab I start typing "united sfo" and I imstantly get the list of 45,000 emails cut down to 56 related to flights I have taken in the last 8 years to/from San Francisco airport on United.

There are also privacy issues being raised about Google's desktop search as it indexes all the emails and files of all the users on the PC:

"This is not a bug, rather a feature," says Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products. "Google Desktop Search is not intended to be used on computers that are shared with more than one person." (via slashdot)

The only downside to X1 is the price, $75 is way too expensive for the average computer user wanting to search their files. If X1 were to cur their price to something much lower (maybe in the $20 range) they would probably end up making more money from the much higher sales volume they would achieve.

Google Desktop alternative

Jason over at the unofficial google weblog suggest X1 as an alternative to Google's new desktop serarch tool.

One advantage of X1 is that it keeps all the data locally so there are less privacy concerns and you can find your files/emails without being connected to the internet.

There is a good flash demo at X1.com.

(more from theunofficialgoogleweblog)

Lexar 80x 1GB Compactflash $50

Amazon.com has a great deal on high-speed compactflash memory cards at the moment.

You can get for the Lexar Professional 80x 1gb CompactFlash card for $50 (after $30 rebate expires 9/30).

Note: if you see a price higher than $80 then Amazon is sold out and they are defaulting to a seller such as Office Depot or Tigerdirect. Wait for Amazon to have them back in stock at the lower price.

Do you really need a high speed card? well a regular card has a write speed of 600kb a second, but this card has a write speed of 12mb a second. We will have a review in a couple of weeks looking at a number of high speed cards and seeing where they come in useful (hint: if you want to take advantage of the 5 shot per second burst speed on the 8.2 megapixel Canon 20D camera you will need a fast card).

Lexar Professional 80x 1gb CompactFlash card for $50

1 GB Compactflash or SD card: $100

Surplus Computers are a trustworthy supplier of surplus or reconditioned computers and accessories.

The currently have two great deals on Brand New CompactFlash and SD (Secure Digital) cards suitable for Cameras, Pocket PCs, or MP3 players:

PQI 1GB 26x Speed CompactFlash Card: $99.97 ($30 discount, condition: New, warrenty: 90 days)

PQI 1GB SD Secure Digital Card: $99.97 ($70 discount, condition: New, warrenty: 90 days)

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 16mb Cache Hard Drives

Maxtor have announced a new range of hard drives that offer up to 300gb storage with a 16mb cache.

The new 16mb cache size should make these drives noticibly faster at loading programs and large files than other comparable hard drives.

The DiamondMax 10 series has the standard 7,200RPM speed for desktop hard drives and comes in 6 sizes: 80GB, 120GB, 160GB, and 200GB (with 8mb cache), and 250GB and 300GB (with the new 16mb cache).

The drives come in 2 versions: one with the new SATA (Serial ATA) interface (available now with the 300gb version costing around $250), and the other with the older ATA/133 interface (available by the end of September).

Windows XP Service Pack 2

After a few false starts the latest upgrade to Windows XP is available... but you will be lucky to get it today.

Service Pack 2 is a major update to Windows XP focusing on security issues: providing a better firewall that is switched on by default, and cutting off a number of features that are potentially unsafe.

It is only going out to 2.5 million people a day via the Windows Update feature of Windows and starting tomorrow (Tuesday Aug 10th) it will start going out to some people via the Automatic Updates feature of Windows.

Note that some software that didn't do things securely enough is broken by this update. If your favorite piece of software behaves funny after the update check with the software manufacturer for an update.

Update 8/9: I have this installed now, the install went very smoothly: very few problems. For some reason it doesn't get a status from Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Style XP doesn't work (they are working on a fix), and if you have a Pocket PC you are going to need to click unblock on a couple of firewall security alerts before Activesync will work.

Make Doom 3 Run Faster

A lot of people are surprised at how slowly Doom 3 runs, even with a good computer.

Here is a simple tweak to a text file that will make things much faster and allow you to use a high graphics resolution and detail level:

My games system isn't the fastest or newest, Athlon XP 2500+, 1gb PC2700 RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb. With that system Doom 3 defaulted to medium detail and 800x600 resolution (in comparison every other game runs well at 1800x1600 max graphics). I upped the graphics to 1280x1024 and high graphics but got massive slowdowns and jerkiness (from 10 frames/second down to under 1 frame per second) whenever there was a lot of movement on screen.

Then I found this simple trick that made my Doom 3 run faster:

Continue reading "Make Doom 3 Run Faster"

Free Software

No, I'm not talking illegal copies of programs here.

Roger Ramsey at Sudhian has written a great article about using Freeware (free software, with no limiting of features, no hidden spyware downloads etc) to replace all paid software on a PC (except the operating system).

The best thing about the article is a full list (with links to the author's website to download) of almost 50 free software programs (divided into core, audio, video, graphics, DVD mastering, internet and productivity categories).

Personally I won't be making a PC with all this software but it will save me buying two copies of some software to use on my laptop, and I will be able to replace some shareware software I need to pay for soon with free software.

Thanks Roger!

(link to Sudhian article)

Longhorn Speculation

Cnet has an article about enhancements being made in the next major version of Windows to improve laptop performance/productivity.

This new version of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, wont be released until at least 2006 so dont take anything as gospel.

Article Link