Laptop Info Today

Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

Is it me or the title of this post just don’t make any sense.

Actually there is a new search engine in town and it is called Bing (hey I’m not binging around ).

Microsoft has actually decided to overcome its failure in the Live Search brand with Bing which is proclaimed to outstead Google and Yahoo search engines in future search use.

Why I’m covering this post  you might wonder, as it got nothing to do with laptops? For me, anything that has got to do with the internet has got everything to do with my laptop …. especially with this blog where I got to communicate with you all ….

I’m quite excited to test out the Bing feature (just to see how true Microsoft has evolved in search engine - Live Search is the one I normally avoid as it has just not live up to its expectation).

Here’s how the Bing Search engine looks like below.

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Just as the time when lots of applications on the web are running on Adobe Flash (e.g watching videos on youtube.com), Microsoft so-called flash based web application named “Silverlight” is gaining momentum as more and more web-based mash-ups/applications are based on that.

Question ….. what has it gotta do do with me?

Well, it actually has an effect on users and a techie guy like who is always on the internet; it definately does.

As more and more web applications run on silverlight, internet browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome and many others will be affected.

How it affects the user, is when a website prompts “You need the latest version of Silverlight” message box appears on the desktop and it will be a complete disaster if your web browser does not support Silverlight.

Till now linux based browser Konqueror and cross-platform based browser Opera has yet had official support for Silverlight. Whether is it a Microsoft tactic to kill Adobe Flash or web browser competition is yet been known.

Websurfers, like you and me however, can enjoy the rich and dynamics of websites that is being displayed on our desktop.

I received a call from a friend today and he told me he is unable to defragment his laptop.

It came to huge surpise that his laptop is still running Windows 98SE operating system!

WHOA !!!!!

To backtrack to today, it is an operating system most considered extinct and definately want to forget. It’s been 10 years since its release and within that 10 years cycle we have seen Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista came into existence.

The answer to why people are still using Windows 98SE ……  is somewhat a mystery but anyway because it was a friend of mine so I decided to help out.

If you encounter your Windows 98SE laptop having problems with Disk Defragmentation and having an error that says “Defrag004” then you would have to perform a scan disk first before proceeding.

For those who are very familiar with MS-Dos command prompt, type scandisk /all/Autofix .

 Then proceed the defragmentation as per normal. The defragmentation process should run as it is.

As I was working on my Lenovo laptop yesterday (running on Windows Vista Home Basic) , I was prompted to install the new Internet Explorer 8 browser via the automatic Windows Updates. Well my question to install or not to install?

Well since its coming from Windows Update, I just install the updates.

Guess what …..

This is consider to be one of the fastest Windows installation update.

Well let me explain …..

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It is another Tuesday again and asyou all know it is Microsoft Windows Update day.

By default, Mirosoft Windows will send update patches to all its users (be it an operating systems patch, office patch or service packs) on Tuesdays -  most being the second Tuesday of each month. 

I have always learn a lot of my IT stuffs and skills from TechReublic which is a good source for some technical details be it in Linux, Windows or Mac.

Today, i’ll be bringing a series of Laptop Dojo - the first on how to:
Stop Windows XP from nagging you about updates you’ve already completed or don’t want.

It is a good tutorial and I think it will work for you and your Windows XP laptop.

Yeah, as ever, I can’t be satisfied with Microsoft Windows yet again.

I’ve tried 2 distributions of Linux so far, Vector and PC Linux OS, which seem to be a downward spiral and somehow or rather, I failed and went back to Windows.

This time around I will be a bit precautious in my next act.

I’ve been reading a lot about Wine and stuffs on how you could actually get Windows application on Linux platforms and this time around I’ll be doing a lot more research before I “walk the plank” .

There’s a couple of distros that might attract me so far …. Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Sabayon and Puppy Linux.

(Note : Most of them are on Gnome)

I prefer KDE environment actually but having tried both the latter and XFE (Vector Linux), I will try my luck on this environment this time around.

Hopefully it will work OK (for the third time of my experience) and if you have any suggestions on which distro I should install on my laptop, drop me a comment …… best yet (which distro has Wine running Windows applications perfectly).

Onward to the Penguin …. till next post.

Recently (well its yesterday actually), I did a post on the new Open Office 3.0.

One of the functions that thrills me with the new Open Office 3.0 is definitely the PDF Importer.

Finally a freeware that allows you to edit your PDF file (well it’s a long wait really ).

Unfortunately this is NOT part of the installation files but it is an extension or add-on to the Open Office 3.0 suite. Do note this extension does not work with earlier versions of Open Office.

It is one of the hottest downloads of the moment; so HOT that it has already reach 254749 downloads at the moment and 58382 downloads from this week already.

What’s more users from various platforms are able to enjoy this breakthrough function. Windows, Mac OSX, Solaris and even Linux (x32 and x64) users can use this powerful tool on their already FREE Open Office 3.0.

To download the PDF importer for Open Office 3.0, click here.

To enjoy enhancing your Open Office with new extensions (if you are familiar with Firefox style of add-ons, this is very much similar) , Click here.

The alternative office suite for PCs (laptops included), OpenOffice.org, has now released version 3.0 of its office suite.

There are many new features in this new suite and for the first time ever ” a PDF importer”.

Which means you can import you pdf files …. edit them up and save as a document, spreadsheet, presentation or draw file (something Microsoft haven’t come out with ).

Though Microsoft has been working with third party ….. Able2Extract on this function to be in the future releases of Microsoft Office suites, Sun Microsystems has leapfrog a step further with this release.

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