bruceb news

If you don’t have enough memory (“RAM”) in your computer, it will run very, very slowly. Once you have a reasonable amount of memory, performance won’t change very much if you add more. Memory has been so cheap for the last few years that most people don’t need an upgrade but I still run into underpowered systems occasionally, usually when someone has complained to me about how slow their computer is.

You can check how much memory is installed by right-clicking on My Computer (WinXP) or Computer (Vista) and clicking on Properties. You’ll see the amount displayed there. Typical business computer users should have a minimum of 512Mb RAM for Windows XP and 2Gb (or 2048Mb) for Vista. […] continued

Microsoft rushed out a critical security update today that should be installed without delay on every Windows computer. It will have been installed overnight on Wednesday on many computers.

Please make sure this update is installed on your computer!

If you use Windows Live OneCare and it is green on Thursday, the patch was installed.

Otherwise, please check your computer! Go to Windows Update and check for updates. If any critical updates are listed, install them.

This is discussed in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067 (“Vulnerability in Server Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution (958644)”).

Apparently a vulnerability was privately reported to Microsoft, which realized it was “wormable” – capable of propagating across multiple computers very quickly. […] continued

Microsoft released security updates on Tuesday night, following its normal monthly schedule. Your computer should have restarted during the night.

We’re all overwhelmed by updates but we’re stuck with them. The holes fixed today are the ones that the bad guys will be hammering on tomorrow. You should be installing the updates for Windows and other Microsoft products when they’re released. Some of them will not be installed automatically – it’s up to you to take care of the ones that require extra clicks!

Take a minute to check your settings!

(1) If you’re running Windows Live OneCare, the icon should be green.

[…] continued

I’ve set up more new computers in the last few months than in the year before that. A lot of you are retiring your trusty Windows XP computers and sitting down to Vista for the first time.

Welcome to Vista! It’s a great operating system.

You’ll be able to get started right away. These are the new features that I point out to my clients – things that set Vista ahead of Windows XP that you might not discover right away. Go read about each one!

Vista’s Favorites list can be made into your best friend, a customized list for one-click access to the folders you use most often.

[…] continued

You might find something you can use in this collection of tips from David Pogue. Take a look! These are just examples from a much longer list:

• You can enlarge the text on any Web page. In Windows, press Ctrl and the plus or minus keys (for bigger or smaller fonts); on the Mac, it’s the Command key and plus or minus.
• You can also enlarge the entire Web page or document by pressing the Control key as you turn the wheel on top of your mouse. On the Mac, this enlarges the entire screen image.
• You can tap the Space bar to scroll down on a Web page one screenful.

[…] continued

I set up a new Dell Inspiron 518 desktop computer today – a nice home computer, a lovely case bristling with USB ports and shiny black plastic that will attract dust like nobody’s business, fast and well-equipped, shipped with the correct configuration and working out of the box, as usual with Dell.

Dell ships computers with less preinstalled software than most other manufacturers, even from the Home & Home Office division, so setup is easy. There were a handful of third party apps to take off – Google’s cluttered “Google Desktop” widget/search program and the rarely used Google Toolbar, one or two others. […] continued

Make a firm commitment not to be fooled into installing malware on your computer!

In this study, researchers created fake popup windows that should have been alarming, and put them in front of people at unexpected times. Most of the people clicked the OK button so quickly it was clear they didn’t give it a moment’s thought – they just wanted the dialog box to get out of the way as quickly as possible, with no thought to the consequences.

It’s up to you to protect yourself. It doesn’t matter what security software you’re running – if you click OK, you have given the bad guys permission to kidnap your family and empty your bank accounts. […] continued

Running a Vista Media Center Extender in the living room requires a computer in the house running Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate. Your home computer can send your photos and music to the living room without working very hard, so it’s quite possible to use the same computer that you’re using at your desk.

There is a caveat, though. The most important trick for a Vista Media Center Extender is delivering TV shows to the TV, and your home computer probably isn’t ready to do that without an extra bit of hardware to plug in the Comcast cable and act as a TV tuner. […] continued

HP has been creating devices for years to bring Windows Media Center to the living room. There are two new Vista Media Center Extenders being marketed under the “MediaSmart” name that have some very interesting features. The HP MediaSmart Connect is sitting in my living room doing exactly what I was hoping.

The previous living room occupant was HP’s Z558 Digital Entertainment Center, a computer running Windows XP Media Center in a box with a full complement of inputs and outputs for audio and video. It was fairly quirky to set up – getting the display to fill the screen took long experimentation, for example, and it wasn’t very good at finding media stored on a different computer. […] continued

Since the market for living room computers never developed, Microsoft decided to focus on “extenders,” a different way to deliver media to your television.

Huge numbers of people already have a computer in the house running Windows Vista Home Premium, holding photos and music. An “extender” is a small box for the living room that connects to the computer over a wireless or wired connection to display the photos on the television and play music on the living room speakers. If the computer is set up for it, the extender can also handle all the TV programming and record TV shows like a Tivo. […] continued