Computer News

Kinda boring out there this week.

Interesting:
Neowin – Windows 8 UX designer on Metro: “It is the antithesis of a power user”
“Windows 7 couldn’t have existed without the lessons we learned from the mess that was vista. Xp couldn’t have existed without 2000. Hopefully Windows 9 will be a solid refinement on all this” – Miller

Downloads:
HWiNFO32 & HWiNFO64 v4.34 – “Comprehensive Hardware Analysis, Monitoring and Reporting for Windows”
CCEnhancer 3.9 – Adds more cleaners to CCleaner (be careful).
TeamViewer 9.0.26297 – Remote control any computer over the internet. “New scaling mode: best fit, Other minor improvements and fixes.“

Paul Thurrott has a great article up entiled What the Heck is Happening to Windows?. Yep, as I’ve said here before the PC is not a phone, tablet, or phablet.
As to fixing Windows 8, 8.1, 8.1 Update 1, as Ron White says, “You can’t fix stupid.”
Oh, and the 8.1 Update 1 non-official release date posted around the web is now April 8th.
p.s. – Paul, Neil Young sucks 😉

Futuremark updated PCMark8 and 3dMark11.

Introducing Mozilla Firefox Accounts

It was one degree at my house this morning with 3 inches of snow on the ground.
As a former Michigander I ought to be able to deal with this.
But this is Central Virginia and I’m over it.

The [H]ardOCP boys are fawning over the ASRock Z87 KILLER FATAL1TY mobo.
I’m digging the color scheme too 😉

Speaking of [H]ardOCP. Steve over there is collecting old computer parts for the underprivileged:
“I know that a lot of upgrades took place over the holidays and that means there is going to be a lot of “old” PC parts lying around collecting dust. Since the parts you and I consider “old” are 100x better than what most people are using now, I figured this would be a great way to put those “old” parts to good use!”
Help him out if you can. Announcement here. Forum post here.

LibreOffice has been updated to version 4.2. Download.

Yes, I’ve ditched all the social media associated with this site. I wasn’t getting anything out of it.

Carrie Fisher makes a Big Bang. She tells us filming for Star Wars: Episode VII begins soon.

Microsoft has a PDF entitled Windows 8.1 Power User Guide for Business. IMHO, worth a download.

Backblaze has an interesting report on hard drive failure rates in their environment.

Apparently this years CES is over. I barely noticed it started.

As I opined nearly a year ago. Microsoft Security Essentials support for XP ends on April 8th too.

Seems that Microsoft finally got the message. We want our desktops and laptops to run like desktops and laptops (a REAL start menu???). Not like phones and tablets.
They ought to announce this on a Jet Airliner.

There are no critical updates scheduled for this months Patch Tuesday. Oracle is also gonna patch a bunch of stuff that day.

The guys over at MajorGeeks have some Geeked out T-shirts on sale.
I just Picked up the Geek Lightning Bolt (AC/DC-ish) shirt.
MajorGeeks Black T-Shirt Sale! Save 30% on all designs until 12/7.

NASA has sent MAVEN on it’s way to Mars. The mission is to “determine the role that loss of atmospheric gas to space played in changing the Martian climate through time. Where did the atmosphere – and the water – go?” I’m putting my money on the blame going to Marvin Martian.

System cleaners System Ninja and Bleachbit have been updated.

In Linux news, openSUSE 13.1 will be released tomorrow and a Canonical (Ubuntu) developer disses Linux Mint.

[H]ardOCP has a Battlefield 4 Video Card Performance and IQ Review. Good info from those folks as always.

Microsoft announced a new logo for Bing along with some supposed improvements to the search engine. [Read more…] about Bing