Sunday, October 18th, 2009
How many of you knew that Microsoft released a free anti-virus and anti-malware program this week? I’m guessing not too many.
A friend of mine, Luy, with IT Support Guys, wrote an excellent blog post on how Microsoft has failed to promote their new security app, even on their own search engine Bing.
Well, it’s called Microsoft Security Essentials and it’s available for download from Microsoft. I’ve installed it on several customer computers and have been rather happy with it. I just got around to installing it on a machine of mine, however, because I keep my system from getting infected in the first place, my machine is not really a good testing environment. But I digress…
The stats coming from Lee Matthews at Download Squad:
The Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog has posted some interesting numbers. After its first week, Security Essentials has already been installed more than 1.5 million times. From the approximately 535,000 machines reporting statistics, MSE has logged over 4 million detections.
44% of MSE users are already running Windows 7 with XP following at 33% and the remaining 23% on Vista. The number of detections per OS is also interesting. 52% of the 4 million reported were found on Windows XP systems compared to only 32% on Vista.
Windows 7 users fared even better. Though they represent the largest group of MSE users, only 16% of detections came from systems running Microsoft’s latest OS. The post also reports 1/3 of these machines are using the 64-bit version, which “is even more resistant to malware than 32-bit due to PatchGuard,” states Microsoft’s Joe Faulhaber.
Surprising that over half of the detections come from only 33% of users? Not really.
Go download and try out Microsoft Security Essentials yourself, and let me know in the comments how you like it? Is it better than the paid apps (like Norton or McAfee), or existing free anti-virus (like AVG or Avira)?
Tags: anti-malware, anti-virus, Downloads, free, malware, microsoft, Utilities, viruses, Windows, Windows 7, Windows XP
Posted in Downloads | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
![3212889115_5f6f5c69cc[1]](http://eastbaypcrepair.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/3212889115_5f6f5c69cc1-150x150.jpg "3212889115_5f6f5c69cc[1]")
I recently bought a Netbook, a lovely Acer Aspire One, however it came with Windows XP and since falling in love with Windows 7, I couldn’t bear to use XP anymore.
So I went searching for the steps to make a bootable USB thumb drive with the Windows 7 install files on it, and got lucky when I found an excellent 7 step guide on CrunchGear. I’d recommend going to view that if you need the steps explained all along the way. But I’ll put them here, short and sweet.
- Since you can’t download the Release Candidate anymore that eliminates the first step.
- The second step is to download WinRAR, I use and recommend 7-Zip for all your unzipping needs, and it does the same job we need it to do in step 3.
- The third step is to extract the files from the ISO you downloaded (hopefully before Microsoft stopped offering it for download in August).
- Next step is to format your thumb drive to NTFS, and you need at least a 4GB thumb drive for the Windows 7 install files.
- That was pretty easy right? Now the hard part. Basically copy the bootsect.exe file from the /boot subfolder in the Windows 7 directory you created in step 3 to your C: drive
- Open the command prompt and go to the C: drive (or wherever you copied the bootsect.exe file), and type in this command:
“bootsect /nt60 f:”
(without the quotes and replace ‘f’ with the letter of your thumb drive)
That should copy the Windows 7 boot files to the thumb drive, then…
- Copy the Windows 7 files to the thumb drive
That’s it. It worked beautifully for me and I’m now enjoying Windows 7 on my new Acer netbook. Everything works great and I can’t wait for the final version of Windows 7 to come out on October 22nd.
Mark your calendars. Mine is already marked.
Read the original 7 step guide at CrunchGear
Tags: flash drive, guide, information, microsoft, tips, usb, Windows, Windows 7
Posted in Windows 7 | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
For Windows Microsoft Office Only:
If you’re like me, you can’t live without tabbed browsing in Firefox. What if you could bring tabs into Microsoft Office?
Well now you can. Using this Microsoft Office plug-in OfficeTab, instead of having separate windows for each open document, you can have tabs for all your open documents in either Word, Excel or Powerpoint.
As Lifehacker points out, you’ve got to wonder why Microsoft doesn’t include this feature by default.. maybe something to look forward to in the next version of Office?
The Lifehacker article also warns of a Visual Studio prompt, however, after installing it on my machine I had no such errors and it works problem free.
To download it you can visit the Google translated download page at OfficeTab or alternatively I have provided a download link here. (OfficeTabv1.20.zip)
via Lifehacker via DownloadSquad
Tags: Downloads, Freebies, lifehacks, microsoft, office, productivity, Tips and Tricks, Utilities, Windows
Posted in Downloads, Tips and Tricks, Windows | 1 Comment »
