The Best Free Antivirus Software – AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012 scored better than most of the commercial competition in antivirus tests. It also gets high marks from independent labs. Now that AVG free integrates with other AVG products and includes useful bonus features, it’s literally a priceless Editors’ Choice product.
10 cool add-ins for Office 2007 and 2010 – As good as the Microsoft Office suite is, some features could be better. Luckily, there’s no shortage of add-ins to help fill in the gaps. Add-ins are COM files that enhance existing functionality, making it easier for you to get your work done. Sometimes, this added power comes at a price: Not all add-ins live up to their promises. But the following Office add-ins definitely deliver. They’ll help you work more efficiently, and some of them will help you do things you might not otherwise be able to do.
Hands On with Sony’s Android Walkman – PCMag’s Wendy Sheehan got her hands on Sony’s Android-based Walkman music player at the IFA show in Berlin yesterday. An iPod touch competitor, the device will connect you to Sony’s cloud based music service of more than 10 million song titles. It is just a prototype, but it looks pretty cool and could be on the market in the U.S. by the holidays. My advice to Sony, hurry up.
TTC Shelbyville – Technical Blog: File Repair – easily repair corrupted files – File Repair software is a powerful tool to repair your corrupted files. It scans the damaged file and extracts maximum data from it to a new usable file.
An Easy Way to Get the Serial Number and Disk Drive Information of Your Computer – Did you ever run into the situation where you needed the serial number on your computer? The serial number is often required when you contact the vendor for support. Instead of crawling around on the floor looking for the serial number, try this:
Get Rid of Nasty Boot Malware with Microsoft’s New System Sweeper – Have you ever booted up your PC and only gotten a black screen? If so, something’s clearly wrong. You probably then tried a variety of steps to get your PC running again. But what if these don’t help? You might be looking at a nasty malware infection that is messing with your system’s boot files.
Backing-up Your Photos, Music and Files for Free – Your hard drive will eventually fail. So you need to backup your files. Why not do it for free?
The Pros and Cons of Web-Based Operating Systems – Web-based operating systems, such as Google’s Chrome OS, and new Chromebooks — notebooks built around the Chrome OS — have both received a lot of attention in the press. The question is do they make sense for small business?
Could Google be Resurrecting Gdrive? – Back in 2006, Google began work on an internal project codenamed Platypus. The core of the program was to provide every Gmail user with a cloud-based hard drive akin to Microsoft Skydrive or Dropbox. It was later revealed as GDrive, but it never launched. The project was quietly killed in 2008. But some new code in the Chromium project makes it seem like the service might be making an unexpected comeback.
Company News:
Toshiba Launches AT200 Tablet: Thin Is In – The AT200 is very light and very thin, measuring 0.3 inches thick and weighing 1.2 pounds. It’s got a 10.1-inch, 1280-by-800 display and a 1.2-GHz TI OMAP 4430 processor, making it one of the first Honeycomb tablets to not pack Nividia’s Tegra 2 processor.
Microsoft Sued For Collecting Windows Phone Location Data Without Consent – Microsoft this week was hit with a lawsuit that accuses it of storing location information about its Windows Phone 7 users even if they opt-out of having that data collected.
BlackBerry PlayBook tablet gets $150 price cut – Best Buy cuts the price of the 64GB PlayBook by $150. Though nothing like the fire sale on the HP TouchPad, it may be a precursor of more cuts to come.
Toshiba guns for no-glasses 3D TV market – 3D TV that’s as natural to watch as the regular 3D world is the holy grail of video. With the 55LZ2, Toshiba is betting the technology is mature enough to sell.
Off Topic (Sort of):
For Rent: International Space Station – Currently, the Gadhafi regime is first on the list of potential applicants, however; as transportation is not provided by the ISS, the capability to attain an appropriate launch vehicle is a major consideration in the determination of all renters.
Steam: The Best Way to Play on the Internet – Valve’s PC game distribution service Steam is one of the oldest and largest game platforms on the Internet. Since Valve released a Steam client for Mac OS X last year, the service is indeed the best in the business, earning our Editors’ Choice award.
1985: The Year of Living Ignorantly – Recently I was reorganizing my old data files when I came across a copy of an old magazine called Computer Wire. This issue was from 1985. Wow. That was the year that marked the tenth anniversary of the original desktop-computing revolution, which most people will agree began in 1975. What fascinates me is that, despite the clear advances this revolution was making, many people who should have known better were still in absolute denial about them.
Tablets Will Replace PC, Say Users – Experts argue over the likelihood of tablet computers replacing desktops and laptops, but many tablet owners have no such doubts. A recent survey from Staples Advantage, the B2B division of the big office-supply retailer, shows that a clear majority of tablet users believe that tablets will end up replacing their more traditional machines.
Today’s Quote:
“If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.”
– Robert X. Cringely
Today’s Free Downloads:
Free MP3 Cutter and Editor – This free mp3 cutter and editor is an extremely simple and handy tool for routine mp3 editing tasks. The program displays a waveform graph that lets you easily select a portion of the mp3 for editing. You can cut out unwanted part of the audio, change volume by specifying a percentage value, create a fade in or fade out, and convert the audio between stereo and mono.
Kindle for PC 1.7.1 – Kindle for PC allows you to read more than 360,000 Kindle books on your PC. No Kindle required. Already have a Kindle? With Whispersync, you can access your library of Kindle books, notes, and more.
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