Archive for August, 2009
A simple package that combines two detection engines for maximum efficacy
German security specialist G Data has been producing anti-virus software for over 20 years, but there’s nothing retro about anti virus 2008.
Open it up and you see a basic user interface giving direct access to the main functions (starting and scheduling scans and updates), as well as a few information panels. Click on “Options” and you can set some default behaviors and toogle options like heuristics. As with Spyware Doctor . the emphasis is on practically.
The Targus website claims this versatile bag enables you to “change your look, from classic to cool to fun, in just a few minutes”. In reality, this amounts to being able to switch between these strap colours: gray, black and the slightly dubious lime green. Marketing plays aside, this is a good bag. Your 15.4in laptop is held in an elasticated neoprene sling, with good padding providing above-average protection. There’s a second flap giving extra protection to the main notebook compartment, although this adds to the Velcro, but this bag will keep your laptop will protected.
Targus TSM08001US Velos Messenger Bag (Charcoal)
Spyware Doctor is a veteran package, and way back in 2006 it held a place on our a list. These days, though, spyware is just one of a whole host of threats. PC Tools bundled optional antivirus into the package a few years back, and now this latest version focuses on behavioural analysis and system resources.
PUTTING YOUR PAGGING FILE ON A SECOND HARD DRIVE WILL IMPROVE PERFORMANCE
Splitting up the pagefile and your everyday apps is common sense. Doing this allows Windows to dump temp junk onto one drive while not having to interrupt reads or writes on the other. If you have two hard drives, this is a tip that definitely works and works well: Expect at least a 5 to 10 percent speed boost, depending on the existing speed of your rig and, especially, the performance of your drives. But any second drive will help at least a little: While not recommended, you can even put the pagefile on an external USB drive and see some performance gains.
iRiver’S mp3 players have consistently impressed us with their solid design and decent build quality, and this latest L-Player takes the range a step further. Similar to the Clix 2 in design, it features the unusual D Click system, which entails depressing the edges of the screen to navigate the player’s interface rather than clicking buttons. The results is an incredibly small player-it’s just 60 x 13 x42mm-but one that still manages to squeeze in a bright, watchable 2in screen (the same size as the iPod nano’s). Sound quality is excellent, audio file format support takes in Ogg and Flac as well as the usual WMA and MP3, nad there’s a raft of features including an FM radio, voice recording and video playback at up to 30fps. An excellent alternative to the nano,and cheaper too.
WRITE CACHING WILL IMPROVE PERFORMANCE ON SATA DRIVES
This feature is disabled by default in VISTA because if your computer loses power before a write is completed,you can lose data. If you’re confident in your UP’s capabilities, crank it up and you’ll see at least a 10 percent improvement in performance. Remember, write caching is supported only on SATA drives. The options are grayed out for older ATA disks.
DISABLING UNUSED NETWORK CONNECTIONS WILL IMPROVE BOOT TIME
Say you set up a network drive for a network drive for a computer you had months ago but is no longer on your network: When Windows boot, it spends at least some time reconnecting to that drive, wasting precious seconds you could be spending on Facebook. While XP and Vista are better than older versions of Windows about network connections [who can forget those interminable “Connecting…’ messages?] it still makes sense to disconnect from network shares you no longer need. You won’t actually boot noticeably faster without those extra drive letters, but Explorer will become usable more quickly after launch. This is especially noticeable in Vista, which has a helpful “loading” progress indicator that overlays the address bar: Having any number of network shares will cause it to take any extra 10 to 20 seconds to fully load.
This book covers almost all aspects of application development using C# with the .NET 3.5 Framework. It offers in-depth discussions of database access technology LINQ(Language Integrated Query) and new language extensions, such as type interface and lambda expressions . The book explores topics topics from object orientation and fundamental data types to generics and metadata. It has a guide to the Visual Studio debugger but, curiously , little on WPF(Windows Presentation Foundation).It’s not for novices, but for those with experience of past versions or switching from another language, such as Java, it will be invaluable.
Programming Microsoft® Visual C#® 2008: The Language
Vista/XP
SUPERFETCH BOOSTS PERFORMANCE for vista
Superfetch is an update of the XP Prefetcher, designed to more intelligently load applications into RAM based on frequency of use. With Superfetch on, your PC should theoretically get faster over time, particularly when loading frequently apps. You won’t see improvement in general performance, like rendering Photoshop files, but Superfetch does tend to make apps load10 to 20 percent more quickly, depending on their size.
Which equates to a stunning 9p for every one of the 640gb on offer. But the compromise is in the features : there are no eSata or FireWire connections, for instance, so it’s USB only. This puts performance behind eSata drives, such as the A-listed Western Digital MyBook but, when compared with the quickest of USB drives, performance was more mixed. The Verbatim was quicker than the Freecom Hard Drive Pro when handling single files, but fell far behind when tasked with groups of small files. This means the Verbatim is only ideal if you’re willing to trade performance for storage.
