GuruNews, Volume 8 Number 42, 11-20-08

[Kevin-PC Gurus]

Welcome to GuruNews



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Vol. 8, No. 42                 

11-20-08

 

1 Upcoming           

2 Holiday favorite  

3 Yahoo shakeup, Apple off the hook, Life online, death in the MS family

4 Free burning       

5 Avast

 

The holidays are nearly upon us.  As a consequence you'll see some breaks in publication as the Guru crew breaks for celebrations with family and friends and take a well earned rest.

 

All the holidays fall on Thursdays this year so after this week there will only be issues on December 4th, 11th and 18th, then we'll pick back up on January 8th.

 

Until then I'll do the annual shopping guide, where I will explain the latest gadgets and make suggestions on who might actually benefit from them.  If there's room I'll try to get in a little bit on things you might actually want for yourself.

 

There are things currently on the market that can offer unique uses, provide some enjoyment and possibly even save us some money.

 

Be warned, it's going to be a weird year.  Ordinarily retailers stock up like there's no tomorrow, at least on normal items, and considering many retailers are made or broken by Christmas sales there may be no tomorrow for many of them this year.

 

They aren't stocking as many items as normal and, as a result manufacturers aren't making as much.  There are always shortages on things like game consoles and iPods but this year you may have trouble finding items like DVD players and cameras.

 

With those possibilities in mind I would suggest doing as much shopping as possible fairly early, especially for electronics.  Everybody needs underwear but not everybody actually needs a video game or wireless headphones.

 

After the first of the year I want to take a hard look at the upcoming administration's attitude on things that affect us as computer users.  We've never had a President who had an understanding of technology so the next four years should be quite interesting on that front.

 

Things are looking good already with the transition team tasked with examining the FCC.  The duo in charge is made up of Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach, both long time advocates of Net Neutrality.

 

Obviously with the economy, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran there are more important things than a hard look at the DMCA but at least someone will be in there who has a basic understanding of technology issues.

 

Have a safe and joyful Thanksgiving, help with the dishes instead of falling asleep on the couch watching football and try not to eat too much.  I doubt I'll manage the latter two but I'm going to give it a shot ;)

 

Kevin Mefford, Editor

pcguru at microdome.net

 

 



 

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

 

 

Tech News of the Week

 

Looking for a new gig?  Yahoo! co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang is stepping down. Bring your resume' and some Goody's Headache Powder:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2008-11-18-yahoo-ceo-hunt_N.htm

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed charges from a small computer maker that Apple Inc. is a monopolist because it tightly controls which computer makers build machines using its Macintosh operating system software:

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200811182018DOWJONESDJONLINE000702_FORTUNE5.htm

Life magazine announced Tuesday that it is making more than 10 million of its archival photographs publicly available through a partnership with Google:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10101099-52.html

Microsoft said Tuesday that it will discontinue its OneCare PC protection offering next June, replacing it with a thinner, free offering focused solely on anti-malware protection:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2334982,00.asp

Copy us on the good stuff!

 

Matthew Dattilo

thepcgurus at gmail.com 

www.mattstodayinhistory.com

 

 

Download of the Week
 

CD burning software is not cheap and can take a little study before one can use it.  "Totally Free Burner" is just what we've all been looking for. "Totally Free Burner" handles all the image and data chores that you would expect and will burn audio CDs and video CDs as well. All that's missing is the ability to burn a DVD movie.  It's free here: http://www.dandans.com/TotallyFreeBurner.htm 

 

Carlita Lupino

Cards57 at gmail.com

 


Email Question of the Week

 

Q:  I've been using Free AVG for a long time but I'm tired of trying to update etc. Seems like there's always some reason I can't easily update. I'm not opposed to paying for good protection,but free is good. What do you recommend?

 

A:  If you're looking for another free product that works just as well if not a little better than AVG, try Avast! from http://www.avast.com .  You can click here: http://avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html for the free home version.  You do have to register and get a product key, but they do not e-mail you for anything other than when your registration is about to expire.  I like it, and when I work on a machine for someone, it's the anti-virus I put on for them.  Remember to uninstall AVG before installing Avast!.  If you need any assistance, feel free to e-mail back, and I'll be happy to help.

Daniel A. Williams

daniel at thepcgurus.com

 

 

Contact info and legal stuff
 

If you have tech support questions or ideas and/or submissions for our newsletter please submit them by visiting www.thepcgurus.com and click on the "Email the Team" icon. 

  

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