GuruNews, Volume 9 Number 25, 7-16-09

Thu Jul 16 18:35:45 PDT 2009

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Vol. 9, No. 25                           

7-16-09

1 Windows XP going away soon         

2 Vista?

3 Moon landing, YouTube chicanery, Office again, flash security, home shopping laziness, 3D pics

4 Stickies

5 Registry cleaners

At the end of July, barring an unforeseen stay of execution by Microsoft, Windows XP will no longer be sold on new PCs.  You have to buy from local shops or from the business pages of web retailers currently so it’s already hard to find.

Many manufacturers have already ditched XP with the notable exception of locals, Lenovo and Dell.  If you’re thinking of purchasing a new PC and don’t want Vista you’d better buy it quick.

The way they do this is to sell computers with either Vista Business or Vista Ultimate licenses and then do a “custom downgrade” to XP Pro.  The license is valid for both OSs. 

The license is still valid after July 31st and you can still either do a fresh load of XP yourself or have a shop do it but the Microsoft Partners agreement (which encompasses most legitimate vendors) is specific and won’t allow them to sell it on PCs beyond that date.

If you hate Vista and are waiting for Windows 7 to be released in October 

be forewarned that it is more or less Vista SE.  Much like Windows 98 SE, it has improvements and additional features over the original, but it’s still based on Vista.

I’ll be the first to admit that from what I’ve seen it is much improved.  It’s lighter and faster and doesn’t ask you “Are you sure” a half dozen times if you really want to run a program or make a change.  It’s also supposed to give better performance on multi-processor (think dual- and quad-core chips) and 64-bit systems.

This is far from the death knell for XP.  Microsoft will continue to provide support and updates for XP through April of 2014 in part because it will still be sold as an OS on netbooks, the small lightweight hybrids of PDAs and notebooks.  Netbooks lack the power to run Vista and most manufacturers offer an alternative Linux load.  MS obviously doesn’t want more users switching to that.

There’s also the issue of corporate support of Vista or Vista-base operating systems.  In the current economy many companies, ranging from small mom-and-pop shops to large conglomerates, simply don’t want to spend the enormous amount needed to upgrade or replace every PC to bring it up to Vista requirements, much less the time and expense needed to train users on the new OS.

This all boils down to two things.  If you want your new PC or notebook to come with XP you need to order it in the next couple of weeks.  After that you can still run XP on it by ordering Vista Business or Ultimate on it, but you’ll have to have it wiped and reloaded from scratch.

On another note entirely, there are a couple of changes in the newsletter this week.  Daniel Williams has taken over the Tech News section and Matt Dattilo will now handle the Email section exclusively.  

This will free Matt up a little due to his increased workload.  He’s been handling two sections to everyone else’s one every week anyway.  Thanks for all the great headlines over the years, and the new Email section bears your name :)

Email us if you need us folks…

Kevin Mefford, Editor

pcguru at microdome.net

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

Tech News of the Week

This week is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, landing the first man on the moon.  Take an interactive look true to the countdown of the mission here:

http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/

YouTube is going to start forcing people still using Internet Explorer 6 to upgrade Internet Explorer or use Firefox or Chrome before they can view videos on the site:

http://tinyurl.com/mpmu5y

Microsoft has started letting out details on Office 2010, complete with lots of new features that most people will never use, but look pretty:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/

Is your run of the mill flash drive not secure enough for you?  Try this one on for size:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=5806

SmartSwipe is a piece of hardware that lets you have all the fun of swiping your credit card right in your own home:

http://tinyurl.com/l7luyp 

Soon you'll be able to take pictures in 3-D with a simple point and shoot camera:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1909457,00.html

Let us know the news you see, e-mail me at the address below

Daniel A. Williams
daniel at thepcgurus.com

Download of the Week

Simple Sticky Notes lets you create sticky notes on your PC. They're just like the Post-it notes that litter people's offices--but more private and not so unsightly.  Double-click the program's icon in your system tray and it creates a note for you. Type in what you want to remember and you're done. You can drag the note to any spot on your desktop. Overall, Simple Sticky Notes is straightforward and simple to use.  You can change the font and the color of the note, too.  It's free here:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Enhancements/Other-Desktop-Enhancements/Simple-Sticky-Notes.shtml 

Carlita Lupino

Cards57 at gmail.com  

Matt’s Email Question of the Week

Q:  i am running trend micro and wonder if i need to run a registry cleaner as well.

A:  Nope, registry cleaners are basically worthless.  They advertise that they'll speed up your PC and remove causes of crashes but they don't really make a difference.

On rare occasions you might need one to remove leftovers to install a similar program from a different company, in which case we generally recommend CCleaner from www.ccleaner.com but otherwise I wouldn't worry about it.

Kevin Mefford

pcguru at microdome.net

Contact info and legal stuff

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