Windows 7

Let's start the game all over again...

Microsoft just released its Windows 7 Operating System, so obviously I've started digging for information before making the financial commitment of spending my hard earned money yet again on a Microsoft OS.

What I found out:

• Taking a beating with Windows 7 pricing by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols and
• Windows 7 pricing in Singapore out! by Joe Teh

Vista left me a really bad aftertaste... Paying too much money for software that does not meet essential expectations regarding stability, efficiency, compatibility...

I have tried the Windows 7 Release Candidate, and it is indeed better than Vista, but my position is that Microsoft would almost redeem itself by charging a reasonable price for the upgrade (like Apple, for example), or why not offer it as a service pack?

It's up to you, dear reader, but I just can't part with so much money... again.

I'll be in the Apple Mac OS X camp and eagerly waiting for Ubuntu 9.10, thank you very much.

Google+Education

Some interesting links on using Google (search, apps, etc.) for educational purposes ;-)

• http://www.google.com/educators/
• http://edu.googleapps.com/
• http://www.google.com/educators/weeklyreader.html
• http://www.googletutor.com/

Best Free Defragmenter

A must have piece of software for any Windows user:

MyDefrag - download and install it!

First run may be slow. Use it often (recommended: weekly or every other week) for better results.

Twitterholics

Are you into Twitter?

If so, this blog entry with 11 Free Twitter clients may be interesting to you.

This post has similar information, specifically for Linux: "Six Twitter clients for the Linux desktop and one for the road".

Personally, I use the web interface when posting, and/or Twitterrific (available for the iPhone or as a desktop Mac application.

You may also want to check Tweetie for Mac OS X and MyTweeter for Windows.

The nice and glossy icon used in this post is from AODdesign!

Premiere Elements 6

I had to work intensively with Adobe Premiere Elements 6 last weekend. It became a horrible experience since it crashed often.

Obviously, I had to find an immediate solution. After a lot of google, more gray hair and frustration, I found the bug: Microsoft's Visual C++ runtime is pure fertilizer and must be updated.

Download and install these two files, but mind the fact that the smart people of M$ named them... Exactly the same. So change the names or save to different folders. Anyway, applying these updates solved my crashing problem in Premiere Elements 6.

• Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86)
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package (x86)

I installed both just to make sure there are no conflicts and both are up-to-date. Should the links stop working because of M$ changing them, just google for their names and get them from Microsoft.com.

If you're looking for the best and least expensive Photoshop & Premiere you can get, check this great bundle by Adobe.

All brand and product names, logos, etc. belong to their respective owners, blah, blah, blah...

Annoying Firefox settings

I'm a Firefox fan, but there is a setting I always change. It annoys me when it saves everything to the Desktop by default. I prefer to be asked, so I can organise my files properly.

These are the simple steps to change FF's default settings:

Go to Firefox > Preferences

and then, under the Main tab,

click on "Always ask me where to save files"

OpenOffice.org

Downloading OpenOffice.org takes too long?

Try a server near you - the list is here.

For example, the two South Korean servers that mirror OpenOffice.org are

• http://ftp.kaist.ac.kr/openoffice/ and
• ftp://ftp.kr.freebsd.org/pub/openoffice/