July 2009 Meeting Links

Microsoft unveils ’screaming deals’ for Windows 7 – Microsoft is trying an aggressive campaign to get people to upgrade to Windows 7. For a limited time (I know it sounds like an informercial), you can get upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium for only $49.99. You’ll be able to upgrade from either XP or Vista. I (Bob) have already purchased a Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade from Amazon. I’ve been using the release candidate of Windows 7 and I’ve been happy with it.

System Explorer – This free program gives you a lot more information than you’d find in Task Manager. It also gives you the ability to search for a process name on Google or ProcessLibrary.com.

After June 2009 Meeting Links

MostFun.com Game Network – This is the start of an intriguing way to get free games. This store gives you the opportunity to use a game for free. The catch is that you have to watch in-game ads. From my limited experience, the ads don’t seem excessive. If I (Bob) really love a game, then paying $19.95 makes sense. However, there are many games that I only play on occasion. For those games, I like this model.

June 2009 Meeting Links

A free way to give Office 2007 the classic look – If you’ve never gotten used to the Office 2007 look, this is a link to a program that adds back the classic menus to the Office 2007 programs.

From Starter to Ultimate: What’s really in each Windows 7 Edition? – Ed Bott, in his ZDNet blog, compares features in each Windows 7 version. Since Microsoft hasn’t produced an official list yet, he had to manually go through each version looking for changes.

Windows 7, June release – This link was a little deceiving to me until I read the article. Basically, a leaked memo suggests that Best Buy will allow people to upgrade to Windows 7 for a limited time for $49.95 to Windows 7 Home Premium. You’d still have to wait until October to actually get Windows 7 though. I’m wondering whether my OEM version of Vista Home Premium will work. I (Bob) doubt it, but I think I’ll be doing some investigating.

June Meeting Topic

Meeting Date: Wednesday, June 17th at 6:00 PM

Meeting Topic: SATA docking solution and Windows 7 RC1 – We’ll be looking at Olive’s new SATA dock that allows you to swap multiple hard drives for backup or booting. I (Bob) have also loaded Windows 7 into a virtual machine to take a closer look at it prior to its release in October.

After April 2009 Meeting Links

For this month’s links, I have a couple of YouTube videos that Olive gave us at the meeting:

Susan Boyle – Britain’s Got Talent – It’s very likely you’ve already heard about this YouTube video since it’s been played on every major news program. If by chance you haven’t seen it, I definitely recommend clicking the link. Without giving it away, it proves the old adage that you should “never judge a book by its cover”.

Antwerp train station dance – I’ve always been a big fan of Broadway musicals so this stunt of spontaneously dancing to “Do Re Mi” from the Sound of Music is definitely up my alley. Unfortunately, it degenerates into a stupid remix part of the way through but that only lasts for about a minute. Sadly, I fear if someone tried that here, the police would have everyone arrested.

March 2009 Meeting Links

Ultimate Windows Tweaker – This is a Vista-only program that allows you to tweak many Vista settings without resorting to registry edits. It allows you to adjust the sensitivity of the User Account Controls (UAC), tune Vista to your Internet connection speed, Internet Explorer tweaks and more.