..Fans inside computers; that is, not fanatical computer users.

If your fans aren’t working correctly inside your computer then you’ll likely have problems: The first and main one of those will probably be overheating:

There’s probably a "chassis fan" on the back of your computer: This fan sucks hot air out of the case. The hot air rises from the components, which get hot and heat the air around them. If heat builds up in the case then the components get even hotter. – The chassis fan helps to prevent this from happening.

You might also have an "intake fan" behind the front panel of your computer, or perhaps on the side panel of the case, or both. Some cases have a side-panel fan built-in when they’re manufactured. Intake fans assist the chassis fan by blowing air of room-temperature into the case, where it circulates around the components, picking up heat, and then being blown out again by the chassis fan(s).

These aren’t the most important fans though. A lower-powered computer can often work fairly well without any intake fan. Some can operate satisfactorily without a chassis fan, or both in some cases. (Though I recommend always having a chassis fan if at all possible.)

The most important fans, usually a necessity, are the "CPU fan", and the "PSU fan":

The CPU fan is usually located on top of, or adjacent to, the large heatsink attached to your computer’s CPU or processor. These two components are collectively known as the "CPU cooler". Their joint function is to prevent the processor from overheating. Without either you’ll be lucky if your computer gets a chance to boot up before its processor overheats. Most processors these days include a thermal shutdown mechanism, where if the processor chip gets too hot it senses this and shuts itself down so that it doesn’t "fry" itself.

If the fan on a CPU cooler fails then although the heatsink portion of the cooler continues to conduct heat away from the processor, once the heatsink reaches thermal equilibrium with the processor there’s nowhere for the heat to go, and the processor consequently shuts down or fries. The fan blows air onto the heatsink which removes the hot air from between its fins and thus most if not all of the heat dissipates into the air inside the case; which can then be evacuated from the case via the chassis fan.

The PSU fan is normally located within the computer’s power supply unit itself. This is normally located at the top of the case at the back. Its function is to draw coolant air from inside the computer’s case, across the internal components – which get very hot with all the wattages flowing through them, and to eject it out the back of the case into the atmosphere of the room. If it fails you might smell an acrid stench first as the PSU’s components begin to fry themselves (Maybe giving off smoke.); soon after which the power supply unit will almost definitely fail; possibly with associated fireworks.

In a few cases there may be another critical fan; that being the "chipset fan": The SiS chipset on the Shuttle SS21T motherboard, for instance, requires one. The chipset fan works on a similar principle to the CPU fan; though the availability of thermal shutdown might vary between chipsets. (?) You may also find a "GPU fan" attached to a large heatsink on your graphics card if you have one fitted: This also works in much the same way as a CPU fan.

We’ve now covered pretty much every type of fan you’ll find inside a computer, apart from the tiny fans inside HDD bays, perhaps. Now we know what they are and what they do, you’ll understand why they have to be maintained.

Air is full of dust and vapours. Lots of air passes through your computer. therefore we can assume that lots of dust and vapours also pass through your computer. It’s like a vacuum cleaner: It sucks in air and expels air, except that your computer’s not intended to remove the dist and dirt from the air. Nevertheless it does do that to a certain extent: Where does the dust and dirt it removes from the air end up? Mainly on and around the fans and between the fins of heatsinks.

That’s not good: A heatsink that has the air passage between its fins blocked by debris can’t work efficiently. A fan that’s spinning in dirt is slowed down by friction with the dirt and by the weight of dirt sticking to its blades due to the adhesive effect of accumulated condensed vapours. If a heatsink can’t work properly and the fan that’s supposed to be keeping it cool can’t spin its blades fast enough then heat builds up because it’s not being removed properly: Result = component(s) overheat and shutdown and/or fry.

Your computer itself might notice that it’s getting rather warm inside, and could display a message such as "System fan error: Check system fan." That’s probably a warning that something’s about to fry or to shut down. OK so which fan is the system fan? It’s not specific; but all or any of them could be at fault. The first ones to look at are the important fans; the CPU fan first. The exercise: Clean it. if necessary and you have the expertise, close down and unplug the computer, remove the entire CPU cooler unit from the processor, and clean it thoroughly. If possible separate the fan from the heatsink and clean the spaces between the fins. Clean the fan; its blades and its bearing. – A tiny 500ul drop of hi-grade lubricating oil may be of use when applied to the bearings of some fans such as sleeve-bearing fans, but usually a clean is all it needs.

If you’ve not removed a CPU cooler before I suggest that you ask someone who has to do it for you, as you’ll need to clean off and reapply the heat-conducting grease between the processor and the cooler on reassembly and refitting: If you don’t do this there is a good chance the processor will overheat due to insubstantial heat conduction to the cooler.

Having done that, clean the GPU fan if you have a graphics-card fitted, (It may be difficult to remove the heatsink, so just do your best at cleaning the fan without disassembling the graphics card.) and the chipset fan if one is fitted. I’d also recommend removing, cleaning, and refitting any intake and chassis fans at the same time. Also use compressed air to blow out any dust in the computer’s case and on the motherboard. You can buy cans of compressed air for this purpose from most computer retailers.

Whether or not your computer is warning you of a fan error; I suggest doing this operation at least every couple of years at least.

We haven’t attended to the PSU fan. This fan is probably inside the PSU itself. Trust me it’s not a good idea to open up a PSU, especially not long after it’s been in operation: There are potentially lethal charges stored within the capacitors inside; and even if you avoid the capacitors themselves there’s always the risk of a triggered electromotive-induction shock through discharging a capacitor through a low-resistance inductor. If you need to clean the PSU fan I suggest unless you know exactly what you’re doing, you get someone who does to do it for you, or maybe even replace the PSU if your existing unit is more than a few years old. (If it’s an old AT-model PSU then I suggest that you get a new computer: You’re probably suffering from geriatric computeritis. (Using an ancient substandard computer.))

Clean fans = healthy computer.

Mozilla are getting ready to produce a third beta release of Firefox 3.1. Are all these beta releases really necessary though? Mozilla say yes; and they’ll be subjecting their new baby to at least 1 more before a final release candidate is produced:

Although it’s in essence just another minor release; there are a number of new features in 3.1, such as the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine as well as a privacy mode. Mozilla want to fully iron out the bugs by means of beta-testing before committing to release candidate phase. Microsoft take note.

Do you think they’ll still release as scheduled; or do you envisage there being further issues that could easily delay the release?

Microblogging service Twitter used to allow users worldwide to update their status via free SMS from their mobile phones. In August of this year, 2008, the available 250 free SMS updates were withdrawn from European countries and Australia due to the greed of the mobile-phone companies causing Twitter to be unable to strike a reasonable-priced deal with them in order to subsidise these free SMS updates.

Three months later in November 2008 the same fate has befallen Canadian users, once again due to the greed of the service providers.

Writing for Venture Beat; M G Siegler expresses disgust at AT&T’s charging another $15 a month for conveying such a tiny amount of data.

Like Siegler; I don’t blame Twitter: it’s the greedy mobile operators that are slowly choking Twitter who should bear the brunt of any anger.

When India becomes Twitterless as far as mobile phones are concerned; will the US eventually follow suit and Twitter’s free SMS service be a thing of the past? Will this be a state-by-state shutdown or a nationwide outage? How will this affect the many Twittereers and Twitteresses in the USA who rely on SMS to tweet?

There are times when things can be hard to write; and maybe this is one of them, but what the…

OK I’ve been somewhat of an anti-proponent of Apple up until now; and I have to say that I’m still having problems in my mind with what I term "the Steve Jobs modus operandi". I’ve borrowed incidental comments from others and expanded upon them, slating Apple and Steve Jobs in the process. I’ve even used the name "Jobsweh" as a derogatory name for Jobs, (A parody of the all-powerful and demanding Yahweh in the Bible.) which I picked up from a term used once in fun by Ded Ryzing in July of this year, 2008.

But it’s starting to get to my head, and after almost actually, without realising it, trolling in a comment I made on PC Mech earlier, which owner David Risley described in his follow-up comment as a "knee-jerk reaction every time he mentions the word "Apple"", I’m beginning to realise that all that’s happening is that I’m, without meaning to, starting a pointless one-woman-crusade against Apple; which is a ridiculous thing to be doing.

So what got me started on this foolhardy idea in the first place? Well during July I had a long conversation with a taxi-driver whose brother-in-law worked for Apple, and who had passed on some insider-information to him that Apple had rushed out the initial iPhone platform to get the iPhone to market ahead of the LG Viewty. I looked up the LG Viewty on the web and realised that it was a very nice cameraphone. From then onwards I became a proponent of the Viewty in opposition to the iPhone.

At the same time the world went iPhone mad: Suddenly everyone had an iPhone, but very few people owned a Viewty, despite the Viewty’s camera being far better than that of the iPhone. The thing was that the Viewty was a top-class camera-phone, but that’s all it was; a camera and a phone. It wasn’t a mobile personal computer like the iPhone.

At this point I was on the verge of admitting defeat and going with the flow; when suddenly up popped the news that Steve Jobs; control-freak extraordinaire, had a lever that would remotely block any chosen application on any selected customer’s iPhone. The iPhone suddenly became just like a Mac: The property of Steve Jobs, right down to which applications you could run on it. It was no longer a personal mobile computer as in your personal mobile computer; it was Steve Jobs’ personal mobile computer that you’d paid to lease on the proviso that he dictated what Apps you can and can’t run on it. It was yours to do what Jobsweh liked with, literally. It seemed like people were paying Apple for a computer that they were told was their property, but was under the remote control of Apple, with Steve Jobs at the controls. That; to my mind, is a con.

From that point onwards I’ve been expressing my distaste of Apple and Steve Jobs; which is starting to go overboard and is serving no useful purpose as such other than possibly to negatively affect my popularity of late.

Unfortunately it’s time for me to accept the fact: Apple, despite what I may think, and regardless of my opinion, have pulled it off, and they are a successful company, and growing too. Whatever I may think of the tactics of Steve Jobs; they work and they have made him a fortune: More than anything ethical or that I consider ethical has ever made for me. Do I need to redefine ethicality within my own mind? It may be so; maybe not? – I have to think a lot on that one.

Whatever the case; Apple have the iPhone as probably the most popular phone on the planet. Apple are the only company who managed to get everybody excited about their phone product: Think about it; no other mobile device has such a buzz associated with it. Why? The iPhone seems to just work the way people want it to. I don’t know if they envisage Steve Jobs at a remote-control booth somewhere in iWorld booming "I am the Almighty Jobsweh! Thou shalt not run that program upon thine iPhone that I have granted to thee." and pulling the lever. I have no idea whether they see it anything like I do but just put it out of their minds. Whatever they do or don’t do they buy iPhones – millions of them. – And now everyone is trying to make their latest mobile device look nd feel like an iPhone to the greatest extent that they can. Am I missing something here?

Why iPhones? Why not Blackberrys? Why not Sony Eriksson z750i like I have? Why not a Windows Mobile-powered device like I have? Evidently the others seemingly don’t have what it takes. I love my z750i – It’s cute, it’s a cool girly flip-phone. I’m content with my Windows Mobile-powered device to a certain extent too; although it could be better. – But I heard something today which went down like a lead balloon with me: Microsoft are prepping the ancient IE6 to work with Windows Mobile: In itself that’s good news, the current browser I’m using is insubstantial. – BUT would you believe it – here’s the bad news – it’ll require a 500MHz processor to work properly! My device has a 201 MHz processor, 64MB RAM with 128MB flash RAM. Great! No wonder they’re not offering it as an update; millions of people will require a new device! Thanks Microsoft!

Will I be getting a new Microsoft Windows Mobile device? Will I fsck. I’m getting an iPhone next: Not right at the moment; but when I decide to upgrade, which might not be until a better model iPhone is released, I’m getting an iPhone. There you are all those who I’ve slated iPhone to. – Flame bait for you all.

I don’t know if it’s a wise move; I don’t know if I’ll regret it, but in for a penny, why the heck not: It seems to be the better of a bad bunch.

As time goes by I expect mobile devices to improve, and the future is anyone’s guess. Right now; if I can’t beat them – join them.

In the UK; VAT will drop from 17.5% to 15% from Monday. The cut in VAT is one of Chancellor Alistair Darling’s tactics to encourage UK consumers to start spending again.

I think it’s a joke, and that the UK government have given too little away to make any real difference. Why so little? Because the UK Government, just like UK businesses; are greedy, and they don’t want to impact a high-income source too much.

Had they dropped it to 10%, or even 12 1/2%, that would have made a difference; but the proposed miniscule reduction will have negligible if any effect.

(Don’t forget; we’ll be paying for this eventually with a 20% VAT rate: I give this particular prediction a 4/5 chance of becoming a reality within the next 5 years.

The next government; if it’s Labour, will realise that there just isn’t enough revenue from GDP, despite a partial recovery, to balance the books against the massive debt built up when today’s Labour government threw money at the recession in the hope that it would go away before the available coffers ran out. (It won’t, but the excessive spending will help to cushion the depression.) Up will go Income Tax in the higher rates band for people earning £150,000+, and National Insurance Contributions, by up to 2%: But the prominent rise will be in VAT; which will then be raised from the reset figure of 17.5% to 20%. That will leave some people up to 5.5% worse off in order to pay for the current governments current plans, in addition to an increased burden on an already well-overstretched NHS.

A Conservative government would also increase VAT to 20%, if it’s not already at 20% when they are elected, and make cuts in public services rather than increase taxes, although the National Insurance Contributions rise appears unavoidable at some point.

The first thing they’ll be considering is their own pockets, and then paying off the huge debt.)

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So let’s take a look at how the 2 1/2% reduction will affect you; the British computing/geek public:

Your "cutting-edge technology" computer from PC World (UK retail store.), with a dual-core processor, 2GB generic RAM, and a 500GB hard-drive (Hardly cutting-edge!) will drop by £12.50 from £499.99 to £487.49. The 5-year warranty that they nag you into buying will only be £341.25 compared to £350. At the end of the day, then, your "yesterday’s technology at today’s prices" cloned computer will cost you a total of £829.74 compared to £849.99. (Operating system included.)

If you were to buy an equivalent purpose-built computer from Kustom Komputa with a 1TB hard-drive and 2GB branded RAM, but with only the standard 1-year warranty other than for some components with a longer manufacturer’s warranty, you’d still be paying £487.49 compared to £499.99. (Operating system included.)

Yes, I suppose that was an advert for Kustom Komputa. Of course, if you’d rather; you could always build your own:

Your new 1TB hard-drive by itself will cost you about £1.60 less. 2GB DDR2 RAM will cost around 25p less. A new chassis-fan will cost less than 5p less…

Across the board, then, the savings are so small as to be academic. Even a £16,000 Porsche will retail at £15,600: That’s £400 the government won’t be getting its hands on; it’s only £1600 rather than £2000 the greedy parliament will have to add to their coffers, but I very much doubt in itself it’ll get anyone spending any more: People will just offset the miniscule saving against inflation so far this year.

Someone’s bound to say "PC World are the bees-knees: Without PC World there wouldn’t be computers. PC World are great value-for-money. Kustom Komputa must be utter crap if they only charge that much…" (Someone actually said that to me already in essence!) Each to their own. I won’t argue with an "expert". Please email me and I’ll happily sell you a Kustomised Computer with those specifications for over £800, just to make you happy.

Do you think 2.5% is enough to get the nation spending; or is it too little too late? Leave a comment below:

I couldn’t be arsed to hypelink this article as I normally do. Let it be an exercise in the reader learning to use Google.

The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics show that 42.3% of broadband connections are slower than 2Mb/sec.

Last year, telecoms regulator Ofcom was claiming that "the average headline speed has doubled in a year to reach 4.6Mb/sec". That’s the headline speed; the fastest it peaks at. In reality the average speeds are much slower. – I myself have known my broadband connection to drop below 2Mb/s on rare occasions, yet my average speed is 3.5Mb/s. – It’s supposed to be 8Mb/s, and I don’t live miles from the exchange in some far-flung corner of the British countryside in the middle of nowhere.

The ONS figures could be taken to imply that average speed figures are being heavily weighted by  truly high-speed connections, such as the 24Mb/sec ADSL2+ broadband offered by ISPs with Local Loop Unbundled services. These decent connections amount to only a small percentage of UK broadband connections.

"The proportion of broadband customers unaware of their connection speeds has continued to grow – 55% were unaware of their connection speed (actual speed)." Claimed a separate report issued 25/11/2008 by Ofcom, whose Consumer Satisfaction report also claimed that almost 20% of broadband customers were unhappy with the speed of their connection.

This is a general trend amongst British businesses these days: Give as little service for as much money as is possible, and rip the customer off in as many ways as can be accomplished without the customer realising it. Meanwhile their workforces use a similar principle in doing as little work as possible for as much money as possible, ripping their bosses off too if at all possible.

This is rip-off Britain; and the trend has caught on countrywide. Something has to change; this greedy moneygrabbing culture can’t continue without severe consequences. I can see how it started; looking back at the Thatcher years of the 1980s, where the divide between rich and poor became pronounced as the yuppie-culture fed off the poverty-stricken; driving them into deeper poverty whilst those with the upper hand continued to get fat from the losses of those that they exploited.

Not that much has changed today either…But that’s another story.

Back on-topic; and the ONS figures show that the number of fixed-line broadband connections has fallen by 0.4% of late; probably due to the growing number of mobile broadband connections contributing to the decline of their fixed-line counterparts. If you’re on the move all day then what’s the point of only having a connection at home?

Do you agree with my "rip-off Britain" synopsis? (it’s not actually my original idea, but a widely-held view which I am fully in agreement with.) More to the point; do you think that UK broadband speeds suck, and that something should be done about it? After all it’s the British citizen who’s paying for it; yet those taking the money with glee are promising one thing and giving less than half of what they promised in a lot of cases.

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When AMD have setbacks then it’s usually not a good sign for the chipmaker that’s currently struggling to stay anywhere near Intel and not lose any more ground to them. The news today is that AMD appear to have a setback, in that they’ve shelved development of the 45nm-based Fusion processor, putting its release date back to 2011, if they actually do develop it at all, from the original release schedule of 2010.

There are several ways of looking at this: The main one being ‘better late and working than early and a fiasco’, a fiasco as occurred with the initial release of the Phenom, which subsequently allowed Intel to surge ahead and lengthen their lead.

Right now, AMD are seemingly the underdogs by a huge margin: Intel are rolling in money and surging ahead, while AMD are in debt and still playing catchup after their Phenom farce: A development marketed with best intentions using a new core architecture technology that emptied their coffers whilst on development and when the release date came there was just that one bug that needed to be ironed out. Naturally, when Intel replied by stapling 2 dual-core dies together, upping the architecture, and selling it at an increased price compared to AMD’s offering, everybody bought Intel’s product without any bugs in it. AMD were left behind to pick up the pieces and try to fathom out what went wrong while Intel; loaded with the proceeds from their victory, developed better, faster, offerings.

AMD’s senior vice president Randy Allen said at today’s launch of AMD’s 45nm Shanghai-cored Opteron processor that it was "the best server processor on the planet". – A side swipe at Intel who had said that their new Core i7 is the ‘fastest processor on the planet’.

Fusion was originally scheduled for 2009, but now appears to have effectively been cancelled according to some commentators. If that is the case than that is a setback; because if Intel produce 32nm processors in 2009 then AMD have their work cut out for them and won’t be able to catch up until at least 2011 by all analyses.

AMD aren’t finished yet though; so don’t go writing them off just yet as they live to fight another day. Do you agree?

First-off let me state that this is not a how-to article: It’s an analytical article designed to prompt discussion, (If anybody can be bothered to comment.) on the subject.

In this Twenty-First Century I’ve tried pretty much everything regarding partitioning; and to be honest, I don’t see much point to it, other than if one is intending to run a dual-boot. (Linux and Windows installed on the same disk in different partitions, for example.) Even then I prefer to use a different physical drive for either operating system.

Partitioning was used primarily back in the early days of personal computers, when Windows and Mac operating systems, as well as at times the hard-disk controller architecture itself, were unable to recognise, and to interact with, a partition greater than 2GB in size. Some hard-drives were around that were larger than 4GB, so it was necessary to partition those. These days most operating systems can handle partitions of 2 terabytes or more. (One day we’ll think of a terabyte as a small disk size no doubt. I have a 760MB hard-drive floating around somewhere: Once upon a time even that was considered a massive-sized disk.)

I’ve tried the method of having many partitions: One for the Windows swap-file, one for the operating system itself, one for active programs, one for storage… Too confusing; and the operating system finds it so too, leading to unnecessary corruption. In addition the hard drive encounters more wear, having to keep changing the arm between partitions, and as a consequence system response time is increased.

Some people think that by keeping the operating system on a separate partition they can just reinstall Windows if the operating system goofs and carry on as normal. They’re forgetting one crucial factor, however: The Windows registry won’t re-register their programs which exist in a different partition on install. In fact the new operating system won’t even see their existing programs on another partition as it installs. The only true way to preserve things as they were is by regularly backing up to a source external to the computer; such as another computer, NAS box, external hard-drive, or online backup.

Putting the swap-file onto a different partition isn’t that good an idea either: Head-travel and hard-drive wear come into play as the arm swings wildly between partitions, causing a reduction in response time too.

Some think that if they put the operating system on a drive other than C: it’ll be safe from malware as malware writers target their wares at the C: drive. Utter crap. Get decent protection and learn how to use a computer while staying safe online is the solution to that; not trying to outwit the malware writers.

I have 2 computers: Both run XP and both currently have a single hard-drive. On the main computer, the one I’m writing this on, the drive is not partitioned. On the other one, the backup computer as well as the computer I’ll be watching TV on from now, having just installed a TV card, the hard-drive is partitioned into two. This is from the days when the drive was in a different (now dismantled) computer and I was playing around with Ubuntu. I use the second partition for storage and for backing up files, and the first one for everything else: Basically the second partition is for inactive files and folders, while the first partition is active.

Windows; at least the versions available within the last ten years, is designed to all be put onto a single partition, and it’s good at managing itself on a single partition. ‘Spread it across multiple partitions and it gets funny, becomes harder to maintain, uses more resources, slows down, corrupts easier, and wastes time. I’m not anywhere near as well experienced with any other operating system as I am with Windows; so I’m mainly referring to Windows in this article. I’d imagine, though, that the situation is the same or similar with other operating systems too.

Your comments are invited.

This symbol is causing some controversy and has sparked a furious row between Microsoft and HP in addition to causing the software giant to be sued by customers in the USA. It’s also kicked off some internal bickering within Microsoft itself.

‘See it’s turning out that the claim is exactly what it says on the tin: "Designed for Windows XP". Although the systems concerned will run Vista, they’ll only run Vista Home Basic.

The future? I predict that Microsoft are going to lose this case and get another hefty fine plus maybe a compensation order. How about your opinion and prediction? What do you think?

In an unexpected turn of events, Microsoft have become rather chivalrous by aiming to provide a free tool, code-named "Morro," that will provide a basic anti-malware service; protecting against viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans.

This will be offered at the same time, June 30th 2009, as they discontinue their Windows Live OneCare consumer security service.

Morro will have a small footprint and use only a few system resources. The idea is that it will run on low-power PCs and low-bandwidth networks. As a stand-alone download it will support Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Existing OneCare customers will be directed toward using Morro instead when it becomes available. If you are currently and/or up to June 30th 2009 a OneCare user you will continue to be able to use the online backup feature as normal until that date; probably with the same charges attached.

The Windows Live OneCare blog says that this is not due to a poor sales figure, but rather a tactic aimed at bringing protection to millions world-wide who have none. Personally I think it’s probably a bit of both – Oh please; Microsoft aren’t known generally for being that public-spirited, despite being nowhere near as tight and money-grabbing as Apple. I very much doubt that they’d drop a product line that was making them a fortune.

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Last month; October 2008, I reported on BT’s plans to create its own fibre-optic network in the UK, starting with Muswell Hill, London, and also Whitchurch, South Wales, (Not Whitchurch in Hampshire.) at a total cost of some 1.5 billion. Short-sighted shareholders, however have basically vetoed those plans for the time being. The shareholders expressed concerns about spending that much money in the current economic climate.

Chief executive Ian Livingston was better foresighted, and said that he still believes that BT should go ahead and make the investment, which he initially announced not long after becoming chief executive. Although he echoed the shareholders’ concerns, there appears little point in cutting back on investment, job creation, resources, and investment, simply because the media have decided that everything financial is doom and gloom. All that will do is aid the recession to deepen, and amplify its effect upon the company in question.

“‘But we need to have the environment in which our shareholders feel there is a good chance of us making a return,” Said Livingston. “If we cannot have that environment this is not the time to be taking on sure-fire losses.”

Also, last week, BT announced that it plans to lay off 4,000 of its own staff and also 6,000 contractors, in order to reduce operating costs by £1.25 billion.

That seems a rather silly move to my mind; but in the light of that move it can now fund all but 250 million for the above project. – It will not do so, however. – So where does the money end up? Probably it appears on the end-of-year profits so that the BT bosses can award themselves another pay-rise as a reward for increased productivity under "detrimental economic conditions": I wouldn’t be at all surprised; the greedy ba—-ds!

On October 10th 2008 I stated the following:

"In general I think that most computer users are too lax don’t take security seriously enough.

I am fairly certain that the number of machines that are still unprotected by any kind of firewall is fairly big.

I am fairly certain that the percentage of machines unprotected by any kind of anti-virus and anti-spyware software is quite high: Higher than you’d imagine.

I am fairly certain that the number of people who have anti-virus and anti-virus software installed, but whose databases have never been updated is quite colossal.

I am fairly certain that the percentage of machines that have not once taken any update to or Windows components is probably in the twenties.

I am also fairly certain that there are a number of people who’ll click on links or open attachments from unknown sources without giving it a second thought."

A new survey by the UK Government’s Get Safe Online Campaign allows me to put some actual figures to those statements:-

Overall almost half of UK internet users fail to keep their security software up-to-date.

48% do not update their anti-virus software frequently enough to ensure it remains effective.

47% do not have website authentication software to protect against phishing attacks.

23% do not have any protection against spyware.

As a result cybercrime is on the increase, especially phishing, according to the campaign.

23% of those people surveyed said that they or someone they knew was the victim of a phishing attack this year, 2008. In 2007 the figure was only 8%.

According to Tony Neate, managing director of Get Safe Online: “If internet users invest a relatively small amount of time and money in ensuring they are fully protected and up-to-date, the risk of such financial loss is almost negligible.”

‘Typical couldn’t-care-less "Der I’m a Brit so I don’t need none ov this crap" attitude. What is wrong with people? Are they really so unthinking and irresponsible in the UK? Unfortunately the figures seem to speak for themselves. I’m still getting visitors to this blog who are using Windows ME and 9x. Read this article – I wasn’t joking; these operating systems are a security risk, even if you do apply all the patches available.

"Oh who’d want to bother hacking Windows 9x? It’s outdated and Microsoft don’t have anything to lose ." Bad answer; you’re missing the point: The attacks aren’t so much virus and other malware attacks by criminal Linux zealots designed to discredit Microsoft these days. They are designed to rip off the public in any way possible, to steal money from you and me. Criminals launch malware designed to target old Microsoft operating systems still in use which aren’t patched against the latest threats. Your old relic machine running Windows ME/9x is probably being used right now as a malware relay and/or a remote server under the control of a criminal gang; and I also bet you that those criminals have any of your security details left on that computer too.

There’s no need to buy a new computer necessarily: If your machine will run Windows XP, or Ubuntu Linux even if you can’t afford a second-hand copy of XP, then all you need do is change the operating system. I’ll write an article at some point on this.

Please please please peoples; for the sake of all internet users, follow these simple rules: Yes it’ll take a little extra time; but you and everybody else will reap the rewards of doing so:-

1. Ensure that you have antivirus software installed and that it is updated daily. If you can’t or don’t want to pay for it then download Avast! Free Edition. Avast free edition includes antispyware. It updates automatically and will inform you audibly when it has done so. (Male American voice: Unchangeable.)

2. Get website authentication software. (Microsoft have this built into Internet Explorer 7 and above.)

3. Get spyware protection. Avast! free antivirus has built-in spyware protection. Some antivirus programs do not. (If your antivirus program is more than a year old it needs changing as it’s unable to detect or cope with current threats.)

I’ll be blunt here: If you can’t be bothered to stick to these simple rules then I hope you get scammed/robbed; after which you might just take some care to abide by them. If you can’t be bothered then you deserve anything and everything you get. Despite that I suggest you do the sensible thing and ensure that your online security is 100% – Before it’s too late for someone else; or more importantly before it’s too late for you.

I’m not going to say much about this: It speaks for itself, but I felt that I needed to blog it. Haggard was a money-making-minister who was preaching against such "evils" as homosexuality (Evil?- WTF? Certain people have some strange ideas!) while ripping off the US Bible-Belt to pay for his gay affairs with male prostitutes and his secret drug habit. – One among many similar stories that have surfaced this year, 2008. Personally I fail to see why being gay is such a big deal that they make such a great fuss about yet ignore the reality that they themselves are spreading phobia-based hatred throughout society based on the ramblings of a bronze-age book. They do a lot more harm than good as it is; and when one or more of them at Haggard’s level is found out to be a total hypocrite it hits the headlines.

In my opinion I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they’re all up to much the same thing; from the average lay-person (Pun intended.) in the congregation to the leaders.

It’s all a huge farce; the only point of which is to fill empty lives with some sort of meaning, in addition to making the select few stinking rich: It’s a joke; and not a very tasteful joke either.

This kind of thing appears to be fairly standard and widespread practice in the USA; although only the reports of bigtime hypocrites ever make it to the newsrooms. Draw your own conclusions:

Three London hospitals; Barts Hospital in the City of London, Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, and the East-End London Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green, have been forced to shut down all their computer systems since lunchtime on Monday 17th November after being infected by a computer virus.

No information has been released regarding the nature of the virus attack. Official press releases stress that everything is under control and that the institutions are handling the matter competently and effectively: "The Trust’s well rehearsed emergency procedures have been activated to ensure that key clinical systems continue safely while the system is being stabilised and a solution is being found." This is the official British way of saying "We’re hoping that we can handle it and that the resultant losses aren’t that bad." Stiff upper lip included. The spokesman said the virus was "not malicious", and the infection was "self-contained".

From the above it appears that it probably wouldn’t be all that difficult to get a rootkit into the NHS computer system and steal confidential information by having it downloaded to a remote server. Maybe that’s what they discovered was happening and covered it up?

Aside from Government incompetence in leaving sensitive personal information on a train in a laptop, the Government losing unencrypted disks full of confidential records; or the banks dumping sensitive customer information including account numbers, PIN numbers, and the like, into open skips outside their premises in paper format, it makes you wonder just how secure the UK actually is.

All it would theoretically take is for one employee to open one attachment and every piece of personal confidential and private data stored by all government departments gets into the public domain. Maybe that’s already happened; but the standard cover-up operation has been executed?

Privacy is maybe becoming a thing of the past? What do you think? What security threats would this pose if it were true?

During 2007, Computer Shopper magazine tested a number of free and paid-for antivirus solutions. NOD 32 came second to Kaspersky. By the time I tried Kaspersky for myself they’d released a new version which was so bloated I thought of Norton. I’d tried NOD 32 previous to this on a single-cored Pentium 4-driven system, however, and was quite impressed by its functionality, ease of use, and small footprint.

During this month; November 2008, I got the chance to try out the full version of Smart Security from ESET, the makers of NOD 32. As a rule I always try out anything new on my second machine, which happens to be currently fitted with a 2.2GHz single-cored Athlon 64 processor.

I installed the product: Installation was quick and painless and I soon had it up and running properly after it had updated itself with all the latest files.

The firewall isn’t intrusive. It keeps track of what’s going in and out; but unlike some it doesn’t continually ask you whether you’d prefer to allow or deny every single connection. It accepts everything acceptable that’s flowing from trusted software which is already installed and does its job silently.

The antivirus scan is well hot: It even informs you if files are corrupted, incomplete, or don’t have a valid checksum, in addition to telling you if any files are infected with spyware or a virus.

The anti-spam I didn’t really try out so I won’t present any data on that.

My overall verdict is that it’s a very good security suite; but the problem is that it has a large footprint: If it almost occupies an entire core; even on a single-cored 64-bit processor, then it’s too big for my liking. On a quad or six-core processor-driven machine things might not be so bad; but certainly I’d say it used far too much CPU for a single or dual-cored machine.

A strange twist to this article occurred whilst I was writing it: I heard a loud click from my second machine, which was right next to me, and a metallic noise. Then nothing appeared to happen out of the ordinary for about a minute, when suddenly that machine stopped, switched off without shutting down.

I hoped that the fault wasn’t as I expected; but on opening the machine my worst fears were confirmed:

The Shuttle motherboard used in its construction, like most other socket AM2 motherboards, keeps the cooler attached to the socket AM2 CPU by means of a fixing where a metal loop attached to a lever is hooked over one of two lugs on the enclosure around processor socket. This lever appears on the other side of the cooler with a similar metal loop attached to it. This other loop is hooked over the other lug and tension is applied to it by means of another lever; therefore the processor and cooler stay in close contact while the cooler is tensioned downwards onto the face of the processor so that heat transfer is maximised with the help of some heat-conductive grease.

The model of Shuttle motherboard used (Now discontinued.) uses a rather brittle material to make the CPU surroundings including these lugs that the cooler depends on to stay in contact with the processor: Not a noticeably brittle material, but nevertheless to brittle for the purpose. I’ve had one or two of these machines returned under warranty with the lugs snapping off after a number of months, rendering the entire motherboard worthless and inoperative. That’s exactly what had happened to my machine (Kustom Komputa Exel model A101-s) which was one of the original machines built by Kustom Komputa in the days when a single-core Athlon was incorporated in them rather than a dual-core. This syndrome I’ve affectionately christened "lug-rot".

So what to do? Suddenly I was reduced to a single machine. Of course I can get by quite easily with only one computer; but it’s always better to have two: I use both at once occasionally, and I always have a spare if one breaks down, as had happened recently when the hard disk died on the other one.

I was planning to publish the article about ESET SS that day; but needs must, I had no backup, and if the other machine went down, as Sod’s law would make sure that it did if I had no backup, then I’d be totally stuffed.

I checked the junk cupboard: I had an old wrecked machine from about 4 years ago which the PSU had burnt out on. It had been checked since and the motherboard was still working. It was an Asrock board, still in a case, and the processor and cooler were still attached. I’d removed and dumped the burnt-out PSU, also I’d used the DDR RAM sticks and the hard drive from it. – Otherwise it was complete except for DDR RAM, PSU, and SATA leads: There was even a SATA DVD-RAM drive fitted but unconnected.

The processor was a 1.8GB AMD Sempron, which was a bit weak for my liking, as well as being only 32-bit, despite the motherboard being 64-bit capable. Seeing I didn’t have any socket 754 single-cored Athlon 64s in stock, which was the only other processor the board would take, the existing 32-bit Sempron would have to do. I had a brand new 300 Watt PSU and a 250 MB stick of DDR2 in stock. That would at least work; although rather weakly. I could use the hard drive from the failed computer…In fact I might be able to simply pop it in and boot up just as before without any problems.

I’m trying to keep this from taking on the proportions of a novel; in other words keep it short: So to cut a long story short I built it as planned and powered up: Rattle rattle rattle. – The hard-drive was having a fit. When it eventually booted it was unbelievably slow and the hard-drive was still thrashing. I had a driver CD for the board, which I managed to install eventually, but the performance didn’t improve to a level which I was anywhere near happy with.

I ended up taking note of everything that I had installed on the system partition C: on that disk and reformatting the partition, reinstalling, optimising, finalising… And now I have a second machine again that works well. I found another 250MB stick of DDR which I installed, and that made the performance so much better. Surprisingly, after reinstalling the Windows XP Home OS and activating it with just the 250MB RAM installed, it told me that I needed to activate it again after installing another 250MB stick!: A notice appeared at boot saying that the hardware specs had changed significantly and that I must reactivate this copy of Windows. – That’s the first time I’ve ever had to reactivate after installing just another single stick of RAM!

So usual scenario: A few hours building it (2 in fact.) and a whole day plus some installing, verifying, optimising the software. It was fun, but it delayed my posting to my blog.

Have you ever built a computer? What was your experience?

Have you ever tried ESET Smart Security? Do you agree with my findings?

Leave a comment below why not? Come on, don’t be shy, don’t leave it to the spammers to make the only comments. – Which I delete if the Akismet anti-spam software doesn’t get there first. Your comment probably won’t be deleted, even if it’s a negative comment. I have a good comment system set up: Use it why not?

Probably within the coming year; and maybe before the release of Windows Seven, we’ll be seeing a new standard of USB connection emerging into the marketplace. USB 3.0 is set to theoretically be ten-times faster than the currently-used USB 2.0 connection. Whether or not that is actually the case in reality remains to be seen; but the figures say so at least.

Does that mean that USB devices will suddenly become faster? No; it means that if you use a future motherboard equipped with USB 3.0 ports, or use a USB 3.0 card fitted to a PCI or PCIe slot, along with future devices which are USB 3.0 compatible, you’ll theoretically be able to transfer data at ten times (4.8 gigabits per second (Gbps)) the current speed of 480 megabits per second. (60 megabytes/second) (Also six times faster than FireWire 800.*)

All this works out fine in theory; but I’ve clocked USB 2.0 working in real-time in the real-world; and the fastest I’ve seen it go on one occasion was just under 30 megabytes/second when transferring a huge file from a USB external drive to a computer with an Asus motherboard fitted with 2GB RAM + a dual-core CPU, and running a SATA 2 7200RPM HDD. Realistically then you’d be lucky to achieve a 2.4 Gbit/sec transfer rate with USB 3.0 : That’s still fast; but more realistic in terms of practical application.

(Typo fixed.)

Why the difference between the theoretical transfer rate and the real-world transfer rate? Well the example I used had a number of bottlenecks placed in the path of the data: The first of these being the external HDD itself along with its USB interface circuitry. What exits the USB interface travels via the USB 2.0 cable to the computer and through the USB 2.0 interface on the motherboard, including the South Bridge. The South Bridge is also handling all the other USB and whatever else traffic flowing through it, then a bus line to the RAM and CPU. – The CPU regulating the USB interface and controlling the data throughput, then on to the computer’s HDD via the SATA controller, the disk’s read/write cache, and finally the disk itself. ‘Not quite as simple as you might have imagined possibly.

Imagine yourself in a car: The car is capable of travelling the 3 miles it needs to go in about 1 1/2 minutes IF it were travelling completely unobstructed and in a straight line. The reality is, though, that there’s a number of bends and roundabouts in your path as well as other random traffic: There is no way you’ll make the trip in 1 1/2 minutes even though the car is capable of doing so.

The blog wired.com, linked to earlier as well as here, is of the opinion that USB 3.0 will kill off FireWire. But, and there is a big but here, there is something that the author didn’t consider:-

    FireWire 3200

Since 1995, when it was introduced, IEEE 1394 or FireWire has been what everyone has looked to for high-bandwidth data transfer. No matter how much USB has tried to keep up with it, FireWire has always had the upper hand. With the coming advent of USB 3.0, however, FireWire is starting to lose the race:

The IEEE has approved the IEEE 1394-2008 specification, adding support for bandwidth up to 3.2Gbps: It’s fast, it’s not as fast as USB 3.0. Will it be good enough? In some cases perhaps so; in fact in some cases it may well be the preferred choice despite 3.0. Here’s why:-

USB 3.0 will still be processor-reliant with regard to the control of the data throughput; therefore USB 3.0 won’t be able to achieve its theoretical speeds and will probably at best be only as fast as FireWire 3200. Added to that is the fact that, despite the higher current-output of USB 3.0; at 900mA (0.9A), it doesn’t quite have the current-output capabilities of FireWire. – Neither, for that matter, does it have the voltage capabilities:-

FireWire is able to supply between 8 up to around 25 volts under certain conditions. USB 3.0 will still be able to only supply a single voltage: 12 Volts.

Using Ohm’s Law: 12 Volts multiplied by 0.9 Amps equals 10.8 Watts,  over three times the power supplied via USB 2.0 and just enough to power a small USB external hard-drive at a push perhaps; but nothing compared to the 24 Volts multiplied by 1 Amp equals 24 Watts capable of being delivered by FireWire.

If I were a camcorder designer presented with the choice of using a USB 3.0 interface or a FireWire 3200 interface for my device I’d instantly see that 10.8 watts would be more than enough to power the camera itself, but would be insubstantial for powering the camera, the onboard disk-drive motor, and the USB or FireWire interface all at the same time: That would mean that I’d have to include a rechargeable battery onboard which charged from the USB power. The battery would mean extra weight and extra circuitry to be included. That would mean extra cost. It would take up extra space and make the design more bulky. However the users of my device wouldn’t want to use it connected to the computer at all times; so I’d have to include a rechargeable battery whichever connection method I used.

The advantages of using FireWire would be that the battery could charge at any time the camcorder was connected to the computer, even whilst it was being used to film and record on its internal disk drive, whereas the USB model would only be able to charge whilst the camcorder was connected and idle. Also the FireWire model would have a faster charge-time, and probably a very slightly faster data throughput compared to its USB rival.

It would seem, then, that I would design and manufacture a camcorder capable of interfacing by means of both USB 3.0 and FireWire 3200. The user could choose which one they wanted to use at a given time. This gives the user extra choice and also keeps FireWire very much alive.

All things considered, at least as far as this round of advancements is concerned, FireWire is here to stay. I don’t see it vanishing into obscurity for some years yet, if at all.

Do you see it differently? If so please do explain by means of a comment below.

Chipmaker, Advanced Micro Devices, has launched its first 45nm ‘Shanghai’ Opteron chips for servers and workstations.

It also has a forthcoming range of desktop processors built on 45nm technology codenamed "Deneb". Both of these ranges are constructed using a process called "immersion lithography". AMD claim that this fabrication technique will lead to ‘dramatic performance and performance-per-watt gains.’

The new Opterons will have an increased clock speed due to this fabrication process; rising from 2.3 GHz with the current Barcelona-cored Opterons, to 2.7 GHz with the Shanghai-cored chips. The current Phenom range, which run at up to 2.6GHz, may also benefit from this upward-clocking in their next incarnation.

The new Shanghai-cores also benefit from increased cache-size, as well as from HyperTransport 3.0, which increases bandwidth considerably. Let’s hope they vastly outperform the Intel competition as well as the previous/current Phenom CPUs, or AMD is going to have a hard time on its hands and will probably end up cutting retail prices to offer a cheaper though lesser alternative to the Intel  developments.

AMD also plan to introduce a new six-cored range of chips called "Istanbul" sometime next year (2009). As for Deneb; AMD will probably be launching them before the end of 2008.

The Question is can AMD ever get ahead of Intel again? Can they even catch up; and if so is this their chance? What’s your opinion?

ank

There’s a rumour going around on Twitter that Twitterank is no more than a rather clever phishing scam.

Twittereers and some Twitteresses world-wide have disclosed their details to discover their numerical rating for the purpose of massaging their egos. This colossal waste-of-time venture appears to be just another no-brainer Twitter App that is doomed. However there are suspicions that it may be more of a waste than at first thought.

Oliver Marks of ZD Net saw the following retweet on Twitter:-

"@t RT @brianoberkirch Twitterank is a vast conspiracy I created to steal all of ur passwords + shame Twitter into OAuthing. + make u look vain."

My advice, if you’ve got your Twitterank, is to look at this, read this, and then change your Twitter password – just to be on the safe side.

In September 2008 I predicted that Microsoft will have to launch Windows 7 in 2009 rather than the expected 2010 release. The recent news is that I was right and that Microsoft themselves appear to agree. As a result they’ve apparently brought their launch schedule forward to 2009 in order to have Windows 7 on the shelves for Christmas of that year.

One recent report indicates that they want to have Seven ready to go final retail by around June 2009, as suggested by a presentation at WinHEC.

Thusfar they’ve stuck to their guns and remained determined on a release-date somewhere in early 2010, or "When it’s ready".

Now that the suggestion is out that the actual release to manufacturing will be 2009, it indicates that either the development team are happy with progress and/or ahead of schedule; or that Seven will be another rush-job that’s substandard, underdeveloped, doesn’t work properly, and requires a number of service packs to make it stable: Does that remind you of anything? Vista perhaps? To be honest, though, I suspect the former; that the developers are on cloud nine and the development program is rockin’.

The pre-beta as well as the public beta1 release of Seven has already flooded the p2p networks, and people so far appear to like what they see. Maybe Microsoft are bouncing back, having learned huge lessons from their Vista fiasco?

Remember the flak that was encountered by the softies when they launched Vista in January 2007? They missed Christmas, they missed the moment when the money flowed; in fact they missed the boat altogether. This annoyed the PC vendors, manufacturers, and the like. Also there was the issue that, due to M$ keeping quiet about the hardware requirements of Vista, there were very few compatible drivers and virtually no recently-developed compatible hardware.

In this author’s opinion the only way for Microsoft, provided that they play their cards right this time, is up.

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Fire Your Computer Technician!

A computer technician spills the beans and makes available the knowledge he has charged clients hundreds in service fees for.

They will stop at nothing to get your personal details, bank details,, and as many other details as they can. They are out to get you and they will have the shirt off your back if they can.

Read Microsoft’s advice and don’t become another unfortunate scammed-statistic. Even if you get an official-looking email and are 99.99% sure that it’s genuine; all you need do is phone your bank or whoever it purports to be from to check that it really is the real McCoy.

There’s a very simple set of ten rules that you can apply to avoid waking up one day to find yourself up to your eyeballs in it – and the only escape is via un rue d’merde’:

• Microsoft and other reputable companies don’t ever send patches and updates by email.
• If your bank emails you requesting details after a "security alert",  merger, or anything else; phone up and check before you click or send anything.
• If you get email from someone you don’t know, or for someone else, with an attachment – delete it.
• If your computer’s been compromised, the only way that you can be 100% sure that it’s clean is to reformat and reinstall.
• The only thing cheap online Viagra makes hard is your financial recovery afterwards in many cases.
• If the spelling’s bad then the deal is commonly worse.
• If you unsubscribe from spam you’ll get a hundred times more spam.
• If you have suspicions they’re probably right.
• If the address (URL) of the page on which you’re just about to make a financial transaction doesn’t begin with https:// then don’t make the transaction.
• If it seems too good to be true then it’s probably bullsh*t.

Ignore the above at your peril.

Be safe online.

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Fire Your Computer Technician!

A computer technician spills the beans and makes available the knowledge he has charged clients hundreds in service fees for.

CLICK HERE

In this article I want to demonstrate and to talk about a simple potential divider.

What is a potential divider? It’s a device or a number of devices that divide a voltage potential.

In the first (1) of the diagrams below, we see a pair of resistors R1 and 2, dividing the voltage potential between the + rail and zero volts. This could also equally be accomplished with a single resistor or any number of resistors. I’ve used two resistors in the diagram so that there is a centre-tap where they connect together. (A).

The value chosen for the resistors in this circuit will affect the voltage at point A. These same values will also affect the amount of current flowing through the series-resistor pair; and therefore also will limit the current available at point A.

Let’s put some meat on the bones and give an example:

First let’s decide on a voltage for the + rail. 10 volts sounds a nice round figure.

Now let’s select some values for our resistors. How about we make both R1 and R2 a value of ten ohms? Let’s do just that.

So between the 10V rail and 0V (Zero volts) we have 2 X 10 ohm resistors connected in series; which gives us a total resistance of 20 ohms. How much current will flow through the resistor pair? To answer that we use Ohm’s Law:

Ohms Law says that I(current) = V(voltage) divided by R(resistance). Therefore 10 volts divided by 20 ohms = 1/2 amp, or 500 milliamperes (mA). This means that under these circumstances, if you were to connect an ammeter between point A and 0V (ground), it would give a reading of a half an ampere.(Amp.).

If you’re building the circuit you’d need to account for this: Resistors are available in a number of different wattages. In this circuit we need to know what wattage resistors 1 and 2 should be. If we use components rated at too low a wattage then they’ll get too hot rather quickly and burn out. We need to know the wattage that is used by the circuit:

Once again we turn to Ohm’s Law: Ohm’s Law describes wattage with the variable P, for Power – which is what wattage is; power. Ohm’s Law says there are two ways of calculating the wattage in a circuit:

The first of these is P = Isquared(R) ; Power = current squared multiplied by resistance.

We know that we have 1/2 amp of current, and we know that we have a total of 20 ohms of resistance: Therefore the power used  in the resistor-pair circuit is ( 1/2 x 1/2 ) =1/4 (0.25) x 20 = 2.5 watts.

We could also do this calculation the other way: Ohm’s Law says that I x V = P; current multiplied by voltage = wattage:

At point A we know that we have 1/2 amp, but we don’t know what the voltage is at point A:

What would be the voltage at point A? To calculate this we use the following equation:-

V = Vx(R2 / R1 + R2)

That means; voltage (The voltage at point A.) is equal to the voltage of the + rail, multiplied by the solution of the equation where the value of R2, in ohms, is divided by the value of R1 + the value of R2, both in ohms.

Since we know the value of all the variables in the equation, we can rewrite it thus:-

V = 10 x (10/10 + 10)

V = 10 x (10/20)

V = 10 x 1/2

V = 5 volts

Therefore we now have a voltage of five volts for point A.

Using Ohm’s Law we can say that 1/2 amp x 5 volts = 2 1/2 watts, or 2.5 watts: ‘Same answer.

When we select the physical 10 ohm resistors to build the circuit then we need to bear in mind that they need to be rated at a minimum of 2.5 watts. If we use a pair rated at exactly 2.5 watts they’ll be running at their limit; so we want to use a rating somewhere above that; let’s say 5 watts, bearing in mind that resistance decreases with heat, and we want our resistors to stay at as near 10 ohms each as is possible, so that we know what’s going on.

Having done so we can build the circuit by connecting two 10 ohm 5 watt resistors in series and connecting either end across a 10 volt supply. We know that the current used by the circuit is 0.5 amps; therefore we’ll need a power supply capable of delivering that amperage.

Basically, by building this potential divider, we’ve built a very primitive voltage regulator: We know that if we supply this circuit with exactly 10 volts at the correct amperage, we’ll get exactly 5 volts from point A. We also know that we can draw up to 0.5 amps of current from that point also.

The problem with this voltage regulator is that it’s too primitive: Whether we draw 0.5 amps of current or not, this circuit will always use 2.5 watts of power from the supply, even if we leave point A unconnected. – That’s going beyond the scope of this article though.

On a final note, let’s recap on what we’ve accomplished:

We designed a potential divider out of 2 resistors. Using Ohm’s Law we calculated the current flowing through those resistors in circuit, and we calculated the power that they would drain from the supply. We used that figure to help us choose our components, and we calculated the voltage at point A.

Although it might not appear at face-value to be so; we’ve actually just learned a very important part of analogue electronic circuit design: Once again, however, we’re going outside the scope of this article if we were to dwell any further on this.

Looking at (2) in the above diagram, I’ve added a device called a "potentiometer" (‘Obvious reasons?) or variable resistor, between the two resistors. (You’ll find potentiometers in a lot of places; even though you may not have realised it: For instance; when you turn up the volume on your stereo sound machine, if you turn a knob then you’re actually adjusting a potentiometer. The same goes for a TV volume control, brightness control, maybe even the bass and treble controls, or the graphic equaliser (Might be sliding potentiometers?) on your computer’s speaker amplifier?) Using a potentiometer this way you can adjust the output voltage at point A. – Another article perhaps?

There was a typo in this article; which has now been corrected.

I hope you find what you’ve learned both enlightening as well as useful; at least perhaps in the future if not right now.

^Wrong Type of Spam^

A study carried out in early 2008 by computer scientists from University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego (UCSD) reveals that spammers might not be on to such a good thing as was previously imagined. It also suggests that spammers may be vulnerable to attacks that make it more costly to send junk mail.

Despite the above statements it does suggest that a big-enough spamming operation can turn over a multi-million dollar profit nevertheless.

Spoof Spam

The team ran a fake-spamming operation as part of the Storm network, sending their own fake-spam through the tens of thousands of hijacked machines infiltrated by the Storm-worm from a number of proxy-bots that they created to act as conduits between the command and control system for Storm and the infected spam-relays. One of these fake-spam campaigns was a fake-pharmacy site which always returned an error message when potential buyers clicked a button to submit their credit card details, but nevertheless registered the number of hits.

They sent out over 465,000,000 fake-spam emails; most of which contained links to the fake pharmacy site, the others mimicked the storm-worm’s self-spreading tactics.

Result?

"After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted," the researchers wrote.

That’s less than a 0.00001% response-rate – Well below the average of 2.15% reported by legitimate direct mail organisations.

"Taken together, these conversions would have resulted in revenues of $2,731.88—a bit over $100 a day for the measurement period," said the researchers.

Scaling this up to the full Storm network the researchers estimate that the controllers of the vast system are netting about $7,000 (£4,430) a day or more than $2m (£1.28m) per year.

Although these are good numbers and a sizable amount, it nevertheless suggests that spammers aren’t making as much capital from their operations as was previously estimated. 

The conclusion that the researchers arrived at was: "The profit margin for spam may be meager enough that spammers must be sensitive to the details of how their campaigns are run and are economically susceptible to new defences."

Challenge

Give me a first: Would any spammers like to break their silence and confirm or deny this? If you’re a genuine spammer you’ll be adept at spoofing your comment source and faking your email address so that you won’t get rumbled. (Pretend spammers need not answer this – even if they can hide their identity.)

What about you non-spammers; do you think the team’s findings are likely to be correct, or do you think that they, by an amazing chance, were left with a spurious result?

Back on the theme of technology; and I saw this initially at http://operatingsystems.mixx.com , went and found it on You-Tube, and brought it here for your entertainment.

What do you imagine would happen if Bill Gates were suddenly captured by Steve Jobs?

Here’s one idea with a Star Wars flavour at one point:

May the source be with you.

Enjoy the coming week, and best of luck with it.

There are those in the geek community who say that Microsoft have seen every error report and there’s no point sending in error reports to them. As a consequence of this they switch error reporting off, advise others to do likewise, and no longer bother sending error reports to Microsoft.

Admittedly I was starting to formulate the same opinion lately: Fairly recently I had a computer – a self-build – that had started repeatedly encountering stop errors. My primary hard-disk had recently died, which’ll teach me not to use second-hand disks in computers that I build for myself. (To save on costs I’d bought a batch of few second-hand disks off eBay which I thought I’d use for experimentation and in prototype-builds at the time. Most of them were still stuck in unused prototypes etc that were stored in the junk cupboard, but one of them was lying around spare when I built this computer, so I used it as a primary disk and used the larger disk that I’d bought new and intended for purpose as an additional disk.) This caused a spate of stop errors, ending in the computer’s refusal to boot at all. Having replaced the faulty disk and reinstalled everything I assumed that the system would operate as normal. I was surprised when, a week later, I encountered another stop error, followed by another the next day, and the next…

Several days of fairly intensive tests showed that the component causing this problem was the floppy drive, which I replaced and the stop errors stopped. I had sent every error report to Microsoft, who each time informed me that the error was caused by a device or driver.

Very helpful: I checked every driver and updated if possible. I checked every device thoroughly; ending with the floppy drive which was faulty. All those hours could have been saved if Microsoft had been more specific about which device or driver had caused the errors.

I started to think that Microsoft were just deleting most/all error reports from Windows XP users: After all XP was now considered outdated by them, and it appeared that Microsoft were only interested in Vista. I didn’t switch error reporting off, neither did I get any more stop errors. – Until yesterday.

This time M$ reported that the stop error had been caused by malware in the form of spooldr.sys. I ran all the checks Microsoft suggested, but found nothing, and no spooldr.sys either. I’d had an identical report when my disk was dying- surely the new disk wasn’t on its way out too? Today I encountered another unexpected stop error. The error report went off to M$, and I was expecting them to say either it was caused by a device or driver, or by spooldr.sys: The former telling me that they couldn’t be bothered to be specific, the latter telling me that they didn’t have a clue.

I was extremely surprised to see the message that they returned on sending the error to them:-

"This problem is being researched"

"Thank you for submitting a problem report to Microsoft. At this time we are researching the cause of this problem."

So they are still interested in error reports regarding XP!

"Please continue to submit all Windows problem reports. This will ensure that when a solution is available, you will receive updated information."

Either way round; to my mind it’s a Microsoft fault. The other computer that I built for myself shortly before this one is a totally different model. (One from my "Exel" line of "Kustomised" computers, and which runs like a dream with only a single hiccup so far after a year plus.) The one in question is from my "INXPense" line of "Kustomised" computers; of which I’ve built quite a few, and none of which have been plagued with any unexplained issues. The component models currently incorporated in this computer have all been previously used in other INXPense computers which have all been shipped to customers and which as far as I am aware are still working perfectly today.

The only untested, "un-prototyped" shall we say, thing about this individual unique computer is the combination of components: The power supply and motherboard are standard and are used in all INXPense computers, as is the case and lower front panel, recessed and covered by a sliding flap. The IDE DVD-RW drive is of the type used in most INXPense computers. The graphics card ditto. The processor type as far as core and speed is concerned has been incorporated in one other INXPense computer. The identical Seagate SATA HDD has also been incorporated into one other INXPense computer, but as a secondary disk. Identical RAM with identical frequency of operation has been incorporated into a number of… All INXPense computers bar one are fitted with a floppy drive.

At some point in the future I’m going to try installing a different HDD, processor, and probably almost every other component too, until and if I can discover what is causing this latest issue, if it has anything to do with the way the machine is constructed, unless Microsoft beat me to it.

Yes, you’re right; I was going off topic somewhat. Microsoft have said in essence that they are interested in what went wrong, that they don’t know what went wrong, and that they want to try and work out the problem so that they can find a solution. They are interested in my error reports that I send in to them.

Perhaps they have seen 99% of error reports before, and maybe they do know what your particular problem is, despite their reply only being sketchy in nature. I suggest, though, that despite this Microsoft’s customers don’t switch automatic error reporting off and that they do continue to send error reports to Microsoft for their analysis. – Even if they have seen most error reports 1000 times or more before, what happened very recently to me proves that they maybe haven’t seen every conceivable error report, that they don’t have a cause and/or solution for every error, and that they may still be totally clueless as to some, possibly extremely rare errors, that can occur with even "outdated" operating systems.

Your thoughts? Please do comment.

Addendum: I eventually discovered that the fault was file-system corruption which was causing a mis-read of data and a subsequent BSOD, as well as an old outdated driver installed for the graphics card from an installation CD. It took a while to locate the f/s corruption, and the problem was initially pre-diagnosed by deduction. However the system works fine now.

As expected, malware dealers are attempting to capitalise on the results of the US Presidential Election: A spammed news message arrives in email with a link to a web-page that supposedly has a video of the event. Of course it claims to require a special viewer, said to be adobe_flash9.exe (MD5 47c86509a78dc1edb42f2964bea86306) and nags you to download it.

The viewer is not a viewer: It is rather Trojan-PSW:W32/Papras.CL, that hides itself by using a rootkit, steals all your personal details, and uploads them all to a server in Ukraine.

The link in the email takes you to this page: Note the download link for the "viewer".

• Some of the subject lines of the email include:

• USA Election 2008 Results

• Election Center 2008 – Election Results

• Obama’s Win Reshapes the Race

• Election 2008: Time lapse of U.S. counties

• The new President’s cabinet?

• Obama win preferred in world poll

• Can Obama win popular vote but lose election?

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While on the subject of Flash Player, there is a new version of Adobe Flash, version 10.0.12.36 which fixes a bug in previous versions.You should, of course, download it directly from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ rather than from any malware-dealer’s email.

A risk of fire hazard has caused Sony to recall 100,000 batteries used by five laptop manufacturers, .

Around 74,000 laptops sold by HP and 14,400 from Toshiba have been recalled. 40 cases of overheating; four cases in which users suffered minor burns, and 21 cases of damage from fire were reported. The faulty batteries are also used in laptops from Dell, Acer and Lenovo.

Back in 2006 a much bigger recall of 9.6 million Sony PC batteries occurred, costing Sony around $360 million.

This begs the question: Should quality control and safety checks be tightened at Sony? I certainly wouldn’t be a happy bunny if my new laptop burst into flames and destroyed my property. I’d imagine the same would be true of most people.

In this author’s opinion the matter should be given a full in-depth internal investigation. I certainly would currently be suspicious of any laptop which I knew was fitted with a Sony battery.

In fact I’d go so far as to advise all laptop users to have a fire bucket conveniently placed nearby, just in case the worst case scenario comes to the fore.

We all have to take risks; indeed life itself comes with the ultimate risk of death or injury. Unnecessary risks such as this one caused by sloppy manufacturing are a bit beyond the pale though.

Please do comment and state your opinions: There’s a comment box down below for you to express your thoughts in writing.

If building your own laptop you are advised to avoid using Sony batteries.

This is the 200th post on kkomp.com – I know; only 200! It seems like I’ve been blogging a lifetime, even though it’s only a few months at date of publication.

What better way to celebrate this than to show the victory speech of President Elect Obama; and quite a speech it was too. Among other things he promised to get scientists and intellectuals together to develop technologies that would free the USA from the tyranny of oil. That was a very positive promise. If he delivers it could lead to a new technological revolution, utilising cleaner and greener ways to generate energy that aren’t reliant on fossil fuels such as oil. This would be a massive step in reducing greenhouse emissions and can only be good for the environment. If he can lead the world in a global utilisation of these new greener cleaner technologies it will be a great bonus, and our planet will be a pollution-free place yet again.

It won’t, however, make him popular with the oil-barons and those who have become extremely rich from the oil industry. The middle-east with its massive underground supplies of oil won’t be happy bunnies about it. Even Texas with its oil-wells will have to change tack and find another way of making a living from the available resources.

He also promised to end the war in Iraq. That pointless war that was engineered by George Bush, assisted by the lies told by Tony Blair to the British people, has cost many thousands of people their lives needlessly. It was probably true that Saddam Hussein had to go; but not in an endless tide of sorrow and bloodshed while Bush pursued his objective of controlling the area’s oil wealth. Yes I truly believe that the motivation behind the attack was purely financial on the part of Bush, and to a certain extent of Blair also.

Obama promises change: He promises healthcare for the American people: Affordable healthcare for everyone; young, old, black, white, gay, straight, Republican and Democrat alike. He promises education, recovery, economic enhancement, technological achievement.

McCain, on the other hand, could only promise 4 more years of Bush strategy. The American people wanted change rather than stagnation.

Let’s hope Obama delivers. I leave you with the victory speech of President Elect of the United States of America; Barack Obama:-

Congratulations Barack Obama: The next President of the United States.

(Only 200 blog posts eh? It’s time to get the proverbial finger out.)

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New research data from Point Topic, which details profiles of broadband DSL and ADSL services worldwide, indicates that the number of new broadband lines added to the UK’s infrastructure between July to September was a clear 20 per cent below previous forecasts.

"To keep on track Britain needed to add 390,000 broadband lines in the July to September quarter, said Tim Johnson, chief analyst at Point Topic. "We estimate that the actual number was only 313,000. That’s 20% down on the target". Point Topic also estimates that Virgin Media may have gained another 60,000 cable modem customers at the expense of BT and other smaller alternative broadband ISPs, who actually lost around 70,000 customers during this period.

Local loop unbundling – where ISPs such as Carphone Warehouse, Utility Warehouse, and Sky install their own equipment in BT‘s telephone exchanges – was found to be the main driver of continuing growth in broadband, adding 323,000 lines in the third quarter of 2008.

"By the end of 2009 there should be about 18.4 million broadband lines in Britain, 300,000 short of what was expected six months ago." Continued Johnson.

He predicts that this means that fewer people will switch from dial-up lines to broadband, and about 240,000 more homes will be without any kind of internet access by the end of 2009.

To my mind that is utterly diabolical: Nearly 1/4 million homes giving up internet access altogether! It underlines the tightfisted nature of the British consumer in general; slashing costs indiscriminately in the face of a shortage of beer-money or reserve cash for cosmetics, without a second thought for the effect on themselves caused from the denial of a principal technology. Of course this shortsighted approach is in the face of a financial assault by the money-grabbing profiteering UK ISPs who, as with most British business, will stop at nothing to rob the public of as much money as possible while at the same time delivering the minimum service that they can possibly get away with.

I honestly didn’t realise that there were so many people in the UK who still used dial-up! Why use dial-up? At the end of the day it costs more than a broadband connection, is far slower, and in some cases less reliable too.

I know that in America many people in far-flung reaches of the continent have no choice as there is as yet no broadband or cable service in their area. That’s possibly acceptable in such a huge country, at least temporarily so anyway. This is the UK though: This is a small group of overpopulated islands. Th4ere is no excuse whatsoever for there not to be a countrywide broadband service in the UK at this point in the 21st Century. If the powers that be would invest their profits rather than pocketing them, I’m quite sure that the task could be completed in a short time. The only thing standing in the way is British greed.

What do you think about this subject? Do you agree that the UK needs to pull its socks up, and fast?

Would you believe it; the US elections mean almost as much to the UK as they do to the USA?! All the buzz is currently centered on Barack Obama and John McCain. The entire internet is alive with election fever. Despite the importance of the outcome to the UK people though, only the US citizens get to vote.

Why is the result so important to the UK?

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, rightly or wrongly, made a promise to support America in its War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq. Whatever the decision of the new US President regarding this matter, the UK will be affected in whatever way.

Analysts envisage that the USA will have the task of directing the world’s economy back to the rails and out of the recession that was originally born in America. Whoever becomes President will be at the helm and steering the economic environment in whatever direction.

Also there’s the matter of greenhouse gases and environmental pollution: Environmentalists think that America is responsible for up to 25% of greenhouse gas emissions; even though only around 5% of the world’s population live there. Clearly if this is indeed the case then it is a situation that requires urgent action. The next President will decide what action is to be taken on this issue, an issue which will affect the entire planet.

The question is: Are Americans considering all or even any of these issues? Are they voting for the better personality, or are they seeing the wider picture and voting with due consideration? What’s your opinion?

Normally YouTube videos are only viewable off-site by embedding the script presented onsite in your own html page. Now it’s possible to capture YouTube or Google video and save it as an .AVI, .MPEG, or .flv file with save2pc (lite). (The paid-for version also allows you to capture to .mov, .wmv, 3gp.)

Paste the URL of the video you want to capture into the link box on program’s GUI, press Start , and the .AVI, .MPEG, or .flv file will be downloaded into the selected folder in the "Save to" box.

From the website:

"save2pc allows you to easily grab and save desired YouTube video. The user interface of save2pc is very simple, so you don’t need any technical knowledge to use it. No need to use scripts for web browsers. Just run save2pc and start downloading!"

"save2pc is a completely FREE Software. It contains absolutely NO ADWARE, NO SPYWARE, NO REGISTRATION, NO POPUPS, NO MALWARE or other unwanted software."

It works with Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, 2003, and Vista operating systems.

A break from the usual tech-related subject matter.

A blonde phoned up a video-hire shop:

"Hello: I rented a porno-film yesterday to spice up me and my boyfriend’s lovemaking, but when we played it there was nothing on the cassette at all. It really let us down, and I’d like compensation when I bring it back later."

The store owner replied:

"I’m so sorry madam. We did receive a few faulty videos in our last batch; and it seems that you’ve accidentally managed to pick up one of them. I understood that we’d checked all the videos on display and removed all the faulty ones. You say this was a porn video. Do you have the title of it to hand?"

The blonde replied:

"Head Cleaner."

I was having an extended blonde moment today; so I started writing a post about blondes. I deleted a lot of things. It’s unfair to judge a person’s IQ level by their hair colour – There are a lot of hair dyes available these days.

I’m trying to introduce this video I found on You Tube. The artiste’ is Damh the Bard – A very famous performer amongst the Pagan community. You can visit his website at http://www.paganmusic.co.uk. If you like his music then why not buy his album(s)? All the recorded tracks are self-produced, and the money from sales of his albums funds the next album.

Enjoy.

Feel free to comment. Have a good week.

A few of the cards on sale have only 560 stream processors enabled, rather than the full 640. AMD say that they were part of a limited number of pre-production demo cards with a dodgy pre-production BIOS, designed solely to impress the media, that somehow were released to retailers due to a mix-up somewhere along the line. All these affected cards were made by HiS, and AMD claims that less than 400 of the dodgy cards were released to the retail market.

The HiS cards are quite a bargain at only £89.98UKP inc VAT from MicroDirect. In the unlikely event that you should happen to get a problem card then a BIOS update will fix the issue: All you need to do is to run GPU-Z. If the number in the shaders box is less than 640, then download a BIOS update from this page. (I suggest that you ignore the adverts for spyware-laden Zwinkys etc from Tribalfusion that are scattered around the page.)

Can this mistake be put down to experience and forgotten; or should those people who bought a dodgy card that needs a BIOS fix be compensated? What’s your opinion?

November 1st is, surprisingly, the first day of the month (Not much gets past me!): Here are the percentages of users, out of a total numerous original visitors since July 2008, who are using a certain one of a number of various operating systems. (There is a reason why I’m presenting these figures, which will become evident further down.):-

(The percentages are rounded off to the nearest full 0.1 percentage point above the actual decimalised percentage points less than 0.1; which is why the total percentage figure adds up to a fraction just under 100%.)

24838 of my (original) visitors were using Windows: That’s approximately 92.5%.

1124 of my (original) visitors were using a Mac: That’s approximately 4.1%.

764 of my (original) visitors were using Linux: That’s approximately 3.1%

I want to deal with Windows specifically from this point. No favouritism intended; and well done to the Mac users – That’s a fairly good figure, which demonstrates that the Apple community is growing. Well done also to the Linux users: A figure of 3.1% shows that Linux usage is increasing – Great news for the open-source community.

Windows users; all 92.5% of you: You’ve proved some things to my mind. I want to share them with you. I have touched on some of them before in previous statistical reports that I’ve presented:-

I feel that 3 months of usage statistics in the latter-half of the year is an ample sample (Poetry!) to indicate a usage trend for the year as a whole; So I’m going to present and share with anyone reading, the Official 2008 kkomp.com Windows Usage Analysis. (Percentages are rounded off to the nearest 1/100th decimal point above.) Behold:-

75% of you Windows users are using Windows XP.

15% of you Windows users are using Windows Vista.

4.3% of you Windows users are using Windows 2K.

1.7% of you Windows users are using Windows Server 2008.

*And the obsolete ones still in use:*

1.6% of you Windows users are using Windows 98 and 98SE

1.5% of you Windows users are using Windows NT4.

0.4% of you Windows users are using Windows ME.

0.4% of you Windows users are using Windows 95.

I’m going to class Windows NT4 as an obsolete operating system. I would rather say obsolescent; but for this analysis I’m classifying it as obsolete. I’m also stating as a fact that Windows 98 and 98SE, ME, and 95, are also obsolete operating systems.

That’s 3.9% of you Windows users who are using an obsolete operating system, or 2.4% if you don’t count NT4 as obsolete.

To those 3.9/2.4%: Did you know that, since your operating system is obsolete, it is a security risk? Microsoft have stopped patching it or issuing critical updates and bug fixes for it. That means that, since it became obsolete, it can harbour the newly-discovered security threats which can affect other Windows computers. It could be part of an advanced botnet already, and you have absolutely no way of knowing what criminal gang has your computer exploited to do their work. It could be being used as a spam server. It could be relaying illegal pornography. It could be standing by to participate in a DDOS attack on a mainstream server. It may be a virus storage facility if you don’t have antivirus or can’t be bothered to update your antivirus: True, the viruses may not be able to affect your computer itself; but you can bet your rear-end that they’re affecting others.

Worst of all you could have the authorities calling and arresting you for criminal cyber activities that you knew absolutely nothing about: How does distributing child pornography sound? Participating in a directed DDOS attack designed to deprive a company of its right to a healthy internet connection, or designed to commit sabotage and theft of company classified secret information by electronic means? Assisting in the distribution of unsolicited illegal advertising? Assisting in the distribution of computer viruses likely to cause a nuisance and inconvenience to the general public on an international level as well as possibly causing millions in losses?

The lawsuits could be colossal and cost you millions and/or your freedom. – And all because you couldn’t be bothered to spend a few bucks/pounds, whatever, on a new operating system and/or a new computer. If you get nicked it’s your own fault; and ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the (British) law. (Probably most other countries’ legal systems also.)

Is it really worth taking the risk?

If you’re 100% sure you know what you’re doing, are an experienced and knowledgeable geek + internet security expert, and are running the OS as a bit of nostalgia, then good luck to you. Otherwise ditch the obsolete OS, sell the 486 or whatever old heap you’re running it on to a museum, buy new, and stay safe online. Don’t make yourself and others suffer as a result of your own lethargy.

End of lecture. I know I’ve said similar before. This is repetition for emphasis. It is important. Please address the issue  post-haste, for your own sake as much as that of others. To the other Windows users who aren’t using an obsolete OS: Keep it up. – That means keep your antivirus and antispyware updated at all times. Scan your computer regularly. Install all the updates and patches issued by Microsoft. – Why not go check Windows Update right now to see if there’s anything you missed?

To change the subject; I am astonished that 5 times more people are still using Windows XP rather than Windows Vista. I read an article on PCMech.com by David Risley entitled "Is Windows Vista Really a Failure?". In answer to that question just look at the statistics. Go figure!

I’m looking forward to Windows Seven: I think Microsoft have learned their lesson with Vista. (The first public beta comes out early next year BTW.).

If you’re using your laptop there may be many times when you may want to leave it switched on, but not have your LCD screen running using up power and making light unnecessarily. Changing your settings in Windows seems a pain-in-the-proverbial for just that one event – Only to have to reset them afterwards.

 This is where Turn Off LCD comes into its own. Developed by Taimur Asad, Turn Off LCD is a small-sized handy utility that doesn’t require installation and runs out-of-the-box. You’ will, however, need to have Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 installed to run it. It allows you to instantly switch off your LCD display screen with a single click

The software will run on both Windows Vista and Windows XP. 

At Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles it was announced that the first public beta for Windows 7 would be announced early in 2009.

Although M$ have already provided developers and journalists with a pre-beta build, they will be releasing a beta 1 to the public in only a few months.

Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president for Windows, said at the conference, on Tuesday 28th October 2008:-

"The beta’s going to be feature complete and we’re going to deliver the beta early next year."

According to Sinofsky a final release date for 7 still hasn’t yet been decided. Microsoft are going to be gauging people’s reactions to the beta first before even considering an RTM date. The company are supposedly sticking to their plans to launch a new OS every three years. This leads one to believe that the release will be in January 2010. Personally I very much doubt that this is an ideal time to be releasing a new operating system, and I think it wise to expect a pre-Christmas release – which would most likely be in 2009. Nobody has any money left in January after the holiday season; and the retail sector in general is concentrating in selling off overstocks cheaply rather than launching new products at that time of year.

Sinofsky told journalists earlier this week "We really do mean we’ll ship it when it’s ready. We don’t need to be playing schedule goals all the time.".

- So what say you? 2009 or 2010 release? Do leave a comment stating your opinion.