BRUCEB NEWS
How To Buy A Cheap Windows PC
Do not buy a slow Windows PC to save a few dollars. If you get a slow Windows PC, you will become bitter and depressed, people will mute you in Zoom meetings, and you will pound the keyboard with your fists in frustration. Has “Fists Of Frustration” ever been the name...
Buy.Com And “Customer Loyalty”
This is a cautionary tale to make you careful online shoppers. It strikes close to home for me because it involves Buy.com, a favorite of mine at one time, but the scam is also...
COMCAST POSTSCRIPT
Ace consultant Brian Dent of CompuDent Systems points out an interesting corollary to the speed increases from Comcast: Just one caveat I’ve run into. A lot of the existing...
COMCAST SPEED INCREASE
Comcast Internet subscribers in the North Bay are getting a free speed increase, and some new choices for even faster Internet connections. Here’s today’s press release. The...
iPHONES AND CARRIERS
I ran across an interesting article about the effect Apple is having on the wireless business. The conventional wisdom has been that AT&T and Verizon are abusing their market...
FIREFOX, CHROME UPDATES
Lots of people have installed Firefox to do their Internet browsing. Sometimes, out of curiosity, I ask people why they use it instead of Internet Explorer. There are people who...
DISABLE INTERNET EXPLORER SECURITY WARNING
There’s some new wording on a security warning in Internet Explorer 8 that nearly drove me nuts. If you don’t like it either, instructions to disable it are below. All too often...
VISTA VS. WINDOWS 7
I’m frequently asked whether to buy a computer now or wait until Windows 7 is available in late October. If you buy a Vista computer now that has the hardware I recommend, you...
INSTALLING USB DEVICES
Microsoft has accumulated a remarkable library of drivers for all the hardware devices and gadgets and gizmos that we hook up to computers with USB cables. The drivers that are...
TIPPING POINT TO 64 BIT
We’ve reached the tipping point. Many of you will buy 64-bit versions of Vista on your new computers from now on, and almost all of you will buy a 64-bit version of Windows 7....
ERRONEOUS SECURITY WARNINGS IN VISTA
Starting on July 14, some Vista computers began displaying erroneous warning messages from the Windows Security Center. If you run Windows Live OneCare on a Vista machine, you...
RICHARD FEYNMAN AND PROJECT TUVA
This is not directly related to computers but it’s a nice thing to know about. Bill Gates announced today that he has made a classic series of lectures by Nobel prize-winning...
MICROSOFT OFFICE 2010 – DETAILS HAZY, ASK AGAIN LATER
The bloggers were buzzing about Microsoft Office 2010 today, after Microsoft gave a nice presentation at a Partner Conference. The new Office suites won’t be on the market until...
MICROSOFT OFFICE 2010: THE MOVIE
I’ll write about the features in Microsoft Office 2010 later. For the moment, take these two clips as evidence that Microsoft might actually be able to do cool advertisements....
CHANGE COMES SLOWLY
One of the things that kept Vista from being adopted quickly was a simple problem: once we are used to doing something a certain way, it’s difficult for many people to change....
BING AND SEARCH RESULTS
Bing is Microsoft’s new service for Internet searches. As I wrote last month, its search results are more or less comparable to Google and it has some nice design touches that...