One of my personal favorites among the new features that Windows 7 came with was the introduction of some awesome and long awaited keyboard shortcuts. I personally use them as much as I can to save time, and I recommend the practice of using keyboard shortcuts to others too.
This article talks about 15 really cool keyboards shortcuts that are specific to Windows 7. I can bet that you don’t know all of them. Check them out, some of them will surprise you for sure.
We love Live CDs, but it’s a hassle installing the same packages every time you need to do a virus scan or recover accidentally deleted data. We’ll show you how to roll your own Ubuntu Live CD, with all the packages you want, and even more nice customizations.
The tool that we’re going to use is called Reconstructor, which is a free webapp that lets you roll your own Ubuntu and Debian CDs.
Getting Started
The first step, as noted above, is to sign up for an account. Click the Sign Up link and fill out the form that appears.
You will be greeted by Reconstructor’s main interface. To create your customized Ubuntu CD, click on the Create Project button in the left column.
Your old CDs – especially ones you’ve burned yourself – degrade over time, to the point that they’re unreadable. We’ll show you how to squeeze as much data out of them as you can, before it’s too late!
The tool we’re going to use to do this is called ddrescue, which can be easily accessed from the Live CD environment. ddrescue can make .iso files out of your CDs, which can then either be burned to a more reliable CD, or can be mounted and accessed in all modern operating systems.
Boot into the Ubuntu Live CD environment using a burnt CD or a prepared flash drive.
First, we’ll install ddrescue. Open up the Synaptic Package Manager (System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager). continue reading…
Roughly one month prior to the release of Windows 7, Microsoft debuted its consumer antivirus and antispyware solution, Microsoft Security Essentials. This solution does not include a firewall which is understandable since Windows 7 does include one. Microsoft has a sketchy past with previous firewall incarnations that either left systems open for attack or did not provide the customization options that existed in commercial solutions. In this review I will take a closer look at the capabilities of Microsoft Security Essentials and the Windows 7 firewall. I will try to determine if the software giant has managed to stroll into the desktop security space as a solid contender.
Download Microsoft Security Essentials here.
Microsoft Security Essentials is a very small download at just under 7 MB. The installation is rather uneventful, a simple Next, Next, Next, Finish straight forward approach. Thankfully a restart is not required for Microsoft Security Essentials to begin protecting your system. Immediately after installation you are presented with an option to do an initial scan and update of virus and spyware definitions. On my system the scan took less than 15 minutes to complete.
