Home & Small Office Computer Guide

Ever since the release of Vista there have been many businesses that have found that a lot of software problems came with the new operating system. Many programmes that small businesses in particular depend on simply don’t run under Vista.

That situation has seen an upsurge in the number of new computers being brought into computer repair shops to have Vista removed and XP installed. Now it seems that Microsoft has bowed to the inevitable and is allowing the big PC makers to offer XP once more … but only in certain circumstances.

You can read more about Microsoft’s shift here

Close on the heels of a senior member of the Vista team admitting that there was still a lot of work to be done before Microsoft’s new operating programme was ready for release CNet is reporting that Microsoft’s CEO as saying that Vista is on “on track to ship in the first part of next year January”.

You can read the full story here

As the release of Vista, Microsoft’s new operating system, draws closer there is a lot of talk and speculation about how much memory it will require and whether or not your current PC will be able to handle the new system.

Vista and the Quest for More Memory takes a look behind the story that the minimum requirements will be 512MB of DRAM and 1GB would be better.

Microsoft recently announced that Vista would not be as secure as everyone first thought. In fact Microsoft was intentionally leaving a back door in their otherwise secure system to allow various law enforcement agencies to be able to access files in the interests of national security.

Now that sounds all very noble and patriotic doesn’t it?

But there’s one slight problem. If there’s a back door there for the security agencies how long will it be before hackers find it and exploit it?

We have a friend who runs a small computer shop where he custom builds computers for just about any application you might want. He has always been a big fan of Asus motherboards until yesterday when he found a major problem.

The latest Asus motherboards that he would use for most of the machines he builds has a major problem with Pentium 4 chips. It’s not something that manifests itself until you are well into the loading routine and then the computer stops and posts an error message that it can’t find a vital file.

The file is there of course and you can even manually point the computer to the file but it can’t read it.

Asus do have a solution to the problem, all you have to do is flash the BIOS.

Now that sounds pretty simple doesn’t it but … to flash the BIOS you have to have loaded the basic operating system into the computer … and you can’t do that because the Asus motherboard has a problem.

Oh well … it seems that the board works fine with AMD and Celerons.

Now I know that this sounds really weird and I really shouldn’t be letting my imagination run away with me but I think my partner - the light of my life - she who brought light and happiness into my life - has some strange ability to communicate with operating systems.

Yes, I knew it! You’ve immediately consigned me to the bin marked ‘Crack Pots, Looney Tunes, and other Demented Nitwits’ - but not so. I am as perfectly insane as any other computer user but my wife does have this strange ability.

Consider the evidence - ever since the introduction of digital watches she has been unable to wear one and have it last longer than three days. Good quality or absolute crap - it doesn’t matter, they all die after about three days.

And now that strange ability to destroy things is beginning to manifest itself in her computers. She has a laptop that works fine but after she has used it for a couple of months it dies. The software corrupts and it has to be formatted and re-loaded.

And then there is her PC. Over the last couple of years, despite changes in motherboards and peripherals it too starts to die. Invariably it’s the USB ports that go first. One at a time they just stop working for no apparent reason. Anything that is plugged into those ports can be moved to my computer and it works fine but if she tries to transfer a file across the network to anything plugged into a USB port on another machine it never reaches it’s destination.

Last week it all started again and one by one her USB ports failed so tomorrow it goes back to the computer shop for another format and reload.

I guess we could live with it but the failures are happening more frequently.

And you thought I was joking - where is the them from the X Files?

A blog like Home and Small Office Computer Info is never going to delve too deeply into anything related to its subject simply because it’s here to give you an overview of a very broad-ranging topic.

But that doesn’t mean that I can’t point you in the direction of some blogs that do delve deeply into more narrowly defined topics.

If you are interested in the new Windows operating system that is due for release next year, once known as Longhorn but now known as Vista then there is no better place to start that the Windows Vista Weblog.

Microsoft have huge number of projects set to roll out in the next 18 months and if you want to keep up with all those goodies then keep in touch with the Unnofficial Microsoft Weblog.

Both blogs are run by John Evans, lover of homeless sea gulls and all things related to Windows

The latest edition of Australian Computer Magazine is suggesting that Microsoft “has effectively conceded that a pirated copy of Windows is as good as the real thing” and anyone silly enough to use a pirated copy can now come in from the cold.

It is going to cost you of course but for $238 Microsoft will now sell you a serial number for Windows XP Pro. It seems that the purchase option is offered when someone using a pirated copy goes to Microsoft to download updates.

It seems that back in June Steve Ballmer - the number 2 at Microsoft and well-known hurler of chairs - was speaking at a meeting in Sydney and made this bold prediction:

“In the next six months, we’ll catch Google in terms of relevancy”

Knowing Microsoft’s ability to keep to deadlines I think we shouldn’t really expect anything like that in the foreseeable future.