Category: Windows Desktop
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Windows 8.1 is Android Kitkat and other thoughts
— Update 2016-01-03 read about my new approach to backup — My daughter is going to university and has just bought a Lenovo laptop which has Windows 8.1 installed. It is a conventional 15.6″ laptop with a i5 processor, 8 GB RAM and 1TB hard disk. First impressions This is my first use of Windows…
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Humour: Excel and big data
As consultants our job is to help the user and unlike the poor second line support person we usually have the time and infrastructure to do it. Here is an amusing rant from one such Sys Admin in The Register. The scenario will be familar to anyone who has ever done a data warehouse project…
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The best format for video in PowerPoint
I needed to include video shot on my mobile phone in a PowerPoint presentation. A problem with video is that the user needs to have the correct codecs installed before they can play the video. In my case Windows 7 does not come with audio codecs for the 3gp format used by my phone. Although…
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The future of Windows
http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/index/~3/j34uJD7Eoiw/ This is a very insightful article that shows how Microsoft could be planning to reconcile the different needs of consumers and businesses and reduce the licensing and support burden. Some key points: There will only be Windows, not Windows 9, 10, 11 … which will all require different support cycles This will be possible because…
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Microsoft OneDrive is better than Google Docs
I needed to share an Excel document so I investigated Microsoft OneDrive. Microsoft is late to the file syncing party Dropbox and Google Docs having got well ahead. I’ve used Dropbox a lot, because it just works; it is really effective and painless way of sharing files quickly. This is their core business and they…
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Better than Apple Time Machine but for a PC
— Update 2016-01-03 read about my new approach to backup — Over the last month I’ve learnt a lot about backup. There had been significant structural changes over the last few years, disc is cheap, bandwidth is inexpensive and remote storage is coming down in price dramatically. It is necessary to address two different issues,…
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Tiny 64GB usb stick is like another laptop hard drive
One problem with laptops is that that only have one drive. This limits space and data redundancy. This tiny USB drive is designed to be installed permanently in your laptop. An added bonus is that it could be bootable. Thus giving you access either to a linux machine or recovery media for the laptop while…
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Why I removed Acronis True Image 2014
I have just removed Acronis true image 2014 from my laptop and breathed a sigh of relief. Backup software should make you feel that your computer is safer than it was before, Acronis did not. — Update 2016-01-03 read about my new approach to backup — –update 6 June 2014– I am now using…
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The best Acronis backup scheme
— Update 2016-01-03 read about my new approach to backup — Acronis is a full featured backup application. Because it can do almost anything it is very difficult to configure. As is often the case, the first thing to work out is what you want to accomplish. Scenario I have a laptop and travel for…
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How to recover from hard drive failure
Your hard drive is about to fail, it might be next week, next month or next year. Mine failed last week. Summary of this article This article tells you how to recover from a hard drive failure. It presents my particular issue as an illustration. To smooth recovery when this happens to you I recommend…
Dr James Bayley 