Computer Blogging

About a month ago I decided to give Microsoft’s new anti-virus product a try. Windows Live One Care offers anti-virus, firewall, and spyware protection in one product. The product is easy to install and was very intuitive in it’s use.

I have a Pentium M powered laptop that has 256MB of ram. Not a power machine, but for what I use it for it works fine. One Care says that it requires 256MB or ram to operate.

Once One Care was installed, it was easy to use and I saw no performance changes except when the tuneup utility ran. That was OK though as it was easily cancelled or scheduled for a low usage time..

About a month into using One Care, I started noticing the laptop slow down. It go to the point that the computer was practically unusable even for basic applications like Word and IE.

I was considering doing an entire re-install, but last night decided to disable One Care to see if it was causing this problem. Once the One Care services were disabled, the machine immediatlely returned to it’s previous level of performance.

I would not recommend One Care for a computer running at 256MB or ram and do not really believe that the performance would be good at 512MB, but cannot confirm this.

It appears that Dell and Sony had talks about the exploding laptop batteries about 10 months ago. Does this open them up for potential legal issues?

Check your laptops and talk to your laptop manufacturers. Make sure that your laptop does not have a similar battery defect for the safety of yourself, and your co-workers or families.

One of the most hated problems used to be hitting the CAPS LOCK key by accident and forgetting it was on.

While the Keyboard does have a light to indicate the CAPS LOCK key is activated, by default there is no audio warning. You can change that easily!! To configure Windows XP to give you a BEEP when when you hit the CAPS LOCK key. navigate to control panel, Accessibility Options and place a check mark next to the “Use Toggle Keys” option.
Now you will get a beep when you switch on the CAPS LOCK

Do you want to use OE to compose your Gmail messages instead of the Gmail Web interface?
Here are the instructions for setting up OE to access your Gmail account:

1. Log onto the Gmail Web site and click Settings in the top navigation bar.
2. Click the tab marked Forwarding and POP
3. Check Enable POP for all mail or Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on
4. Click Save Changes
5. In Outlook Express, click the Tools menu and select Accounts
6. Click Add | Mail …
7. Type your name and click Next
8. Enter your Gmail address and click Next
9. Under “My incoming mail server is a [dropdown box] server, select POP
10. Under “Incoming mail server,” type pop.gmail.com
11. Under “Outgoing mail (SMTP) server,” type smtp.gmail.com and click Next
12. Under “Account name,” type your Gmail address (username@gmail.com)
13. Under “Password,” type your Gmail password and click Next
14. Click Finish.

Now configure the new account:

15. Highlight the account name and click Properties
16. Click the Servers tab
17. Under “Outgoing Mail Server,” ensure that the following is checked: My server requires authentication
18. Click the Advanced tab
19. Ensure the following is checked under both “Outgoing Mail (SMTP)” and “Incoming Mail (POP3): This server requires a secure connection
20. Under “Outgoing Server (SMTP)” type 465
21. Under “Incoming Server (POP3)” type 995
22. Click OK and close.

IE 7 release candidate 1 is now available for download.
The term release candidate refers to a final product, ready to release unless fatal bugs emerge. In this stage, the product features all designed functionality and no known showstopper class bugs. At this phase the product is usually code complete.

I have yet to download RC1, but did download and run the beta 2 version of IE 7 a while back, but I have not yet been able to upgrade or remove this version as the installer errors out. I will see what happens when the Final version comes out.

But, if you are a early implementer and not afraid of test versions, you might want to download it and see how it works for you. If you do and have any problems or information to share, please come back here and comment on this thread.

Download Here.