PC Fast Fix

Dell launched the Studio line of mid-range notebook computers for the consumer market on Thursday, spicing up its offerings by bringing a variety of color options to fashion and style-conscious users.

The new Studio line fits between Dell’s low-end Inspiron and high-end XPS. The Studio notebooks are available in seven colors and start at $799 for the 15-inch model and $999 for the 17-inch version. Both models feature built-in Webcams and optional LED displays, which offer higher quality graphics than standard LCD screens.

Dell was among the first to shape this trend last year with its mainstream Inspiron series. The new Studio 15 and 17 series could be seen as an expected expansion, with design elements that are carried over from the more stylish XPS series as well as eight different colors you can choose from: Purple, green, red, blue, pink orange, black and silver are available.

For a more subtly personalized laptop, Dell has added an optional high-gloss Graphite Grey choice that can be customized with contrasting black, blue, pink or red edge trim.

Tags: New Computer Products by admin
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Unfortunately time is running out for Windows XP. On June 30, Microsoft will stop licensing XP to larger computer makers and it will stop shipping XP boxed copies to retailers.

Windows XP is seven years old and has had a pretty good run. We still favor the operating system and have it on many systems in our offices, over 90% (of this office) still runs on XP and no one here really feels the need to upgrade, but it will be inevitable.

There was hope that Microsoft would extend the Windows XP deadline beyond June 30, but this doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

You can still downgrade new machines to XP, but this will most likely be at some cost, depending on the manufacturer.

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Run our free scan to fix Windows XP and Windows Vista errors

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The Mozilla Firefox 3 release date has been announced for tuesday June 17.

It has been over 34 months in development with contributions from thousands of users and developers.

Firefox Download Day

Firefox is also hoping to set the record for the most software downloads in a 24 hour period - this is known as Firefox Download Day. So if you want to help make history, then you can get involved now. All you have to do is download Firefox 3, which is going to be pretty cool anyway.

Click here to visit Firefox 3 Download Day

Tags: Internet Browsers, Tech News, Uncategorized, Windows by admin
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If your installation of Windows Vista is still not running as fast as you’d like then give some of these tweaks a try - they should give a decent gain in performance.

Firstly, turn off services that hog alot of resources and aren’t really all that useful anyway.

Turn Off Resource Intensive Services

1) Turn off Remote Differential Compression (RDC)

Remote Differential Compression (RDC) allows applications to synchronize data between two computers in an efficient manner. The synchronization efficiency is made possible by using compression techniques to minimize the amount of data sent across the network.

To switch it off:

- Control Panel -> Programs and Features
- On the left menu click on “Turn Windows features on and off”
- Uncheck Remote Differential Compression

2) Turn off Windows Search Indexing

In order to make searching faster, Windows Vista keeps an up-to-date index of files and folders. This index is updated on a regular basis and can slow your computer considerably. If you don’t do alot of searching, it is worth turning this off.

- Click Start -> Computer
- Right click on c:
- Select the “General” tab -> uncheck Index this drive for faster searching

3) Turn off hibernation

Hibernation is a useful feature, but its another one that uses alot of resources and should be switched off if not used regularly. We recommend that you try disabling it to see what kind of performance gains you get.

- Control Panel -> Power Options
- Click Change Plan Settings
- Click Change Advanced Power Settings
- Go to Sleep -> Hibernate After
- Move the selector to 0
- Click Apply

Hopefully those tweaks will help improve your Windows Vista performance. The effects can vary depending on hardware, but some users have reported a pretty decent improvement.

For even greater performance, run our free download and scan - Fix Vista errors and increase speed by up to 300% - Free Download Click Here

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The latest version (4.5) of Windows Installer has just been released on June 2. You can now download the latest version from here.

The Microsoft® Windows® Installer (MSI) is the application installation and configuration service for Windows. These are some of the new features you will find in 4.5:

Multiple Package Transaction: In a multiple package transaction, you can create a single transaction from multiple packages. In a multiple package transaction, a chainer is used to dynamically include packages in the transaction. If any of the packages do not install as expected, you can roll back the installation.

Embedded UI Handler: You can embed a custom user interface (UI) handler in the Windows Installer package. This makes a custom UI easier to integrate. You can also invoke an embedded UI handler from the Add or Remove item in Control Panel. Or, you can invoke an embedded UI handler during a Windows Installer repair process.

Embedded Chainer: You can use the embedded chainer to add packages to a multiple package transaction. You can use an embedded chainer to enable installation events across multiple packages. For example, you can enable the install-on-demand events, the repair events, and the uninstall events across multiple packages.

Update Supersedence Resiliency: This feature enables you to correct for changes in the FeatureComponent table during supersedence.

Shared Component Patching Resiliency During Uninstall: This feature makes sure that the most recent version of a component is available to all the products.

Custom Action Execution On Update Uninstall: This feature enables an update to add or change a custom action so that the custom action is called when an update is uninstalled.

Tags: Tech News, Uncategorized, Windows by admin
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