Windows 7 Family Pack Returns

Good news for anybody who is thinking about upgrading to Windows 7, Microsoft announced that the Windows 7 family pack returns on October 3. The family pack allows you to upgrade 3 of your Windows Vista or Windows XP computers to Windows 7 Home Premium. (Please note, however, that Techs-on-Call does not recommend upgrading Windows XP computers to Windows 7.) The cost for 3 upgrade licenses is $149.99. Consider that one upgrade version costs $99.99 retail, this is a good deal if you have 2 or 3 computers. This is a limited time offer. If you are thinking about upgrading your computers to Windows 7, this is a great deal.

Because of this, Techs-on-Call is offering another Windows 7 deal. Techs-on-Call will upgrade 2 computers from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium for $300 and 3 computers from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium for $350. This is in addition to our current Windows 7 special running until the end of the year where we will upgrade Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium for $200.

0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 9:30 AM - Categories: News

Overview of the Various Audio and Video Standards

Without a doubt, there are many and various different audio and video standards out there. Some are for computers and some are for consumer electronics. This blog entry is a brief and simple overview of some standards currently used or recently used. It will not provide an in-depth and technical explination. The purpose is to inform you of the various standards. A future blog post will explain how to put your video files, even HD video files, onto your iPad and this blog entry will be required if you do not know about the various standard. (Expect this blog post to posted mid September.)

First, there is one definition you should know. It will be used quite often in this blog entry. A codec, which is short for coder/decoder, is a way of audio or video so that it can be easily shared. They can be divided into two groups: lossless and lossy. A lossless codec is one that does not discard any of the source material when capturing the original source. A lossy codec does discard some of the source material. Lossless codecs cannot compress the source material well, which makes it harder to use. Lossy codecs do compress better, so the key is to compress just enough so that the output is close to the original. As time goes on, lossy codecs have become more efficient, meaning they can compress the source much more and achieve the same level of quality. Because the destination is much smaller, lossy codecs are usually used.

To limit file sharing, some formats support Digital Rights Management, or DRM for short. This is just a controversial system that monitors and tracks how many devices a particular file is being used on. When a file has DRM, it is only activated when the file is used.

Read more...

Posted by Wade Burchette at 5:00 PM - Categories: Audio/Video

Intel Purchases McAfee

Intel announced today (August 19, 2010) that they are purchasing McAfee, which produces antivirus software, for $7.68 billion pending FTC approval. On the surface, these seems like a strange combination. Why would Intel want to purchase an antivirus software vendor? However, if you examine deeper it does make sense.

Computer security is a critical issue. Hackers are always looking to make a lot of money for little work or just want to be mean. While most of the time hackers exploit a weakness is software, sometimes they exploit weaknesses in the hardware. CPU's are complex little machines; nobody can make a perfect design without any vulnerabilities. The same applies to operating systems such as Windows. Since there is going to be a vulnerability, wouldn't it be nice to have a system designed to detect what black-hat hackers do and block such attacks while being completely transparent to the end-user? Intel purchased McAfee to help implement security and defense in the hardware so that future attacks on computer systems will be harder.

Short term, don't expect anything to change. Long term, I would expect McAfee antivirus to become very much inferior to the competition because I suspect Intel will have the company focus less on the software and more on the hardware.

0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 12:17 PM - Categories: News | Security

Another Study Shows Antivirus Software Is Poor Against Malware

0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 9:35 AM - Categories: Malware | News |

Intel Settles With The FTC

0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 8:45 PM - Categories: News |

For Sale: Your Habits

0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 7:45 PM - Categories: News | Privacy |

The iPad Review

0 comments - Posted by Wade Burchette at 9:15 AM - Categories: Reviews |