Category: Windows 7

Upgrades Aren’t Always Painless

Just a quick update for today. With the impending release of Windows 8 it’s a good time to remind people that upgrades (be it hardware or software) aren’t always seamless or painless. Whilst there isn’t an expected problem with people upgrading to Windows 8 from Windows 7 or even Windows Vista you should always prepare …

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Don’t Clone Hard Drives to Solid State Drives

Here’s a quick tip for people out there looking to buy a solid state drive for their computer. Generally, people have gotten used to the concept of cloning a smaller hard drive to a larger one when capacity has become an issue and naturally this would be seen as an option to migrate from a …

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Office 2013 – First Impressions

Last night I decided to try out Office 2013 – perhaps not the smartest thing to do just as the university semester is getting underway but I couldn’t help myself. Anyway, I just wanted to share my first impressions of it with you starting with the installation. First of all, the time between kicking off …

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Internet Explorer and 64-bit Windows

Just a quick note for this evening. On 64-bit versions of Windows you actually end up with two versions of Internet Explorer as part of the “out of box” installation. You might be forgiven for thinking that you would be using the 64-bit version of Internet Explorer by default but that often won’t be the …

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Making Bootable Windows Installation USB Sticks the Easy Way

Here’s a quick tip for today. Creating a bootable USB stick of a Windows 7 or Windows 8 installation disc used to be quite the black art but there is a much easier way to achieve the same outcome by using a neat little tool from none other than Microsoft. All you need to do …

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64-Bit Windows and ODBC Drivers

A slightly more technical article for today but something worth mentioning. At work, I am attempting to get a direct connection between MS SQL Server 2008 and an Oracle database. Some might say that such connectivity would bring about the end of the world or a hole might open in the ground and swallow me …

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How to Fix Windows Activation Error 0x80072F8F

The last thing you want to see during a Windows installation is an error message and particularly one which might not give you any helpful information on how to correct it (and not many Windows errors fall into that bucket). Anyway, this is a simple yet frustrating problem that I came across recently and I …

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Obtain Great Windows 7 Desktop Backgrounds Everyday

While we probably don’t sit around gazing at our desktop background everyday it’s nice to be able to be surprised by something that looks spectacular. Bing has become noted for having a new image everyday on its landing page and, while there has been the ability to get two new wallpapers a week via RSS from …

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Translator for Windows Phone 7

Translater - Panasonic Headphone Manual (German to English)

Here’s something that travellers might find handy if they find themselves in a bind. Microsoft has quietly developed an app that offers translation of typed text, optically recognised text (i.e. using your camera) and voice while using the power of its Bing platform to do the translation for you. Sure, there have been a few apps out …

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Locate a Seemingly Missing Mouse Cursor

With screens of massive size and resolution all the way down to those tiny screens on netbooks it can be difficult to find the mouse cursor for whatever reason. There is however an easy way to locate your cursor on your screen by enabling a handy feature in Windows 7. Windows Vista: Click the “Start” …

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