Chaitanya Sareen who is Microsoft’s senior program manager notes that there are 36 changes to Windows 7 release candidate.

The changes include an ALT+TAB window feature which will be implemented in Aero Peek. The Windows Logo+ # shortcut gives access to the taskbar for launching or switching a program. Windows 7 RC can now play .mov files without installing Apple’s QuickTime software. FAT32 and NTFS hard drives will be supported.

Also, performance tweaks have been added. The article at Techtree notes that the company is taking each step carefully.

Source: Techtree

Its been almost a year and a half since I last asked what you think of the site and where I can improve. As a webmaster, I love hearing any feedback from our readers so that I can keep on doing what I am doing right, implement any suggestions you guys have and stop doing the stuff you hate.

So, Hows our driving? What do you love about the site? What do you hate about the site? Got an idea or a suggestion?. Comments are open as always, you don’t need to sign up to make a comment and you can even post anonymously if you like.

Windows 7 will be shipped with three new games. They are internet-based versions of spades, checkers, and backgammon.

“The new versions of these games have been completely redesigned and improved over their old-school predecessors. Tired of Minesweeper? Definitely give these games a try and join the thousands of other players online who are playing too,” wrote Microsoft’s in-house Windows blogger.

If a live player drops out, an AI will take over. The three games will have three levels of difficulties.

Source: Information Week

Microsoft released patch yesterday for Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) bugs in Windows 7. It addresses a wide range of “reliability” problems.

“We use the term ‘reliability’ to broadly encompass all types of stability problems including crashes, hangs, memory leaks, etc. Most of the issues that we discovered through the [IE8] Beta are fixed in the Release Candidate 1, which is now available for Windows Vista and Windows XP,” said Herman Ng who is a program manager on the IE8 team.

The article at Computerworld notes that the total number of bugs that the patch fixed is not given.

Source: COMPUTERWORLD

In the past, Technibble has featured the Norton Removal Tool and the McAfee Removal Tool and now it’s AVG Antivirus’ turn. AVG Remover does exactly that, it removes AVG.

Why not just uninstall it via the Add/Remove Programs you might say? Because sometimes the uninstaller doesnt completely remove everything. If you try to install a new version of AVG or some other antivirus, you cant because it believes that the old AVG is still installed. This fixes that by running a script that removes all the registry keys that AVG left behind.
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The beta version of Apple’s next web browser upgrade is now available for download.

In this version, Javascript loads 30 times faster than Firefox 3 according to the article at Macworld’s website.

It scored a perfect score on the Acid3 test according to the author of the Macworld article. The test checks how a web browser follow web standards.

There is a new topsites page feature which loads by default. It is similar to the speed dial feature in Opera web browser and the speed dial extension for firefox.

Source: Macworld

One of the most important skills for a young computer business to master is advertising. I see it time and time again where technicians will ask “what form of advertising worked best for you?” only for the responses to be fairly mixed. One will say that their Yellow Pages ad brings in 90% of their clients while another business will say that he only gets 1 call a month from it.

I wish that I could give Technibble readers a silver bullet for advertising, but what worked well for me wont necessarily work well for you. What I can do however, is tell you the factors you need to take into consideration to eventually find what works great for you.
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PC Perspective published a story that Intel’s SSD X25-M drive degrades as the drive is used due to file fragmentation.  Intel could not replicate the problem yet.

The problem is not something an OS-based disk defragmenter can detect according to the article at Ars Technica.

The story that PC Perspective published include tips on how users could improve the drive’s performance.

“In our estimation, the synthetic workloads they use to stress the drive are not reflective of real world use,” Intel told CNET.

Source: Ars Technica

The release candidate version of Windows 7 may be released on April 10 according to various sites.

Steven Sinofsky, the exec who is in charge of Windows reported that the “Send feedback” button on the Windows 7 beta desktop was used by 500,000 users.

Andy Patrizio of Internetnews.com notes that in his opinion, Windows Media Player 12 is just plain bad. Another complaint that he has is about the desktop shuffler. He mentions that it is buggy since it has a tendency to stop working.

Source: Internetnews.com

I would like to share with you my (and many other technicians) process of working on a computer and dealing with a client. I have built up this process over many years after making many mistakes of my own and putting extra steps to make sure they don’t happen again. This is my process:
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