GetVolery

Now if you are planning to get Window 7, you will probably be wanting to do a clean install (and you have to if you aren’t currently running Windows Vista), then I just stumbled onto a service called Volery.
This makes it easy to install programs (although at the moment the only programs are ones I would call ‘essentials’, so browsers, instant messaging, media, imaging, documents, anti-virus, run-times (i.e. flash, java), file-sharing, utilities etc.

All you do is simply click on the relevant boxes, and click “get installer”. Then all you have to do is set up an account, using the demo code: howtogeek with your email, and a password (please for the love of God, tell me you don’t use the password, “password” – if you do, YOU’RE AN IDIOT and you don’t deserve to use the internet).

Some of my essential programs on it - like WinSCP and PuTTY

Anyway, I think that’s probably posting done for today – today’s been a pretty good day

128-bit Windows?

Robert Morgan, senior member of the Microsoft Research team seems to have claimed that he is: “Working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and long-term projects. Research & Development projects including 128bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan.” Now this doesn’t necessarily mean a lot at the moment, as Microsoft has said that they are working on a new client operating system to follow Windows 7, but this isn’t expected until 2012 at the very earliest.

But would the new operating system being in 128-bit really be a great move?

I personally don’t think the majority of users would even have moved to a 64-bit operating system, mainly because, unlike apple, Microsoft hasn’t enforced it to be so. (Though of course, this would actually be a lot harder for windows considering the huge variant of hardware the system will work on)

But by does this mean that Microsoft will be phasing out 32-bit for 64-bit as it’s main, with a 128-bit for architecture for being that want to be at the forefront of technology?

If you want to see what Robert Morgan wrote on his LinkedIn profile, it is cached here.

Anyway, Ill try and put anything up as soon as its seen

Forbidden planet

Forbidden planet is pretty much a comic bookstore.

But it is just so awesome its hard to leave it at just that.

It has basically anything geeky anybody could ever want. Comic books (signed or not). As well as figurines (although many our very expensive), clothing, DVDs, gaming, collectibles, toys (vinyl and otherwise).

It also has a great website showing all of these at www.forbiddenplanet.com.
It also tells you about events such as the signing yesterday by Kevin Smith for his new book.
Most of these are done in the London megastore, but some happen in the other stores.
They’re also on twitter @ForbiddenPlanet.

Google chrome

I haven’t written anything up recently so I thought I would start off with the fact that I am now using Google chrome as my default browser. I’m using windows, so I can’t say whether its good or not on anything but windows, but on Windows it is astonishing. Now it doesn’t have anything new with add-ons or plugins, I would still say firefox is the best at that.

But Google does best what I want most from my browser – its FAST!

And I don’t just mean its slightly quicker than others, they seem to pale in comparison to chrome.

It has a nice speed-dial type page when opening a new page, like safari or opera, where it shows the most viewed pages and recently closed.

But there are 2 main touches that I really like, one of which makes me think it should be the default browser on computers in libraries etc.

That feature is called incognito mode, this basically opens a new window, where the only difference is that it doesn’t save the history of the pages, and also doesn’t save any cookies. Plus I also like the fact that if a tab crashes in either of these modes you don’t have to close the whole browser down, but instead chrome has its own task manager that shows the memory each tab is taking up etc. But its mostly helpful because you can end the process i.e the tab.

Plus if you want more, there’s a hyperlink at the bottom called ‘more stats for nerds’. This simply opens a new tab with the address about:memory. This shows all the memory being used and in detail by all the tabs and plugins.  Plus if you have more than one browser opened at once, it tells you how much memory each is taking up, so that you can clearly compare them.

The only problem I would have with chrome is that if you have a lot of tabs open when starting it up for the first time, it can take a while, but still only as long as firefox, otherwise it starts up a lot faster than any browser I’ve used before.

I think if you have a netbook like mine, the nc10 or something else, chrome is ideal if it has windows on it.

Helping to see the full address

I personally don’t like the tinyurls you see on twitter and other websites, as you have no real idea where it is going to. So you basically have to trust the author of the address you are actually being sent to.
What I have just installed is the firefox plug-in called “long url please” and it does what it says, it doesn’t give a shortened url, but the entire thing.
This basically means you know where you’re going, which makes me at least feel a bit happier with what I’m clicking on.
Anyway, still haven’t installed any OSes yet, I have had a few things on, and haven’t been able to get round to it.
Plus I would just like to say Sky+ HD rocks, and Sky Anytime is so useful, I don’t know how I got through daytime tv before