Fascinating post by Dave Winer, describing how he uses his information flow, and more importantly how he would like to see it used:

I have a feed of things I link to, which then flows to River2 subscribers, and through TwitterFeed, to people who follow me on Twitter. Every one of those links is potentially telling my news system that this is something I’m interested in. 

When I push a link out not only am I sharing the link with people who follow me, and bookmarking it for future reference — I could also be informing a news engine of my interests. So then what comes back to me, on my River page, are news items that relate to the things I’m interested in. 

I have a similar philosophy toward Twitter, which has largely replaced RSS as an information source for me in recent years.

I’m still busy, but thought I would drop in here for a minute to alert those who are still hanging around that Microsoft has released the IE9 Release Candidate.

My review is up at ZDNet:

IE9 Release Candidate review: will Microsoft’s big browser bet pay off?

I’ve been running an escrow version of the IE9 RC for several weeks, on a variety of desktop and notebook PCs, and earlier this week upgraded to the final RC bits. It is a solid, polished package, and I have no trouble recommending it to anyone running Windows 7 or Windows Vista. (Sorry, XP users. This is yet another reason to upgrade your OS.)

You will find echoes of other modern browsers throughout IE9. But this is no clone or copycat, and in fact it has a few features that other browser developers would be wise to copy. IE9 has its own distinct personality  and visual style, especially when compared side by side with archrival Google Chrome.

I tried to go into as much detail as possible about the user interface, some very interesting new privacy and security features, and performance. Way too much detail to summarize here, so go read the whole thing.

I’ve also posted answers to a lot of common questions, including where to download the RC code, how to make a few hidden features and UI elements visible again, and how to uninstall if you have problems.

IE9 FAQ: how to install, uninstall, and tweak the IE9 RC

A reader asked me this morning about whether 64-bit Internet Explorer is ready for everyday use yet. I said no. There’s still no official Flash add-in, and there’s no real benefit (and potentially some memory cost) from running as a 64-bit process. For now, use the defaults and stick with a 32-bit browser even on 64-bit Windows.

I wrote this almost five years ago, so I think it’s OK to recycle it here:

No, I haven’t become a Bokononist. [*]

I’ve been busy on our forthcoming update to Windows 7 Inside Out and preparing some larger pieces for ZDNet. Oh, and wrestling with some networking issues.

Talk amongst yourselves for a while. Or ask some questions.

---

* From The Books of Bokonon: ”Busy, busy, busy is what a Bokononist whispers ‘whenever [he] thinks about how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.’”

Intel motherboards are used in the majority of PCs and notebooks sold in recent years, and they contain a surprising amount of technology. It’s common to find HD audio, graphics, networking, and disk controllers on the motherboard.

Whether you’re using the original PC manufacturer image or a clean install of Windows, chances are one or more of those drivers are out of date. Tracking down updates manually is confusing, to say the least. Fortunately, Intel has now automated the process with a web-based scanner that inventories your current drivers and offers to install the most recent updates.

To start, open Internet Explorer and visit the Intel Driver Update Utility page. (This page also works with Firefox and Chrome, but I recommend those options only if you already have Java installed on your PC and are confortable downloading and installing a Java applet. On my computers, I avoid anything that requires Java.) Click the button labeled "Check your system for the latest updates."

In Internet Explorer, the Intel Driver Update Utility uses an ActiveX component called SysReqLab.cab (System Requirements Lab) from Husdawg, LLC. This is a safe, well-known add-in that I have used for years with PCs. If this is the first time you’ve used this tool, you’ll need to approve its installation, after which it scans your system and produces a display like the one shown below.

As you can see, this system needs an update to its chipset software (which tells Windows about the specific capabilities of the motherboard) and its wired network adapter. Click the plus sign to the left of the heading to see details for any of the components, including the version number of the currently installed driver and any available updates.

In this example, I was using the generic chipset software included with Windows. Updating that information with the official Intel release makes it possible for Windows to identify my system’s capabilities more accurately.

If you have an Intel-based motherboard, I recommend this tool highly.

Update: If your desktop PC has an Intel motherboard that uses an i3 or i5 CPU and you want audio delivered over the HDMI connection, you need to install the Intel Management Engine Interface (MEI) driver. This driver is a separate download, available on Intel’s Download Center:

Intel® Management Engine Interface Driver for Intel 5 Series Chipset-Based Desktop Boards

The "5 series" to which this link refers is the first digit of the number in the chipset name, in this case DH55 or DH57.

If you’re thinking of picking up a heavily discounted three-pack of Windows 7 Home Premium, don’t delay. According to the product listing at Amazon.com, sales of this product will end on New Year’s Eve.

Microsoft offered this exact same package as a limited-time offer in 2009. Here’s what I wrote about it at the time at ZDNet:

If you have two or more PCs in your home and you want to upgrade them to Windows 7, this deal is for you. This package is only available in a physical box and (according to Microsoft) only for a limited time. It includes two DVDs: one copy each of the 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade installation media. You get a single product key that can be activated on up to three different PCs.

[…]

The license says you can install Family Pack upgrades on up to three PCs in the same household, for use by residents of that household. When I asked Microsoft whether it was OK to use this license in a home business, I was told, officially, “There is no restriction around use of a license for business purposes conducted within the home,” although naturally they recommended Windows 7 Professional for those situations.

Nothing in the license prevents you from mixing and matching the 32-bit and 64-bit versions on up to three PCs in your household. But no, you can’t share licenses with your neighbor or your cousin in Peoria.

The list price of this  package is $150, but you can buy it now at Amazon.com for an even more deeply discounted $125: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade Family Pack (3-User). If you use all three licenses, that’s an average cost of roughly $42 each, well below the regular upgrade cost of $120. Even if you only use two of the three licenses, it’s still a substantial savings.

Last week, thanks to a one-day sale at Newegg, I picked up an OCZ Vertex 2 solid state drive (SSD). It’s only 60GB, which is plenty of room for Windows 7 and an assortment of apps. It will quickly run out of room for data, but that’s easily fixed by adding a conventional hard disk drive and making sure that all data files get saved there.

I’ve set this system—a Dell XPS435MT with an i7-920—in a dual-boot configuration, with Windows 7 Home Premium on the SSD and Windows 7 Professional on a 1TB Seagate SATA II drive. Both systems are running a clean install of Windows 7 (64-bit) with the most recent drivers for all components.

In the Windows Experience Index, the hard disk drive is rated 5.9. That’s about as high as a standard SATA II drive can get. Here, by contrast, is the WEI in detail for the SSD-based installation:

That’s a 7.7 for the SSD, close to the maximum 7.9 that Windows 7 allows. (I also looked at the PassMark benchmark scores for each drive. This score for the OCZ drive is nearly double that of the Seagate SATA drive, which is the second highest ranked SATA drive in the charts. If you’re in the market, be sure to check the scores before you buy.)

So the differences benchmark-wise are big, but how much of a difference does an SSD make in day-to-day operation? The most obvious difference is at startup. Using a stopwatch, I started timing when the Windows boot menu appears, ignoring the 12 seconds or so that the BIOS consumes initially as it enumerates hardware. As soon as the desktop is visible, I press Windows logo key+1 to launch Internet Explorer and click the stop button when the browser’s home page finishes loading.

The resutls?

• The hard-disk installation of Windows requires 53 seconds from a cold start to as fully loaded web page.
• Using the SSD, the total time for the same sequence is 24 seconds.

That’s a difference of nearly 30 seconds, more than 50% of the total startup time. The increase in speed is noticeable, as splash screens whiz by instead of hanging around. I can also feel the difference each time I open an app, even though the raw times are too short to measure accurately using a stopwatch.

I’ve been studying the ins and outs of solid-state drives intently lately as we begin our first big update to Windows 7 Inside Out, and have been struck by the lack of useful information on how to work with SSDs. Although prices are coming down quickly, SSDs are still far more expensive than conventional hard disks, and performance varies widely.  SSD is definitely still an emerging technology, and I plan to write in much more detail about my experiences with this drive and a similar Samsung SSD that’s installed in my two notebooks.

Have you used an SSD? Has it made a big performance boost for you? Leave your comments below…

As I noted last week, Microsoft has released version 2.0 of its free Microsoft Security Essentials software. Most of the changes are relatively small, but I just noticed one setting that takes care of a longstanding issue.

Several readers have complained about MSE 1.0 hogging CPU resources during its scheduled scans. In version 2.0, you can tame the program with this new setting, on the Scheduled Scan tab of the Settings dialog box:

That drop-down menu allow you to choose a value between 10% and 100%, in increments of 10%. Clear the checkbox if you want scans to complete as quickly as possible and you aren’t bothered by CPU usage.

Other noticeable changes in the MSE user interface allow you to specify that you want quarantined items to be deleted automatically after a specified period of time. This option (found on the Advanced tab) is off by default. If you enable it, the default setting is 1 month.

In addition, you’ll find two new options on the Real-time Protection tab. Enable Behavior Monitoring and Enable Network Inspection System are both on by default. In addition, the option to monitor file and program activity on your computer now allows you to scan only incoming or outgoing files (the default is Monitor All Files).

If you use the free Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus program, there’s an update waiting for you. The latest and greatest is version 2.0, which adds two key benefits:

• Better protection against network-based threats, scanning network traffic for signs of vulnerability.
• Better performance, thanks to an update to the core antimalware engine.

According to Microsoft, there are also fit-and-finish improvements and better integration with the Windows Firewall.

I’ve been running the beta of MSE 2.0 since July with excellent results. This is a highly recommended download.

Note that as of today this update is not available as an automatic update. Instead, you need to visit the Microsoft Download Center and kick off the installer manually:

Microsoft Security Essentials

Your Windows installation must pass validation as "genuine," and there are separate installers for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions.

If you run into any issues or have any questions, post a comment here.

A few years back, Nvidia distributed what turned out to be a bad batch of graphics chips to notebook makers. If you bought a notebook containing one of these chips (in the G84/G86 family) from HP, Dell, or Apple, there’s a good chance it overheated and perhaps even failed. Nvidia acknowledged the problem in a 2008 statement, blaming the issue on "a weak die/packaging material set in certain versions of its previous generation GPU and MCP products used in notebook systems." According to that statement, "Certain notebook configurations with GPUs and MCPs manufactured with a certain die/packaging material set are failing in the field at higher than normal rates."

I know this problem well, because I experienced it firsthand with a Dell XPS M1330 notebook that had to be repaired multiple times.

Not surprisingly, the problem ended up in the courts, where it looks like relief might finally be in sight. Under the terms of a settlement I learned about last week, if you own (or owned) one of the affected notebook models and experienced this issue, you can file a claim. Depending on the manufacturer and model, you are eligible for reimbursement for repair costs, replacement of the defective part, or a replacement system.

If you’re eligible for a chunk of this settlement, it’s important that you register soon. You can get more details from the NVIDIA GPU Litigation page. The list of affected notebooks is here.

Microsoft just rolled out a nifty overhaul to its Fix It program, a neat Solution Center that makes it easier to find out quickly if a known fix is available for a specific problem. The idea behind the program is to give you a big Fix It button that runs a repair script, changes some registry keys, or otherwise does the sort of tweak even experienced Windows users aren’t comfortable with doing manually.

I’ve only taken a quick look around the new Fix it Solution Center website, but so far I like what I see.

After the jump, a quick visual tour.

Continue reading “Got a Windows or Xbox or Office problem? Try the Fix It center” →