Tag Archives: Microsoft

Lately, I have been experimenting with various types of front ends for my HTPC from the likes of PLEX, XBMC, MediaPortal, and more.  For some reason though, they all seem to fall short, in their own ways, of Windows Media Center.  After tons if installs and uninstalls, I settled on using the MediaBrowser Plugin for Windows Media Center… but there …

For a long time I had resisted converting my DVD and Blu-Ray disks into any other format because I didn’t want to lose any quality.  I had lived by this rule for a long time, and thankfully companies like QNAP and Thecus came to my storage rescue.  However, the day has come where the cost of storing all the extra …

I can better be classified as more of a PlayStation fan than an XBOX 360 fan, mainly because I don’t like to pay to play.  However, there are still some things that makes the XBOX an integral part of my entertainment center.  Firstly, its application list and UI is more attractive and user friendly than that of the PlayStation 3.  …

Personally, I have never really been a fan of Apple products.  That doesn’t mean they don’t have their place in the world, it just means they aren’t for me.  However, when one of the most influential people in technology passes, we ALL mourn the loss.  Whether we are PC, Mac, Linux, etc, we can all recognize and appreciate what Steve …

Clever utilities are what really get my mouse twitching.  In the age of the connected home, more of these devices are disconnected from one another.  I have a keyboard and mouse for eight PC’s in my home, 3 of which are HTPCs.  The HTCPs in my home all are capable of using a Logitech Harmony Remote control and all are …

I run a lot of different software packages on my bench system to perform analysis on hardware.  Because of this, I run into a lot of software issues that many of you face or will face.  Typically, the fixes are easy and not do difficult to find.  Recently, I received an error stating “The program can’t start because MSVCR71.DLL is …

Every person has different tastes when it comes to their installation of Windows.  Through the years that have been many things that I do right off the bat when getting my install “just right”.  In the XP days, the first thing I would do was to stretch the taskbar, enable Quick Launch, add an address bar, unlock it, then move …

Look, we all know and realize that Windows is the superior operating system to anything else out there.  With that said, I am going to detail ten reasons why this is the case and offer supporting data.  Some of this may be shocking to you if you are a user of another operating system, but please… don’t feel inferior.

Most of you have probably seen the commercials from Microsoft touting the cloud experience behind Windows 7 and Windows Live.  The thing is… many of us that have Windows 7 don’t really know how to do some of the things they show in those commercials.  In this multi-part series, we will attempt to demystify the “cloud” and show you how …

In a previous article here on C.O.D. (Essential Windows 7 Tweaks: Part 1), I mentioned it’s my opinion that users should disable the system restore features in Windows 7.  Outside of the resources associated with running the task, I feel as though it provides a false sense of security for Windows Users and does nothing for users plagued by things …