Secure your home router

It never ceases to amaze me how clueless some people are about thier privacy. They buy a shredder to shred their do*****ents or they have fits about showing thier ID to a clerk when presenting a check. I know that is another story. The fact remains though that people are tighter with social security numbers and bank info then Bush was with money and response time to Katrina victims.

But yet when they fire up that wireless router to answer email while they sitting on their porcelain throne adding to the brown trout population. They could not be more exposed then if someone tore down that bathroom wall.

I can sit on my front porch and access no less four wireless networks. No encryption and the default username and password in the admin log in. Secure your wirless and wired networks people. I live on a lake and have taken my boat with my laptop out only to be bombarded with dozens of unsecured wireless networks. A nefarious person could do some very bad things with that much network access.

You may think that no one cares or that your out in the middle of nowhere but guess again. I travel with my notebook by car. As do more people then you think or people with smartphone. It is nothing to pull along the side of the road in the vicinity, not in front of your house but maybe as faraway as 200 yards and logon to your network to check my email. Secure those networks folks.

Also a recent article I read pointed out something new in that people are placing malware in the routers themselves. This would give access to not one but all the computers on your network.

Read more here on malware for your router.

For tips on securing your home network then read on.

NVidia's 9800GTX vs Radeon HD 4850

Nvidia 9800 GTX and ATI HD 4850 go head to head in bench marking done by PC Perspective. Nvidias 9800GTX vs ATIs HD 4850 see who wins this street fight and who is left on the ground in a bloody heap.

Read the story here.

The top tweaks for Windows Vista

Brought to you by PCPitstop. The best tweaks for Windows Vista

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How to install Windows Vista

No do not break out the bible and start reading "Revelations" about the part that says "When James doest expell unto the masses how to install Vista into thine computer. The end will surely be at hand" Because it is not there.

I did how ever come to terms with the fact that someday I will actually have to know. So here it is kiddies, explained in full detail. How to install Vista on raid. (Cue scary music) So turn down the lights and grab that popcorn, curl up with your favorite blankie after you make sure the all the windows and doors are locked.

Click here to read the horror story "How to install Windows Vista".

Computer cases reviewed

Toms hardware takes a long look at several cases. See which one is the best for the money.

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Intel Core 2 Duo E7200: The new kid on the block is budget King.

Take the highly succesfull and burning fast E8400 or the E8200 or any one of the E8000 series of cpu. Hack mangle and shred it into a chip called the Wolfdale-3M and what do you get? Another lighting fast cpu based on the 45nm Wolfdale. The Wolfdale-3M is just another wolf in wolves clothing. With a level 2 cache of 3 MB, a frontside bus of 1066 MHz and selling at $130, this chip will prove worthy of the Wolfdale name. Plus it overclocks more then Jose Canseco on steroids. People are claiming clock speeds of more then 3.60 Mhz.

Read the full story here

Intel tell's NVidia and SLI to take a hike.

This is actually a couple stories in one. The first being that Anandtech.com has the Nehalem processors. With a 20-50% increase in speed over the Penryn core (The last core to come out such the E8400) and only a 10% increase in heat this core is fast looking like the Big Brown of the chip cores. Just think a scant two years AMD had opened a can Whoopass all over Intel. When I went to an Intel meeting in Southfield Mi in the summer of 2006 to introduce the new Core 2 Dou, I admit I had some serious reservations about how much faster it would be then AMD's offerings. Please pass the salt, it makes the crow go down easier.

Read the Anandtech article here.

Now comes the crapper. Intel is not giving NVidia permission at this time to make the NForce chipset for the new Nehalem processors. Now I say at this time but the article I will refer you too does not. I cannot believe that Intel would alienate the masses by not offering up it's latest and greatest to the best chipset ever made. But then maybe Intel feels it really will make more money by offering it's own chipset but as far as I know it has no SLI or anything for running dual video cards. Though I have read it has a new GPU using trace technology but that is down the road. There is currently no games that use trace technology so this is not some ting that we will be seeing anytime soon.

Read the full article here.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 installing vulnerable flash.

Windows Xp Service Pack is installing an older vulnerable version of of the flash player. To get the newest and secure version you need to Macromedias website.

Read the full story here

Windows XP Service Pack 3 problems and fixes

Registry corruption, vanishing restore points, AMD Asus A8N 32SLI Deluxe "Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer" are just a few of the problems with Windows XP Service Pack 3. PC Pitstop has taken a look at these and many more problems and fixs.

Read the full story here

Microsoft to stop selling Windows XP

I am a Microsoft Certified Partner (well most people would say I am certifiable) and today I received an email stating that Microsoft would stop selling the retail product of Windows XP on June 30 2008. However it will remain in the mainstream support policy till April 14 2009. Then it will fall under the extended support till 2014. So you have another six long years before they stop supporting Windows XP.

Of course in the same email they were talking up Windows Vista but I still have yet to make the switch. Given the fact that the support for XP will last longer then I thought. Maybe I will not have to bother with Vista as rumors of Windows 7 coming out in a year or two are running rampant.

If any of you remember the old web site, I was one of the early adaptors for XP having received it at a Microsoft/Intel meeting in Southfield Mi.. I went and installed it on my pc that very night. Everything promptly went to hell in a hand basket after that. My printer and scanner would not work and gadzooks.......many of my games would not work. I pissed and moaned like a catholic priest who had no altar boys, for a week after trying to get acclimated to the damn thing. After a week of finding drivers and reading forums for fixes, everything started to work. Microsoft is not completely to blame for this..... Did I really just say that????? Much of it depends also on the software and hardware makers for their support. Eventual XP turned into a good OS to use.

Things for Vista would take time also I reasoned in one of my earlier writings but I did not think they would take this long. But again it is not all upon the men in Redmond Washington. The work around for Sound Blaster in some games was asinine. The extremes needed just to get sound in CoD2 were terrible and then it did not work some times. This is both Microsoft and Sound Blaster fault.

So buy up XP kiddies if you plan on building another system in the next 5 years. Stock pile it like food during a raging winter. Meanwhile I am going to www.newegg.com to buy two hard drives to put in a Raid 0 so I can dual boot between XP and ugh Vista.