Tamer’s Tech Blog

Lets say you are working on a word document, for example I am working on changing my resume. I opened the resume and made some changes to the document and saved and exited the document, but not before deleteting my opening paragraph because I did not like it. A few days later I decided I liked the opening paragraph and that I wanted to restore it back to my document. however I do not have a backup of my document. Well, what will I do? how do I get back the earlier version of my resume? Well, with Microsoft Vista you can restore earlier versions of a file.

To restore the file:

• Get to the file location in Windows explorer (on the hard drive).
• Right-click the file, and click Restore Previous Versions.
• Pick the earlier version you want to restore.
• You know have your old file.

This tip only works on only Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, and Windows Vista Ultimate editions support previous versions of files.

Here are a few of my favorite free apps.

• Chatting: AIM, www.aim.com
• Browser: Firefox www.mozilla.com
• Audio Player: WinAmp, www.winamp.com
• Anti-virus (not free, thought) CA’s Anti-virus, http://home3.ca.com/Microsoft/
• Documents: Google Docs, docs.google.com
• Webmail: Gmail, www.Gmail.com
• Online Calender: Google Calender, calendar.google.com
• Online Backup: Mozy, www.mozy.com
• Sync files between drives: Microsoft SyncToy 2.0, www.microsoft.com/downloads
• FTP: FileZila, www.filezilla-project.org
• Virtual Machine: Microsoft Virtual Machine, http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc
• Blogging: WordPress, www.wordpress.com
• Photo Manager: Picasa, www.getpaint.net
• Maps: Google Maps, maps.google.com

I will expand on each in the future as to why I love each one. Stay tuned…….

I often get asked this question on job interviews; (not that I am going on that many of them, however this question somehow always pops) “What are your favorite’s website to visit?”

Well my favorite websites are:

• Betanews.com: Because it always fresh with beta software reviews and sign-up links. That where I go to find out about what companies are working on.
• Webware.com: I used to think this website is dedicated to FaceBook, because of the many posts the writers have on FaceBook. However lately I have given it a second chance and I really like all the articles that have on web applications and website reviews.
• DownloadSquad.com: I really like all the freeware software they find. You can practically find all the software you need for your PC that is free there.
• Crackberry.com: I LOVE this website. I am a BIG time Blackberry user and I love all the info this website gives on upcoming blackberry products and current blackberry app and product reviews.
• Engadget.com: I love gadgets. So any website that can tell me about current gadgets and upcoming ones is OK by me.

I have a few more that I like as well. However the ones above are the ones I always check daily.

So my brother just bought a new MacBook laptop. I was impressed with the sleek looking laptop. So he asked me to install Windows Vista on his MacBook. My experience can be described as”EASY”. The folks over at apple really made it easy to install a windows OS on the Intel based apple machines.

• I loaded Boot Camp in Leopard
• I partitioned the hard drive
• I rebooted the laptop
• Windows vista started
• Formatted the partition for NTFS
• Installed Vista

Overall the installation was pain less.

Here are the few hick up and issues that I ran into post installation.

• Keyboard: the MacBook, does not have a full keyboard, so the layout of the keyboard was slightly different, however there are no “insert, backspace, right click” keys to name a few. I had to go and look for a keyboard remapping software to remap some of the keys. that turned out to be a difficult task; since there a few easy to use programs. I used Sharp Keys software. it is free and pretty easy to use.
• The f1 to F12 keys are hardware keys, for example when you press F5 you are increasing the volume. SO I had to go and change that

On the pro side, Vista was flying and working very well on the instal-based mac hardware.

Overall if you are looking to pay for a laptop, then get the Macbook, as it gives you both apple and Microsoft windows OS.