Windows 7 on the way

For those who love the latest here is something to gladden your heart. Windows 7 is already in the pre-beta version and should be here soon. If you are like me and cant wait to try whats new then its for you. A sneak preview indicates there are many new features especially with their media center. Also at the bottom of the screen the taskbar is much more Mac like. Gadgets will go where you want them. No more sidebar and Wi-Fi selection comes with a single click. Also it promises to be even more user friendly in the way you synch with portable devices. However we all want to know what its going to cost. Lets wait and see.

Goodbye screen savers!

Remember how we all started using screen savers and felt we were doing our bit to preserve our computer monitors. So we watched the flying saucers or bricks in an endless line and thought we were preventing burn in of our monitor. That was the time when we had tube monitors. Now there are no more burn ins. Flat LCD monitors don’t burn and if you are still looking at flying saucers or that slide show of last years party you are way behind the times. When you are not sitting in front of the monitor just switch it off.

Telstra, the big phone company in Australia removed all corporate screen savers from some thirty five thousand office computers. They say the change will cut tons of carbon dioxide emission which is equal to taking 140 cars off the road for a year. Good for them!

So let those flying saucers crash!

Calling widget fans

If you like adding widgets to your blog, then try this website. There are hundreds of interesting widgets to try out and install.

http://www.widgetbox.com/

Lots of fun widgets!

Hint for the week - passwords

If you belong to the group who use the same password for many accounts and an easy to remember one, then you are not alone. Its easy on the head not to have to remember words that have no meaning and (horror of horrors) pecking out symbols on the keyboard. But if you want to remain safe on the net then these hints should strengthen your passwords.

Use a jumble of numbers and letters. Throw in a few symbols as well such as the % or & sign.

Use at least eight characters and randomly capitalize.

The big no no is to avoid using your birthday, personal names of family members, your house address number and easy strings such as 123 or abc.

If you have different accounts use different passwords, though the temptation is great to just make do with the same one.

Change passwords for important accounts at least once in three months.

Avoid using actual words in any language. Password crackers run language dictionaries to find passwords. Not at all difficult for them. They can run through thousands of words in minutes until they find your word.

After going through all these hints how do you remember the password that makes no sense? Best safe storage is good old pen and paper. Not on your computer