But the great news here is that for any student currently enrolled in a Tertiary institution such as a University or TAFE, you may be able to get an upgrade version of Windows 7 Home Premium for – wait for it – $49.95.

To take advantage of this – obviously awesome deal, you do have to purchase through the online Microsoft Store and you must have an eligible email which contains edu.au. Now while I am the first to yell out the benefits of using a Mac, I understand that there is a place in the market for Windows 7. In fact I have even been using it (while not extensively) since it came out as a beta release and to be completely honest this is a very worthwhile upgrade. If you are still using XP, what on earth are you waiting for get out there and get yourself windows 7.

So if you have a PC or even currently use a Mac and occasionally use Windows with boot camp I really feel it is worth the $’s to head over to the website and put your order in. The added bonus here if you are a student is that you can also get a copy of Office 2007 Home and Student for $79 when you get Windows 7. Together this adds up to less that a retail priced copy of Home Premium…this really is a no-brainer!

So if you want to take advantage of this offer head over to: http://www.microsoft.com/australia/windows/offers/windows-7-student-upgrade.aspx

I’m sure that by now you have all had the moment where you’re anti virus program spits out at you that you have a virus or some sort of infection on you’re system, now letting the anti-virus deal with it is all well and good, but adding this malicious software removal tool could save you a lot of pain.

My suggestion would be to let you’re anti-virus do it’s job and attempt to delete the infection, but after this is done add in another step. Due to the fact that virus authors are becoming more and more switched on to ways to exploit your system it makes it harder and harder to actually get a virus off your system.

The next step that I’m speaking of is to run the Malicious Software Removal Tool. Now for all Windows users this is actually something that is sitting right there on your computer, in fact Microsoft updates this on the 2nd Tuesday of every month (the same way it does with software updates). To find this program, go to your start menu. There is a ‘run’ selection, press on this. In the window that pops up search for ‘MRT’. This will launch a program, one this has loaded it will prompt you with a few selections – these are ‘quick scan’, ‘full scan’ and ‘custom scan’. For the purpose of locating and removing malicious software you will want to do a full scan. Note that this may take several hours depending on the size and speed of you’re computer.

This will locate and hopefully remove any malicious software that is on you’re computer, and may in fact save you from the need to do a complete system re-store. Now what if you can’t find this on you’re system, well the MRT is available from Microsoft’s website for download, follow the few quick prompts. This is a fairly small download and is under 9Mb in size so there really isn’t any excuse for not using it.

Well I hope that this helps out in determining if you’re anti-virus really is doing its job, while giving you a little extra piece of mind in knowing that you’re system is safe!

I stumbled across this video on YouTube this evening, and after seeing the title I thought ‘oh this might be good for a laugh’. This video looks to have been shot at the time Apple launched the iPhone back in 2007.

In the clip Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer, literally laughs off the threat of the new Apple device stating that there is no way they feel threatened by “the most expensive mobile phone on the marketplace”, now at the time this may have been a real thought for those guys at Microsoft, Apple had never been in the Mobile phone market before what signs were there to say they would be successful?

Well…weren’t Microsoft in for a suprise! I think that Microsoft were under the misbelieve that because they developed Windows Mobile they were somehow the market leaders and that nobody was going to knock them off their perch. I’m almost certain that Steve Ballmer wouldn’t be the one laughing now! Steve Jobs and the team at Apple would be sitting pretty now with their ‘revolutionary’ product. Even though the iPhone was seemingly expensive at the time the 1st Gen still sold like hotcakes, only to be severely outdone by the 3G, and again by the 3GS!!!

Its so apparent when we see behaviour like this from CEO’s and managers that they just do not understand the real threats that their companies and products are exposed to, even if you are the market leader it doesn’t mean you’re invincible. Businesses operating in these times need to be constantly evaluating what their competition are doing and attempting to stay a step ahead. I feel pretty confident in saying that I really don’t think Windows Mobile has a leg to stand on, and without knowing the real figures – I would hazard a guess that there is probably as many if not more iPhones out there as compared to Windows Mobile.

It is so comical to watch things like this and think how embarrassing it must be for the company to look back on. It’s this shallow minded perception of the marketplace that Microsoft exists in that makes me think that one day when they least suspect it they will be knocked out of the number one spot by a competitor in the market!!

The Dock

Apple really have excelled at making an incredibly user friendly operating system and it may take a couple of weeks to a month to get the hang of it but hang in there it’s worth it. The biggest thing that hits you when you start up your new mac is the ‘dock’.

Essentially this is one of the main places where you’re applications or programs live, each symbol in the dock represents a program. Now working the dock really is simple. To load a program simply click on its image, only one click is needed. You may notice this icon bounce once or twice while the program loads, after loading is complete your program will open and you will notice a little round white glow appear under the program in the dock. This glow means that a program is running.

By right clicking on one of these icons you will get a list of other options, for example on your mail icon you might get options like get mail or compose new message. You can change what is displayed in your dock, for example I like to have only my most regularly used programs in the dock, if there is something there you don’t like simply click and drag it off the dock. This will take the icon off the dock but don’t worry you haven’t deleted it, if you need to get it back simply find the program in your finder (more about this later) and drag the appropriate application back onto the dock.

There are a number of cool features you may like as well such as being able to magnify the icons when you roll your mouse over them, as well as increasing or decreasing the size of the dock by cliking the little dotted line (located in the picture above five icons in from the right), you can hide it as well when not being used and it will pop back up when you put your cursor at the bottom of the screen. The dock allows for a very user friendly workspace.

The other quick thing that I would mention about the dock is the trash can and it has a couple of functions. This performs the funtion of the recycle bin in windows. The main use for the trash can is to delete files – you do this by clicking and dragging files into the trash. However the trash can has another main use, and this is to eject items, for example CD’s from the CD drive or USB Keys. There will be an image of either a white folder (representing storage) or a CD on the desktop and to eject them properly click and drag the appropriate one onto the trash, this then ejects it from the system.

Title Bar

The title bar runs accross the very top of the screen, this is one of the things that really got me when first using a mac. Where in a windows environment all of your menus are located at the top of the active window on a mac your menu’s are all located within this bar running accross the top of the screen. There usually are not any options available in the active windows.

The apple logo in the left hand side is always there, never moves, this gives you access to info about your system, software updates as well as all of your commands such as restart, log off, shut down etc. Next to that is usually the name of the program that is currently active on the screen with the other applicable menus running next to it. These menus change depending on which program is currently active on your screen. In this picture you can see I had Safari active at the time but if I clicked on an iTunes window the name and menu’s would change to iTunes applicable menu’s.

Over the left hand side are other icons and information such as time and date, the volume, the airport (wifi) status and here the stronger the signal the more little rounded bars you get, there’s also information about what time machine is doing as well as other logos that may get on there from programs you install on your system. You can click on all of these as well and they give you links to settings and options for each application.

Finder

The finder is you Mac alternative to Explorer in Windows. This is where you will navigate to locate and manage files and folders on your computer. Down the right hand side you will see different locations at the top are the hard drive folders, under that you will see network shared drives or computers, under places you will see all of your local files and folders, Documents; Movies; Music; Pictures are quick links to the respective data in your login.

There is a number of ways to display your files and folders in the finder, the method displayed in the pictures shows a list of files and folders and as you open a folder it opens it’s contents in the list to the right and so on, once you arrive at your designated file the box to the right of the file will display info about it, press space bar and you get a ‘quick view’ of what you are looking for.

You can also navigate in the traditional sense of seeing a big folder you click on it and it opens the containing files. Another way I like to look at folder and files is buy using cover flow, this provides you with a graphic view of what files are in a folder so you can see what is in the picture or word document and flick through them as you would with a book or filing cabinet. The finder has many more features but it would take forever to cover them all.

Spotlight

Do you hate digging through all of your files and folders trying to find what you’re looking for? Well spotlight is the answer for you. Spotlight is a very powerful way of searching the contents of your computer, you start typing the name of what you are looking for and spotlight will find files, applications, music, basically anything on your computer that matches what you are searching for. Simply click on the desired result in the list and hey presto it opens it up.

I find spotlight a great way to search for and open applications that I don’t use frequently enough to have on the dock, simply type the first few letters and bang there it is. Spotlight is also duplicated throughout a lot of apples programs so anywhere you see a little magnifying glass or long oval shaped field you can do a search.

I find this really powerful, it is really quick to load your results and does so while you are typing, it constantly indexes what is on your computer so it will be ready when you need to search. This has been executed in a much better way than what Windows offers. No more lost files ever again!

Expose

This is one of my most favourite things in Apples operating system OS X, Expose! All too often I find my desktop getting incredibly cluttered with open windows. Now in Windows your solution to this is by clicking the appropriate window in the taskbar, but not on a Mac. Now activating Expose can differ between computers, some older macs you would click the F9 Key, new mac keyboards have it on the F3 key represented by a little icon above it, or you can also program your mouse to use a certain click to activate it (my favourite way of using expose). Essentially what it does is graphically move each and every window onto the screen at once, shrinking the window size a little but giving you a view of what is going on in that window at that point in time, and yes video continues to play while you are in expose.

Once you have activated expose, you move your cursor to the window you would like to get into, it changes to a light blue color all over and you can then select that windows by clicking. The window you have clicked will be brought to the very front of all windows. Neat hey!

The Apple Keyboard

The keyboard is the final thing I will talk about in this post, now you may think a keyboard is a keyboard. But not on a mac! Now of course they still perform all the same function as any other keyboard but theres a few differences.

The first that you may notice is the Command Key, this acts like your control key on a windows computer. For functions like Cntrl + S for save on windows you would use command + s on a mac. There are tons of other uses for the command key but this is the main one. You may notice in the menu’s on a Mac that next to certain commands there are funny little expressions these are basically keyboard shortcuts, there are heaps of them but if there are functions that you repeatedly perform then you may like to remember the keyboard shortcuts.

One of the other big differences here is that there is a return key in place of the Enter key. Return was basically used in the early days of the mac as a way to ‘return’ to the beginning on the next line as in a word processor. Now it performs much the same function as the enter key.

Another thing that may puzzle you is that there are two delete keys on the mac keyboard. The delete key where a backspace key would usually be is just that, a backward delete. So in a word processor or when entering other text it deletes characters in a backwards manner. The other delete key, where a ‘delete’ key is normally on a windows keyboard. Is a forwards delete, so deletes from the right side of your cursor. Now this key doesn’t perform the function of deleting a file like it does on windows. To delete a file you will need to click and drag it to the trash can in the dock.

Another quirky thing about macs is the eject key. Now all modern macs execpt for the high end MacPro have slot loading disk drives, so there isn’t a tray that comes out. So in order to get the disk out simply press and hold the eject key for a second or two and the computer will eject the disk for you. Alternatively you can click and drag the disk’s image on your desktop to the trash to achieve the same result.

I hope this little guide is of use to you and gets you on your way to becoming a fluent Mac user, and most importantly of all enjoy your new purchase!!!

]]> http://lukeandmelissah.com/new-to-mac/feed 0 http://lukeandmelissah.com/windows-7-without-web-browser-in-europe http://lukeandmelissah.com/windows-7-without-web-browser-in-europe#comments Sat, 13 Jun 2009 13:02:36 +0000 Luke http://lukeandmelissah.com/?p=161 I came accross this news post last night from BBC News, and at first I thought OK so Microsoft aren’t going to ship internet explorer with their new version of Windows for all computers in Europe. The reason behind this is all to do with a big anti-competition lawsuit that Microsoft are battling with the European Commision. In a nutshell Europe believe that Microsoft are behaving in an anti-competitive manner by incorporating Media Player and Internet Explorer in such a way that makes it hard for users to switch web browsers. Now I don’t disagree with that at all, Microsoft tie them into the operating system and make it very difficult to break these ties.

Now my initial reaction to Microsoft’s course of action to stop incorporating internet explorer as part of the operating system install was, ok thats fair enough. Then it hit me, if you install windows or buy a computer with no web browser installed how on earth are you going to browse the web to download any other browser software?!? I’m sorry but this is like saying to me ‘Oh here have a television but you can’t have an aerial or dvd player’

Microsoft what on earth are you thinking??? It is beginning to become apparent to me that this behemoth software company just takes one step forward (Windows 7) and four steps back!!! Now we all understand that you don’t want to continue spending millions on lawsuits but there are other ways to avoid this rather than once again making life hell for the end user of your products.

What would have been wrong with simply leaving the web browser on their but not making it so entrenched in the system, or after install show a software update style page that allows you to choose from the most commonly used web browsers, the consumer can then make their choice and go on. It makes no sense to me for Microsoft to leave it out all together or provide it as additional software in the form of a CD. Compact Disks are slowly but surely becoming something that we will not need, I don’t know the last time I used a CD to install software simply because I download it all off the internet. Computer manufactures that are ahead of the game are aware of this, take Apple for example. When designing and releasing their MacBook Air they left out the optical drive altogether as they are aware that when you have a secondary computer you don’t need the drive.

I’m not saying that CD’s are obsolete or don’t serve their purpose, but why bother wasting more of the worlds resources stamping thousands or millions of CD’s with something that could simply be included with the operating system?

Besides anybody who is a user of the web is aware that Internet Explorer is an out of date, obsolete and slow web browser. Microsoft have failed to keep up with emerging web standards with their latest release of this browsers software, my solution for them is simple if your going to do a half baked job at something (i.e IE8) then don’t even bother trying, leave it up to the people who do know what web browsing is all about Mozilla with their Firefox, Apple’s Safari and Google Chrome. These companies know the web and are designing browsers for the future. Once again Microsoft you are behind the eight ball before you even start.

Keep in mind that as to my knowledge this will not affect anybody outside of Europe, but the way Microsoft seems to be handling this just goes to show they feel they have a monopoly and can do what they feel like with no regard for the end user. If you want to keep up with the best of them Microsoft you will have to do better than this.