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TECH EXPERT

Windows Vista Update

In the latest Mac versus PC ad, that put-upon Windows guy quietly concedes he's "downgrading" from Vista to XP. He may have good reason: new tests show that the older XP runs common productivity tasks significantly faster than Microsoft's newest operating system.

Researchers at Devil Mountain Software, a Florida-based developer of performance management tools, have posted data from their most recent Windows performance tests -- and Vista, even after it's been upgraded to the new Service Pack 1 beta package, is shown to be a laggard.

"The hoped for performance fixes [from Vista SP1] that Microsoft has been hinting at never materialized," said Devil Mountain researchers, in a blog post summarizing their results.

The researchers compared patched and unpatched versions of Vista and XP running Microsoft Office on a dual-core Dell notebook. The results revealed the time taken to complete Office productivity tasks such as the creation of a compound document and presentation materials.

Devil Mountain researchers ran a mix of tests comparing existing versions of the operating systems -- the original Vista and XP SP2 -- and versions that had been patched with the latest updates -- Vista SP1 beta and XP SP3 beta. Tests were also run on machines with 1 Gbyte and 2 Gbytes of memory.

Windows XP trounced Windows Vista in all tests -- regardless of the versions used or the amount of memory running on the computer. In fact, XP proved to be roughly twice as fast as Vista in most of the tests.

For instance, notebooks running Vista SP1 took more than 80 seconds to complete a series of Office tasks in the OfficeBench test suite, while notebooks running Windows XP SP2 completed the tasks in just over 40 seconds.

What's more, the tests showed that the resource-hungry Vista gobbles up most of the additional RAM added to a computer. By upgrading a notebook running Vista SP1 from 1 Gbyte to 2 Gbytes of memory, "we managed to achieve a 'whopping' 4% improvement in OfficeBench throughput," the researchers noted.

The test results are the latest black eye for Windows Vista -- an operating system that Microsoft unveiled in January amid much fanfare but which has since failed to capture the hearts and minds of computers users in both the home and business markets.

A recent InformationWeek survey found that 30% of businesses have no plans to upgrade their computers to Vista -- ever.

Many users have voiced worries about Vista's resource requirements and compatibility with older applications and peripherals. The concerns have prompted some PC makers, including Dell and Hewlett-Packard, to reintroduce XP as an option on certain systems.

Microsoft rival Apple is seizing on the Vista backlash to promote its new Leopard operating system. Its latest ad is an attempt to portray Microsoft as a company that's tone deaf to user concerns about Vista.

"Ask not what Vista can do for you, but what you can buy for Vista," says the PC guy, posing as a politico. Given the latest research, an increasing number of Windows users may end up seeking a new candidate.

Originally published online by InformationWeek entitled, "Windows XP significantly outperforms Vista, tests show", Posted November 27, 2007 by Paul McDougall.

This article was submitted by Andy Butler of Compatible Computer Services; (902) 420-1212. CCS provides sales and service support for PCs and Restaurant & Retail Point of Sales systems and develops client-specific custom-built business software applications.

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SURFIN' SAFARI

Some Useful and Interesting Web Sites

WHAT DOES IT DO?

Jott

Take notes and do to do lists online or with your mobile phone. Never forget an idea or meeting with hands-free voice dictation and transcription services and group text messaging.

Jott is a service that automatically converts your voice into e-mail and text messages anytime, anywhere, with any cell phone. Jott makes you more productive and efficient by capturing your ideas, notes to self, tasks, and more without using your keypad.

Usually when you jot something down, you'd need a pen, or a crayon, maybe even your PDA; the point is, to jot really requires some manipulation, right? Not so, not so, not anymore with jott. You'll need a cell phone, or a plain old telephone; dial 1-877- 568-8486; and talk! Think about it; it's incredibly, utterly simple. Scenario 1: Jott to Self: You need to remind yourself to finish copying photos for a presentation on Thursday, so what do you do? No need to enter all that info into your Getting Things Done' system. All you do is speed dial jott, which in turn asks whom you'd like to jott, you say "Home", then say your piece. Jott then sends you a text message and/or email to remind you. You can jott groups, individuals and yourself. It saves you time. Scenario 2: Group jott: Say you're stuck in traffic and need to tell your workmates that you won't be able to make the meeting, just jott to group and with a simple phone call you can notify everyone, without writing multiple emails or text messages, or making endless phone calls. You can also easily import your contacts from Yahoo, Gmail, Plaxo and more. Jott's free and it rocks.

Learn more and download Jott

SAY WHAT!?

Sound Like a Computer Wizard

HARDWARE HELPER

Top 5 Budget Digital Cameras

Despite excessive noise at higher ISOs, Canon's A570 IS offers an excellent value and an impressive feature set in its category.

Price: $142.95 - $251.99

With a shiny new interface, fast performance, and great pictures, the DSC-W80 sits on the top of the budget snapshot heap.

Price: $184.99 - $229.95

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W55

It's not the fanciest camera, but quick performance and solid images make this sub-$200 shooter a worthwhile pick.

Price: $159.95 - $239.95

This camera's low price tag and solid performance can help you forget that it doesn't have many bells or whistles.

Price: $125.95 - $290.98

This camera's solid performance can help you forget that it doesn't have many bells or whistles.

Price: $124.49 - $206.99

SOFTWARE SEARCH

Five "Most Useful" Free Programs

Mozilla Firefox

In many ways, Firefox is the ultimate Web utility, opening up the vast majority of content on the Internet to your personal desktop. The browser wars are far from over -- Internet Explorer 7, Opera 9, and Avant Browser all have their own positive and negative qualities--and Firefox is certainly running slower and using more resources in its default configuration than ever before.

For now, however, Firefox is still cream of the crop, primarily because of the open environment for developing third-party extensions and themes and the impressive collection of plug-ins that have already been developed. Also, the configuration options are all transparent and customizable. Firefox is your own personalized browsing experience; ambitious users can fine-tune it to their hearts' content.

VLC Media Player

Remember those days when you had to add a new codecs nearly every time you downloaded a video because of the vast array of file formats available? In some cases, you even had to download a separate application just to watch a specific movie file. We certainly haven't settled on one dominant Web video file format, but we do have more applications that can play them all.

My favorite for a while has been VLC Media Player, a smallish program that doesn't look like much at first glance, but includes all of the playback options you need hidden under its surface.

Audacity

Many of us often need to edit audio, whether it's clipping a soundbite from your boss' recent speech or removing the vocals from your favorite rock track so that you can create a karaoke video for YouTube. Audacity is a free, full-fledged audio editor for Windows, Mac, and Linux distros. It takes a bit of practice to become an effective audio editor, but a well-design interface that focuses on the most common editing tasks will have you cutting, mixing, and dubbing in no time.

Paint.NET

Quick! Resize those pictures of Halloween at Aunt Dottie's to upload to your photo-sharing site before you leave for Thanksgiving vacation. Oh, and reduce the file size so that each is under 100K. And while you're at it, fix the red-eye in some of the pictures of Mom. Of course, Photoshop is an excellent program for all of those basic image-editing tasks, but it's overkill in many cases. Paint.NET will provide 99% of the editing features most amateur photographers need, use a lot less system resources, and less your wallet much heavier.

FileZilla

FTP clients seem so 20th century, but I'm willing to bet that most of us need one from time to time, whether we're updating our Web site or downloading a file from a company of friend. One of the most frequent searches we get at Download.com is for "free ftp," so it's not only me.

There are oodles of free FTP clients to choose from, and I'm always willing to listen to recommendations, but the choice is simple for me. FileZilla incorporates an intuitive design with all of the features that I need from an FTP client, most importantly simultaneous file transfers. Simple view buttons at the top show and hide treelists for local and remote directories, the transfer queue, and the message log. A very useful "Quick Connect" bar at the top of the interface lets you connect to another site without even accessing the options.

Learn more about useful free software here.

WEB WARY

Free vs Paid Internet Security

From CNET’s Community Newsletter Forum: This is the most popular response to the question of which is better, free or paid internet security programs.

With most types of products you can expect that the paid version will be better than the freebies, but this is an exception.

If you pay for your antivirus and anti-spyware protection you tend to get some nice features, but you usually don't get better protection and the reason is really simple. Viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, adware, and all the other malicious garbage that can attack your computer isn't just a threat to you-- it threatens everyone on the internet. This includes big companies and governments. It is in everyone's best interests to control these attacks, but that can't happen if the malicious code can hide in private computer systems because the owner can't or won't pay for the software needed to protect the machine. Therefore a number of private companies have committed themselves to providing free versions of their software for those who can't or won't pay money for it. A lot of this software is superior quality.

There is a catch, but it isn't any different than if you were buying the software. Whether you pay for the protection or get it free, make absolutely certain that you know what you are getting. Many companies also put out bad programs, and some of them actually cause the problems they are supposed to be detecting. There is no way to avoid the need to check a product out before using it, unfortunately. Many people have purchased or downloaded software believing that they were protecting their computers, only to be infected with viruses or spyware as a result. Never respond to a pop up that offers to "scan" your computer for free. This is one tactic used to sell inferior or even malicious products. Always check out the reviews of the product before allowing it to access your computer.

It is, fortunately, very easy to check out a product before purchasing or downloading it. CNET has a lot of information. Check out download.com, and don't forget to type the product's name into your favorite search engine and see what the reviews on other sites say. You can get a lot of information in a short period of time.

You should run one (and only one) antivirus product on your computer. You should run one (and only one) software firewall on your computer, and the one that comes with Windows is not the best choice. You should run 3 or 4 anti-spyware programs, but not in "real time." Run only the one you trust the most constantly, then run the others manually right after updating them (at least once a week). Be sure to disconnect from the internet while running your scans manually. This is also a good time to run a full antivirus scan and any other utilities that need to be run, such as a defrag program.

If you are still deciding which products to choose, and you are willing to pay for the products, I urge you to support those companies that offer free versions of their software. The paid versions aren't going to protect any better, but you should get some nicer features. Any company that will offer quality software for free deserves your business. They are doing their part to ensure that we can all access the internet safely, and we should appreciate them for that effort.

Also, don't despise some of the free software in other categories. Much of it is high quality. The open source movement is one reason. Also, some of the software is put out by individuals who create a program for themselves and then just want to give others access to it. Some of it is software put out by companies that also sell paid software, hoping that you will like the product and come to them for other software you might need. Take a look at it. You might find something you need for free or at little cost. You will probably find something that is just cool. Don't go wild! After all, there is a lot of junk out there as well, but do take a look and check the reviews. You will be pleasantly surprised at what you find.

Read more about viruses and scams

TIZZIE'S TIPS AND TRICKS

Organize your Favorites in Internet Explorer

It's not enough to stuff random links into your Favorites list. You'll need to be able to find them later, which means organizing them into folders. From the menu bar in Internet Explorer, select Favorites, then click Organize Favorites. You'll see a dialog box listing your current bookmarks and offering several button options. From there, you can create new folders and rename, move, or delete folders and bookmarks.

This can also be done in other web browsers, such as Netscape, Firefox, Opera, etc. The name may be Bookmarks rather than Favorites, but the organization features are similar.

Send Tizzie YOUR Question!