Category Archives: Software

Category containing all information relating to software.

Spotify – free, legal streaming music in wonderful quality! A must have!

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I recently came across Spotify – it’s a free, legal music streaming service available in many countries. It’s completely free to download and use, so go ahead and get it from www.spotify.com.

The first thing you’ll notice is that it has an interface that (I think) vaguely resembles iTunes – but thankfully, it’s much quicker and easier to use than iTunes. It’s really quick to install, and once you’ve spent 30 seconds of your time creating an account, you’re ready to start listening.

It has some distinct advantages to other free music streaming services available on the net, such as:

  • No listening limits – you can listen to each song as many times as you like. No limits like on sites like last.fm.
  • Really high quality – some sites have noticeable compressed tracks which just aren’t worth listening to. However, Spotify has really good sounding tracks that don’t sound compressed. Perfect!
  • Listen to full albums in one click – You just start the album and it will play the whole way through without any interruption, just as if you owned it.

It’s just really simple and easy to use. I’d recommend it to anyone. It’ll even scrobble to last.fm if you want it to.

Go enjoy some free, legal music that’s worth the bother.

Mainstream support has been ended for XP, but it’s nothing to worry about… yet.

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Basically, as planned, Microsoft ended Mainstream Support for Windows XP today. As far as I am aware, this means that Microsoft will no longer provide non-security updates to private users. As Extended Support is still available (and will be for years to come), Microsoft is still going to provide security updates for free as and when they are required. Microsoft is not planning to cut security updates for XP until April 8, 2014.

The company is also going to continue providing support both over the phone and on the web.

Basically, there’s not much to worry about. However, when Windows 7 is released, I would suggest that people start to think about moving to that rather than hanging on an earlier version of Windows that will only provide security fixes for a limited period.

The same Mainstream Support has ended for Office 2003, so users may also consider upgrading to Office 2007 or waiting until the next version of Office is released with Windows 7.

Update: It also seems to have become apparent that you need to be on Windows XP SP3/Office 2003 SP3 to continue to receive important security updates.

Windows 7 will offer downgrade to Windows Vista and XP

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Microsoft has confirmed to news site The Register that Windows 7 will offer a downgrade to Windows Vista and Windows XP for up to 6 months after general availability. The news page seems to suggest that the downgrade will be available for Windows 7 Pro and Windows 7 Ultimate.

I would guess that the downgrade availability would be becuase there are still a large group of people who prefer Windows XP to Windows 7 and Vista.

So, if you still love Windows XP, you don’t need to worry about buying a new computer. Personally, I think Windows 7 will be much better than any previous Windows version, so see what you think before you downgrade.

Which is the best free antivirus/firewall around?

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Today, you don’t need to fork out money to get a good antivirus. There are plenty of free alternatives available that’ll do exactly the same job for you, without you having to burn a whole in your pocket.

And there aren’t just one or two free options anymore, there’s actually quite a lot to choose from. Some are better than others, but it’s still worth doing your research and doing a bit of testing to see what’s what. So that’s exactly what I did.

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Windows 7 Release Candidate now set for May according to Microsoft

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There is news spreading on the internet that a div at Microsoft has published (supposedly by mistake) on the Microsoft site that the Windows 7 release candidate was due in May 2009, which has blown some people’s ideas that the RC would be available in April.

Are we to suspect that Microsoft is falling behind schedule? It’s not like Microsoft has fallen behind before – remember what happened for Windows Vista. Remember how late that was?

We’ll have to see what happens to the release candidate. It begs the question will the final release be delayed. Microsoft has been constantly reminding us that they want Windows 7 out by January ’10 at the very latest, but we all know what they are like.

Oh and by the way, I would like to apologise for the slight lack of posts lately – I’ve been doing websites for a few people and GEEK! fell a little behind. Don’t worry, the websites are now finished and I can concentrate on GEEK! again 🙂

I’ve got a really nice budget ADSL2+ router coming in for review in the next couple of days, so stay tuned.