Upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium. Windows 7 Home Premium makes it easy to create a home network and share all of your favorite photos, videos, and music. You can even watch, pause, rewind, and record TV (a broadcast TV tuner may be required). Get the best entertainment experience with Windows 7 Home Premium. Do you use your PC for work, run Windows XP programs, or require enhanced security? Consider Windows 7 Professional. Windows 7 is designed to make your PC simp (more…)

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 is the essential software suite for home computer users and includes 2007 versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and OneNote. This system enables you to quickly and easily create great-looking documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and organize your notes and information in one place, making it easier and more enjoyable for you to get things done. The new streamlined workspace and easy-to-browse tabs make program features ea (more…)

For example, when you search digital cameras, it shows the images of 1,562 digital cameras in an semi-3D array, see image on the left. You can scroll up and down to pick the ones that look nice to you, or you can use the feature selector on the left to select number of pixels, zoom, price range, etc, and it will narrow down the image array to the ones matching the selected features. So it provides quick way to visually find a camera you like.

On Bing Visual Search, it also offers other pre-made visual searches, including dog breeds, handbags, movies, even politicians. The downside of this visual search feature is that each of these visual searches has to be manually built, very much like the old Yahoo directories, only now with visual navigation. So there is the scalability and timeliness issues. Visual search will work well on things where the looks matter, these actually include many things, such as handbags, shoes, sunglasses, furniture, home decor, fashion, travel, pets, etc. As long as a category is popular enough to warrant the man power to create a visual search for it, it can be done. Because it is pre-made, it will suffer in the real-time-ness of the data. New items may not be included days after launch or until it becomes popular.

Many players have tried different ways of doing visual search, and they all have failed to gain traction. The right areas for visual search should be things where looks matter, there is huge search volume, and it can be monetized.  Shopping and travel are two top candidates. Another area is dating. The first dating site that will bring the Bing Visual Search feature for browsing potential dates will be a hueg hit.

Bing has been providing good search results on par with Google. With the new visual search feature and other planned features to be relased around Christmas this year, we believe that Bing will start to gain market share. This is good thing because when there is only one dominant player in an area, the competition and hence the innovation goes down, and the prices go up.  However, people’s habits are hard to change. Most people’s search needs are met by Google, I doubt the visual search will be enough to convert many people. It may draw some curious drive-by traffic, but it may not be enough to draw people back when they need to do quick search.

Another example is the 8% discount you get on eBay buy-it-now when you use Bing to search for something and then follow the eBay ad to eBay. Many people first pick something they want to buy, just before they click the buy button, they go to Bing to search for a product, then click on the 8% off eBay ad to come back to eBay. Refreshing the screen of the item you want to buy, the 8% discount now shows up. The 8% discount draws people to Bing, but these same people may not use Bing to search for other things.

Surprisingly, one small feature in Bing that has drawn attention from school kids is the high definition images that Bing display on its home page, where when you float your cursors on different parts of the image, an interesting fact and a search link pops up.

What do you think of the search war between Google and Microsoft? What will make you switch to Bing?

If you do not know what new features will be included in Windows 7, take a look at the Windows 7 RC

iTouch competitor to be released on September 15th!

Many of us are anticipating the arrival of Zune HD to be mind blowing and extraordinary. Why wouldn’t we be with its outstanding features including:

• Crystal clear HD Radio with wireless syncing
• 10 hours of High-Def playback on your Zune.
• Multi-touch navigation with 16:9 OLED (organic light-emitting diode) display
• 720p support for when you would like to watch movies, music videos and tv shows through your Zune to your HDTV.
• Surf your browser anywhere, anytime with Wireless Wi-Fi

Microsoft have made the next step in the upcoming appearance of the Zune HD in September by revealing the above features, pricing and that it is available to reserve right now! You can pre-order your Zune HD from US retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart if you are that anxious ! For more information about the product features and pre-ordering, feel free to visit Zune’s website.

Pricing

Speculations of Amazon and Best Buy were completely true and accurate, not surprisingly. The 16GB Zune media player will cost $220 (£132.50) and the 32GB Zune platinum model will cost $290 ( £174.80.) In addition to the pricing, Microsoft have revealed there will be five contrasting colours the portable device will be available in and the opportunity of having your name engraved in it with a choice of ten expert designs!

The big clash: Apple iTouch Vs Zune HD

There seems to be not really much in it in terms of differences in features between these two portable super heavyweights! For sake of argument, below are some of the features that the current iTouch contains:

• Touchscreen navigation
• Anytime Wireless Wi-Fi
• 576P HD video output

However, in these early days, the Zune HD has the upperhand with numerous advanced features in comparison to the iTouch including better gaming experience and OLED display, which can make all the difference at the end of the day! But then again, remember Apple are going to release their new iTouch in early September with rumours of awesome fresh feature like GPS navigation and a camera!

It’s a very hard decision to make! Both devices are just fantastic in their own ways, and consumers making decisions now are definitely narrow minded!

Want to pre-order now? Visit Amazon now!

Who do you think will come out on top? The new iTouch that Apple have up their sleeves or the staggering Zune HD which is sure to be a big hit straight away! Please feel free to tell us your opinion below.

Meaning of svchost.exe

Microsoft help and support deem svchost.exe to be a “generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs.)” Ok, well in simpler and english terms, the history behind it is that Microsoft transferred all of the files from the internal Windows services to .dll files, without actually using .exe files. This was deemed as a huge mistake because it means that each user are unable to open a .dll file from Windows as it has to be opened through a .exe file. Hence, the svchost.exe was programmed.

*Note .dll means dynamic link library and .exe is a file name extention meaning an executable file.

Why are there fourteen of these svchost.exe files running simultaneously?

Here, you can see all the services running and which ones are needed or not and be sure that the show processes from all users box is ticked.

Well, there are many of these similar programs running because if you think about it, your operating system, Windows, has many services that are important to run and thus if there was one huge svchost.exe file and it failed, the whole system would fall. Therefore, having indivisual files for these services would prevent any failures. You may be wondering what the services are for. It’s really quite simple. The services are ordered into congruent groups and each of these svchost.exe files are made for each specified group. For example one svchost.exe could be for the UI ( User Interface.)

Your role

As an admin of your PC/Laptop, you are able to stop unecessary services by disabling them. The key problem seem to have is finding which services are needed for each svchost.exe file. You can do this by the tasklist command or go-to-service tab which will be explained further down.

In addition, users may find they have a high CPU usage one indivisual svchost.exe file and if you know it is definitely an anomoly, you can restart the services under that name without anything being affected in the system.

Identifying and checking particular svchost.exe files from the Command Line – For Vista and XP.

To check which services are being hosted by specific svchost.exe files, you can use the tasklist command from the command prompt using the command:

tasklist /SVC

However, users tend not to use this command as the services that occur are unclear to the human eye.

Checking through Task Manager – Vista Only

In task manager, you can right-click on any svchost.exe file and then select the “Go to Service(s)” option. Thus, this will direct you to the Services Tab and highlight the services running under that svchost.exe file as seen below.

Using this option, it enables you to see the proper name under the Description heading, thus making it even easier to choose which services to cancel.

Disabling services via Control Panel – for all platforms.

In order to disable some unwanted services you should either go to

Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services or

Start/Run/services.msc.

Once you are at Services, you should identify a useless service and then right click on it and select properties, as displayed below.

For the second part of disabling a particular service, change the Startup Type to Disabled and then click the stop button for full effect to take place as you can see below.

Lastly, you could utilize the command script to disable the service instead of using the control panel if you please. For example, in this service the command would be Apple Mobile Device. Thus the command would be as follows,

sc config applemobiledevice start= disabled

This concludes the tutorial on svchost.exe and I hope this has helped you with the puzzling svchost.exe file. I have explained what it is, why there are so many of these running and what you can do about it. If there are any unanswered queries about the confusing svchost.exe, please feel free to comment below.

]]> http://techcombo.com/2009/07/15/what-is-svchostexe-123/feed/ 4 http://techcombo.com/2009/07/11/intel-we-created-chrome-os-with-google-123/ http://techcombo.com/2009/07/11/intel-we-created-chrome-os-with-google-123/#comments Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:06:55 +0000 Paul Young http://techcombo.com/?p=818

"Our long-term goal is providing hardware for devices with different operating systems...more competition will drive up more innovations and that's good for consumers,"

Chip makers Intel, have announced publicly that they have been participating in the development of Chrome OS.

With the highly anticipated release of Google’s own operating system, many of us considered that Google couldn’t launch an operating on their own. Thus, Google’s Sundar Pichai confirmed this rumour and unveiled a list on Wednesday quoting,

“The Google Chrome OS team is currently working with a number of technology companies to design and build devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience. Among others, these companies include Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.”

As you can see, Intel were not included in this group of tech giants. But an Intel representative validated that they worked with Google on the exciting project and the Intel-insider further proved this in saying they were delighted with the progress and outcome of Chrome OS. Well, who wouldn’t be in this stage?

The Intel representative confirmed the speculation by saying,

“We have been privy to the project for some time and we have worked with Google on a variety of projects, including this one. We welcome Google’s move here.”

Will this scare Microsoft?

Seeing Intel and Google work in conjunction must be strange for Microsoft. This is because over they years, Microsoft and Intel have been close friends and this move may upset the balance in the tech market. Especially, as Intel have put their efforts into creating a solely netbook operating system with Moblin, who incidentally are rivals to Google. It’s all a bit complex but all that is happening is that Intel are stuck in the middle of many projects, and perhaps to keep the fine balance, they must now work with Microsoft in a new project.

However, Intel’s Michael Chen, director of Intel’s embedded sales group in Asia, said that his company is completely mutual and is a service for all companies,

“Our long-term goal is providing hardware for devices with different operating systems…more competition will drive up more innovations and that’s good for consumers,”

Furthermore, we can see the operating system market is booming with the release of Chrome OS and soon enought the release of Windows 7. What do you think on Intel’s position at the moment? Are they parting with companies too much? Is Intel making relations worse between Microsoft and Google, by publically announcing they are delighted with Chrome OS? Please feel free to comment below.

Lenovo is the latest candidate in joining the "free windows 7 update" along with Dell and HP

HP was the first PC service to offer a free upgrade to Windows 7 and now has been joined by fellow company Lenovo.

Lenovo have now decided to provide users with a free Windows 7 upgrade with their PC’s and Laptops. The deal has been available for three days now and will come to an end in January 2010. All of the Lenovo systems which have Vista, between then qualify for the free update.

The PC giants have made it clear that companies who purchase more than twenty nine systems will be referred to Microsoft’s volume licensing programme.

Their actions have come after HP, on Thursday announced they would offer a free windows update between 26th June and 22nd October with systems, effectively coming complementary. In addition to HP, Dell are also offering a deal almost identical to Lenovos, starting from 26th June and ending on 31st Jan ‘10. In light of these three companies actions, I am sure other PC services are sure to follow especially as Microsoft are offering a “referral” program to major organizations.

The software giants are adament on helping users out as they said earlier last week that they’d provide discounts to users that pre-ordered Windows 7. This is sure to give Microsoft quite a bit of profit from users becoming obliged to buy a computer system to get the free upgrade, which they really needed!

Is it only a matter of time before all of the major PC companies offer the upgrade just to attract more potential customers? Feel free to comment below!

Software giants, Microsoft are prosecuting three people from Canada who according to Microsoft, produced a huge online scam by penetrating their pay-per-click ad service.

The culprits were Gordon Lam, Melanie Suen and Eric Lam who felt they would get away with it but were oh so wrong.

A spokeswoman commented on the topic saying this was the first ad-related law suit Microsoft have pursued,

“Microsoft’s Internet Safety Enforcement team has a long history in enforcement efforts on issues such as malicious code distribution, spam, scareware, child protection, and other Internet safety issues, but this is the first case we have filed with respect to click fraud.”

Microsoft have been looking into the serious matter for just over eleven months now and now have been tracked down from the cities of Vancouver and British Columbia.

Like many other scams taking place on the internet, this one was not much different. Thus, Redmond was paid extremely high amounts for search related ads. The convicts got $250,000 from the scam and so Microsoft are demanding $750,000 so no one else dares to do it again or think of doing it.

Microsoft quoted,

“By engaging in a widespread scheme that generated invalid clicks on links to online ads that were displayed in response to search requests on Microsoft’s network, defendants disrupted the advertising campaigns of their competitors, and obtained increased user traffic for their own ads at a much lower cost than they could have otherwise.”

Click fraud has become more common in the last year as a result of the current economic climate and so have been pleaded guilty. For example, in 2006 Google paid out $90m to an advertiser.

What do you feel about click fraud? Is it right to get through in life or just plain wrong? Feel free to comment below.

With the latest introduction of the "Bing" search engine into the Microsoft empire, giants stay in the limelight with the supposed release of free antivirus software.

Software giant Microsoft close to supplying “free” antivirus software.

Over the last couple of months, Microsoft has been busy with endless projects. Especially, with Windows 7 RC and the highly regarded Bing search. Thus, the release of the “credit crunching” complimentary, antivirus suite.

Morro

The costless antivirus security, called Morro, is programmed to defend against viruses, trojans, spyware and rootkits. However, when using the antivirus, you will see why it is in beta and cost-free. But these faults are being spotted and refined by Microsoft employers, so hopefully will be out in “beta” soon and in public hands.

The antispyware suite arrives in light of Microsoft’s first, unsuccessful try of an anti-malware subscription service, in Windows Live OneCare. Not surprisingly, it was a disaster mostly because other software products were much more reliable and efficient, such as Symantec and AVG. Thus, when Morro is released, its predecessor will jump off the scene.

Symantec’s president of consumer products ,Janice Chaffin exclaimed:

“Microsoft’s free product is basically a stripped down version of the OneCare product Microsoft pulled from the shelves. A full Internet security suite is what consumers require today to stay fully protected.”

Janice seems to make a fair point in saying that consumers need more than a basic edition of internet security and so users tend to purchase home security suites for around £10- £40 or just go onto the AVG website and use their trustworthy services.

According to reports, Morro will be available to use near the latter stages of the year so keep checking the Microsoft website for updates!

Do you think Morro will be a disaster like Windows Live OneCare? Please feel free to post your comments below or any other feedback.