Microsoft recently released the Windows 8 Developer Preview, allowing interested people (mainly developers) to download and try an early version of Windows 8. You can download the Windows 8 Developer Preview for free at msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/home/ . Be aware, this is very much pre-beta software and should only be used for testing purposes and not as your primary operating system, since it is likely still quite unstable and has missing features. A good way to test Windows 8 without affecting your primary operating system is to install it within a virtual machine, using software such as VMware Workstation.

As a matter of course, with any computers that I own every 12 months I always do a complete hard drive reformat and reinstall the operating system. However, on my current computer (an Acer Aspire One D260 net book running Windows XP) I am unsure how to complete this process as it does not have a DVD drive. When the computer was new I did backup everything to a 1 TB external hard drive but I do not know how to restore that backup onto the computer. Can you assist? (more…)

Windows 7 includes a nice new feature which allows you to display your desktop wallpaper in a slideshow so that it automatically changes at a preset interval. To setup this slide show functionality go to the “Start” menu > “Control Panel” and click “Change desktop background”. Select a “Picture location” (or browse to a folder containing the pictures you would like to display) and then tick images you would like to use as the desktop background. Finally, set the “Change pictures every” interval to specify how often you would like the pictures to change, and you can also tick “Shuffle” to display them in a random order.

Recently I replaced my Netgear DG834G v4 router with a new Netgear DGND3700. The installation went well and I was happy with the improved performance. However, when I subjected the new installation to the Gibson ShieldsUp! Tests it reported that ports 21 and 443 are open on the DGND3700. Previously all of the ports had been in stealth mode so this was quite a surprise. I immediately contacted Netgear Support and was advised that this may have something to do with the antivirus software installed on the computer, although the antivirus vendor disagrees. Back again to Netgear who now advise that ports 21 and 443 must be left open. I await further explanation, but do not hold out much hope. Could you bring some of your common sense expertise to the problem? The computer is running Windows XP. The router has an inbuilt firewall but the Windows firewall is also turned-on. I understand that two firewalls are not desirable but I am reluctant to disable the Windows Firewall until my faith in the Netgear protection is restored. (more…)

Users of Mac OS X Lion with trackpads (such as on a MacBook or users of the Magic Trackpad) will notice that by default Lion uses “natural scrolling”. This adopts the same scrolling paradigm as that found on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, whereby the content tracking follows the movement of your finger. However, this is exactly the opposite of the scrolling direction found in previous versions of Mac OS X and other operating systems. If you would like to disable natural scrolling, and put it back to the “classical” scrolling direction, then go into the “System Preferences” > “Trackpad” click the “Scroll & Zoom” page and untick “Scroll direction: natural”.