26th
April
2008
As I mentioned yesterday, I had to rebuild my PC this week, which included a clean install of Vista and all my other software. So here’s my list of some essential programs for Windows. Anyone have any other suggestions they would add to this list?
- Mozilla Firefox
- Mozilla Thunderbird (email)
- Office
- Google Picasa (photos)
- Exact Audio Copy (CD ripper) with LAME (MP3 encoder)
- Tag & Rename (MP3 tagger)
- iTunes & Quicktime
This next one is not essential, but I wanted to test out a game on the new PC and ended up downloading Trackmania Nations Forever. This has to be one of the best free games in history - basically it’s a racing game with a range of extreme tracks and online racing - all for free. I enjoyed the previous version of this game but it wouldn’t run on Vista so it’s nice to have an updated version that works. If you like racing games or just want something to help you waste a few minutes then definitely download this game. Here’s a YouTube trailer for it…
Tags : Software, trackmania, Video, vista, Windows, youtube
Categories : Games, Software, Windows |
12th
March
2008
I’ve begun using Apple’s Time Capsule as my network storage/backup solution and thought I’d make a few comments.
If you’re unfamiliar with it Time Capsule is a network hard drive (500 Gig or 1 terabyte) and wireless router. It’s designed to work seamlessly with Mac OS X 10.5.2 Leopard and the Time Machine software to backup your Mac, but also works well with Windows as a network attached drive and print server.
Basically I’m using it as an extension of my existing network. I plugged the time capsule WAN port in to one of the ethernet ports of my existing router/ADSL modem. I shut down the wireless radio on my old router and am now just using Time Capsule’s faster 802.11n for my wi-fi connectivity. Through the Time Capsule’s USB port I connected a USB photo printer and another external hard drive (via a USB hub). After running the AirPort setup program on my MacBook Pro and my Vista PC both computers spotted the Time Capsule drive straight away, although for some reason it took a few restarts of the capsule before the USB printer and hard drive would show up. Aside from this, setting up and using Time Capsule has been a breeze. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get my network running the way I wanted to with it.
I decided to use the USB hard drive as my backup disk for my Mac. The first Time Machine backup took several hours but now it does a quick background backup every hour. I have not yet had the chance to look back into the history/restore features of Time Machine but from the demos it looks pretty good. The 1Tb Time Capsule hard drive I’m using as a media server and backup for all my music, movies, photos, home videos etc, and for any other content I may want to access from either my Mac or PC. I’ve now created a second library in iTunes on my Mac which contains my complete MP3 collection so I now have thousands of songs which I have rarely or never listened to before. Expect to see an eclectic mix of tracks in my “Recent songs” list on this site (which is generated using last.fm by the way)
So Time Capsule is great. Combined with Time Machine it is an incredibly easy and effective storage and backup solution. Gives me even more incentive to consider switching my desktop PC to a Mac when I next come around to replacing it. Imagine a 100% Mac household… I wonder if I can?
Categories : Apple, Computers, Mac, Windows |
