Should you go 64 bit or stick with 32 bit Windows Vista?

If you just built or bought a new computer, upgraded your computer, or just for some reason need a new operating system, you have probably wondered if you should buy the 64 bit version or the 32 bit one. This will depend on two things – the hardware and software you use.

First of all let me say why I’ll be talking about Windows Vista here. XP x64 has proven to have terrible hardware and software support. So if you want a 64 bit Windows OS, it should be Vista.

Hardware

Now on to the hardware. Most hardware that’s a few years old will be supported under Vista x64. But to be completely sure, go to your hardware manufacturer’s website and double check the drivers section for your product for a Vista x64 version. My three year old Epson printer was supported, but my six year old Linksys wireless USB adapter was not.

You also need to make sure your digital cameras are supported, your USB accessories, and stuff like that. Most USB hard drives and optical drives will work. It’s things like printers, cameras, wireless, bluetooth, cell phones, and stuff like that that need to be double checked.

Software

Most software will work in 64 bit Vista, but once again, if you need to use specific programs, make sure they work.

Read moreShould you go 64 bit or stick with 32 bit Windows Vista?

MacBook Air gets hacked in 2 minutes – PWN 2 OWN

Famed iPhone hacker Charlie Miller hacked a MacBook Air in just two minutes at this year’s PWN 2 OWN competition. Miller visited a website which contained his exploit code, which then allowed him to seize control of the computer. Contestants could only use software that came pre-installed on the operating system, which means he could have only used Safari for the exploit. Well done Mr. Miller, well done. Maybe now people will finally realize that Mac OS X isn’t virus-free like Apple claims.

Charlie will get a $10,000 reward as well as keep the Macbook Air.

Bristlebot: A tiny vibration-powered bot you can make

I came across this awesome video on YouTube today. Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories shows how you can make your very own bristlebot. I can’t wait to try this out as soon as I find a spare motor.

“The BristleBot is a simple and tiny robot with an agenda. The ingredients? One toothbrush, a battery, and a pager motor. The result? Serious fun.“

“The BristleBot is our take on the popular vibrobot, a simple category of robot that is controlled by a single vibrating (eccentric) motor.“

Here is the video:

Top 3 Photoshop resource and tutorial websites

If you are new to Photoshop, or even if you’re an advanced user looking for some new stuff to try out, these three sites are probably the only places you’ll need to visit to find what you’re looking for. Together they have thousands, if not a million, tutorials not just for Photoshop but for Dreamweaver, Flash, and other web media and coding. I highly recommend these sites to beginners and to pros.

  1. Pixel2life.com – Pixel2life was the first tutorial site I used, and I learned most of what I now can do in Photoshop from there. Pixel2life has all user-submitted content, so it is basically a huge database of tutorials. They also cover a variety of different programs.
  2. Tutorialized.com – Tutorialized has more than 8,000 Photoshop tutorials as of today. They also have sections for other 2D and 3D graphics, web development, and many applications. They have thousands of quality tutorials for almost anything design and code related you can think of.
  3. Good-tutorials.com – Good-tutorials has more than 23,000 tutorials as of the time of this post. They have tutorials for CSS, Flash, HTML, Java, Photoshop, PHP, 3ds Max, and more. You should definitely check them out.

There are many, many more tutorial sites out there, but I think these have enough tutorials to cover everything you could think of.

Fakefactory’s Cinematic Mod V7.0 for Half Life 2

This has just been released a few days ago, and it has to be one of the best cinematic mods I’ve seen. I think the screenshots will do all the explaining for me.

Features:

  • Raise the quite outdated graphical appearance to a state-of-the-art level
  • Give the HL2 trilogy a more stressed, darker and minatory look
  • Complement the atmosphere with a emotional cinematic music soundtrack that fits the action on the screen
  • Replace the low-resolution textures with high resolution counterparts and more detailed environments
  • Complement the storyline with the unused content from the original games
  • Refresh the look and feel with optional new HD models
  • Add more replay-value to the game

Hardware Requirements:

– DX9 capable graphics hardware with minimum 256 MB VRAM. (512 MB recommended)
– 3 GB RAM (4 GB recommended)

Software Requirements:

– Fully installed STEAM Client; You can’t start the mod without STEAM running.
– Fully installed and unlocked HL2 / EP1 / EP2; Make sure, you have started those games in the past.

And in addition to this, 32-bit operating systems are not supported. That means you need to have either XP Pro x64 or a x64 version of Vista to play “without crashes”.

You can download it here.

Screenshots:

Firefox 3 beta – ready for daily use?

Firefox If you’ve been following the latest tech news, you should know that Firefox 3 beta has been available for a while. Many people have downloaded and used it. But should you jump on the bandwagon and start using the beta version as your everyday browser? Probably not.

I recently took the latest beta of Firefox 3 for a spin, and here is my short review. First of all, it’s fast. Not noticeably fast when loading pages, but faster in benchmarks. I didn’t run the benchmark myself, I found some on review sites a while ago. They showed Firefox 3 beta was faster than Safari for windows, Firefox 2, and of course Internet Explorer. So you won’t notice much of a difference unless you’re loading huge pages.

So since real-world performance is almost not noticeable, I don’t think it’s worth it to give up your extensions. Most extensions still do not support Firefox 3 beta. For me, extensions are a major part of the reason why I use firefox. I say wait until the final release comes out, then upgrade.

As for the well-known memory leak in Firefox 2, that seems to have been mostly fixed. I didn’t notice any difference in memory usage since I have 4GB of RAM, but those of you with 2GB and less will notice.

The conclusion – you can download the latest beta of Firefox 3 here to try it out, but I wouldn’t recommend using it as your daily browser just yet. Wait until the final version is out if you want maximum compatibility with extensions.