ISSN 1488-3163; PC Improvements © 2007
==== 1498 Subscribers in 50 Countries ====
Welcome to the 446th issue of the PC Improvement News. PCIN consists mainly of news highlights and tips. There is something for everyone, and if this is your first issue, I'm sure there will be something for you. If you give me two or three issues, I know that you will come back for more!
You can reach me at editor@pcin.net with any suggestions or comments.
Support PCIN at http://PCIN.net/donate.php
A couple of random comments for today... Andrew was off school today for a P.A. Day. It's weird that it was in the middle of the week... I cut the lawn for the first time this year today. It looks great... I saw a porsche SUV today. I didn't know they had such a thing.
Chris has been under the weather fighting the bug that's been going around, so he didn't get around to doing a tip this week. Hopefully you feel better soon Chris!
Happy Cinco de Mayo!
Graham editor@pcin.net and Chris chris@pcin.net
Google beats Microsoft, Coke in brand stakes
Google has knocked Microsoft off the top spot and been named the most powerful global brand of 2007 in a recently published brand ranking.
It's the second year in a row a tech brand has beaten household names such as Coca-Cola, Marlboro and Toyota.
In the ranking, which factored in financial performance and consumer sentiment, Google ranked first with a brand value of more than $66 billion, nearly double its value in the 2006 ranking, according to market researcher Millward Brown Optimor.
'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' wins $25,000
Thirteen-year-old Morgan Pozgar, of Claysburg, Pennsylvania, was crowned LG National Texting champion on Saturday after she typed "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from "Mary Poppins" in 15 seconds.
"I'm going to go shopping and buy lots of clothes," the teen said after winning her $25,000 prize from the electronics company LG.
Morgan defeated nearly 200 other competitors at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan to become East Coast champion and then beat West Coast champion Eli Tirosh, 21, of Los Angeles, California.
She estimated that she sends more than 8,000 text messages a month to her friends and family.
Millions of workers have poor 'desk health'
A survey of 1,500 UK office workers by market research firm Tickbox.net, on behalf of ergonomic monitor firm ViewSonic, shows a link between poor ergonomics knowledge and ailments such as headaches, eye fatigue and backache.
The study reveals that 46% of office workers spend six or more hours in front of their computer screens each day, and 51% of these are not scheduling appropriate breaks according to ergonomic guidelines.
Around three-quarters of respondents said they suffered from headaches (67%), eye fatigue (77%) and backache (71%).
Internet2 Breaks Another Speed Record
The Internet superhighway has broken another speed limit -- twice in as many days. The Internet2 Consortium announced Tuesday that an international team led by the University of Tokyo transmitted data at speeds of 7.67 Gbps late last year, and then at 9.08 Gbps the very next day.
The first record-breaking transmission took place on December 30. The 20,000-mile roundtrip path, using standard TCP, began and ended in the NTT building in Tokyo. The second one took place the next day, on New Year's Eve, over the same path but using modified TCP.
The path crossed six international networks, and covered 75 percent of the Earth's circumference.
Check out these new or updated pages on the PCIN.net site:
Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 and Adobe Premier Elements 3.0 Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/photoshopEL5_Premiere3.phpExpoDisc White Balance Filter Review
http://PCIN.net/help/hardware/expodisc.phpParagon Software Group Partition Manager 8.0 Professional Software Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/ppm8.phpUpdate PCIN.net home page with "Top 10 Most Popular..." features
http://PCIN.net/Microsoft Digital Image Suite Plus Review
http://PCIN.net/help/software/msdimagesuiteplus.php
500 free fonts
This site is a fabulous resource for free fonts. There are 5 pages with samples of fonts. To download the font, you just click on the sample and a ZIP file will download. The site explains how they determine which fonts are "tops":
Top 500 is calculated based on download counts from some of the web's biggest free font archives.
My wife loves changing fonts when she is typing something up. I'd better not show her this site! :-)
Undelete plus - New Version - And Still Free
I found this a while ago through a link from Pirillo's Picks. Undelete Plus is a free utility that tries to recover previously deleted files. I tried it out for the first time today on my 1 GB USB drive. It took about 5 minutes to scan the drive. It scanned what it said were 550,000 files and then an error came up saying that it was out of memory. I then applied a filter to the search and tried again with the same results. I then tried it on my C: drive (a local rather than removable drive), and had the same error.
I'm not sure why I couldn't run the software, but after searching for more information on Undelete Plus, it appears that many people have used it successfully. Give it a try...
Both of us have other sites other than PCIN.net. These are all sites that we are actively involved in (they aren't client sites). Don't forget to check them out from time to time for updates:
PCIN is brought to you by Graham Wing. The opinions expressed are those of the Editor, Graham Wing and the Assistant Editor, Chris Empey. Graham Wing and Chris Empey accept no responsibility for the results obtained from trying the tips in this newsletter.
Graham Wing can be reached at editor@pcin.net
Chris Empey can be reached at chris@pcin.net
Copyright 1998-2007, Graham Wing. All rights reserved.
This publication may be reproduced in whole, or in part, as long as the author is notified and the newsletter is presented as is.
Support PCIN by visiting http://PCIN.net/donate.php