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A recent automated update to McAfee Anti-virus software caused the software to mistaken detect a key Windows system program as malicious and move it out of its proper location to a McAfee anti-virus quarantine. Due to the critical nature of the quarantined system program, ‘svchost.com’, affected computers failed to start correctly and were sent into a rebooting loop.

According to Microsoft, the affected file ‘is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries’.

McAfee responded to the problem by withdrawing the definition update and later releasing a clean one. The security giant also published advice on how to manually fix affected computers. The influx of interested parties trying to look up this advice through McAfee’s forum caused the site to become unavailable for a short time on Wednesday evening.

Source: The Register

McAfee had the following to say on the matter.

McAfee is aware that a number of customers have incurred a false positive error due to this release. Corporations who kept a feature called “Scan Processes on Enable” in McAfee VirusScan Enterprise disabled, as it is by default, were not affected.
Our initial investigation indicates that the error can result in moderate to significant issues on systems running Windows XP Service Pack 3.

The faulty update was quickly removed from all McAfee download servers, preventing any further impact on customers. We are not aware of significant impact on consumers.

We recommend the use of ESET Anti-virus products including NOD32 Anti-virus and the Smart Security Suite. If you are interested in a secure, reliable anti-virus and computer security solution for you business, please feel free to contact us for more information.

Version 1.4 is the latest inception of the highly popular lightweight cross browser JavaScript framework. The new version features many new additions and speed improvements over 1.3.

jQuery was developed in 2006 by John Resig and since launch has been adopted by many large companies such as Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Digg and many more. The mantra behind jQuery is “write less, do more” With a wide range of easy DOM manipulation calls and user interface effects jQuery is an attractive option for developers looking to make applications more intuitive, user friendly and feature rich.

So whats new in 1.4?

Aside from all the new additions and improvements one of my favourite new functions is .delay(). Delay provides us with the functionality to delay execution of subsequent items in the queue.

For example we can fade out and fade in an element with a second delay.

jQuery not only allows us to delay on effects we can also apply delays to custom queues.

One of many new updates is the addition to pass event data to the function .live(). This gives developers much more flexibility to capture events. From form submission, focus changes, clicks and custom events.

The example below shows how to smooth scroll on all anchor tag elements using live to capture the click event data.

According to BuiltWith.com’s statistics jQuery is running on one in five websites on the internet. Not surprising considering the adaptability of the framework.

14 days of jQuery is still running and you can find more information via the below links.

http://jquery.com/
http://jquery14.com/

Over the past few weeks we’ve been talking about Windows 7, how it looks, how it feels and also if it’s any good from an end users point of view but which version should you go for? Well hopefully after reading this you’ll have a better idea.

The different versions are as follows:

This info is taken directly from the Microsoft site but I feel it’s not very direct as to how the versions vary. There’s no mention of Microsoft’s ‘ghetto’ copy of Windows 7 called ‘Starter’ which appears to be quite a basic version of 7 which will be pre loaded onto netbooks and possibly even some more powerful smartphones in the future. I have discussed some of the more funky features in previous articles so I’m just going to point out a few things from the above info.

One thing that leaps out straight away is ‘Watch, pause, rewind, and record TV on your PC.’ Although it is possible to do this without any additional software if you have a PC without a PVR (personal video recorder, also known as DVR digital video recorder) you’ll need to get one as TV will not be automatically received by your PC.

‘Run many Windows XP productivity programs in Windows XP Mode’ this feature is going to be more for people who have old programs they’ve been using for years. It will allow you to still run these programs in a compatible environment. So say you have an MP3 player whose software will only work in Windows XP but obviously you still want to use the device, pop your CD in as usual, right click and use the compatibility option for Windows XP, simple.

All in all I’d stick to these simple rules; if you’re a home user go for Windows 7 Home Premium, if you’re a business user go for Windows 7 Professional as you can connect to domains with this version and finally Windows 7 Ultimate if your prepared to spend an extra $20 to be able to encrypt your whole hard drive with Bitlocker – just be advised that if you choose to do this data recovery on that particular drive will be almost impossible. Having worked as a techie for years the amount of people who assumed the differences in Windows XP home edition and Windows XP Professional edition were huge! Having the word ‘Professional’ after the title somehow gave people the impression they were getting much more for their money. It’s bizarre how this single word made people part with an extra £50 without them even knowing the difference in versions, the amount of times I’ve asked why they were buying professional for home use and the usual response was ‘it’s just better’ when in all honesty it’s just networking options and the ability to attach to domains, well in a nutshell.

The above recommended prices are in dollars also so I thought I’d give you a heads up on how much the different versions will cost you here in the UK, all prices include VAT @ 15%. The cheapest I found Windows 7 Home Premium on the web was around £60; £90 will get you a copy of Windows 7 Professional with Windows 7 Ultimate coming in at around £160. Bizarre pricing structure, I’m unsure why ultimate is almost double premium for what in essence encryption software which you can pick up for around £30.

So now you’ve had a little taste of Windows 7 I’m going to continue to explore the features with you, kind of hold your hand in a virtual way.

HomeGroup

“…HomeGroup takes the headache out of sharing files and printers on a home network. Connect two or more PCs running Windows 7, and HomeGroup makes it easy to automatically start sharing your music, pictures, video, and document libraries with others in your home. The new “Share with” menu, meanwhile, provides a speedy way to share individual files. Concerned about privacy? So are we. That’s why HomeGroup is password-protected and puts you in total control. You decide what gets shared—and what stays private. You can also make your files “read only,” so other people can look at (but not touch) your stuff. You can join a HomeGroup in any edition of Windows 7, but you can only create one in Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate…” Once again the ‘ghetto’ copy (Microsoft call it starter) seems to exclude quite a large feature, XP Home and Pro both allowed workgroups to be created but only pro allowed connection to a domain and I’m failing to see why this couldn’t happen again across all versions of Windows 7. Not a bad feature though, you absolutely MUST have IPV6 enabled to make a HomeGroup but sure it’s an improved way to share files. Nothing overly groundbreaking except it works much faster.

Jump Lists

“…Jump lists—new in Windows 7—takes you right to the documents, pictures, songs, or websites you turn to each day. To open a Jump List, just right-click a program icon on the Windows 7 taskbar. (You’ll also find them on the Start menu.) What you see in a Jump List depends entirely on the program. The Jump List for Internet Explorer 8 shows frequently-viewed websites. Windows Media Player 12 lists commonly-played tunes. Your Jump List missing a favourite? You can “pin” whatever files you like there. Jump Lists don’t just show shortcuts to files. Sometimes they also provide quick access to commands for things like composing new e-mail messages or playing music…” Simple idea this but very effective, it’s like having everything you use regular in one place! Kind of like browsing history for you whole computer followed by a quick launch instead of just information.

Windows Live Essentials

“…What is Windows Live Essentials? Simply put, it’s free software that makes a PC running Windows 7 do more great things. Things like e-mail, instant messaging, photo editing, and blogging. Windows Live Essentials is available from the Windows Live website…” I bet a lot of us are using some of this software already it’s just a convenient way to get all of them in one place.

The free download includes: Messenger, Chat instantly with friends and family on your PC or mobile phone. Photo Gallery, Find, fix, and share your photos. Mail, manage multiple e-mail accounts (like Hotmail) in one place. Writer, Compose your blog, add photos and video, then post it on the web. Movie Maker, Turn your photos and videos into great looking movies and slide shows. Family Safety, Manage and monitor online activities so your kids stay safe. Toolbar, Search instantly from any webpage. So they’re pretty self explanatory right? Mostly quite basic but they will give you a good ‘foot in the door’ feel, anyone who’s wanted to get a blog off the ground or make their first photo slide show will find this software perfect.

Windows Search

“…In Windows 7, you can find more things in more places and do it faster. Start typing into the Start menu search box—and you’ll instantly see a list of relevant documents, pictures, music, and e-mail on your PC. Results are now grouped by category and contain highlighted keywords and text snippets to make them easier to scan. Few people store all their files in one place these days. So Windows 7 is also designed to search external hard drives, networked PCs, and libraries. Overwhelmed by your search results? You can instantly narrow them by date, file type, and other useful categories…” it’s a search engine, nothing here to get too excited about, sure its quick and it does narrow the searches well but again it’s something that has been somewhat overlooked in previous versions of windows, Vista’s version was a vast improvement but the search engine in Windows 7 is now actually a feature and not just programmers panicking at the last minute and rustling something up.

So I guess the next thing to talk about would be graphics cards, now there are literally hundreds out there, different manufacturers, different models and different chipsets but again it’s the numbers game and sadly, as with everything, the more it costs the better it is. Prices start from around £20 and rocket up to around £400 so choosing the right one could be crucial. Spend too little and you’ll be left wanting, spend too much and buyer’s remorse will set in… First of all you need to decide what sort of games you’d like to play, if you just like simple puzzle games like Zuma, Bejeweled or Puzzle Quest then a £20 graphics card will be fine but if you want to get into some hardcore first person shooters like Bioshock, Fallout 3 or Crysis then you have to start around the £150 mark to get anything decent. One of the biggest games ever sold is The Sims franchise of PC games, a lot of parents when buying PC’s for the kids who like to play this game (and believe me LOTS of under 16’s play this game) fall into the trap of thinking just any PC will play it. Sure Sims, the first in the series, was only a 2D game meaning it didn’t really need a lot of power to play it. Then when Sims 2 was released everyone who was playing Sims 1 couldn’t play it due to it needing almost 3 times the graphical power! So if you’re buying a family computer then you all need to sit down and discuss what you’d like to use the PC for. Being able to play the top flight games is what can easily double the cost of a PC.

One of the biggest arguments with graphics cards is ATI or NVidia – the 2 leading GPU (graphics processing unit) manufacturers, there’s really not a huge amount in it, there are arguments for both sides. You just have to do a little research into what’s recommended at the time I’ve had ATI 9800 pro then an NVidia 8800GT and now I have an ATI 4890 so not really any bias I just bought the best at the time. The numbers involved can get quite complicated; take these for example Sparkle NVidia GeForce 8400GS 512MB PCI-E @ £22.94 and this one Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB PCI-E 2.0 @ £103.44, both are 512 Megabyte cards so why the huge price difference? Well as I said it’s the numbers game so I’ll try and break it down for you.

There are key things to look for when buying a graphics card:

1) Interface type

2) Clock speed

3) Ramdac clock speed

4) API support

5) Video memory installed

6) Video output

7) Max resolution details

8 ) Max monitors supported

Without getting too complicated I’d say the above would be the best items to compare as I feel they are the most common denominators in all graphics cards.

1) Interface type: all modern computers use PCI-E (peripheral component interconnect express) this is a motherboard level interconnecting port and is much quicker at handling data then the older AGP (accelerated or advanced graphics port) PCI-E 1 = each ‘lane’ can handle 250 megabytes of data, PCI-E 2.0 = 500 megabytes of data and in turn PCI-3 (when its released) claims to be able to shift a whole gigabyte.

2) Clock speed: basically clock speed refers to rate in cycles per second for the frequency of the clock in any synchronous circuit. For example a graphics card that has a clock speed of 200 MHz will be able to perform 200,000,000 cycles per second, this is the aspect most ‘Overclockers’ will look at, pushing to get more cycles per second will increase performance.

3) Ramdac clock speed: this is how quickly the digital to analogue converter pushes the graphics output from the card, this will govern how many refresh rates are supported and at what resolution. So again the higher the number here will determine how quickly the image gets to the screen and in turn how big that image can be.

4) API support: this basically outlines which Direct X support the card will conform too which handles things like video editing, blending, rendering plus other accelerated processing. Direct X is Microsoft’s unification programme for both gaming and multimedia. Direct X 9.0c is still (probably) the most widespread, Direct X 10 is used by a lot of gamers and now that Direct X 11 was released July this year only the most hardened of ‘hardware chasers’ will currently be using it.

5) Video memory installed: this tells you the amount and type of RAM on the card 128MB, 256MB, 512MB all the way up to 2GIG nowadays for amount and the GDDRx (graphics double data rate) refers to version of RAM, stick with the higher the better again.

6) Video output: simple one this it’s the maximum resolution achievable – how many pixels can be displayed.

7) Max resolution details: I’ve included this as it often differs to the above dependant on connection used. VGA (video graphics array) is the most common connection and will give a standard signal whereas DVI (digital visual interface) and HDMI (high definition multimedia interface) can often give not only a crisper picture but also a higher resolution so check the connections you have to achieve the best picture possible.

8 ) Max monitors supported: no prizes for guessing what this means! Lots of designers will use 2, 3 or even 4 monitors I’ve also know gamers to do the same so its handy to know.

So back to my original graphics card comparison here are the specs for both cards:

Sparkle NVidia GeForce 8400GS 512MB PCI-E @ £22. (approx)

Interface type: PCI-E

Clock speed: 450MHz

Ramdac clock speed: 400MHz

API support: OpenGL 2.0, DirectX 10

Video memory installed: 512MB DDR2

Video output: 2048×1536

Max resolution details: VGA/S-Video /DVI-I all formats = 2048×1536

Max monitors supported: 2

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB PCI-E 2.0 @ £103.00 (approx)

Interface type: PCI-E 2.0

Clock speed: 750MHz

Ramdac clock speed: 400MHz

API support: Direct x 10.1

Video memory installed: 512MB GDDR5

Video output: 2560 x 1600

Max resolution details: DVI: 2560 x 1600/VGA: 2048 x 1536

Max monitors supported: 2

So as you can see from the above specs, you see why the ATI card is so much more expensive. It’s defiantly more of a gaming card than just a display adapter; feel I should re-iterate at this point no bias whatsoever has been implemented in the above guide. Find a great range of different cards here