Just upgraded to the release candidate. and so far things are good.

Scrolling is a little faster, which is throwing me slightly - maybe it is too fast for me?

The layout etc is the same and one behavioural change by default is to open new tabs next to the tab from within which the link was clicked instead of at the end.

Clicking links on the bookmarks bar will still open the tab at the end, but links inside the page will open next to the current tab. This feature may take me some time to get used to as the grouping of tabs has no visual indications unlike in Internet Explorer 8 and I also have to fight my muscle memory.

I managed to get an offer for Windows 7 Professional for £30 (as a download only version - it is available to all people who are "students" or teachers or have access to an email address ending in .sch.uk or .ac.uk and a few others too) and since my Vista installation was both slow and the install of Vista Service Pack two was constantly failing, I thought it would be a good offer to waste the money. I did and this post is being written from Windows 7 Professional.

Now that the biggie is over, the rest is much simpler. Once again, free of cost software only.

If there are any requests, comments, corrections or additions, please go ahead and keep them coming.

Utilities

7-Zip is a file archiver that supports many formats, and is free.

ISO Recorder - This allows you to burn "iso" disc images from within windows without the need to resort to other programs such as Nero

Anti Spyware

There are two good options that I am aware of here, but I have not used either in a good while:

Every Windows Based PC should have an up to date antivirus solution installed. A lot of the popular/advertised options have either a fixed or an annual cost. however, they may not always be the best and could even be resource hogs. There are a few free contenders out there that I am aware of here.

The rule of thumb is: Avoid Norton. It really is a system hog and replacing it with another alternative could give your PC a new lease of life.

Microsoft Security Essentials

Microsoft's Security Essentials is the new kid on the block and its free to all users who have a legitimate copy of windows, so its a good alternative to the others below where some have a "home use only" requirement.

Call this the first of many posts on technology. I will start on something a little more mundane than most technology.

You know how people say that it would be fab if they had a fridge that could talk? Well I don't. I like things to be simple.

When I was young I watched The Terminator. I know what happens when you give technology too much control. Don't people learn from such educational tools?

Which brings me nicely tom the new steam Iron we have at home. Simple it is not.
Took me a while to find out where the water went in from (the back - I almost had to ask! I did, but found it before I got a reply. I call that a no score draw.)

Today I what I call a net win day.

Firstly I fudged around with theme on this site. Previously, it broke when viewing large images in internet explorer. Now it breaks when viewing large in Internet Explorer. Just differently. Something that will go unnoticed on most pages. (I am only aware of one topic with large images - the Jummah Mubarak topic)

While doing this, I also managed to find the missing 20pixels that Internet Explorer was stealing (in short, I was not using the available width as Internet explorer was making the page wider than it should have been on some pages, but not all. The proper browsers out there was doing what they were being told to do.) I doubt anyone will notice this, but it is one less thing on my ToDo list.