Computer Info Master

I just found out about a new “search engine” on the block called “Scour“. Technically it’s not a search engine because it uses results from Google, Yahoo, MSN instead of its own results to give you an answer to your search queries, but so far it looks pretty good. Scour basically took a bunch of good ideas from different search engines and put them together. What makes it good is that all these ideas are implemented well.

Scour describes itself as a “social search engine”. The reason is that it lets users rate and comment on the search results in hopes of improving accuracy and relevancy through this information (the social aspect).  This idea was first implemented by social bookmarking sites years ago and Google itself recently rolled out this functionality as well (although you have to be logged in on Google to see it).

I love using Google, but honestly I think they need a little bit of competition in the search market. Yahoo and MSN are just not very good competitors anymore. Scour looks like they may have a product that could compete with them. The challenge, of course, is that it is a huge uphill battle for them. Google has most of the internet’s users using it as their search engine.

What really makes Scour interesting is that it pays users for using it! That’s right - you get paid for searching while still getting great search results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN. You basically accumulate points while using Scour. You can the redeem these points for cash.

Here is how Scour point system works:

• 1 point for every search
• 2 point for rating a search result
• 3 points for commenting on a search result
• 200 bonus points for joining through this link
• 100 points for installing their toolbar
• 25% of points earned from your friends

Even if Scour didn’t have the point system to pay users to use it, I am still going to give it a shot.  It has a very clean and slick AJAX interface and seems to give relevant search results consistently. However, right now it seems that they were a little unprepaired for the amount of traffic they are getting and it is a little slower than instant search results on Google.

Conclusion
Scour is a website that shows a lot of promise.  It launched in the summer of 2008 and is quickly gaining popularity.  Even if they didn’t offer Visa gift cards, it is still a great idea to use Scour as your search engine since it can take the best results from the top 3 search engines.

Join Scour now using this link to earn a bonus 200 points upon sign-up!

Most people were disappointed by Windows Vista when it came out. Although it came a long way since it’s release, it still has problems. I am hoping the new version of Windows 7 will be a move in the right direction for Microsoft. To see if that’s true I decided to take a peek at the upcoming operating system Windows 7.

There have been a lot of rumors about it recently. Some of them are pretty bad and say that Windows 7 is the same slow, bloated, and frustrating as hell Vista. On the other hand some other people offer a brighter review of Windows 7. So which one is it?

Before we dive into Windows 7 let’s look at what made Windows Vista so bad. In Vista Microsoft decided to add a new display layer and vastly improve computer security. Admittedly these were great steps forward but the way these changes were handled is what frustrated many users. At the time of Vista release a significant number of (badly-written) software had difficulty running on Vista because it was expecting to run with administrator access (which is usually unthinkable if developing for other operating systems like Linux). Eventually many software vendors fixed up their stuff, but there are still those that haven’t updated or fixed their software. Was the crappy third party software the fault of Microsoft? No, but the way it was handled in Vista is their fault. Doing more testing with real live users would’ve revealed these problems. In addition to that, when Vista launched, many hardware vendors did not have proper Vista drivers that worked with the new video or sound subsystems, which left many users frustrated. Driver development not the fault of Microsoft, but delaying release until after majority of vendors had the proper drivers would’ve softened the blow. Of course there were other problems with Windows Vista, but these two were the ones that caused problems for most people.

Now that the beta is floating on the internet, I decided to check it out myself. Before I dive into what’s new in Windows 7, I want to talk about what remained unchanged. Windows 7 doesn’t make any new architectural changes - it is essentially the same Windows Vista architecture underneath. What that means is that any software or hardware that worked with Vista should also work with Windows 7. This means that unlike the transition from Windows XP to Vista, in the transition from Vista to Windows 7 nothing that used to work will stop working.

So what’s new in Windows 7?

Let’s dive right in. The user interface has undergone the most radical overhaul and update since the introduction of Windows 95 thirteen years ago.

The first thing you notice is that the task bar is very different. All the programs are now grouped by default (e.g. multiple browser windows are shown as one icon) and the text description of each is gone in favor of bigger icons. The navigation between windows is now two-level. You basically have to put your mouse over an icon in the task bar first; it shows a set of window thumbnails; you then click the thumbnail and it switches to the program you want. Right clicking the icons shows a list of shortcuts that Microsoft calls a “Jump List”.

Jump lists will provide quick access to frequently and recently used program features. Programs will need to use the system API to automatically acquire a Jump List containing their most recently and frequently used files and actions. There’s also an API to allow software developers to add custom entries for the Jump List (for example Media Player has special options for playback control). Fortunately Microsoft learned from their mistake of relying on independent developers to make their software compatible with new features. They also provided automatic default lists if software does not yet use its API. Microsoft now wants existing applications to benefit from as many of the 7 features as they can without any developer effort.

Window management has undergone a lot of changes. In recognition of the fact that people tend only to use one or two windows concurrently (Microsoft collects a lot of data from users who decide to opt into the Customer Experience Improvement Program), Windows 7 changed the way users can work when they have multiple windows open. Dragging a window to the top will maximize it automatically, dragging it off the top of the screenwill restore it. Dragging a window to the right or left edge of the screen will resize the window so that it takes half of the screen.

Windows 7 also gives you a useful feature of “peeking” at windows (looking at a content of a window briefly just to read something within it but not actually do anything within the window). You can also peek at your desktop (very usefull if you want to look at one of the gadgets you have installed).

In Windows 7, Microsoft decided to remove the sidebar and allow people to place gadgets directly on their desktop.

The system tray has also been changed. A common problem with the system tray is that it fills with useless icons and annoying notifications. In Windows 7, new tray icons are hidden and invisible by default. The icons will only be displayed if explicitly enabled.

The other significant change is in Windows Explorer. Windows 7 adds a new concept named “Libraries”. Libraries present you your files by file type and common attributes (these views are independent of where the files are).

Another important change is that many bundled applications would be unbundled from the operating systems and will be available as free downloads or as web services on Windows Live instead (I guess they’re afraind of another lawsuit). There have also been screenshots of some of the new versions of standard programs that usually come with Windows like Calculator and Paint but I didn’t see them in the version I found.

I decided to end 2008 by looking at the developments in the browsers world. I decided to take the 3 most popular browsers (in terms of market share) and run them through a few tests that test areas that users generally find to be the most important. Things like page load time, memory usage, and JavaScript performance will be covered here. I must say I got some surprising results.

Each browser is running on the exact same machine so that the comparisons are accurate. If you do the test on your own machine you will definitely get different results for each specific browser (because your computer may be faster or slower than mine), but what you need to remember with these tests is that the results are all relative to each other. This means that the relationship between test results of different browsers should stay the same on your computer.

Notes:

• All of these tests were performed on a Windows Vista SP1 machine that was wired into a network to minimize the effects of wireless disturbances.
• All browsers started with a clean profile and no add-ons/extensions installed.
• Caches were cleared before each test was run.
• Only one browser was open at a time and no other applications (other than standard Vista services) were running.

Test 1: How Fast Do The Pages Load?

Some of the browsers show how long it takes for a page to load, but I wanted an independent verification that could be used with all of the browsers. I figured that sitting here with a stop watch just wouldn’t work :-).

After some research I came across the Numion Stopwatch. It is a fantastic tool for measuring how long it takes for a page to load. It uses Java Script to notify you how long it takes a website to load. From what I can tell it does a great job.

I ran the page load test 3 times on 3 different sites so that we could really see what the results were like. I wanted to use some of the most popular sites on the internet that had a lot of content so that there was actually something to measure (no point of measuring the millisecond difference in load time of Google.com). I used Yahoo.com, CNN.com and digg.com as the test subjects.

For each test I started the browsers with a cleared cache, and the three results were averaged together to get a single overall load time (measured in seconds).

Average Browser Page Load Time

The faster the load time the better, so in these tests Google Chrome turned out to be the winner. The surprising result to me was that FireFox 3 was beaten by IE7. There was a time when I mostly used IE (back when we had IE6) because as a web developer I need to use what most of my users are using. Then IE7 came out and people started switching to IE7, but I just couldn’t. The thing was so bloated and slow I couldn’t believe they realeased such an atrocity, so I switched to FireFox and have been using it since (I might re-evaluate that after these tests though). Since then the folks at Microsoft finally came around and fixed up IE7 (although a little late because a lot of people switched to FireFox since then). For those who are interested in raw data here are the averaged resutls for each of the 3 sites:

Test 2: JavaScript Speed

I wanted to pick a JavaScript test that resembled the use of websites you visit everyday. That’s why I decided to go with the MooTools SlickSpeed test which runs the browser against different JavaScript libraries like: Dojo, JQuery, MooTools, YUI Selector and Prototype.

A lot of websites use these libraries. By running the browsers through the SlickSpeed test, I was able to find out exactly which ones will give you better JavaScript performance (and that’s what really matters on a day to day basis).

All of the browsers showed some errors when running these test, and so I’m only going to compare speed. I ran each of the tests 3 times, averaged the runtime (measured in milliseconds) for all five libraries, and then averaged the results.

Browser JavaScript Performance

Lower score is better. Again Google Chrome turned out to be the winner by slightly outperforming FireFox. It looks like folks at Microsoft have a lot of work to do to get IE up to par in terms of JavaScript performance.

Test 3: Memory Usage

Memory usage is a big concern these days as I’ve seen some browsers use up enormous amounts of memory. Although switching from IE6 to FireFox felt great switching from FireFox to FireFox 2 did not (exactly because of the memory usage problem). So I decided to compare how each browser performed in this area.

I ran the test by opening a list of sites that are extremely popular. Places like MySpace, YouTube, CNN, and others were all included as I went through and recorded 4 different memory usage readings:

1. I started the browser, and took a memory usage readings from the Task Manager.
2. I loaded ten predetermined websites in tabs, and took a memory usage reading after all the sites finished loading.
3. Loaded ten more predetermined websites in tabs (totaling twenty websites), and took a memory usage reading after all the websites finished loading.
4. I then let each browser sit for fifteen minutes with the twenty tabs open, and then took a memory usage reading.

The table below lists the browsers and the result from each test mentioned above:

Right now it’s clear that Firefox 3 walks away as the clear winner. After swtiching to FireFox 3 from FireFox 2 at least to me it was appearant that they finally fixed it up in terms of memmory consumtion. I must also note that although Google Chrome turned out to be the looser in this test (being the one using the most memmory) it was to be expected as it creates separate processes for each new browser tab you open. There’s definetly a memmory overhead for creating new proccesses, but I think it’s worth it because it makes it more stable and it runs faster on multi-core processors (which are on most computers today).

Browser Test Conclusion

It took me about eight hours to compile all of the results that you see here. I’d love to hear any comments you might have regarding theseresults, but remember that what you’ll see on your computer will likely be different from what I saw (but relationship of the results should stay the same). After running these tests I am definitely considering using Google Chrome more. I hope it gets the same kind of community going as FireFox.

Adware, Spyware, Malware and various viruses have rapidly become the number one threat. Statistics show that over 90% of computers can be infected which usually causes pop-ups, computer to run slow or freeze. These include “Spyware”, “Adware”, “Malware”, “Trojans”, “Popup Ads”, “Worms”, Web Bugs, Monitoring Software and others. Fortunately there are good removal tools that will remove Spyware, Adware and other viruses from your computer. Unfortunately the problem is some of these threats mask themselves as Anti Spyware and Antivirus software. This means you have to be carefull and not go download just any software outhere.

Bottom Line - How To Remove Spyware, Adware and Malware? Use a good Spyware/Adware/Malware/Trojan/Virus remover. I personally used many programs for threat removal. It is surprising how many of these so called solutions are actually ineffective at scanning, detecting and removing these threats from computers. It’s a good idea to use one that’s popular because you can be sure that it is not a threat masking itself as Anti Spyware or Anti Virus and because it has been tested in the field by many users. Each of the Anti Spyware products I selected here fall into that category, although Spyware Cease and AdWareAlert are the most popular. Spyware Cease detects the widest variety of threats, while AdwareBot comes in a solid second. Spyware Cease has a very high satisfaction rate and gets the nod as my top choice.

Side-By-Side Comparison

	Spyware Cease	AdwareBot	AdWareALERT	Norton Internet Security
Overall Rating	98/100	94/100	86/100	82/100
FREE Spyware Scan				No
Website	Visit Website	Visit Website	Visit Website	Visit Website
Features
Ease of Use
Effectiveness
Support

Features

	Spyware Cease	AdwareBot	AdWareALERT	Norton Internet Security
Control Startup Applications
Home Page Protection
Real Time Protection
Severity of Infection
Block Cookies
Auto Updates
Scan Scheduler

Detection & Removal

	Spyware Cease	AdwareBot	AdWareALERT	Norton Internet Security
Spyware
Adware
Keyloggers
ActiveX Controls
Toolbars
Tracking Cookies
Dialers
Malware
Browser Hijack (BHO)
Blocks Malicious Web Content
Trojans
Worms

Technical Support

	Spyware Cease	AdwareBot	AdWareALERT	Norton Internet Security
Email
Help Files
Live Support
FAQ’s

Supported Operating Systems

	Spyware Cease	AdwareBot	AdWareALERT	Norton Internet Security
Windows Vista
Windows XP
Mac

Totals

	Spyware Cease	AdwareBot	AdWareALERT	Norton Internet Security
Features	25/25	24/25	19/25	18/25
Ease Of Use	24/25	23/25	21/25	19/25
Repairs	25/25	24/25	25/25	25/25
Support	24/25	23/25	21/25	20/25
Overall Rating	98/100	94/100	86/100	82/100
FREE Spyware Scan				No
Website	Visit Website	Visit Website	Visit Website	Visit Website

If you don’t find any spyware or adware on your computer and your computer is still slow it is likely that you have a problem with your registry. Here’s how to speed up your computer.