Month: September 2014

And, speaking of the new Start Menu and interface…

Need to clean and optimize your PC? Now you can with SlimCleaner – Free!

SlimCleaner – Free

Clean & optimize your PC with a crowd-sourced approach.

SlimCleaner is the world’s first software that lets you clean and optimize Windows systems using a crowd-sourced approach. SlimCleaner uses aggregated-cloud feedback to recommend optimal settings for programs, start-ups and services.

SlimCleaner uses what’s called “authoritative ranking” to ensure that the ratings for your programs are accurate and that they reflect what people really think. It works by weighing the ratings of each contributor against their previous levels of accuracy and against the ratings of high-ranking users.

What it does: SlimCleaner is the first software to use social networking for PC repair and optimization.

SlimCleaner combines the industry’s fastest PC cleaning engine with a community of users who provide real-time feedback to improve computer performance. SlimCleaner uses social networking and community-sourced feedback to tell people what’s on their computer, and what they can do about it: it’s like having an army of tech-savvy geeks helping consumers maintain their machines.

Cleaner
The industry’s fastest, most robust engine for analyzing and cleaning unneeded files that slow down a PC. SlimCleaner’s new cleaning engine is fast and powerful, analyzing entire computers in as little as one second.

SlimCleanerOptimize
The world’s first cloud-based optimization engine that allows users to adjust startups and services that impact PC performance, using community-powered feedback.
“More Info” Dialogs: Dialog boxes that give detailed information about what an item on a PC does and how the community views it, including peer reviews, “what should I do?” and comments from other users.

Granular Controls: Adjustable filters let users identify unneeded software and startups in seconds.

Badges: In addition to a personalized Wall, registered users earn badges and rewards based on various factors such as accuracy of their ratings. The Wall contains users’ personal profiles, ratings’ history, comments and trust network – whom they trust and who trusts them.

SlimWare AV Cloud Access: Lets users scan startup vectors for viruses and view results from multiple antivirus engines.

SlimCleanerUninstaller

The first community-powered uninstaller with access to SlimWare Utilities’ community feedback, reviews and comments. SlimCleaner uses a real-time stream from the cloud to compare against community feedback and make recommendations about which applications to keep or remove.

SlimCleanerSoftware Updater

Lets users check for updates to the software on their PC and install those updates directly from SlimCleaner. SlimCleaner checks and installs updates for tens of thousands of commonly used software programs. Software updates are downloaded from SlimWare Utilities’ cloud, and all updates are scanned for viruses using CloudScan technology, SlimWare Utilities’ proprietary system of scanning files with multiple antivirus engines.

SlimCleanerIntelligent Disk Defrag

Allows users to run a personalized defrag based on their specific PC hardware. SlimCleaner will identify a PC’s hardware configuration and allow users to start a defrag based on settings intelligently determined by SlimCleaner based on that individual PC.

SlimCleanerDisk Tools

Easy to use disk utilities that allow you to manage, clean, and secure both internal and removable media using state of the art technology. Identify the data clogging up your drives or securely wipe sensitive information using a visually intuitive design.

Disk Analyzer Disk Analyzer provides a visual display of a PC’s hard drive so that consumers can analyze the contents and easily identify what’s taking up disk space. Disk Analyzer reads the contents of a drive to flag large files that are taking up an extraordinary amount of space, giving consumers the option to remove them. Users have the ability to view files by directory or file type. This feature is especially useful for consumers who use Ultrabooks and solid state drives, which offer less storage space and make it more important to have a clean, efficient drive.

Disk Wiper Disk Wiper is a clean-up tool that overwrites the raw sectors of a drive with random data to securely erase data that users would like to dispose of. In “free space” mode, Drive Wiper overwrites sectors that house unwanted data, left over from deleted files, with random data. This process secures the drive by making previously deleted files unreadable, without harming any files that actually exist. In “entire drive” mode, secondary partitions (NOT the C:\ drive) can be completely wiped of both currently-existing files and previously-deleted files.

SlimCleaner Solid-State Drive Optimization:

Allows users to optimize the layout of files on their solid-state drives to speed-up loading programs and opening documents. The intelligent defrag system works with solid state drives by organizing files into logically sequential sectors while minimizing wear on the drive.

SSD Optimization means logically defragging the hard drive, so that to Windows, files are stored in logically sequential sectors. This process gets rid of the overhead Windows incurs when files are stored in non-logically-sequential sectors, and makes it easier and faster for the machine to load programs and open documents. Improvements in solid-state drive write cycles and endurance makes SSD optimization a good way to enhance solid state performance.

SlimCleanerDuplicate Finder

Provides users with a quick, automated way to find and eliminate unnecessary duplicate files that can clutter and slow down a hard drive. The duplicate file finder wipes out extra or unneeded copies of files — including text files, videos, music files, etc. — that can take up space. The feature includes settings to allow for different levels of analysis.

The duplicate finder feature includes the company’s new “IntelliMatch Scan” engine, which uses SlimWare Utilities’ IntelliMatch technology to identify all duplicates. The engine works similar to a high-end anti-virus to read the various parameters of each file and accurately identify all duplicates across an unlimited amount of drives.

SlimCleanerHijack Log

Scan for startup items, toolbars, BHOs, ActiveX controls, browser plug-ins and other third-party or malicious items that can “hijack” or modify a system. Get direct access to SlimWare’s cloud of antivirus scanners, or alternatively, VirusTotal, using the VirusTotal public API.

SlimCleanerWindows Tools

Conveniently organizes system tools and settings in one easy interface. See all the windows tools such as device manager, performance monitor, security settings, restore settings, system Information and much more.

Yep… with Lixux Desktops expanding, especially with the success of the Chromebook, Microsoft had better get Windows 9 right, or they are history!

Microsoft Mustn’t Blow Its Last Chance to Save Windows

eWeek – By: Mike Elgan – “The foundation of Microsoft’s success as a company is Windows. When PCs went mainstream in the 1990s, Windows was top dog. Microsoft grabbed the lead way back then and hung on to it ever since.

With Windows as the foundation, Microsoft built empires around its Office productivity suite and other application software platforms, along with online services as well as peripheral and system hardware.

Fast forward to the present day and Android and iOS: Android and mobile applications rule the world. In the United States, for example, Android and iOS together hold 94 percent of the smartphone market. Windows Phone owns just 3.6 percent.

The good news is that Microsoft still dominates desktop operating system market share. The bad news is that Microsoft is also losing market share on the desktop, even as PC sales level off.

Microsoft recently dropped barely below 90 percent desktop market share (89.96 percent share). Apple’s OS X is rising, but still far behind with 8.34 percent share.

Microsoft’s biggest current advantages are vendor and consumer lock-in. People have invested in Windows software and hardware and have invested time in mastering Windows and related enterprise platforms.

But these advantages won’t last. New users are focusing on mobile devices, including tablets, and are especially focused on multi-touch user interfaces. Enterprises are embracing Apple mobile devices big time.

Apple will gradually move most of its current desktop and laptop users running OS X over to iOS. And if Microsoft isn’t careful, the enterprise and business markets will follow Apple down this path.

Apple is rumored, for example, to be working on a 13-inch iPad. But even if those rumors are false, there’s no question that Apple will eventually ship big-screen touch devices that work like or even run iOS.

Microsoft’s Best Strategy for Desktop Computing

Microsoft executive Stephen Elop talked on Sept. 2 at Microsoft’s recent Australian Partner Conference about the company’s strategy for competing against Apple in the future.

One part of that strategy is already being implemented, he said: Microsoft is getting ready to mass produce Perceptive Pixel computers, which are those large touch-screen devices you see on the cable news shows. Microsoft acquired Perceptive Pixel in 2012.

The computers that this company makes used to cost about $80,000. Now, they start at around $7,500. (Microsoft sells an 82-inch and a 55-inch Touch Device.) Microsoft is working on ways to drive the cost down further, according to recent news reports. That could involve a combination of smaller-screen-size options, the fall in component prices and the economies of scale that come from higher volumes and mass production.

Microsoft has repeatedly missed opportunities in the past 20 years. The company was late to the Internet, late or wrong on mobile, late to the cloud, late to the mobile media player market, late to the smartphone market and late to the tablet market.”

In almost every case, Microsoft entered into markets after it was too late for even a great product to gain enough market share to make a difference.”

Imagine a helium-filled 10 terabyte hard drive, that YOU can out in your own PC! Awesome!

Western Digital unveils world’s first 10TB hard drive: Helium-filled, shingled recording

ExtremeTech – By: Sebastian Anthony – “In what can only be described as the hard drive equivalent of Game of Thrones, Western Digital’s HGST has announced the world’s first 10-terabyte hard drive: the helium-filled Ultrastar He10. This comes just a few weeks after Seagate announced initial availability of its 8TB air-filled hard drive, which at the time was the largest hard drive in the world. There’s no word on pricing yet but Western Digital says, somewhat unbelievably, that the 10TB drive will have the lowest cost-per-gigabyte and power consumption-per-gigabyte of any drive on the market.

In a bumper press release, WD’s HGST subsidiary announced a bunch of new products and initiatives — but here are the three top headlines that stood out: a) HGST is sampling a helium-filled 10TB hard drive, b) there’s also an 8TB helium-filled drive that will come to market a bit earlier than the 10TB unit, and c) WD now has a standard air-filled 6TB hard drive (the Ultrastar 7K6000). Let’s take these in order.

Western Digital’s new 10TB hard drive uses the same HelioSeal technology that debuted with WD’s first 6TB hard drive in November 2013. HelioSeal essentially means that helium is hermetically sealed inside the drive — it can never get out, and air (and other contaminants) can never get in. In short, a helium atmosphere provides a lot less resistance than normal air, allowing for more platters (up to eight, I believe) while still using less power. Western Digital’s own figures put the power consumption of helium-filled drives at 23% less than its own conventional air-filled drives. Multiplied out over the thousands of drives that you might have in a data center, and you’re talking big energy savings.

Curiously, HGST’s 10TB drive uses shingled magnetic recording (SMR) to increase areal density, while the 8TB drive uses standard perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR). HGST says the performance of SMR isn’t yet up to that of PMR, so the drive is being marketed for cloud and cold storage, where access and read/write speeds aren’t as important. This video from Seagate explains SMR rather nicely:

While the 10TB drive is being sampled (meaning it won’t be on the market for a few months yet), WD also has a helium-filled 8TB Ultrastar He8 drive that’s being “qualified by Netflix, Promise, and “other top OEMs and cloud customers around the world.” The He8 uses seven big platters (1.2 terabytes each I think), but is otherwise no different from the earlier He6 6TB or upcoming He10 10TB models. This is presumably the drive that WD is pitching against Seagate’s own 8TB drive, which went into qualification back in July.

Finally, WD is now shipping a standard air-filled 6TB drive, the Ultrastar 7K6000. This drive is mostly significant because it has just five platters, each clocking in at 1.2TB. This makes Western Digital the “areal density leader” apparently, implying that Seagate hasn’t yet discovered the secret sauce to shipping drives with 1.2TB platters.

Price-wise, we sadly don’t have much to go on. The air-filled Ultrastar 7K6000 should start popping up online today, priced at around $400. The original helium-filled 6TB Ultrastar He6 seems to now be down to around $500. There’s no price on the 8TB Ultrastar He8, but I’m sure it’ll be upwards of $1,000 when it starts shipping in commercial quantities. Your guess is as good as mine on HGST’s 10TB drive, but it won’t be cheap (and thus I have no idea how the company can claim to have the lowest cost-per-gigabyte).”

Sigh. I have had to rebuild my whole home infrastructure this weekend. I have had to spent a lot of time doing that, and, I have an all day meeting at work tomorrow. so, tune in this coming weekend!