Brandon Dimmel

Another Thanksgiving is upon us, and that means so too is another round of dog-eat-dog Black Friday mayhem. And as usual, there are plenty of rumors circulating about which companies will offer the biggest and best deals. Let's get things started ... with high-end hardware maker, Apple. Maybe it's just me, but it seems Black Friday is now a bigger deal than Thanksgiving, a holiday as old as Puritans. But as the first major bargain day in the long lead-up to Christmas Eve, Black Friday means a green weekend for most retailers. Rumor: iPods Slashed 30% Kicking things off this year is Apple, which ... (view more)

Is Microsoft already looking beyond Windows 7 to Windows 8? Well, it can't hurt to be prepared. In a recent presentation at the Los Angeles Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky revealed two interesting slides that CNET ... News believes confirms the next major release from the Redmond-based firm is pegged for 2012. There's great value for Microsoft in being up front with its home and business customers. For one, being prepared keeps stock value high. Second, it keeps consumer confidence at a peak, and although the initial knee-jerk reaction might be to wonder if news of ... (view more)

Default Programs Editor Default Programs Editor is a powerful but simple file association utility for Windows. It is a context menu editor, an autoplay editor, and default programs association editor, essentially, it gives you the ability to edit ... the settings in the Default Programs Control Panel page. It's a replacement for the File Types dialog in Windows XP, and brings some key features of TweakUI to Windows Vista and Windows 7. http://defaultprogramseditor.com Windows Easy Transfer Use Windows Easy Transfer to copy your files, photos, music, e-mail, settings, and more from a computer ... (view more)

All My Apps All your applications can be installed on your new PC with one click. Should you need to reinstall your system, Allmyapps takes care of reinstalling all your favorite applications in the blink of an eye. Extremely handy in the age of ... spyware and flimsy laptop and netbook casing! http://www.allmyapps.com Format Recovery For Email Format Recovery for Email is free software that can recover email from a damaged dbx file or deleted dbx file or re-installed Windows drive. The mail fragment can be saved as an EML file. It supports Outlook Express and Foxmail format. Even if the file ... (view more)

The recently-released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is not only smashing records for video games at most electronics retailers, but it's also raising the bar for home releases within the wider entertainment industry. All of that buzz has brought ... more attention to the game's controversial elements, none more captivating than a level where players fill the shoes of terrorists. It was just last week that we reported on the controversy surrounding the game , which parents should note is clearly marked "M" for Mature (18+). Not only is the game violent, but to some critics it's unnecessarily ... (view more)

Although the next version of Microsoft's very popular Office software isn't set to ship until the new year, the Redmond-based firm recently unveiled a public beta allowing interested users to try new editions of PowerPoint, FrontPage, Word and more. ... Microsoft revealed the beta at the PDC developer event going on right now in Los Angeles. The beta is currently available and can be installed and run alongside older versions of Office, allowing the user to take a closer look at what's new for 2010. (Source: pcworld.com ) So, what new features can we expect in Microsoft Office 2010? First of all ... (view more)

Create Private Torrents This article explains how to share large files with either your friends privately or with anyone publicly using Bittorrent and uTorrent. Creating Torrents and sharing files can be a risky business, so it's important you're ... prepared. http://www.bootstrike.com Access Linux Files From Windows Want to know how to get safe and quick access to alternative file systems? DiskInternals Linux Reader is a new easy way to do this. This program plays the role of a bridge between your Windows and Ext2/Ext3 Linux file systems. This easy-to-use tool runs under Windows and allows you ... (view more)

XP Quick Fix Plus There are a lot of excellent, free, Windows repair tools around the Internet. But there are times when you want just one quick fix; for example, when you are under a virus attack and you just want to enable the Task Manager or the ... Registry Editor so you can fight the virus back, or when some new installation changed your XP behavior and My Documents opens on every start up. This is the right time to draw XP Quick Fix Plus with 40 common Windows XP problems fixes. http://leelusoft.blogspot.com Gmail Drive GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual file ... (view more)

A couple weeks ago, we reported on Microsoft's plans to unveil special Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm applications for its popular Xbox Live online service. They've now been officially set live on Live, and they're being heralded as handy ways to ... keep in touch with friends. For those unfamiliar with Xbox Live, it's Microsoft's online service for the Xbox 360 console. It allows those who subscribe to the service (about $60 per year) the ability to play games with one another, chat, download free (and not free) games and movies, and upload music and videos to the system's hard drive. Although ... (view more)

Less than a day after its last Patch Tuesday release Microsoft was forced to admit the existence of a Windows 7 zero day bug affecting the Server Message Block, or SMB protocol used for sharing files and printers. It's serious, too: according to ... reports, the vulnerability could allow a hacker to remotely crash Windows 7 (or, alternatively, a Windows Server 2008 R2 system). We first reported on this issue last week, but at the time the Redmond-based software giant had yet to weigh in. Microsoft responded to the issue by releasing an advisory that describes in closer detail exactly what Windows ... (view more)