Category Archives: computing

Firefox is Blocking Bitchute

Posted on 2020-08-28 by jimbelton

My Windows laptop was in bad shape this morning. After manually cleaning up Firefox, I restarted it and discovered it had automatically upgraded itself. The new version claimed to be faster. One of the first sites I tried to open … Continue reading →

Posted in computing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Windows: Goodbye, McAfee, Hello Avast!

Posted on 2018-04-05 by jimbelton

Windows 10 started lagging for me again. Checking the Task Manager, I saw that McAfee Module Core Service was using huge amounts of memory and disk was 100% again (probably due to swapping/thrashing). It is time to remove McAfee. To … Continue reading →

Posted in computing | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Windows 10 Performance: Disk at 100%

Posted on 2018-03-30 by jimbelton

Windows 10 was lagging like crazy this morning. I opened the Task Manager (using Ctrl-Alt-Del) and discovered that the disk was running 100% of the time. I tried a bunch of things described in How to Fix: 100% Disk Usage … Continue reading →

Posted in computing | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Major Security Flaw in Intel CPUs

Posted on 2018-01-03 by jimbelton

Have you heard how the Kernel-memory-leaking Intel processor design flaw forces Linux, Windows redesign? This could be the biggest hardware security flaw I’ve ever heard of. Programmers are scrambling to overhaul the open-source Linux kernel’s virtual memory system. Meanwhile, Microsoft … Continue reading →

Posted in computing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Free Software for Windows

Posted on 2018-01-01 by jimbelton

I’m a big fan of free software. Now that I’m (at least temporarily) back on Windows (10), I’m finding the Windows equivalents of all of the applications I grew to love on Linux. Here’s a list of them, which I’ll … Continue reading →

Posted in computing | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Windows 10 for People Who Hate Windows

Posted on 2017-12-28 by jimbelton

I hate Windows. I haven’t run it since the day my Windows Vista laptop took an update and bricked itself. Since then, I’ve run Ubuntu and Linux Mint Debian Edition. I just got a new Dell Inspirion 17/5000, which comes … Continue reading →

Continue reading →

Posted in computing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Windows 7: Time for an Enema

Posted on 2016-07-05 by jimbelton

I had to use a Windows 7 lap top that was unusably slow. Here’s how I got it performing slightly better (only one of the two CPUs is being pegged by crappy Windows 7 services now). To see what’s running: … Continue reading →

Posted in computing | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Don’t Buy CYBERPOWERPC and Best Buy

Posted on 2015-04-18 by jimbelton

Here’s a cautionary tale for you. My son bought a $2300 CYBERPOWERPC gaming computer from Best Buy. It had a hardware failure after 15 days (one day after the government mandated 14 day return policy). Best Buy sold him an … Continue reading →

Posted in computing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Goodbye, Freebase, Hello, Wikidata

Posted on 2015-03-08 by jimbelton

Sad news. Freebase, a community created database of metadata on many topics, is shutting down this year, as announced here by Google, who bought the company that ran the freebase website: https://plus.google.com/109936836907132434202/posts/bu3z2wVqcQc Fortunately, it looks like the data will be … Continue reading →

Posted in computing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Repairing the Gateway NE57003h Laptop

Posted on 2015-01-04 by jimbelton

My Gateway NE57003h Laptop got dropped on its power connector, and ever since has been fiddly to keep connected. Lately, it started getting hard to keep it powered overnight, so I decided the time had come to repair it. If … Continue reading →

Posted in computing | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments