The ‘Application’ Key

Most Windows compliant keyboards have a rarely used key between the Windows Key and the Ctrl key to the right of the space bar. This key can be used to bring up what is called a context menu for whatever is selected at the time. Context menu is the name for the menu that pops up when you click the right mouse button.

For example if you press the key when you have Word open, you will see the following.

Or if you have a drive icon selected in My Computer, you will see something similar to this (although, your menu items may differ from mine):

If you ever have problems with your mouse not working, but you still need to use your PC, this key can be very useful. In a future post I will give instructions on reinstalling faulty mouse software using only the keyboard.

Some say you need a super computer to run Crysis, Crytek beg to differ.

The Experiment

Over Christmas we took the time for a little in-house experiment. With only a limited budget of around US $900 we wanted to set up a brand new machine that can handle Crysis on High settings. We should note that Very High settings are reserved to keep Crysis future-proofed, just like Ultra was in Far Cry.
Together with EA we looked in shops around the world and bought the hardware parts to put together our machine starting from scratch. While we had a budget in mind, we wanted to still make sure this machine would have top-notch hardware such as a multicore processor or a DirectX10 graphics card.
The Videos
As you’ll see from the 8 minutes of video we recorded, Crysis looks absolute fabulous on High settings with this configuration and runs very smoothly on a 1280×720 resolution. They show different locations from the Crysis Singleplayer Campaign with everything set to High.

The Configuration

Below you find a rough list of parts we purchased so you can see and check for yourself about the total costs of such a high-end computer. The prices may vary from country

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Let’s say your computer started acting funny and you have no idea what’s going wrong. Maybe it slowed down, or a program or device isn’t working like it should.

Windows Vista can run a diagnostic report to find any obvious problems and save you the time and aggravation of hunting the problem down yourself, especially if you’re not an IT pro. (more…)

There is little doubt that 64-bit architectures are the future, as far as the parallel evolution of processors and operating systems goes. But when it comes down to Windows, the 32-bit version of the platform will survive not only with Windows Vista, but also with Windows 7. At this point in time, among the scarce details made available by Microsoft about the forthcoming iteration of Windows, to follow Vista, the only sure thing is that Windows 7 will come in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors.

According to estimates from the Redmond company, by mid 2008, the install base of the Windows operating system would surpass the 1 billion milestone worldwide. But the vast majority of those Windows copies will still be 32-bit, largely just Windows XP and Windows Vista. (more…)

The Microsoft Group Policy Team invites everyone to send in suggestions for Explain text changes of any kind (check the link).

Just send your suggestions to “gptext(@)microsoft(.)com”.

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The iPhone, that extremely popular gadget built by the Cupertino company Apple, is one of the latest devices threatened by some malicious packages, as Orla Cox of Symantec today warned. What’s interesting is that this threat, if we can name it so, is not as dangerous as it may sound, because the only thing it does is to harm some of the applications deployed on the affected iPhone. The malicious file comes as a firmware update and is named “iPhone firmware 1.1.3 prep”. Its creators described the package “an important system update; install this before updating to the new 1.1.3 firmware”, according to the Symantec official. (more…)