boot

SkiTech review: Tecnica Dragon 120 Ski Boots

I have skied since I was 12-years old, and over the years have cycled through just about every make of boot available: San Marco, Dalbello, Tecnica, Lange, Dolomite, Rossignol, etc. Over the past few months, however, I have fallen in love with the Tecnica Dragon 120 HiPerFit ski boot. It is by far the best boot I have ever worn.

Though Tecnica was kind enough to let me use its Dragon 120 ski boot for the second half of the 2008 ski season, it wasn't until I put the boot through its paces in Las Lenas, Argentina, that I fully discovered just how pliant and powerful the boot is. The Tecnica Dragon 120 HiPerFit ski boot is flexible when you need to flex, and stiff when you need it stiff. By simply rolling my ankles into a turn, the Dragons seemed to fuse with my skis (both Volkl AC4s and K2 Apache Recons).

I've never found it as easy to ski blistering hard with my boots catering to my whims, rather than fighting them. Such are the Tecnica Dragon 120 ski boots. They are amazing.

It wasn't always this way. I've skied Tecnicas before (including the Diablos last year) and, while I found them enjoyable, they weren't nearly as comfortable and high performance as the Dragons. This is the best boot Tecnica has made in many years, and puts the company ahead of Lange, Salomon, and other boot manufacturers that had surpassed Tecnica in recent years.

The secret? It's in the technology, as Tecnica boasts:… Read more

Boot your computer from a CD

Booting from CD is one of those computer functions that everyone seems to assume you know how to do. Watch this video, then read this quick tip, and you too will know.

You may be able to just boot from CD without doing anything. Put a bootable CD in the drive, restart the computer, and see. If it doesn't work for you, here's what to try next:

The BIOS is the part of a PC that boots up first and figures out where the operating system is. You can usually access it by pressing a function key during … Read more

Make your PC boot faster with Startup Delayer

Tired of waiting an eternity for your computer to boot? Malware could be the culprit, so make sure to run anti-spyware software. But another cause of slow booting is all the software that's trying to run the moment Windows starts. Startup Delayer takes a clever approach to this by letting you delay selected programs.

For example, I need my anti-virus and desktop-search programs to run right away, but Adobe Reader Speed Launcher? iTunesHelper? LightScribe Control Panel? They can wait. Using Startup Delayer, I can configure programs like those to run at, say, 2-minute intervals, starting a full 15 minutes … Read more

Insider Secrets: Run Windows on a Mac

Watch the video on CNET TV, then come back here for the written recap.

We've shown you how to run Windows on a Mac using BootCamp under Tiger. But Boot Camp is included in OS X Leopard. And it's a little smoother.

First gather the things you need. One Mac with OS X Leopard installed. One copy of your OS X Leopard disk. And a copy of Windows XP or Vista, which you have legally purchased.

If you're not on a laptop, make sure you have a USB keyboard. And then: Back up your data!!

Good--now you'… Read more

Intego questions Symantec's use of name

In a statement issued Tuesday, Macintosh security company Intego accused Symantec of infringing on its copyright. At issue is the new box copy for Norton Antivirus for Macintosh. In the upper right corner, Symantec has prominently placed the words "Dual Protection," a reference to the product's use on both the Mac OS X and Windows operating systems when using Apple Boot Camp.

The Austin, Texas-based Intego said in a press release, "Intego is the owner of a trademark registration for the mark DP DUAL PROTECTION in France (registered on January 17, 2007) and an international trademark … Read more

Should enterprises worry about cold boot attacks?

Late last month, researchers at Princeton made headlines when they published a paper exposing weaknesses in PC encryption technologies. It seems that DRAMs retain resident data for several minutes after PCs are shut down. This vulnerability can lead to "cold boot attacks" that can expose any information stored in PC memory--including encryption keys. Using several different types of attacks, researchers were able to exploit this vulnerability to defeat several disk encryption systems including BitLocker (Microsoft Windows), FileVault (Apple Macintosh), and TrueCrypt (Open Source). Read more about this security research here. (PDF)

The Princeton report renewed a well-understood problem … Read more

SkiTech review: Tecnica Diablo Magma HiPerFit ski boot

If there is a perfect ski boot, it may well be the Tecnica Diablo Magma HiPerFit. We evaluated a range of boots from Nordica, Lange, Head, and Dalbello, but this Tecnica boot took top prize from each of the four reviewers that evaluated it. This boot gets my vote as the best ski boot of 2007, though it had stiff competition, especially from Lange. (It's perhaps not surprising that I liked it so much since I have actually been evaluating it off and on for nearly two years.)

Arguably, there is no more important ski technology than the boot. To drill the bumps or come out flying through the powder, you have to wear a boot that responds to your every move. If you haven't skied for years then you won't appreciate just how responsive a boot can be. In the case of the Tecnica Diablo Magma HiPerFit, I began to think it was reading my thoughts, though it sometimes erred on the side of flexibility.

Indeed, the thing that really sets this ski boot apart is its flexibility. I don't just mean it flexes a little. I'm talking about insane flexibility.… Read more

Ubuntu Linux: Built-in apps get an "A", wireless support an "F"

It didn't take long after installing Canonical Ltd.'s Ubuntu 7.10 version of Linux for me to decide I liked what I saw. A quick tour of the Applications, Places, and System menus indicated that converting from Windows to Linux would be relatively seemless. The only fly in the ointment was my inability to get any of three wireless adapters to work with the OS.

World-class applications without paying a dime I expected to find the Mozilla Firefox browser bundled with Ubuntu, and seeing links on the Applications*Office menu to OpenOffice.org's Database, Presentation, Spreadsheet, and … Read more

Dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu Linux

Running Linux from a CD in Windows doesn't get you much closer to computing in a Windows-less world. To make Windows and Linux and either-or proposition, you have to set your PC to dual-boot. With Canonical Ltd.'s Ubuntu 7.10, a.k.a. Gutsy Gibbon, the repartitioning is done for you during installation.

Before you install Ubuntu, create a full system backup. Creating a system restore point may not be sufficient, because a misstep during installation could render Windows unbootable. Make sure that you've got your restore CD/DVD handy, and that your system is set to … Read more