processing

We all complain that booting up our PCs takes much longer than it should. With Windows 8 on the horizon, Microsoft is trying to streamline and speed up the whole boot process.

In the latest edition of the Building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft program manager Billie Sue Chafins explained yesterday how the company strove to make some long overdue improvements to the much-maligned boot experience and bring it "into the 21st century."

As described in a previous blog, Microsoft is promising a faster boot in Windows 8 courtesy of a new hybrid technology that keeps the PC in … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Researchers at the Black Hat security conference today revealed two ways the Square payment system, which turns any iPhone, iPad or Android into a point-of-sale credit card processor, could be used for fraud.

Adam Laurie and Zac Franken, directors of Aperture Labs, discovered that they can transfer money from a stolen card into their bank account associated with Square without having to swipe a card through the Square dongle card reader. To do this, they used code written by Laurie that lets them feed magnetic stripe data from a stolen card into a microphone and convert it into a … Read more

While iTunes itself is not a tremendous processing resource hog (about 1 to 3 percent CPU usage and 11 to 13 threads when idle), leaving the iTunes Store as your active selection in iTunes can jump the CPU usage to between 6 and 10 percent and add two to three threads when idle.

If you're needing to process anything requiring a lot of power and you've got iTunes open, being sure that the iTunes Store is not the active selection in the iTunes sidebar is a good place to get some extra oomph. Mac OS X Hints user … Read more

With the Web having so many interesting things to look at, it can be difficult to get work done. Since you can already use Google Chrome to check your e-mail, the weather, and news stories, why not try to get some work done in it, too? Here's a serving of five distraction-free (and free in cost) text editors available in the Chrome Web Store that you can use right inside of your browser, yet still save your work for later.

Write Space

This app offers that blank slate you often hear about. Working offline is no problem, … Read more

We've had the unfortunate experience of working for employers who did not clearly define their business processes. The consequences of this are numerous: training is a nightmare, important tasks fall through the cracks, nothing gets documented, efficiency suffers, and employees are frustrated. Creating flowcharts that clearly illustrate your business's processes can save a lot of time, money, and headaches. Bizagi Process Modeler makes it easy to create attractive flowcharts that outline every aspect of your business.

The program's interface is sleek, resembling recent versions of Microsoft Office products. There are tabbed menus across the top and an … Read more

Later this month I'll be canceling my subscription to a leading security suite that runs on two of my home-office PCs. I'll replace it with Microsoft's free Security Essentials, which I've been using on my notebook since I bought it two years ago. I realized several months ago that I simply no longer needed to spend money for the convenience of an all-in-one security app.

That got me thinking: Is there any software that the average PC user needs to pay for? Most of us bought our current operating system--usually Windows or Mac OS X--as … Read more

Two questions: 1) Have you ever tried to delete or rename a file or folder, only to have your own PC tell you no, you can't do that because it's locked by another program or process? 2) Don't you have enough frustration in your life without software piling on? EMCO UnLock IT takes care of Question 2 by dealing with Question 1. It's freeware that can unlock files and folders that are locked by system processes or other programs when you receive an Access Denied error message. It does this by attempting to close any processes … Read more

Office 365, announced today, gives professionals and small businesses a subscription service that lets them work from anywhere using familiar-feeling Web-enabled applications. Combined with hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync, Office 365 is designed to enable users to share, collaborate, and communicate in the cloud. In our testing during the beta, we found that the tools worked well across the board (with some hiccups), and expect that many people who use Office on desktop Macs and PCs will appreciate the familiar look and feel, which should help them get up and running quickly.

Obviously, Office 365 is going to … Read more

The U.S. Congress took the first major step today toward updating a 1986 law, crafted in the pre-Internet era of telephone modems and the black-and-white Macintosh Plus, to protect the privacy of Americans who use mobile phones, Web e-mail, and services like Google Docs, Flickr, and Picasa.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of the Judiciary committee, introduced sweeping legislation that would, in many cases, require police to obtain a search warrant to access private communications and the locations of mobile devices.

"Updating this law to reflect the realities of our time is essential to ensuring that our … Read more