Though both the PCs and the Macs retain the feature of running an operating system, the operating systems that can be installed on each computer vary. An operating system is a collection of software that runs the computer while it is on. Nearly any operating system can be installed on a PC, including Windows and Linux. The only operating system that cannot be legally installed on a PC is the Mac OS. The Mac OS comes in several versions, and a new version is released nearly every year. Most PCs include an operating system pre-installed. Macs come pre-installed with Mac OS X, a series of Mac OS operating systems that have been used since September 13, 2000. The current Mac OS X version is Mac OS X 10.5.4 Leopard, and a future version of Mac OS X is planned for release sometime during the summer of 2009. Through the assistance of Boot Camp, a program that has been included with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and will be included in future versions, users are allowed to install different operating systems onto their Mac through the creation of partitions on their hard drive. Just as an operating system is a form of software, security programs are also a vital form of software for a computer.

Security is another issue between the PCs and the Macs. Both PCs and Macs have the ability to log onto the internet, and when they have fully accessed the internet, they can be easily bombarded by viruses, spyware, and adware; which are all harmful to a computer, whether it is a PC or a Mac. PCs never come with security software, and the Windows operating systems do not include security. Macs, however, have built in, high-level security that is built into Mac OS X because the operating system is coded in Unix, a form of coding language. Along with software differences, PCs and Macs have differences in hardware.

Hardware-wise, Macs and PCs are very different. The most noticeable design feature on the Mac is a glowing Apple logo. Macs usually have a glowing Apple logo on the lid of notebooks or the side of desktops. The design of a PC varies by the company that developed it. Ever since Apple has started using the PowerPC G4 Processor platform, they have started to use more environmentally-friendly materials in their Macs, such as aluminum and glass. Most Macs these days are made of aluminum, and have a glass monitor. For one to upgrade the hardware of a PC or a Mac is not uncommon. Hardware upgrades allow computers to run faster and more efficiently. Most upgrades on a laptop are for RAM, yet on the Apple MacBook, upgrading the hard drive, normally a difficult feat on a PC, is easy. Apple's professional desktop, the Mac Pro, contains no visible internal wires, and there are very few situations where a screw driver is required for an upgrade. Though the PC and Mac are very similar and different in scores of ways, they have made a great impact on the world today.

Computers have been the scaffolds for world-changing innovations since their creation, and they impact the world greatly. I could never imagine the world without computers, and the introduction of PCs and Macs has only opened a door of opportunity for the world, and although they are very different, they have created the path for more advanced technology, and will send mankind further into the future.

Wraith Theme on WindowBlinds

The first application worth looking at is Windows Blinds. Though it's commercial, it's not all that expensive and there is a large number of themes available for it through the Win-Customize website (www.wincustomize.com). Windows Blinds is available from the stardock website (www.stardock.com). It also has the advantage of not requiring lots of dll patching, or anything else that could go wrong like some of the other solutions out there.

Using a theme is as easy as downloading themes then adding them to Window Blinds by double clicking them, then selecting them from a list. The preview it gives is really effective; a large window inside the configurations screen that shows what the desktop would look like skinned (against the wallpaper you have selected).

There are also several options to change the look of the theme including everything from changing the colour, hue, brightness, saturation, and transparency. It is also possible to set up different skins for different programs and this is exceedingly useful as some programs manage to break certain themes. WindowBlinds also has a wallpaper selector and an option to choose from a random wallpaper at certain intervals (such as whenever the user logs on).

The second application worth looking at would be something to sort out the vista style side bar, useful for all those who are sticking to their guns (and XP) until windows 7. There are a number of different options here, from the Thoosje Sidebar to Yahoo widgets, and a vista side bar ported to windows XP.

The third, if you're still using XP is a handy application that acts as an Alt-Tab replacement, giving the 3D switcher of Vista. This is available from Otaku Software (www.otakusoftware.com) and is called TopDesk. Unfortunately it doesn't work well with some Window's Blind's skins, and it's also commercial. There are free options out there as well. Microsoft have an Alt-Tab replacement as part of their powertoys for Windows XP as well as others that can be tracked down with a little work. The best of the free alternatives is a little Japanese application called 'Madotate'. This window manipulation tool started life in 1999, and works in a similar manner to the defunct Microsoft Task Gallery.

Also from Otaku Software is the best of all, a 3D cube that opens up multiple desktops to the user, and does the best job of improving productivity. To get anything better you would have to switch to Linux. Though the version from Otaku Software looks awesome and performs brilliantly, it is nevertheless commercial, and some users might not have the money to fork out for flashy effects. Luckily there is also a free alternative called Yod'm 3D, though it can be quite tough tracking down a link.

Also it's a shame to go to all the trouble of making the desktop look awesome only to let the whole thing down with garish yellow windows XP icons. Fortunately Star-Dock also offer a program called Icon Packager that allows the user to download and replace whole sets of icons at a time.

Finally, it's worth noting that the desktop we're using these days might look nice and shiny, but it's the same old thing that's always been around. Let's face it, it's time for a revolution! Bump Top is a new kind of desktop that takes inspiration from real life desks and allows new levels of interaction with the desktop that goes beyond point and click icons and drop down menus. From throwing around icons to stacking them, spreading them, tiling, pinning them to the sides of the desktop, and even crumpling them up, Bump Top adds something new to desktop interfaces and about time too. As such it's well worth checking out. It's in closed beta at time of writing but should hopefully be out soon. (http://bumptop.com/)

So as we have seen there's no need to be using an ugly desktop in this day and age, and improving one's workspace can only help improve productivity.

Forgot to active Windows Vista and you have three days left and you have misplaced your installation key? The guys at Microsoft themselves give us an easy solution to this problem:

First make sure to switch of any active background anti-virus software and/or registry guard software.

Open the Windows Menu and enter "cmd" into the search field. Then do a right mouse-click on "cmd" and choose "run as Administrator". Confirm the "Nag Screen" should it come up, and at the promt enter: slmgr.vbs -rearm.

Press enter and nothing happens for quite a while. Finally you get a message telling you that your changes won´t take effect until the next reboot. Close everything and reboot. Voilá! You have 30 additional days until activation becomes nessecary. You can do this 3 times.

Note-This is part two of a four part guide.

To Partition Your Hard Drive

You Will Need:

   1. An External Hard Drive
   2. A Kalyway Installation Disk (see first section).
   3. Your Vista recovery disk set.

Instructions

   1. Click the "Start Orb"
   2. Right click on "My Computer"
   3. Click manage
   4. If prompted, type your administrative password or click continue.
   5. In the right pane, click "Disk Management" under "Storage".
   6. In the top pane, right click click your main disk.
   7. Click "Shrink Volume..."
   8. Enter the size of the Partition you want for your Mac installation.  I recommend 25,600 MB (25 GB).
   9. If you are able to shrink the disk the amount you want, then go to the next section.  Otherwise go to step 10.
  10. Put in your kalyway installation DVD, and reboot your computer.
  11. You should see text that says Darwin x86 or similar. If you do, go to step 19.  If not, go to step 12.
  12. Reboot your computer again, and hold F8.
  13. Select enter setup, or enter BIOS.
  14. Find the frame that talks about boot order.
  15. Change the order so that it says cd-rom drive, optical drive, or something similar is first.
  16. Select save and quit.
  17. Your computer should should reboot and say something about Darwin x86.
  18. If not, add a comment detailing your problem, and I shall try to help you.
  19. Wait for it to load (about 5-10 min).
  20. Select your language and click the blue arrow.
  21. Click utilities from the bar at the top.
  22. Select "Disk Utility"
  23. Go to backup.
  24. Drag the icon of your internal hard drive to the source box.
  25. Drag the icon of your external hard drive to the destination box.
  26. Click backup.
  27. After it is done, right click the name of your internal hard drive and click partition.
  28. Select 2 Partitions from the drop down menu.
  29. Enter the size for each one, and name them.  Note: The second partition should be the one you install Mac OSX onto.
  30. On the second one, select Mac extended (Journaled).
  31. On the first one, select MS-DOS.
  32. Click options, then select MBR.
  33. Click partition.
  34. Reboot your computer, and put in the first disk of the set.
  35. Reinstall the operating system, being careful to select the option that lets you perserve the current partitions.
  36. Reboot your computer, and put the kalyway disc back in your optical drive.
  37. Wait for it to load again.
  38. Select your language again.
  39. Go back to disc utility.
  40. Click on backup.
  41. This time, drag the icon of your external hard drive to source, and only the the icon of your vista partition to the destination box.
  42. Click backup.
  43. Restart your computer, and take out the kalyway disc.
  44. Vista should start up, if not, go back to step 34.
  45. Your Hard drive is now partitioned!

Microsoft has recently released a new version of Windows, Vista, (released on January 30, 2007) that has been making people rethink whether they should stay with the Windows operating system. Although there are many pros and cons to Vista, there seems to be more pros than cons this time around. The first con is, the operating system itself takes up a large amount RAM, which means that programs won't be able run as quickly or efficiently. The second con is, Vista crashes a lot and there are incredibly slow loading times, especially during the startup. One pro, is that there is a completely new interface that is more attractive and easier to use. Although this is clearly a just an aesthetic change, it is number one on the list because it is always great to have something prettier to look at. The second pro is… well there really isn't one. There aren't very many pros to Vista and the cons far out weigh the pros.

Apple may be most famous for there iPod and most recently the iPhone, but what most people don't realize is that they have an awesome computer line as well. The current Apple operating system OS X, has many good things and many bad, but it may be just what you are looking for. First, there is the entertainment aspect of computing. If you have a large amount of videos, music, or any other media, OS X makes it very easy to organize it and use in the way that you want. Then you can play them all in iTunes very easily. Second, there is the lack of third-party software. Although there are very good applications made by Apple, not as many companies are programing for Apple. Since Microsoft has been more widely accepted by the work and home community, more programs are available for the Windows operating system. More developers are slowly making software cross-platform for both Mac and PC. Finally, there is that fact that there are absolutely no viruses in OS X. I am not sure how Apple has been able to keep viruses out of there systems, but there is no way at all to get a virus. Unless you use Boot Camp to install Windows on your system, then it is possible. (but why would you want to do that?)

Windows may have been on top for a while, but as time goes on it seems that Apple has begun to move its way up. Apple has a great way of arranging your various media and there are no viruses. Yet, all the Microsoft has is a new GUI. Microsoft may still be better in the workplace, as it has always been, but as a home entertainment system, many people should consider switching.

There are also third party utilities that can give you all the fancy 3D effects of windows Vista, as well as other effects such as Beryl style desktop cubes which also help to increase productivity. Third party vendors provide all the security Windows XP needs with the advantages that if any one security product becomes too bloated, we can switch to a new provider since it's not integrated into the OS like the integrated security systems in Vista.

Alan Turing originally envisaged computers as being machines which could be programmed to emulate any other machine. Microsoft hope to take that away, but limiting what software runs using DRM and other intrusive technologies. By using XP you are keeping control of your own computer and are sending a message to the Microsoft - Hollywood Cartel that they cannot subvert Turing's original and enduring vision for computers as open systems.

How to Draw a Circle

As a mathematical description, circle is a combination of points with the same length from a fixed point. To draw a circle, two things we need. They are the coordinate of center of the circle and radius or diameter of it. Let's now draw our first circle by Solidworks. Let's draw a circle with a center of origin and a radius of 20 mm.

1. Click the sketch button to define a plane on which you will draw. Since our drawing is 2D, any plane can be chosen. I choose top plane as a reference plane.
2. Click the circle button on the toolbar and choose origin as the center point of the circle. Afterthat, drag the circle to the out of the page.
3. By clicking "smart dimension" button , dimension the radius of circle. Since the radius is 20 mm, specify diameter as 40 mm.

How to Draw Filleted Arcs

To draw filleted arcs, we first need a corner of two intersecting lines. As an example, we will filet one corner of 40x40 mm square. Lets first draw the square by using rectangular button on the toolbar.

1. Click the fillet button on the toolbar.
2. Enter the radius of fillet as 5 mm into the fillet parameters space.
3. Choose the corner point which you want to fillet. Be careful here, you should select the point not the sides you want to fillet. After that, Solidworks automatically dimension the filleted arc. Here is the result.

Turning down the visual effects. Your computer is to work, not to entertain you so why do you still use all those visual effects? By the way, all those graphics are just a way for Microsoft to sell more Vista copies, they have no professional use whatsoever. Choose Windows Basic as your Theme and reduce the color depth to 16 bits. Also replace your desktop wallpaper with a solid color instead. Just remember your computer is to work and not to entertain you.

Turn off the indexing tool. Vista has still a long way to go before making a good and fast enough indexing tool. It takes ages and it's very inaccurate the integrated desktop search tool and not only it uses a lot of hard disk space, sometimes up to 10 GB just with temporary files on a 80GB hard disk, but also makes your computer more prone to crashes because of the complexity of the system. If you want some good searches on your computer I suggest Copernic Desktop search instead, but even so... if you can, stay away from desktop search tools.

Clean your hard drive. Uninstall all the software you don't use anymore and delete all the files that are not related to your work right here and right now. Backup them if you think you might need them later. A huge number of files on the hard disk makes it super slow because of the way Windows writes the files in the hard disk. Also a huge number of files makes the disk prone to get fragmented and if you know a thing or two about fragmentation you know it's the number one reason for hard disk failure because of the extra effort to retrieve any piece of information from it.

Defragment the entire hard disk. Windows has a reasonably good defragmentation tool. Use it! If you can afford I suggest you to buy the Diskeeper 2008 because it defragments your disk on the fly.

Use the scheduled tasks to make Windows do all the dirty work for you when you are not using the computer, for example in the evening. This way you have your machine running great all the time. Clean it every week and defragment it every two weeks.

6- Increase your RAM Memory. I use 2.5 GB of it in my laptop and that's good enough.

Increase the number of virtual RAM and Pagination File size. Vista thinks he is good enough to manage this for you but I ensure you it's not. Force the Windows to use the number you give to it. I use 10GB of virtual RAM in my 80GB hard drive. It's not dangerous. Windows used to us 0GB of virtual RAM and that used to make a lot of "Not Enough Memory" messages. This way you can open almost an unlimited number of programs, software and applications with no problem.

Now restart your machine and check the differences. If your computer is not 5 times faster yet, you really need to buy a new one.

Wrong.

I have been using Windows since I started getting into computers as a kid, I cut my teeth on DOS, but moved to Windows 3.1 shortly after. I was with Microsoft through Windows 95, I was there in 98 SE, I remember the Blaster worm, I've been an MS user through and through for over 10 years, and not once had I even considered that there was another operating system out there. Sure, I knew that there were other options, but that doesn't mean I cared about them. I had the almighy, brilliantly supported, GUI driven Windows, why did I need anything else?

And then one day, in the midst of all kinds of success, having a dominating majority of the world's PC users under their thumb, and being the industry standard, along came a little black sheep named Vista. I don't know what anyone in Redmond was thinking, but it obviously wasn't anything to do with using computers, my guess is that they all just sat around drinking cough syrup until the got an idea of what to make this new operating system look like. Vista is an overly bloated, bogged down, under-preforming piece of garbage, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise either hasn't used Vista for any period of time, or is trying to sell you a copy of Vista. The first thing I noticed was that I had no installation media, no recovery discs, nothing. I checked the box, I looked in the flyer to make sure I didn't misread anything, but no, I was right. No discs. Hmmm, not a great start here.... Next I booted it up, and after waiting far longer then what I believe is reasonable on 2 gigabytes of memory, I was treated to the shiny new boot procedure, with shiny new boot splash, and shiny new logon screen, and shiny new desktop, sure everything looks shiny, but is that why I just had to wait over 3 minutes to get Vista to fully load from a cold start?

After getting my user account all set up (thankfully, the process wasn't much different then XP. Much being the key word here.) and getting a couple of basic programs installed (I haven't used Internet Explorer in years, Firefox all the way for me! The only time I let that infernal browser load is when there is no getting around it.) I took a look at what was on my desktop, first thing that caught my eye was where my missing cds were, and I was not impressed at all to see that they were sitting patiently on my hard disk waiting for me to burn them. What the hell is that!?!? You couldn't spring the extra couple nickels to give me discs, so I need to buy and burn them myself? Alright fine, I suppose I it could make some small amount of sense, but most definately not from a consumer point of view. The next problem I hit was the size of the Recovery Disc I was about to burn, it was just enough over a single DVD that I needed to use two. But I can't just use a cd for the extra info, I need to use an entire DVD on less then 500 mb of data, so after a bit of complaing, thats what I did. Next problem came around when I realized what I had just burned... Recovery Discs? I thought I needed an Installation DVD? So a quick round of Googling turns out that I have burned myself a more of less worthless hunk of crap, since any problems I have that require the DVD, Windows simply checks the partition where the recovery media is sitting and uses it instead. Whatever, at least I can recover it should I botch it?

Next step was to load some games and software up, and the first order of business there was the almighty Starcraft. Which didn't work. Neither did Broodwar, Diablo, Diablo 2, or Warcraft (any of them). Turns out, Microsoft decided to change things around in just such a way that Blizzard games don't exactly work anymore. So what about something else? I'll load up Farcry, that is a Microsoft friendly game for sure! Nope, no dice there either. Fine. I'll just load up Photoshop while I look through my games library and decide what to install. What do you mean Photoshop doesn't work either?!?

Alright, I gave it enough chance, time to wipe this thing and replace it with a real OS, XP Pro.

In goes the disc, let it reboot and start from the cd, and it starts copying files over to do the install. But lo and behold, when it rebooted into the GUI portion of the install, it couldn't find any hard drives! Surely Vista couldn't still be making me miserable without even being booted, right? Wrong again. I spent a couple of months dealing with the awful compatiblilty of Vista, while enjoying some of the errors it churned out like how I should contact all these other software companies that made incompatible software, so upon investigating say, Blizzard's web site about Vista compatiblity (the link was given to me by Vista itself) only to discover that Blizzard cannot fix this problem, and it will be something that I might find appearing in other programs too. Somewhere in the development of Vista, Microsoft decided to totally and radically change the makeup of the OS, rendering it obsolete before it was even finished. I followed the leads that I gained from Blizzard explaining that MS changed how things run, and many programs must be rewritten to work properly with Vista, and came across another interesting thing, that hard drive problem I had while trying to install XP could be part of this. Turns out, I was right. If you go buy a newer computer, it'll have a sticker on it somewhere that probably says Designed for Vista, or some crap like that. If you see that logo, find a different machine, MS has remade drivers, and in order for hardware to have maximum compatibiliy with Vista, it needs to have it's drivers totally rebuilt. Which means to make your life easier, Vista machines only ship with shiny new hardware in them. Sounds cool right? Unless that shiny new hardware isn't properly supported by XP....

You make me angry Vista, you make me so angry, I'm.... I'm.... I'm gonna find a new OS!!!!

And along came a wonderful thing, the miracle of being pushed that little bit too far and striking back in your own way. I started learning what else was out there, and in doing so, I was exposed to Ubuntu, one of, if not THE best operating system I have ever had the pleasure of using. It has an incredibly easy way to customize it, and you don't need to worry about messing around with any UX Theme patcher crap, since almost everything in the land of Linux is open source, anyone can modify or add new themes, with little to no technical abiltiy. So I totally converted the entire OS to look completely different. In a matter of minutes too. Ubuntu has a brilliant package management system which frees you from scouring the net in search of the programs, since it has tens of thousands of programs that are maintained and freely available right from your main menu! And the speed! The file systems that Linux uses are just faster the NTFS, hands down. And security wasn't added as an afterthought either, your install is secure from ground up. Hmm, maybe I should start writing a review of Ubuntu.....

I've ranted enough, I think you probably get the point here: Do not get Vista, not for any reason. Even if someone offers you a copy for free, remember: there is a reason its free, do you really want that ugly monster living on your hard drive?

Vista offers the following controls, in addition to Internet Explorer's built-in Parental Controls:

• Windows Vista Web Filter

This controls what websites, downloads and other miscellaneous web usage is allowed.

• Time limits

This controls time curfews on computer usage, in case you are not around to enforce it.

• Games

This setting allows you to limit what type of games can be played on this particular user account.

• Allow and Block Specific Programs

This setting allows you to prevent any other activity in case it doesn't fall in Vista's guidelines, and for other manual fine-tuning.

Vista also has a feature called Activity Viewer, which will show you the top-ten websites visited, blocked, as well as file downloads and attempted (blocked) downloads, any games played (though web-based games have to be managed through the Vista Web Filter), e-mail and instant-messaging events as well. This feature can be engaged independantly of all other parental controls.

To begin using Parental Controls in Vista, simply:

1. Click the Start Orb and left-click on Control Panel. This will bring up a new window.
2. Within this window, double-left click on User Accounts. The window will change into the User Controls window.
3. On the left hand pane, single left-click Parental Controls. (this is usually found under See Also: Parental Controls at the bottom-left corner of your screen) This may take a minute to load, so be patient. A "User Access Control" window may come up as well, if it does, click Continue.
4. From the Parental Controls window, click on the account you wish to apply new controls to. If one does not exist, here is your opportunity to create a new one via the control at the bottom labeled Create a new user account. Otherwise, click on the account you wish to work on.
5. The controls for that specific account will come up. Most of them will be grayed out, to start. To enable the other controls, simply click On, enforce current settings under Parental Controls.
6. Once On, enforce current settings is enabled, the rest of the window lights up. To go into the details of each feature, simply click on the words that are lit up for that option, and to enable, disable, and customize the strength of each setting to your liking. Also, note that you can come back here any time to customize filtering if it is too strict, not strict enough or if your teenager has just been grounded!

A quick summary of available features:

Vista Web Filter

Beneath this setting you will find the ability to block all, or only some specific, web content. If you choose to block only some, you can then edit a block list to add and remove blocked content. If you choose not to block specific content, you can utilize a built-in web restriction level which will attempt to sort out content for you. If you choose "Custom", you will get a front end that allows you to choose what content the user of this account should and should not be seeing. Note that this is not foolproof as new websites come out every day, but it should block a very high degree of them. Lastly, you can choose to block or allow downloads on this account.

Time Limit

This option will give you a week-style calendar in which you can click to block a specific time period (in increments of one hour). Click that square again to unblock it. This account will not be able to log on during the blocked periods!

Games

This option allows you to choose which installed software may be launched from this user account. You can block all games, or a varying setting based on user age. This works with Vista-capable software to judge what that game's setting is. If you are concerned about a piece of software in particular, you can also block it using this section of parental controls.

Allow and Block Specific Programs

This section defines whether the user can use all programs (with the exception of those listed above), or ones that are specifically allowed, also known as a whitelist.

View Activity Reports

If you've enabled this feature for this user account, you may come back to this section under your profile to view activity reports. This will give you a summary of that user's latest activity, such as web sites visited, attempted downloads, logon times, and programs that have been run.

I sincerely hope that this introduction to Vista's Parental Controls has been helpful to you. If you believe it has, please consider forwarding this website to your friends, so that they too might get the most out of their computer!