ExpatTech Techblog - software

We can do a nice little tweak with the bookmarks. Bookmarks are usually used as bookmarks: they point to a web address. Browsers nowadays support add-ons or extensions and there is a huge palette of these nice little utilities helping us browsing faster and spend our time on the territory of world wide web. But for some people these add-ons (or extensions) are suspicious or some people cannot find the one they need for a task. A webprogrammer writes his/her own in this case, but what if the task we want to do is far easier then sitting down and struggling with an add-on (or extension).

In the second part we create a static class for our random function, add a practical function and check whether it is really random.

Are you tired of the old randomgenerators? Here is a basic solution for creating your own.

Everybody knows that the majority computers have the OS on the C: drive and most people are used to this configuration. Although, in most situations, it really shouldn't matter on what logical drive your OS resides, it might be annoying or confusing to some users to not find Windows in the "usual" place. Most of the time when you install windows, it will correctly resolve to the C: drive. However, if the computer comes with removable media drives for memory cards, depending on many factors, Windows might install to a logical drive letter that comes after the removable media drives. If this configuration is undesired, then simply disconnect the removable media drives from the motherboard and redo the Windows installation.

If you decide to stay with your OS on a logical drive other than C:, then you shouldn't experience problems as most programs use environment variables to install. An environment variable is a special DOS level variable used to store useful system information. You can see your systems environment variables by getting to a Command / DOS prompt (start/run/cmd) and typing "Set". As you can see there are variables like "System Drive" that point new programs to the correct logical drive for default installation.

Should you ever run into any suspicious problem during install as I did recently while installing the Flash Player for internet browsing, there is a simple workaround.

These days with software downloads all coming pre-packaged with installers, or using Installation Wizards bundled with Windows, it has become very easy for anyone to install new packages or update old software or drivers. The download, unzip, and then click-once-or-twice and watch-it-install culture has became a part of every day computing life, especially since the advent of all the add-ons available over the internet for our browsers and other 3rd party software being given away free to all and sundry.

However, every now and then, particularly with older computers (and I mean like only more than three or four years old!), you come across a situation where you need to actually know how to install a piece of software manually. I had a situation like that trying to install an audio driver on an older Compaq laptop recently, and it was quite a shock to the system!

It's true that most of the computers that come through our office with problems are Windows based operating systems. However we have had the odd machine running Linux based systems like Ubuntu, and have been able to fix them as well.

Ubuntu is a clean running alternative to Windows - the biofuel of operating systems!