Yavor's Blog » Microsoft

DreamSpark – Free Microsoft Software for students

Yavor — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:58:25 +0000

Not exactly news, but I thought I might as well post it on here. Microsoft’s DreamSpark site offers a number of valuable software products for free, as long as you are a student in a recognized institution. The majority of the software is for software developers, such as Visual Studio 2008, XNA Game Studio, as well as Windows Server 2008 and Expressions Studio 3.

Windows Media Player 64-bit in Windows 7

Yavor — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:33:39 +0000

In case you are wondering why Windows Media Player runs in 32 bit mode when you have a 64 bit Windows 7, and how to run the 64 bit version, read on. It seems that by default Microsoft decided on running the 32 bit version, perhaps for codec compatibility. However, the 64 bit version is already included. To use this instead (the quick and easy way) do the following 10 second fix:

Unpin the WMP icon from the taskbar (assuming that’s where you started it from)
Open C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe (Notice it’s not the C:\Program Files (x86) folder).
Just pin that version instead and you are set.

Here’s the result:

My Digital Life blog has posted a rather complex solution that modifies the registry. However, this does will not work if you still have the 32 bit version pinned to the taskbar and you use it from there. Much simpler than running all those registry hacks is to run your 64 bit version and associate all audio and video files with it.

I find that the performance is at least moderately better, especially when loading my immense music library. WMP 32 bit seems to freeze up for at least 5-10 seconds, whereas x64 just takes a second or two. The 64 bit version seems to take up about 7-8MB more RAM, but not that I care now that I have 4 GB to spare.

Microsoft releases the final version of MS Security Essentials

Yavor — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:52:47 +0000

Microsoft has finally came out with the final version of MS Security Essentials, a security software that complements Windows’ built-in firewall in XP and Windows 7 and offers antivirus, antispyware, rootkit detection, and trojans – all for one great price – free!

That’s right, you no longer need to shell out $80 each year for your (crappy) antivirus software (if you used ESET NOD32 or Avira Premium, disregard the crappy part). So what’s so exciting about another free antivirus? Well, for starters it doesn’t have annoying ads like Avira Free, offers decent detection rate (greatly improved compared to OneCare), and is pretty light on resources (about 8 Mb for me in the background).

I’ve been using the Beta for a while, and the final version (1.0) is available in both 32 and 64 bit. Quite happy with Microsoft lately. Get your hands on it while it’s hot: Microsoft Security Essentials Download