Avast Home Edition and Vista SP2

Today I installed Vista Home Basic SP1 OEM on a new Athlon64 machine. Installation was smooth. Then I patched it with SP2.

I encountered a problem with Avast Home Edition, wherein after the reboot, the Avast splash screen loaded. Quite weird, when I right-clicked the Avast taskbar icon, nothing happened. I also launched Avast from the start menu, the spash screen appeared and memory scanning started. However after the memory scan, no Avast GUI came out.

Suspecting the Windows Defender to be conflicting with Avast H.E., I disabled it and restarted vista. Finally the Avast GUI and taskbar context menu worked. I then re-enabled windows defender.

The problem now is that Avast attempts to update online but can't find any new updates. I will check the firewall settings tomorrow and post back.

MS DevLabs' Small Basic

Many thanks to epgirang for the heads up.

Small Basic is a simple and easy programming language with a friendly environment that provides a cool and fun way of learning programming.

Small Basic is a project that's aimed at bringing "fun" back to programming. By providing a small and easy to learn programming language in a friendly and inviting development environment, Small Basic makes programming a breeze. Ideal for kids and adults alike, Small Basic helps beginners take the first step into the wonderful world of programming.

Official Page:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx

Download Here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/A/F/CAF9E062-94D3-4003-80D9-44CDF7EC7BD9/SmallBasic.msi

PDF Quick-Start Guide:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/0/6/90616372-C4BF-4628-BC82-BD709635220D/Introducing%20Small%20Basic.pdf

Requires .Net Framework 3.5:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=en

Enjoy!

[TPU] ASUS Designs Own Monster Dual-GTX 285 4 GB Graphics Card.

All I want for now is just a measly Inno3D GeForce 9600GSO 512 DDR3 256-bit video card... the Mars is too much and is truly a monster video card!

The whole article here: http://www.techpowerup.com/95445/ASUS_Designes_Own_Monster_Dual-GTX_285_4_GB_Graphics_Card.html

techPowerUp wrote ...
ASUS has just designed a new monster graphics card that breaks the mold for reference design GeForce GTX 295, called the ASUS MARS 295 Limited Edition. The card, although retains the name "GeForce GTX 295", same device ID, and is compatible with existing NVIDIA drivers, has two huge innovations put in by ASUS, which go far beyond being yet another overclocked GeForce GTX 295: the company used two G200-350-B3 graphics processors, the same ones that make the GeForce GTX 285. The GPUs have all the 240 shader processors enabled, and also have the complete 512-bit GDDR3 memory interface enabled. This dual-PCB monstrosity holds 32 memory chips, and 4 GB of total memory (each GPU accesses 2 GB of it). Apart from these, each GPU system uses the same exact clock speeds as the GeForce GTX 285: 648/1476/2400 MHz (core/shader/memory)...