The Old New Thing

October 2006 - Page 4 of 4 - The Old New Thing

If only he'd known to offer to back up their PC instead

October 3, 2006 Oct 3, 2006 10/3/06
Raymond Chen
I love it when two unrelated stories conspire to create amusement beyond what each one provided separately. We start with this report from BoingBoing of a man on Craigslist who offered to perform computer maintenance and repair in exchange for second base. (For those not familar with North American high school sexual slang—and that ...

There's a reason why envelopes have backs

October 3, 2006 Oct 3, 2006 10/3/06
Raymond Chen
For some reason, people are upset that I don't have hard data for the cost difference between "slow" and "fast" mode enumeration. I already did a back-of-the-envelope calculation that showed that fast mode reduces the total time to enumerate the items in a folder from five minutes to two seconds. That's what's so great about back-of-the-...

Does a dual-core processor count as one or two for licensing purposes?

October 2, 2006 Oct 2, 2006 10/2/06
Raymond Chen
Now that dual-core processors are gaining in popularity, there has been some confusion over whether a dual-core processor counts as one or two. This discussion of multicore processor licensing may clear things up. The short answer is that a dual-core processor still counts as one processor. For example, Windows XP Professional supports up to...