An ATM at a bank in Tbilisi, Georgia stopped working just because the Operating system installed in ATM (windows xp) was not activated! The pop up shows that only 5 days are left which means that machine was working for 25 days (30 day trial) without activation. If xp is not activated after install, it shows warning several times but here in ATM case the warning message popped up only before 5 days are left. This means the guy who installed Xp on that machine set the reminder to “remind me after 25 days” and then forgot to activate. I think that windows xp is not just right to be used in ATM machines, either Microsoft should make a different version of OS for these machines or much reliable operating systems like Solaris should be used.

Photo: zparks.lv (illustrated by me)

Digital Pious launches Shuttle barebones ‘XPC SG33G5 Pro / SG33G5M Deluxe’ with fingerprint recognition functionality. With Speed-Link, it can share files and perform backups by connecting it to other PC just by a single USB cable. Intel Core 2 Quad CPU is used in this shuttle PC supporting 1333 MHz FSB and company has also planned for using Intel’s Penryn Core 2 Quad processor as well.

If you are a genuine Windows XP user and reinstall windows after some minor hardware changes, XP will ask you re-activate your copy of windows. I feel this is a total waste of time of user and causes incontinence. To avoid this problem, you can do the following:

1. Go to folder C:\WINDOWS\system32 and look for a file named wpa.dbl
2. Copy this file to a floppy or CD
3. Now when you reinstall the OS, simple replace this wpa.dbl file from old installation to the new one.
4. Replacing may cause a problem and not get replaced by showing error of “file in use”, so what you do is start the computer in safe-mode (pressing F8 at startup) and then replace the file.
5. Done! You don’t need to activate now!

This trick doesn’t mean that you can install your copy of OS on as many computers as you want, it will only work for one from which the wpa.dbl file was taken.

So what’s new? There are already tons of games available for PCs and Mac’s not tons for Mac but still. I found a site where I saw lots of mac games and all free to download. These games are not those which require hours of downloading and eat up all your disk space after install, but are small which can be downloaded fast and also require less disk space. Though small, yet these games are fun to play and people of all age find them interesting. If you have a Mac at home, you must download these mac games. I personally use PC as I am more used to windows OS and this website didn’t disappoint PC users as well. I found a really cool rpg games called Magic Stones and will be spending some time playing it now. This game is available for Mac too.

Samsung Electronics announced the launch of its new desktop PCs ‘Magic Station BP70’ and ‘Magic Station MZ60’ in Korea market, which are designed for business and consumer respectively. It will be available in two designs, all white (in the pic) and slim glossy black and silver finish. Supporting Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, the new desktop PCs feature up to 3.00GHz clock speed and 1333MHz front side bus(FSB).

Most of the people use PC and look at Mac user as totally different kind of person. A Mac computer is a work horse I can say because everything we need to do on a computer can be done much easier on a Mac and this is the reason why most of the professionals prefer Mac over PC. It however doesn’t mean that Mac users doesn’t play games, there are lots of mac games available which are free to download and very interesting to play. If you master the game of cards, you will love to play mac solitaire like me.

Sites which offer free mac games , are also a good source of Mac software’s and news to keep one updated on what’s going on in Mac world. I will recommend everyone who to try Mac at least once and see how it can simplify your computer dependent task.