Vista users encountering problems when they upgrade to Service Pack 1 can breathe out: the company is giving away free support for those installing the service pack.

The transition to the service pack has not been problem-free for many users, with issues such as computers falling into endless reboot cycles and broken applications rearing their head.

Normally, only Vista users who bought the retail product would be eligible for free support but, for SP1 installation, even users with an OEM copy of Vista on their computer can get Microsoft’s help, according to the official Vista blog.

Source: ZDNet

Safari 3.1, which was launched on Tuesday, will run on Windows XP or Vista and, of course, Mac OSX. Apple released a beta for the Windows-supporting version in June last year.

Apple has claimed that the browser is the fastest available for Windows. In a Tuesday statement, Cupertino said it “loads web pages 1.9 times faster than [Internet Explorer] 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2 [and] runs JavaScript up to six times faster than other browsers”.

“Safari 3.1 for Mac and Windows is blazingly fast, easy to use and features an elegant user interface,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, on Tuesday.

To try it out go to the Apple web site and download a copy.

Source: ZDNet

Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) went onto Microsoft’s Download centre website on Monday, fulfilling Microsoft’s claim that it would be made available by mid March.

According to Microsoft, the service pack will be pushed out via automatic updates to all Vista users next month.

Standalone installers for both versions of Vista, 32-bit and 64-bit, have been made available.

Source: ZDNet

Ever had an email from a friend enclosing a powerpoint file with the .pps extension?

If you’ve got a copy of Powerpoint installed on your PC then viewing the file is easy, just double click on the .pps file.

But if you’ve not got this program installed on your PC what do you do?

Microsoft have produced a Powerpoint Viewer program that lets you view full-featured presentations created in PowerPoint 97 and later versions.

To get this useful tool visit the Microsoft download site. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/

At QBS PC Help we do not use tables to design websites as keeping the content and styles separate (XHTML and CSS) produces a quick loading site that’s search engine friendly and far more accessible than a table based layout.

However, we do use tables to contain data that’s best served via a table. So rather than a plain table lets look at a few ways to smarten up our table displays, using CSS.

To see how to do this take a look at our latest web design article – How to use CSS to style a table.

The games industry says British universities are failing to equip graduates with the skills it needs.

The warning comes from the industry campaign group “Games Up?”, which says games developers in Britain are facing a serious skills shortage.

The lobby group says there are now 81 video games degree courses at British universities. But only four are accredited by Skillset, the government body which monitors such courses.

David Braben, chairman of Frontier Developments and a spokesman for “Games Up?”, said: “95% of video gaming degrees are simply not fit for purpose. Without some sort of common standard, like Skillset accreditation, these degrees are a waste of time for all concerned.”

The warning came as executives from across Europe’s games industry gathered for the GameHorizon conference in Gateshead. The North East of England is one of the centres of a games industry whose activities are spread widely across the UK.

Millions of serviceable computers in the UK end up in landfill sites rather than being recycled, a study has claimed.

The research, sponsored by Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC), found that 12.5 million unwanted PC’s and laptops have not been reused or recycled by their owners.

The survey found that one in four machines are taken to tips and more than one million computers have been dumped in household rubbish or the countryside.

This is clearly a growing problem and our PC Help articles can help you deal with the disposal, or reuse, of your old computers in a much ‘greener’ way.

Disposing of old PC Equipment – www.qbs-pchelp.co.uk/pcdisposal.html

How to reuse an old PC – www.qbs-pchelp.co.uk/reuseanoldpc.html

Source: ZDNet

To help with speed of download, search engine friendliness and accessibility CSS navigation is no doubt the best solution.

So where do you start?

The best thing to do is lay out your navigational links using an unordered list. You can then style this list any way you want using a linked CSS style sheet.

Find out more about this by reading our latest article – Designing horizontal and vertical navigation using CSS