I spent yesterday researching this exact problem and I managed to install Windows 7 on my LG X110 netbook in around 20 minutes using a 4GB USB Drive. Setting up the USB drive to install Windows 7 was fairly easy in the end, and the installation was quicker than a DVD drive, so this method is perfect if you want to install Windows 7 quickly on several machines.

How To Install Windows 7 From A USB Drive

1. Find a standard 4GB USB Drive and plug it into your machine
2. Click Start in your enter ‘cmd’ in the run field. Once cmd is open type in ‘diskpart’ and a new window will open
3. In the new diskpart window type:

• ‘list disk’ : This lists all the disk drives attached to your machine
• Look for your USB drive and note the number and then type: ’select disk #’, where ‘#’ is your USB disk number
• then type ‘clean’
• then type ‘create partition primary’
• then ’select partition 1?
• then ‘active’
• then ‘format fs=fat32 quick’

Once you’ve finished these steps you then need to copy your Windows 7 files to the USB. To do this you have to mount your Windows 7 ISO as a virtual DVD. Doing this is easy:

1. Install MagicDisk (free)
2. once installed, right-click on MagicDisk in your system tray click on ‘Virtual CD/DVD-Rom’, select your DVD drive
3. then ‘Mount’ and in the dialog window that opens up, select your Windows 7 ISO
4. Now in windows Explorer, click on your DVD drive and you should see all the Windows 7 Files. All you have to do now is copy and paste all the files to your USB key and you have a Windows 7 USB Installation Stick!
5. Install the stick in the PC you want to install Windows 7 on and boot up. Remember to change your bios to allow booting from USB

If you follow the steps above then you should have no problems installing Windows 7 from a USB key. But if you do, leave a comment below, or even better visit the Windows 7 Forum for even better Windows 7 support.

Via

The company says that Caffeine will be the “first step in improving the speed, accuracy and comprehensiveness of search results".

Web developers are now invited to test the new search engine and provide feedback.

Though the front-end of the engine will look no different to the one online today, the tech driving it will speed up indexing search results and create a larger index.

One clear outcome of this will be the reduction in time it takes for the search engine to find new content freshly-published on the web.

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Last week, I never heard and read so many journalist complain about one thing…in unison.  ”If it weren’t for Twitter, E3 would have had a much bigger impact on me.” The reality is, because of the internet as a whole, leaks and breaking news have been scooping our witty, games enthusiast scoopers.  It is great to see the spectacle that is E3 return, but in all honesty, in this age of ‘nowism’ [wanting to know everything instantly even at the cost of accuracy] how can a microblogging site like Twitter be the fault of the leaks which were going to leak baring the sites existence?

Unfortunately, I was one of the many writers/enthusiast that could not attend E3 this year, but thanks to video streaming sites and Twitter it was almost as if I had the best seat in the house; my home.  The weeks leading up to E3 you would see the occasional ‘rumor’ story and a corporate video leak of insert-Sony-product.  The E3 of old, early 2000 and prior, has this mystique to the veteran enthusiast press and industry execs.  It is talked about as if there was this golden-era of E3, which I do not discount, but it is almost referencing some form of 1950′s style of reporting.  This age, this style came from the gigantic bridge a journalist had to mend when delivering these ‘cutting edge’ stories about press conferences, technological innovation and most importantly, video games. At the time news traveled considerably slower than it does now in the age of the tweet.  Journalists could get away with sub-par or uninteresting writing simply because they were delivering content to an audience that had limited access to the source material.  An argument could be made that this ‘limited access’ still exists today, it is more dependent on an internet connection rather than a magazine subscription.

Source

On Thursday the world’s top software maker Microsoft, countering pressure from European regulators, said it plans to ship the newest version of Windows in Europe without its Internet Explorer web browser. “I don’t think what Microsoft announced is going to restore competition,” Opera’s Chief Technology Officer Hakon Wium Lie told Reuters. “I don’t think it’s going to be enough, I don’t think it will get them off the hook,” he said.

Microsoft’s abrupt reversal comes shortly before the European Commission is due to rule on antitrust charges brought against the company in January, claiming that it abuses its dominant position by bundling its Explorer browser, shielding it from head-to-head competition with rival products.

Until now, Microsoft has claimed that the browser was an integral part of the operating system and should not be pulled out, but it now plans to do that for a European version of Windows 7, due to be rolled out later this year. A European Commission official said the EU watchdog will examine the conditions under which Microsoft will ship Windows 7 without browsers to manufacturers and suppliers, warning that the Commission will find out if there are any conditions attached. “We never suggested that they have to sell Windows without Internet Explorer. We suggested that they might have to give the possibility to customers to chose between different browsers,” the official said. The official added that it was in Microsoft’s interest to inform the Commission of any conditions attached to the rollout. The Commission, which enforces competition rules in the 27-nation European Union, said it planned to decide shortly on its latest case against the U.S. tech giant. It has to date fined Microsoft nearly $2 billion for various offenses.

The Commission can impose a fine of up to 10 percent of a company’s turnover and other remedies if found to have breached EU rules. Last month, it slapped a record $1.49 billion fine on the world’s biggest chipmaker Intel for anti-competitive practices.

A new kind of virus has been found on social networking site Facebook. As per latest news this virus sends messages to friends on the social networking site which contains links to some videos. Once the link is clicked it asks the users to download a Adobe Flash players files from a certain site which contain the worm’s payload.

Once the code is executed the Windows PC gets infected. Once the worm completes attacking one user it then moves on to the friends list of infected users. This malware was first spotted in July and since than has taken nasty steps and has been flared up again since last week.

The latest variant of the malware typically comes in a less salacious package. The first wave of infections came with messages such as “Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf on the Street” whereas the latest variant is more likely to pose as “secret video by Tom” or some such. The latest Koobface variant is programmed to hijack search queries and divert infected users to bogus sites, benefiting crooks through related ad hijacking and click fraud in the process.

Facebook’s advice for dealing with the worm can be found here. The social networking utility is in the process of purging spammed links to the malware from its systems, reports McAfee, which has a full write-up of the threat here. Though various antivirus software have been used to quarantine the virus but the effort has been unsuccessful because of the nature of its code.

Why did I switch back so soon after lavishing praise on Google’s open-source Web browser? Well, when Google added the option to use a cutting-edge "developer preview" version, I signed up, and guess what–it’s not as stable. Specifically, both 2.0.156.1 and the newer 2.0.157.2 that I now have installed inexplicably become unresponsive for long periods of time–at least 10 seconds, which is about 9.5 seconds longer than my tolerance limit.

But I like some of Chrome’s new features, so I didn’t want to downgrade to better-tested stable or beta versions. Instead, I thought perhaps I’d see what my second-favorite browser felt like again while waiting for the newer Chrome features to settle down.

I was a little surprised. What got me to switch to Chrome two months ago was performance, but what I missed most upon heading back to Firefox was Chrome’s user interface.

More than once, I found that even after a few weeks of Chrome, my muscle memory had been reprogrammed to expect different behavior. Switching back to Firefox wasn’t just different, though–I wanted the old features. Here’s a list of what I didn’t even know that I’d come to like.

The location of new tabs
When you open a link in a new tab with Chrome (I often middle-click to do so), the new page shows up in tab immediately to the right of the current tab. This naturally groups related tabs, and for me at least, eases the process of switching among many.

When you open a new tab in Firefox, it appears to the far right of the list, and it’s harder to get to it. It takes just that little extra bit of time to locate and navigate to the tab.

Good news, though: Mozilla evangelist Chris Blizzard pointed me to a blog post by programmer Mike Beltzner, which says the same behavior is coming to Firefox:

• tabs that are opened from links will open to the immediate right of the current tab
• new tabs created by the New Tab button or keyboard shortcut will open at the end of the tab strip
• if multiple tabs are opened (in the background) from links, they will open sequentially to the right of each other; as soon as focus changes, this sequential opening behavior will stop, and tabs will go back to opening immediately to the right or at the end of the tab strip as per the above

Searching from the address bar
I think Firefox’s awesome bar does a better job digging previously visited links out of my history, but searching directly from Google’s Omnibox, which adds online search into the mix, is more useful. I search dozens of times a day, and now I have to remember either to visit a search page or head over to Firefox’s special search box (to do the latter faster, I hit Ctrl-L, then Tab).

Some folks are concerned about sending lots of juicy personal data to Google’s servers, which monitors what you type so it can supply suggested search results. But except for typing in Web sites, it’s the same stuff I’d type into a search page anyway.

One less keystroke
When typing addresses into the address bar, both Chrome and Firefox offer a list of suggestions in a drop-down box. But Chrome highlights its top pick, while Firefox puts it one entry below the box.

That means if the pick is right, I just have to hit Enter with Chrome, but the down arrow, then Enter with Firefox. It’s a tiny thing, but I do this hundreds of times a day. (full Story)

The Internet corporation for assigned names and numbers, or ICANN, also approved measures that will allow top-level domain names in script such as ARABIC or CYRILLIC.

Top=level domain names or TLDs, refer to Internet name suffixes such as the ubiquitous .com .net and .org among others. Currently there are more than 200 top-level domain names which also include the two character country codes used by websites, such as Britain’s .uk.

ICANN officials said some technical issues for the new system must be worked out, but it could be reviewing the first applications for new TLDs as early as next spring.

The application fee is expected to be $100,000. Individuals, companies or group could apply to have any string of letters established as a domain name. It could be a vanity name, for example-.smith-or a category name like .sports or .perfume. A company could also change to reflect its brand, so Apple.com could become Apple.mac, for instance. Straight forward applications will be approved quickly. A review process would be undertaken for controversial strings.