Microsoft handed out 5,000 Samsung tablets running a test version of Windows 8 at its annual developer conference on September 13, hoping to stoke excitement over its new operating system.

The Data Rescue Center announces NucleusOne, a joint venture with DARWINmachine. DARWINmachine is a leading-edge designer of custom computer chassis. The NucleusOne design was a collaborative effort between the Recovery Engineers at the Data Rescue Center and the Lead Designer at DARWINmachine. The unique “aircraft carrier” layout enhances its performance.

Lion is not an evolution of Mac OS X as we know it. It is a new user experience and as such it won’t appeal to all people. It’s also been totally revamped under the hood, and that doesn’t please developers. Lion may be a pain to some, but it’s hard to deny its leaps forward in design, efficiency, and productivity.

I keep my Aperture Library on a separate RAID disk that is connected through FireWire to the Mac. One disadvantage that I found out about the hard way is that I can’t see my Aperture Library in some Media Browsers. A symbolic link may be able to fix that, while an alias almost never can. A symbolic link is much like a Mac OS X alias, only on a lower level (Unix)). You can sometimes fool applications into ‘seeing’ the file while it’s really only the ‘alias’, pointer or symlink that is there.

It’s not new, I know, but it’s a long time favourite of many people. That made me curious (it made me curiouser and curiouser as a very famous person once said). I tried PCalc and try to answer what all the fuss is about.

Running Windows XP or Windows 7 on a Mac is a breeze: just install Boot Camp or a Virtual Machine and you’re off. Virtual Machines are more efficient if you want to exchange files and other data between operating systems. There are two commercial VMs available: VMware Fusion and Parallels for Mac. I tested the latter and found it to perform better than the former in more than one way.

Windows 7 has a comfortable, user-friendly interface. Its task bar supports previews with the ability to apply some small edits (e.g. to photos), and the 64-bit Enterprise edition comes with all the power you expect from an enterprise desktop client.

Coriolis Systems is the British developer of iDefrag 2. Unique about their defragmentation product is that it is entirely dedicated to defragmentation. It is fast, reliable, and can defragment startup volumes without having to start the defragmentation process from a DVD or CD.

Even if you don’t mind applications downloading updates and data behind your back, Little Snitch will continuously watch your network for outgoing connections that you are otherwise unaware of and warn you, so you can take actions. Privacy concerns could be reason enough to have Little Snitch running.