The long awaited official launch of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system has come and gone. On October 22, 2009, Windows 7 hit the retail shelves. The inital media blitz and the launch parties are now just a fading memory. The early reports appear that folks are generally very positive concerning Microsoft's newest operating system.

In a Microwave world where everyone is looking for immediate satisfaction the computer system is not exempt. Faster processors, larger RAM, and faster broadband connections are a few examples of optimizing a computers potential. Years ago it was basically just Servers reaping the benefit of 64-bit processing, but today 64-bit processors have almost become common amongst desktop PCs.

By now most of us are familiar with Mozilla Firefox, and a lot of us prefer it over the pre-installed Internet Explorer, and the ancient Netscape, but there are several other browsers out there definitely worth a mention, and could possibly have you guys wanting to make a switch. Here are the top ten web browsers for 2009 according to several PC magazines ranked by features set, speed, security, ease of use, and help & support.

In the third official edition of the PC Pitstop Free Software Report I wanted to respond to request made by several readers in their comments; more 64 bit compatible freeware. Well let me start off by saying that that will definitely be a hefty task considering the fact that finding true quality free software for the 64 bit system is extremely difficult. However 64 bit compatible freeware is definitely out there, and if you guys have some favorites you are currently using feel free to suggest them because PC Pitstop, as well as the other readers, definitely value your opinions.

It appears Dell is doing something right when it comes to providing users with desktop computers. It was quite interesting and I was more than a little surprised to see Dell sweep the top ten positions in the PC Pitstop Satisfaction Rankings for Commercial Desktop PCs as of July 2009. The rankings are based solely on user feedback describing their experience with their systems.

As PC Pitstop began collating the user satisfaction feedback for desktop systems, it became evident that there was a significant number of custom built Desktop systems. Based on system information we were able to segregate these custom built systems into a separate satisfaction report. From this we were able to tabulate what motherboards were in the most loved systems. It is interesting to note that 4 out of the top 10 best loved motherboards are AMD boards.

These are exciting times in the world of computing, and portables are seeing all the action. One thing that is becoming obvious is that the line between netbook and notebook is starting to blur. Netbooks are becoming more powerful and Notebooks are becoming lighter, and longer lasting. Shown below are your picks for Most Loved Notebooks. Keep in mind that Netbooks have been filtered out of these results and were the category we used to kick off the Most Loved series. You can find those results in the previous July Newsletter or by looking for previous articles in TechTalk.

Welcome everyone to a new and very exciting part of PC Pitstop. Roughly a year ago, as part of the incredibly popular OverDrive test, we began collecting user input about PC satisfaction. We began asking the following three questions:

• * How satisfied are you with this PC?
• * Is this PC running slow?
• * Is this PC hanging or requiring frequent reboots?

Welcome to the official second edition of the PC Pitstop Free Software Report. I want to thank everyone for the tons of comments both positive and negative. We are listening. More importantly, many of our readers learned more from the comments than our Top Software List! In fact, I even learned a few things.

Welcome to the Top Free Software Report. There are two problems with free software. First off, there is a lot of free software and it is hard to know what free software is the best. Secondly, because it is free, free software makers can't spend money on advertising to get the word out on their cool creations. We hope that this new feature in TechTalk will solve both of these problems.