The best Vista version for you

If you’re trying to decide which version of Windows Vista to buy for the first time, simply step through the following Q and A:

1. Will your PCs need to log on to an in-house network server?
a. If not, and your PCs will only need (at most) to access each other’s files and printers via peer-to-peer networking, you only need a Home version of Vista. Go to Question 2.
b. If your PCs need to log on to a network domain, you need a non-Home version. Go to Question 3.

2. (To determine which Home version): Do you have a tablet PC, do you want to burn DVDs, or do you want to record and playback video content with Windows Media Center?
a. If not, you can get by with Vista Home Edition.
b. If you need any of the above features, you need Vista Home Premium.

3. (To determine which non-Home version): Does your company have a Volume Licensing deal with Microsoft?
a. If yes, get Vista Enterprise, which enables you to create a centralized installation routine for Vista.
b. If not, get Vista Business, which is available at retail and has most of the features of Vista Enterprise (as described later in this chapter).

4. (To determine whether you need Vista Ultimate): Do you need some features that are found only in Home Premium and some other features that are found only in the Business or Enterprise versions of Vista?
a. If you need, for example, Windows Media Player (which is available only in Home Premium) and BitLocker drive encryption (only in Enterprise), get Vista Ultimate.
b. If you don’t need such a comprehensive mix of features, save your money and buy a version of Vista that’s cheaper than Vista Ultimate.

Broadcast yourself in Ustream Tv

Ustream.TV is the live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size. In less than two minutes, anyone can become a broadcaster by creating their own channel on Ustream or by broadcasting through their own site, empowering them to engage with their audience and further build their brand.

Ustream's one-to-many live interactive video encourages broadcast-to-viewer and viewer-to-viewer interaction, empowering a much more engaging experience for everyone involved.

With Ustream's interactive broadcast functionality, viewers can personally interact directly with whoever is broadcasting -- including personalities like their favorite musician or politician. Ustream viewers can watch specific broadcasts, explore our networks ranging from music, talk shows, sports and politics to discover a world of interesting new broadcasts, or review our past broadcasts.

Bypass Free Site Registration with BugMeNot

Ever more web sites require you to register on them for free and sign in with a username and password to view their contents. An active surfer can easily accumulate dozens of logins for various sites across the Web. But what about when you don’t want to go through the whole tiresome procedure of registering for a web site — you simply want inside?

Web site BugMeNot maintains a public database of shared usernames and passwords for free web sites. If you come across a site that prompts you to log in to view its content, bypass the registration process by heading to BugMeNot to search for an already-created username and password. Not all BugMeNot logins will work, but you can see the percentage success rate for a particular login and report whether it worked for you as well. If you can’t find a BugMeNot login that works? Create one and share it with the BugMeNot community.

There are three ways to use BugMeNot:

• Enter the address of the site you want to log into on BugMeNot.com to get a list of possible logins.
• Drag and drop the Bugmenot bookmarklet to your web browser’s links toolbar. When you come onto a site you’d like to log into, click the bookmarklet and get login detail suggestions in a pop-up window as shown in the fig. Copy and paste the suggested login — in this example, username stupidideas and password asdfghjkl — into the nytimes.com login page to view a password-protected article.

• 

• Download and install the BugMeNot Firefox extension, available here. Restart Firefox. Next time you are presented with a username and password prompt, right-click inside the username text box and choose Login with BugMeNot as shown in the fig.

• 

The extension is the fastest way to log in with a BugMeNot account because it doesn’t require you to copy and paste the username and password into the login fields, but it only works in Firefox (http://mozilla.org/firefox/).

Google and Yahoo search results in the same window at the same time

If you've ever searched for the same phrase at both Google and Yahoo!, you've probably noticed that the results can be surprisingly different. That's because Google and Yahoo! have different ways of determining which sites are relevant for a particular phrase.

Though we might never know exactly why results are different between the two search engines, at least we can have some fun spotting the differences and end up with more search results than either one of the sites would have offered on their own.

One way to compare results is to simply open each site in separate browser windows and manually scan for differences. But viewing both sets of results in different windows is a bit tedious, and a clever Norwegian developer named Asgeir S. Nilsen has made the task easier, at a site called Twingine. It contains a blank search form into which you can type any search query. When you click Search, the site brings up the results pages for that query from both Yahoo! and Google, side by side. To be fair, the sides on which Google and Yahoo! appear change at random, so people who prefer one side of the screen to the other won't be biased.

Clicking Next or Previous in the top frame at Twingine takes you to the next or previous page in the search results at both sites.

Surfing the pages in the search results at Twingine can be a bit tricky. You'll probably want to open linked search results in a new window or tab, so that you can keep your place in the search results at both Yahoo! and Google. You can open links in a new window by right-clicking the link (Ctrl-click on a Mac) and choosing Open Link in New Window from the menu. You can also set your search preference at either search engine to automatically open links in a new window when you click a search result.

Remove and disable Hibernation Files in Windows XP

In Windows operating system environment such as Windows XP and Windows Vista system, there is always a file named hiberfil.sys created and existed in the system root drive on boot disk.

The hiberfil.sys is large and big in size, always as big as your system physical memory (RAM) size. For example, if the computer have 2 GB of DRAM memory, the hiberfil.sys file size will also be around 1.99 GB in size, taking up precious hard disk space, and in worse case increase fragmentation on the drive.

hiberfil.sys is a file that Windows system creates whenever the computer goes into hibernation mode. When system hibernates, the system state of the computer is preserved by storing a copy of all data in the memory in hiberfil.sys file located on your local disk, so that when the computer restarts, the information can be read into memory to restore the state as of exact state when computer starts to hibernate. That also explains why the size of hiberfil.sys file is always same size with computer’s memory size.

If you have ever used hibernation feature in XP and Vista, the hiberfil.sys file will be created. Actually, Windows kernel reserves hiberfil.sys file and allocates space equivalent to memory size to it when installing Windows and enables hibernate ability by default, thus the file exists too even if you never put system into hibernation mode. However, when the computer wakes up from hibernation, the hiberfil.sys file is left on the hard disk and not deleted. If you no longer use the hibernate feature of Windows XP and Vista, the safest way to remove and delete hiberfil.sys from the hard disk is to turn off and disable hibernation function.

How to disable Hybernation in Windows XP:

• Go to Control Panel, click on Performance and Maintenance link, then run Power Options applet.
• Go to Hibernate tab.
• Uncheck and untick the Enable hibernation option.

Looking for Definitions!

In Google you can use the 'define' search syntax, if you are looking for definitions on the web. Simply write the word(s) you need the definition with the special syntax keyword 'define', like shown below:

define google juice
define julienne
define 42

Google tells you that these are defined as "power of a website to turn up in Google," "cut food into thin sticks," and "being two more than forty," thanks to Wikipedia, Low Carb Luxury, and WordNet at Princeton, respectively.



Click the "Web definitions for..." link or prefix the word you're defining with 'define:' (note the addition of a colon) in the first place, and you'll net a full page of definitions drawn from all manner of places. for example, 'define:TLA' finds turns up a large number of definitions (all about the same).

Here one thing to be kept in mind that The 'define word' syntax is still subject to spelling suggestions, so you don't have to worry too much about misspelling. The 'define:word' form, however, doesn't perform a web search at all, so it returns no results or spelling suggestions whatsoever if it finds no definitions to offer you.

Make money from PDF documents

Adobe has partnered with Yahoo! for an interesting advertising idea — running ads alongside PDF documents in the ubiquitous Acrobat Reader. Officially called Ads for Adobe PDF, it allows PDF publishers to monetize their content without having to find advertisers themselves. That’s because Yahoo! provides them as part of their ad serving system.

Much like a typical search results page, ads are run along the right-hand side of Adobe Acrobat Reader. A publisher simply uploads a PDF document to Yahoo!’s ad serving system. The PDF gets analyzed to determine the most relevant ads (similar to contextual advertising). A set of marketers’ ads are served up to readers of the PDF. It also claims to allow you to block competitors’ ads from showing up in your PDF. Lastly, publishers get the full performance tracking and reporting capabilities of regular Yahoo! search advertisers.

Free Office substitute online

Though it doesn't support all Microsoft Office features, the no-cost ThinkFree Online can use the same file formats, making it the most Office-compatible online productivity suite- it even works with Office 2007 files.
The package, which combines a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation program, runs in your browser, lets you store documents (upto 1GB) on ThinkFree's server. It has two editing modes, Quick Edit and Power Edit. Both have a toolbar interface but no standard menus. A subscription version, currently in beta, also runs as a desktop app.
Writer, the word processor, opens and saves even complex Word 2007 and older files, but edits in full-page view only. Calc, which is rich in financial, scientific, and engineering functions, opens complex Excel files, displays most charts well, and imports Pivot Tables. The Show app opens elaborate PowerPoint files and, in Power Edit mode, resembles PowerPoint. It offers basic transition effects.
If one needs both Office compatibility and online storage, it's a good choice.

Strip and Format text from PDF documents

PDF Text Online is a free online utility, that can:

• Converts PDF text quickly and accurately
• Handles all fonts and languages (including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and more)
• Provides easy access to form data, document properties, and bookmarks
• Doesn't require a software download -- it works in your browser!

Upload your PDF document and the service will present it to you in text format, allow you to change some formatting elements like the font, and page layout of the text. In the end, you get a text document that you can save for later or just text your can copy and paste without having to worry about the formatting.

The developers of PDF Textonline developed an application called PDFTextStream, which they've incorporated into the PDFTextOnline Web app. The app uses Ajax to smoothly upload your document, strip out the images, and give you a clean and simple way to get to the document's text. The tool even retains any bookmarks and document information that might be included with the PDF.

If you just need to copy and paste the text, you don't need to save the document, you can just copy the text from the Web app. If you need to edit the text, you'll have to save the document as a text file. Click "save all text," and the service will present you with a zip archive that contains the text of your PDF document inside it. Once you've unzipped the file, you can use any text editor or word processor to manage the document.

Transfer data files to a new PC

Moving all of your old files and templates from one PC to another—not to mention duplicating all of the settings and preferences that you spent hours perfecting in your old copy of Windows—has been a royal pain for years.
Microsoft provides a better solution to this problem with its Easy Transfer utility in Vista. The program accepts files and preferences from Windows 2000 and Windows XP machines, as well as machines running Vista.
You can select just data files to transfer to the new PC or transfer entire clumps of e-mail messages and contacts, Internet settings, and complete user accounts as well (see Figure). No information is deleted from the old PC, so you have plenty of time to confirm that the data has been transferred correctly before erasing anything on your obsolete system.
The transfer requires that you install an Easy Transfer program from Vista to the older computer. Also, both the new system and the old one must be capable of exchanging data through one of the following methods:

• 
  A local area network

• 
  A USB Flash drive or external hard drive

• 
  Recordable CDs or DVDs

Microsoft is also promoting the use of a USB Easy Transfer Cable. This procedure, like the other methods just listed, also involves installing to the old computer the Easy Transfer program, which can be found on a CD that’s included with the cable. You then plug the provided cable into both machines and start the transfer from the new machine.

Encrypt sensitive data folders and entire drives

Various third-party solutions have long been available to encrypt sensitive data folders and entire hard drives. With Vista, Microsoft now enters this market with BitLocker Drive Encryption.
BitLocker has some advantages over competing encryption products because, integrated as it is into Windows, it can check the integrity of a computer system before the Windows user interface is ever loaded. BitLocker can tell when a hard drive has been moved to a different computer—as would be the case if a drive had been stolen—and can defend against brute-force attacks.
BitLocker also integrates with Microsoft’s Active Directory domain service scheme. The remote storage of digital keys that can unlock or restore data if a user forgets a password is a difficult and labor-intensive chore for IT administratrors. BitLocker handles this by using Active Directory to escrow the keys securely, while still being able to help an authorized (but forgetful) user access crucial data that’s stored in a password-protected drive.
BitLocker is available only in Vista Ultimate Edition, which can be purchased separately or upgraded to from the Home and Business Editions, and Vista Enterprise Edition, which can be purchased separately or upgraded to from the Business Edition.

Computing at the rate of 1$ per hour

Why shouldn't computer power be like water or electricity—a utility you turn on and off and purchase only as needed? That is the concept behind the newly launched Sun Grid. Companies and universities can run processor-intensive projects over the Internet on Sun's grid of 10,000 computer nodes and pay only for the processor time and storage space they use. Most projects require multiple CPUs (mostly 2.4GHz Opterons) working cooperatively, but you are charged at a rate of $1 per CPU hour in the same way the electric company charges kilowatt hours. Many experts believe that in the next decade home computing, too, will follow this model and move from standalone PCs to low-power workstations that tap into a grid of on-demand CPU power and storage.

Visual display of Information in Google

If you're the type that appreciates visual displays of information, you're bound to like the TouchGraph Google Browser. This Java applet allows you to start with pages that are similar to one URL, and then expand outward to pages that are similar to the first set of pages, on and on, until you have a giant map of nodes (a.k.a. URLs) on your screen.



Start your journey by entering a URL on the TouchGraph home page and clicking the Graph It link. Your browser will launch the TouchGraph Java applet, covering your window with a large mass of linked nodes, as shown in fig above.
Hold your mouse over one of the items in the group of pages. A little box labeled info pops up. Click on that, and a box of information about that particular node appears, as shown in fig below.



The box of information contains title, snippet, and URLpretty much everything you'd get from a regular search result. Click on the URL in the box to open that URL's web page itself in another browser window.
TouchGraph does two rather useful things. First, it allows you to see at a glance the similarity relationship between large groups of URLs. You can't do this with several flat results to similar URL queries. Second, if you do some exploring, you can sometimes get a list of companies in the same industry or area. This comes in handy when you're researching a particular industry or topic.
For a look at all the ways you can customize the TouchGraph Google browser, be sure to check out the Full Instructions page at http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGB_FullInstructions.html.

Fit the full URL on Printouts

Sometimes, you want to print out some Web page you’ve found, so you can recommend the site to a friend later. But if the Web address (URL) is a long one, it’s likely to be truncated in the footer of the printed page. That’s because IE, by default, uses a large font and cuts off any of the URL that doesn’t fit on the same line as today’s date.

You can make URLs print in full almost every time by clicking Tools➪Internet Options. On the General tab, click the Fonts button and then select a Web page font that’s more compact than Times New Roman, such as Vista’s Cordia New. (This font, which is similar to Arial, also becomes the default font for Web pages that don’t specify a font.)

If that doesn’t print the entire Web address, give URLs a separate line. To do so, pull down the Printer toolbar and select Page Setup. Enter &b&u in the Header field to devote the full header to the URL (aligned to the right). Then enter &d&b&p in the Footer field to print the date on the left and the page number on the right at the bottom of each page. (This procedure eliminates printing each page’s title, represented by &w. A Web page’s title takes up space that’s best devoted to printing the full URL, in our view.)

Internet Explorer 7.0

IE 7 won’t win any awards for innovation, having not quite caught up with features its free competitor, the Mozilla Firefox browser, came out with two years ago.

Besides the tabbed windows, IE 7 has (thankfully) copied several other features from Firefox, Opera, and other non-Microsoft browsers. These include the ability to add Internet search engines of your choice to IE’s search bar and a default Shink to Fit setting so Web pages will fit your printer’s paper size.

However, IE 7 has also gained a few new features that other browsers may themselves need to catch up with.

Pressing Ctrl+Q or clicking the Quick Tabs tab on the IE 7 toolbar tiles all of your open tabs into a convenient thumbnail view (see Fig). When you have a lot of tabs open, Quick Tabs can save you a substantial amount of time that you might otherwise spend clicking at random to get back to a particular site.

Page Zoom is another handy feature. When you’re viewing a web page that’s just too small or too large, hold down the Ctrl key and press + to make the page 10 percent larger, – to make it 10 percent smaller, or 0 (zero) to return the page to its original size.

These special keystroke sequences work exactly the same way as they do in Firefox, except that IE 7 scales both images and text. The keystrokes work whether you use the symbol keys on the main keyboard or the numeric keypad.

There’s also a small Page Zoom button on the extreme right of IE 7’s status bar. You can click it once to scale a Web page to 125 percent, click it again for 150 percent, and click it a third time to go back to 100 percent.

Gather a Snapshot of Google in time

Google Zeitgeist provides a weekly, monthly, and yearly overview of what the Web was interested in. Turning to Google itself for a definition of zeitgeist (define:zeitgeist), there's consensus that it refers to "the spirit of the times."
And Google Zeitgeist is just that: a mirror that the Web (according to Google) holds up to us, providing a snapshot of the week, month, or year that was.

A typical weekly Google Zeitgeist, shown in fig lists the top 15 gaining queries.

(http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html)

It takes only a few moments of visiting Google Zeitgeist before you're itching to go back a little further in time: the week your second child was born, the month during which the Olympics were held, the year you graduated from high school. Click the Archive link to choose any year from the Google Zeitgeist Archive and display links for every week, month, and year .

Resize large group of photos freshly downloaded from digital camera in two clicks

Everyone likes to email digital photos, but no one likes to receive pictures that are so huge they take forever to download and require you to scroll left and right and up and down to see the entire image.

Microsoft ImageResizer PowerToy is a free utility that plugs into Windows Explorer. Download and install ImageResizer from the link at the end of this post and then browse to the folder where you stored your digital photos.

Select the photos you want to resize, right-click, and choose Resize Pictures from the context menu to get the ImageResizer dialog box. Click the Advanced button to see all of the options as shown in the pic.

From there, choose one of the ImageResizer suggested dimensions, or enter your custom width and height. Be sure to select the Make Pictures Smaller But Not Larger option if you don’t want to size up — and you won’t, because making digital photos larger degrades quality. Click OK.

By default, the ImageResizer creates copies of the files and adds the chosen size to the filename. For example, if your original photo filename was Jeremy001.jpg, and you resized it using the Small setting, the new version will be named Jeremy001 (Small).jpg.

Download here

Speed Up With A USB Stick

If you’ve got yourself a large USB Flash drive (at least 1 GB, preferably 2), you can move your system’s page file onto it for significantly better performance, because accessing flash memory is typically faster than your average hard disk.

You should also optimise the Flash drive for performance—right-click on it in My Computer, select Properties. Go to the Hardware tab, select your Flash drive and click Properties. Under the Policies tab, select “Optimise for performance”.


A few things to be kept in mind:

Firstly, if you remove this drive while Windows is running, you could cause it to crash, so be careful there.

Secondly, Flash drives are good only for limited read/write cycles, so this approach is definitely going to eat into its lifetime. Use this tip only for when you really need the performance boost rather than as a permanent solution.

Flip 3D-Reverse the order of flip

The Aero user interface adds a powerful enhancement to task switching. Alt+Tab still works—even better, in fact, because now thumbnails of each application are displayed, not just titles. But you’ll probably abandon Alt+Tab in favor of Windows+Tab, called Flip3D, which shows you a revolving set of windows at an angle so you can see exactly what you’re switching to.

You can reverse the order that Flip 3D cycles through your open windows by holding down the Shift key in addition to Windows+Tab. In my case, the Desktop window has always been displayed as the bottom-most application when I pressed Windows+Tab. To minimize all applications and display your Desktop, therefore, hold down the Windows key, then press Tab, Shift+Tab, and let go of the Windows key.

Windows Aero- How to switch it off

The new Aero interface gives translucency to the chrome that surrounds most application windows. This enables you to see what lies beneath a window, whether the foreground app is stationary or you’re dragging it to a new location.



If the translucency of window chrome irritates you, you can switch it off. Click Start➪Control Panel➪Customize the Color Scheme and then turn off Enable Transparency.

Can Translucency Help Productivity?

Translucency may seem like an unimportant feature, but a source within Microsoft’s Usability Labs tells us that the bold colors of the window frames in Windows XP were found to distract the eye from whatever material was in the main application window. Lightening up the window colors—by making them partially translucent— was found to improve how quickly a person could work with the content within applications.

Vista-New Start Menu

In Vista, the Start button is no longer called Start, and the Start menu looks completely different from the menu you may be used to in Windows XP. However, it’s still there at its place as in Win XP, here it seems a bit better organised.

The old Start button has been replaced by a lighted sphere that displays the Windows flag logo. Instead of submenus that fly out to the right of the main menu, Vista displays your most recently used programs in a primary window.

If you don’t like the new look, you can get the old Start menu back by reverting to the familiar XP submenu system. Right-click the Start Button, click Properties, select Classic Start Menu, and then click OK.

One thing you won’t find on the default Start menu is the Run option, which generations of Windows users have employed to start programs that may not appear on any menu. The omission isn’t a problem—if you know the secret. Simply type the name of the program you want to run (such as notepad) into the Start Search bar just above the Start button and then press Enter.

Disable focus stealing applications with Tweak UI

Ever been typing in a document or a password prompt and have a pop-up take over as the active window? It’s not hard to instant message a password to a stranger or unknowingly reboot your computer because a Windows Update prompt asked while you weren’t looking. An application focus thief breaks into your workflow without warning or permission. Not only can it steal the window focus, it can take over your mental focus.

A free Windows enhancement called Tweak UI can disable focus-stealing applications. Download the free Tweak UI from the link given at the end of this post. Once Tweak UI is running, under the General options, in the Focus panel, select Prevent applications from stealing focus, as shown in Figure below.

Tweak UI unlocks lots of other Windows settings as well. It’s worth a look around the software for other options to configure Windows just to your liking.

Download here

Clear your Desktop

It’s amazing how fast your computer’s desktop can fill up with shortcuts and files and turn into a virtual candy store of colorful icons beckoning your mouse pointer: “Click me! Click me!” Most modern software puts a shortcut to itself on your computer desktop by default when you install it. Your web browser and email program might save files they download directly to your desktop. It’s tempting to leave documents on your desktop because you’ll know they’ll be in sight at all times. But at what cost?

A cluttered virtual desktop is as bad as a cluttered physical desktop. It’s visually distracting and makes it easy to get derailed from the task at hand.

Clear your virtual desktop by removing all the icons you don’t need. To maintain a completely clear desktop with absolutely nothing taking up space, you can disable Desktop icons entirely. Here’s how:

1. Drag and drop all the files you’ve saved on your desktop into the My Documents folder.

2. Delete all the shortcuts to software applications on your desktop that already exist in Windows’ Start menu.

3. To disable Desktop items entirely, in Windows XP, right-click the Desktop, and from the Arrange Icons By submenu, deselect Show Desktop Icons. In Windows Vista, right-click the Desktop, and from the View submenu, clear Show Desktop Icons.

4. Enable the Quick Launch toolbar to start up programs without having to navigate the Start Menu. Add shortcuts to programs or documents you open often to this toolbar for easy access. The limited real estate is a good thing: choose only the items you launch often. (For example, if you open the status.xls spreadsheet every other day, use a shortcut to that document, instead of a shortcut to Excel.) As for all your other programs? Fear not: they’re still accessible, safely tucked away in the Programs folder.

Wimax in developing countries

The technology may not be familiar to many, but Intel wants to put it firmly on the global broadband map. For developing nations, with poor fixed communication infrastructure, Wimax could offer a vital link to the digital world. Providing the silicon for Wimax modems is an important first step in its journey from pipe-dream to reality.

Wimax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) has, on paper, a lot going for it. Theoretically it can provide data rates of up to 70 mbps over distances of up to 50 km, although its actual range is dictated by many variables, including topography, environmental conditions and network capacity.

Hyped by many as a successor to wi-fi, it also has a vital role to play alongside the fixed broadband technologies of DSL and cable.

This role is best summed up as a hole-filler, plugging gaps left by DSL and cable, providing a lifeline to those in rural areas and countries with poor fixed communications infrastructure and opening up the net to a whole new generation of users.

BT will eventually offer Wimax in the form of an off-the-shelf self-install modem, similar to its plug-and-play DSL service which helped kick-start broadband take-up when it was launched in 2002.

Wimax is being envisaged as working hand-in-hand with 3G and other high-speed technologies to provide a "personal broadband" possibly in the form of a pocket modem that can connect a multitude of devices wherever the user happens to be.

Extracted from BBC News

Multiple Virtual Desktops

The more space you have to lay out your materials, the easier it is to get a job done. Modern operating systems make multi-tasking with overlapping windows on one screen possible, but that requires some amount of task switching and window resizing to get to what you need. A recent survey by Jon Peddie Research4 showed that multi-monitor computer setups can increase a computer worker’s productivity by 20 to 30 percent.

To use physical multiple monitors, your computer has to have multiple video cards or one video card capable of multiple monitors. If you don’t have that capability, use virtual desktops instead to separate your work into four distinct workspaces and focus on one at a time.

In Windows XP, download the free Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop Manager (MSVDM) from the Download link at the end of this post. After installing MSVDM, right-click your Windows taskbar and select Toolbars → Desktop Manager. The MSVDM toolbar displays
buttons labeled 1 through 4. Switch to another desktop by pressing a button, or use the Quick Preview button to see all four desktops in quadrants on your screen as shown in the fig. below:

Assign a different desktop background to each desktop to distinguish them visually. To do so, right-click the MSVDM toolbar and choose Configure Desktop Images as shown in the fig. below:

Click here to download

Making a difference to the World

When we talk about making a difference in the world, most people would say that they are not 'big enough' to make a difference in the universe. But I think differently and to explain my point of view here is a short story for all...

“The Starfish Story” by Loren Eiseley

Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work. One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.

He came closer still and called out “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?” The young man paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean.” “I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?” asked the somewhat startled wise man. To this, the young man replied, “The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.”

Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, “But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can’t possibly make a difference!” At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, “It made a difference for that one.”

Speed up Mozilla Firefox

Sometimes Mozilla Firefox browser takes a long time to open a page, but this problem can be fixed by following few easy steps mentioned below:

1.Type "about :config" in the adress field.

2. Set the value of network.http.pipelining to "true".

3. Set the value of network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to "100".

4. Set the value of network.http.proxy.pipelining to "true"

5. Set the value of nglayout.initialpaint.delay to "0" (not availible in newer versions).

This will increase the speed of Mozilla Firefox to load the page immediately with any delay.

Disabling Anti-Virus from Device Manager

Lot of people always have trouble upgrading their operating system. They either get a Blue Screen of Death(BSOD) or Error Message box. There are million reasons why we might get that error message and one such reason is our anti-virus.

Here is a method to disable the anti-virus through Device Manager rather than the anti-virus application itself.

1) Start >> Run >> Type Devmgmt.msc

2) This will open device manager. Click on View >> Show Hidden Devices.

3) Expand the category which says Non-Plug and Play Drivers. If you look at the picture below, you will see that I have an exclamation mark next Panda File Shield Driver. Now this is where we need to look. Just like Panda(I have Panda Anti-Virus installed), you will find the following.

NAV OR SYM - Symantech or Norton.

The moment you find the driver for your anti-virus, right click on the file and click on disable.

4) Search for other files which fall under the same category and disable them and restart the computer.

There that's the other way you disable anti virus, when your normal application doesn't allow you to do that.

Spybot Search and Destroy 1.5.1.15

Spybot Search and Destroy searches your hard drive for so-called spy- or adbots; that is, little modules that are responsible for the ads many programs display. Many of these modules also transmit information, including your surfing behavior on the Internet. If it finds such modules, it can remove them. In most cases the host still runs fine after removing the spyware/adware.

Another feature is the removal of usage tracks, which makes it more complicated for unknown spybots to transmit useful data. The list of last visited websites, opened files, started programs, cookies, all that and more can be cleaned. Supported are the three major browsers Internet Explorer, Netscape Communicator, and Opera.

Download Freeware

Your Home page never being changed

Some websites illegally modify your registry editor and set their website as default home page, to stop this,

1. Right-click on the Internet Explorer icon on your desktop and select "Properties".

2. In the "Target" box you will see "C:\Program Files\Internet

Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE".

3. Now by adding the URL of the site to the end of this it overrides any
Homepage setting in internet options:

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE"

Speed up Menus in XP

While using the start menu, you will notice a delay between different tiers of the menu hierarchy. For the fastest computer experience possible I recommend changing some values, this will allow the different tiers to appear instantly.

Go to Start --> Run --> Regedt32

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

Locate the key called "MenuShowDelay" and it is probably set to 400.

Change that value to 150.

Reboot your computer.

You should notice a slight increase in the speed of your menus.

Download Videos from YouTube

YouTube Downloader

It's software that allows you to download videos from YouTube and many others and convert them to other video formats. The program is easy to use, just specify the URL for the video you want to download and click the Ok button! It also allows you to convert downloaded videos for Ipod, Iphone, PSP, Cell Phone, Windows Media, XVid and MP3.



YouTube Downloader is freeware, you may use it as long as you wish, no registration required.

Download here

Beta version of MSN Search

After promising (or threatening) for years to take on Google and Yahoo! in the search engine wars, Microsoft finally unveiled its own search technology in the beta version of MSN Search (beta.search.msn.com). It looks and feels like Google. MSN Search does let users configure some aspects of the results page appearance and filter in or out foreign language and adult content. MSN will be issuing a Desktop search product to rival Google’s, and various press leaks recently suggest the designers are experimenting with letting searchers tweak the algorithms that determine the rank of their search results. Microsoft is making this ongoing design process very transparent by putting the staff on its own blog at blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch to chronicle their progress. The developers speak frankly about user suggestions, upcoming features, and even the early slipups. The team says it is still working on compatibility issues with, of all things, Mozilla’s Firefox browser, the open-source competitor to Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer. And within a day of its mid-November launch, the MSN Search beta experienced technical difficulties and delivered server errors to some users. No word on whether these errors resembled the legendary Blue Screen of Death.

Google Desktop

Google edges its way into the software business with the beta release of its standalone Google Desktop Search application. Now you can search your PC as easily as you search the Web because the program can find a keyword hidden in your Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents, in your Outlook email, and even in your browser history. You can search your PC and the Web simultaneously, and Google serves up both online and offline results on a single page. This application, which is currently free, is so good we would consider paying for it.

Quick Search Box

The Quick Search Box is your fastest way to do web and desktop searches and launch applications. You can call it up by pressing the ⌘ key twice, and hide it by pressing ⌘ twice again. Type a few letters or words into the search box and your top results pop up instantly, including applications. For example, you can launch iTunes simply by typing "itu" into the Quick Search Box and pressing Return when iTunes appears as the first result.

Search Your Gmail and Web History

Not everything you're looking for lives on your Mac. Whether you're searching your computer or the web, Desktop helps you find it by searching your Gmail and web history along with your hard drive. Also because your index is stored locally on your own computer, you can even access your Gmail and web history while you're offline.

Low-cost Computers

Low-cost computers haven’t been cheap enough for billions of people in developing countries. But Hector Ruiz, CEO of AMD, wants to equip 50% of the world’s population with computers by 2015. That’s why AMD launched its PIC (Personal Internet Communicator), a complete, stripped-down computer built around AMD’s recently acquired Geode microprocessor. The Geode runs at about 366MHz and will cost $185 without a monitor. So far, the PIC has been picked up by a telephone company in India and cable TV companies in Mexico and the Caribbean. Those companies are giving away the PIC for free in exchange for monthly service plans. The system includes a cheap version of Microsoft’s Windows CE OS, and it enables Internet browsing via broadband or narrowband modems. Ruiz recently noted that AMD has a successor to its current Geode in the works to further its PIC ambitions.

Hybrid Dual Disc

Although music CD sales have sunk in recent years, DVDs fly off the shelves, and so the music industry hopes to nab some of that movie mojo by offering the hybrid DualDisc. One side of the disc holds standard CD audio material, but the other uses the DVD format to deliver a trove of concert footage, lyrics, photos, interviews, or full 5.1 audio versions of the album. EMI, Warner, and Sony are among the major publishers supporting the format, with scores of DualDiscs coming soon from the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Good Charlotte, and the Grateful Dead. But with DualDiscs apparently priced slightly higher than CDs, we’re guessing most consumers would rather the music industry keep its DVD side and just give us the album cheaper.

Temporarily assign yourself administrative permissions

Many programs require you to have Administrative permissions to be able to install them. Here is an easy way to temporarily assign yourself Administrative permissions while you remain logged in as a normal user.

Hold down the Shift key as you right-click on the program’s setup file.

Click Run as.

Type in a username and password that have Administrative permissions.

This will also work on applications in the Start menu.

How to mount CD/DVD image using MagicDisc

• Right click MagicDisc tray icon
  

• Select "Virtual CD/DVD-ROM"
  
  
  

• Select one of virtual CD/DVD drivers. (for examples: K: No Media)
• Click "Mount"

• Browse and select the CD/DVD image you wish to mount.

Click OK.

Using all CD/DVD image without burning them onto CD/DVD

MagicDisc 2.5.74 is a very helpful utility designed for creating and managing virtual CD drives and CD/DVD discs. It allows you to use almost all CD/DVD image without burning them onto CD or DVD in order to easily access your favorite games, music, or software programs. MagicDisc works like a real CD/DVD-ROM: You can run programs, play games, or listen to music from your virtual CD-ROM. Allowing you to run your game images at over 200x faster than from a conventional CD/DVD-ROM.

MagicDisc is a powerful utility that uses a unique combination of options to ensure a perfect back-up every time. Partner with MagicISO, Your original games/program discs can be safely stored away, MagicISO mean that you always have your expensive media stored safely as CD/DVD image file on your hard drive, and use them with MagicDisc just like using the original discs.

MagicDisc supports following CD/DVD image formats:

- BIN (CDRWin)
- IMA/IMG (Generic disk images)
- CIF (Easy CD Creator)
- NRG (Nero - Burning ROM)
- IMG/CCD (CloneCD)
- MDF/MDS (Fantom CD)
- VCD (Farstone Virtual Drive)
- VaporCD (Noum Vapor CDROM)
- P01/MD1/XA (Gear)
- VC4/000 (Virtual CD)
- VDI (Virtuo CD Manager)
- C2D (WinOnCD)
- BWI/BWT (BlinkWrite)
- CDI (DiscJuggler)
- TAO/DAO (Duplicator)
- PDI (Instant Copy)

Download freeware MagicDisk 2.5.74

Search ebooks by Google

Google has some fantastic potential for you to find whatever you are after on the internet.

To search for a book / program / file perhaps try the following.

Go to Google's search page and use the following criteria in the search dialog

intitle:index.of? file extension Name of item

e.g. intitle:index.of? chm syngress

This will hopefully give you a listing of all websites that google has cached that contain references to files in CHM format that are published by SYNGRESS.

Where CHM is a file format used by Microsoft Compiled HTML Help that is a proprietary format for online help files, developed by Microsoft and first released in 1997 as a successor to the Microsoft WinHelp format. It was first introduced with the release of Windows 98, and is still supported and distributed through Windows XP and Vista platforms.

A CHM help file has a ".chm" extension. It has a set of web pages written in a subset of HTML and a hyperlinked table of contents. CHM format is optimized for reading, as files are heavily indexed. All files are compressed together with LZX Compression. Most CHM browsers have the capability to display a table of contents outside of the body text of the help file.

As another example I use the following keywords in Google to search ebooks:

+("index of") +("/ebooks"|"/book") +(chm|pdf|zip|rar) +syngress

Solar Energy as power source

Solar Energy Powers South African Schools

Photovoltaic systems provided by Isofoton, of Spain, and funded by the European Union, have been installed in 1000 rural schools throughout South Africa. These schools have never been served by grid electricity, so this new power source will enable the schools to hold evening classes which will allow for an expanded educational system and for use of modern educational media tools, including much audio-visual equipment also installed as part of the program. Each school's power potential will be 880 Wp.

Difference between DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW

There's DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, and even DVD-ROM! So what's the difference between all of these different names, aren't all DVDs the same? Well, it's not quite that simple.

Let's first start with the most obvious difference: some have R and some have RW. The "R" stands for readable, while the "W" stands for writeable.

The main difference between DVD-R and DVD-RW, or DVD+R and DVD+RW is that the R disc formats can only be written to once, and then it is only readable and can’t be erased for the rest of its digital life. While RW discs are can be written to and erased many times, they are both readable and writeable.

"R" discs are perfect if they are only needed to be written to once, such as giving some files to a friend or transferring them between PCs. "RW" discs have their strength in the ability to be used many times over, which is great for routine system backups, etc. And naturally, the RW discs are slightly more expensive than the R discs, but you'll have to decide if the trade offs are worth the money.

Now, onto the difference between DVD-R and DVD+R. As I just described above, DVD-R & DVD-RW are sister discs, the difference being one is writeable once, while the other is writeable multiple times. The same thing is true for DVD+R & DVD+RW. So the question is, what's the difference between the plus and minus?

In order to explain this we must take a trip back in time. When DVDs were first being developed, there was no industry standard. Multiple companies were competing to develop what they hoped would be the dominant form of the future.

The DVD-R DVD+R difference can easily be summarized by the following:

* The DVD-R/RW standard was developed by Pioneer, and is used primarily by Apple and Pioneer. These "minus" discs can only be written to in one layer on the discs surface. In addition, this format is supported by the DVD forum, but is in no way an industry standard. DVD-R/RW discs are cheaper than the "plus" format.
* The DVD+R/RW format is supported by Philips, Dell, Sony, HP, and Microsoft. These discs can be written to in multiple layers, giving them slightly better and more disc storage than the "minus" format. Because of this additional capacity, they are slightly more expensive than "minus" discs.

A couple final things to clear up is the difference between DVD-ROM and DVD+RW, or the other DVD formats I mentioned above. The DVD-ROM drive can only read DVDs, while the other DVD drives can read and write data to DVDs.

And naturally the DVD+RW CD+RW difference can be explained by the "DVD" or "CD" prefix. DVDs, on average, can store up to 4.7 GB of data, while a CD can only store about 700 MB of data, or about 15% of a DVD's capacity. While CDs are slightly cheaper, in my opinion, the benefits of DVDs are much greater.

So now that you've learned about the difference between DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and even DVD-ROM, which one is right for you? The easiest way to determine which is more beneficial is to watch the industry trends. A few years ago all pre-built computers were shipping with DVD-ROM drives. Today, most PCs have a burnable DVD drive.

I feel that the benefits of having a burnable DVD drive far outweigh any additional costs. They store much more data, and they are ideal for storing your home movies to watch on your DVD player.

My advice is to look at DVD burners that support all of the major formats I've mentioned above, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW. While a DVD drive that supports all of these formats may be slightly more expensive, it will allow you to use any type of DVD disc to burn to, and you'll be protected from any industry shifts to one format or the other.