October, 2008 Archive
October 22, 2008 by
Jason
By default, the Microsoft Windows XP taskbar, which shows buttons for each of your open windows, sits at the bottom of your screen. That’s fine if you don’t open many windows. If you have more than six or seven windows open at a time, however, the taskbar can become extremely crowded. To make more room for windows, move your taskbar to the right or left side of the screen, where it will be displayed vertically, giving you room for more than a dozen windows.
Tip: If you have a widescreen monitor, placing your taskbar on the right or left side of the screen can make much more efficient use of screen space.
To move your taskbar
1. Right-click your taskbar. If there is a check mark beside Lock the Taskbar on the shortcut menu, click Lock the Taskbar to unlock it. Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | No Comments »
October 21, 2008 by
Jason Right now, I am actually looking for some instructions on how to automatically shutdown the computer by using only the built-in components of Windows Vista, without any additional “shutdown computer” applications (oh boy, there are thousands or even billions of those). I am thinking about using Task scheduler in Windows to set up a computer shutdown command in some way. Any other ideas?
I try to always use built-in functions in Windows to do a task before I use “other” software. Using little applications to perform tasks opens the door to bugs and crashes. Most of the times there are built in functions to perform most tasks. Most people just don’t know about or how to use them. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | 3 Comments »
October 20, 2008 by
Jason Normally, Mozilla Firefox operates from your hard drive, but it’s possible to run it completely in your system’s memory (RAM). It speeds up your browsing because computers can read and write from RAM much faster than it can read and write from the hard drive. The following instructions will walk your through a configuration with Windows.
Steps
1. Download and save Portable Firefox onto your Desktop (see Things You’ll Need below). Double-click on the ZIP file and extract the contents of the archive to the folder “C:\PortableFirefox”. You can use a different directory, but you will have to adapt the rest of this article to that directory.
2. Download RAMDisk and save it to the same location as the ZIP file (see Things You’ll Need below). Double-click RAMDisk.exe. This is a self-extracting archive. When asked where to save the extracted files, save them on your Desktop. This creates a directory called RAMDisk. Read More»
Posted in Firefox | 2 Comments »
October 20, 2008 by
Jason Microsoft has been sending out surveys to selected Windows users. There’s nothing unusual in that. It does it all the time, but this one is seeking opinions on a feature dubbed the ‘Instant On Experience’. You may recall that this is something several mini laptop makers have been dabbling with. Asus are one of the first with a system called Splashtop. The idea is that if all you want to do is collect you emails, or surf the net, why should you have to wait ages for Windows (or Linux) to load? Instead, at startup you can opt to run a super-small Linux based operating system, which only takes a second or two to load and gives you more or less immediate access to the web. Microsoft is clearly taking an interest in the feature, possibly for the upcoming Windows 7 (rumoured now to be called ‘Stratus), which is due to make its public appearance next year. The survey also asks respondents what other applications they would like to see fire up in a just a few seconds, now they’re asking, how about Windows…?
Posted in Linux, Windows 7 | No Comments »
October 19, 2008 by
Jason
The Visual Round Trip Analyzer was initially an internal Microsoft tool, which the Redmond company is now offering as a free download. Designed as a webpage performance visualizer and analyzer, according to the software company, Visual Round Trip Analyzer runs on top of Network Monitor 3.2 and is set up to offer a comprehensive perspective over the download of a specific webpage. The Redmond giant indicated that VRTA comes with support for Windows Vista RTM and SP1, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 SP1 and Windows Server 2008.
“The Visual Round Trip Analyzer tool helps web developers and testers visualize the download of their page, identify best practices and changes that improve performance. The Round-Trip between the client and server(s) is the single biggest impact to web page performance – much greater than server response time. VRTA examines the communications protocol, identifying the causes of excessive round-trips, and recommending solutions,” Microsoft informed. Read More»
Posted in Computer | No Comments »
October 19, 2008 by
Jason While Apple’s older iMacs (Late-2006) boast an impressive pair of stereo speakers (considering the all-in-one design and their small size), the same thing cannot be said about the company’s 20-inch and 24-inch aluminum iMac (Mid-2007).
However, both Apple’s Late-2006 and Mid-2007 computers have their speakers placed at the bottom of the system, facing down. This leads to a considerable loss in sound quality, as the sound hits your desk and bounces off in all directions. Given this, some high pitched sounds (but not only) barely make it to your ears. There is a way to capture all the sound coming from your Mac’s speakers, and direct it all towards your ears.
Buy a pair of headphones! Just kidding. No headphones. You do, however, need two extra items on your desk to make this happen. A couple of ashtrays, for instance. Just place them underneath each of your iMac’s speakers. What happens is this: Read More»
Posted in Mac | No Comments »
October 14, 2008 by
Jason The pain…
If you’ve invested your hard earned cash on a Creative X-FI sound card and a copy of Vista, you may be feeling a bit underwhelmed right now. Some of your games may be sounding a bit flat and lifeless and you’ll have no doubt felt that sinking feeling when you edit the sound settings in your new game only to find that you can’t enable some of the fancy options. There is a good reason for this and you probably will have been told at great length about it by one of the many passengers on the anti-Microsoft bandwagon.
The Science…
If you’re an experienced PC gamer you’ll no doubt be aware of DirectX and the various functions that make up the DirectX standard, such as DirectDraw, Direct3d and DirectSound and DirectSound3D. You will probably be aware of the hype surrounding Direct3d already, given that it has now reached version 10, but that’s a story for another day. DirectSound is what we are interested in here and it is sadly missing in Vista. XP and DirectX9 featured a “Hardware Abstraction Layer” which was a piece of software that allowed Windows to talk directly to a soundcard such as the X-FI to provide hardware mixing and 3d effects for your games. Without this layer any sound you hear will be mixed using software, rendering much of your shiny new soundcard useless. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | 1 Comment »
October 14, 2008 by
Jason Network Access Protection is designed to permit a high degree of control over client computers across a network. A critical feature of Windows Server 2008, NAP is now also supported by Windows Vista
RTM and Service Pack 1 and Windows XP Service Pack 3. But deploying NAP is not exactly an effortless task. However, Microsoft is offering the necessary resources to help network administrators, infrastructure specialists and system architects. An illustrative example of this is the Network Access Protection Design Guide available via TechNet.
“The Network Access Protection Design Guide, authored by our very own technical writer and NAP Forum hero Greg Lindsay, is now live! The NAP Design Guide explains the advantages, disadvantages, requirements, recommendations, and design considerations for deploying NAP for the IPsec, 802.1X, VPN, and DHCP enforcement methods. (…) Huge thanks to Greg for his authoring efforts over the last year and to many NAP product team reviewers for helping to ensure that the content is technically accurate and complete,” revealed Joe Davies, NAP Senior Program Manager. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista, Windows XP | 1 Comment »
October 12, 2008 by
Jason Microsoft gave computer makers a six-month extension for offering Windows XP on newly-shipped PCs. While this doesn’t impact enterprise IT because volume licensing agreements will allow IT to keep installing Windows XP for many years to come the move is another symbolic nail in Vista’s coffin.
The public reputation of Windows Vista is in shambles, as Microsoft itself tacitly acknowledged in its Mojave ad campaign.
IT departments are largely ignoring Vista. In June (18 months after Vista’s launch), Forrester Research reported that just 8.8% of enterprise PCs worldwide were running Vista. Meanwhile, Microsoft appears to have put Windows 7 on an accelerated schedule that could see it released in 2010. That will provide IT departments with all the justification they need to simply skip Vista and wait to eventually standardize on Windows 7 as the next OS for business.
So how did Vista get left holding the bag?
Let’s look at the five most important reasons why Vista failed. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | 4 Comments »
October 12, 2008 by
Jason
It is recommend for you to have a secure connection network between your PC and the Gmail server. Let say if you login to Gmail using a public network like wireless or hotspot in Starbucks, someone can tamper or see the sensitive information transferred from your PC to the Gmail server. This is because the network you are using is not secure and is open to everybody.
Non-secure networks make it easier for someone to impersonate you and gain full access to your Google account, including any sensitive data it may contain like bank statements or online log-in credentials.
To check whether you are in a secure connection or not, check that the protocol that being used is https at the address bar. And also, there is a Lock icon at the bottom right corner of your browser (Firefox).
When you have both of them, that’s mean you are in a secure connection. No one can tamper or modify or spying on the data transferred between you and the Gmail server. You are now safe and secure to send emails, at least. Read More»
Posted in Internet | 2 Comments »
Loading ...
