Tag: tweak

Google Apps Sync Kills Outlook Search

June 26, 2009 by Jason

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, introduced at the start of the past week, manages to handicap the Redmond company’s email client, delivered as a part of the Office System. Essentially, the installation of Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook manages to kill the email client’s ability to search its own data. The tool from the Mountain View-based search giant is designed to bridge Outlook 2003 SP3 and 2007 SP2 (or SP1) with Google Apps. However, it appears that Google failed to perform sufficient testing of the utility, as Microsoft came across a bug that no longer allowed users of Outlook to search through their data.

“The installation of the Google Apps Sync plugin disables Outlook’s ability to search any and all of your Outlook data,” stated Dev Balasubramanian, Outlook product manager. “When a Google Apps user installs the sync plugin for Outlook, the plugin modifies a registry key which disables Windows Desktop Search from indexing and providing search functionality for all Outlook data, not just the Outlook data being synchronized from GMail. Because Outlook search relies upon the indexing performed by Windows Desktop Search, Outlook search functions are broken as a result.” Read More»

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7

May 07, 2009 by Jason

Microsoft is delivering a complete package of tools around the Release Candidates of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Downloads such as the WAIK or Windows XP Mode are accompanying Windows 7 RC and Windows Server 2008 R2 RC, but Microsoft has even more. The Redmond company is also offering the Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC). The solution is designed to bridge Windows 7 clients with server operating systems including Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2003. Remote Server Administration Tools allow administrators to manage both features and roles on machines running the server operating systems enumerated above from a remote computer with Windows 7.

“It includes support for remote management of computers that are running either the Server Core or full installation options of Windows Server 2008 R2, and for some roles and features, Windows Server 2008. Some roles and features on Windows Server 2003 can be managed remotely by using Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 RC, although the Server Core installation option is not available with the Windows Server 2003 operating system,” Microsoft informed. Read More»

20 Tips Optimise your system for OS X

May 01, 2009 by Jason

1. Boost memory
The simplest way to a faster Mac is by installing extra RAM. Before you buy, check the maximum RAM capacity of your Mac. You can download a free program called MacTracker that will tell you the precise technical specifications of every Mac ever produced.

2. Install RAM in pairs
Many Macs will give you a speed boost if you install matching RAM modules in pairs. G5 and Mac Pro towers actually require the installation of pairs of modules, though most other Macs will allow the use of an odd number, with the proviso that you won’t get the fastest possible performance from them. Crucial’s website will tell you the specifics for your model.

3. Faster drive
Installing a faster hard drive as the boot drive on a tower Mac will yield performance gains, especially if you go up to a 10,000-speed drive. On a laptop, installing a 7,200rpm drive (to replace a 5,400 rpm model) will also make things faster, though older Mac portables don’t have user replaceable hard drives Read More»

TOP 10 – April 2009 Popular Tips

May 01, 2009 by Jason

1. Windows Help program

2. Conflicker Checker

3. Free Windows 7 Demo Toolkit

4. Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5 for Windows 7

5. Registry Tweaks to Enhance Your Windows XPerience – Part 10

6. Windows 7 Aero

7. TOP 10 – March 2009 Popular Tips

8. Automatic Upgrades to Internet Explorer 8

9. Codename Namoroka from Firefox

10. Introducing the Firefox Taskfox Prototype
Read More»

Registry Tweaks to Enhance Your Windows XPerience – Part 11

April 27, 2009 by Jason

It’s time once again for another episode of our Windows XP optimization series. In the past few months, you’ve seen tweaks that helped you change the Start Menu, Desktop, Display Properties, Control Panel, Folder Options, and so on. Most optimizations could not be made the old-fashioned way (from the Control Panel or any other native Windows configuration utility). As you might have guessed already from the title, this article isn’t any different: today, you’ll find out how you can easily customize the way your Internet Options window looks. So, if, for one reason or another, you need to remove a few tabs from Internet Options and have no idea how to go about in order to accomplish this, you’ve come to the right place.

If this is your first encounter with the Microsoft Windows XP registry tweaks saga, here’s a quick tour on all the highlights: we provide an absolutely free, easy tutorial on how to activate hidden tweaks inside your XP operating system, just by using good-old Notepad. You can start by reading the first article that not only provides a full insight into the highlights, but clearly specifies the few steps that must be taken before heading on. Read More»

40 productivity tips for Firefox

April 17, 2009 by Jason

1. Auto-complete websites
Go to the address bar (Control-L) and type the name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com” and take you there. For .net addresses, press Shift-Enter, and for .org addresses, press Control-Shift-Enter.

2. Turn your bookmarks into keywords
Right-click the bookmark and then select Properties. Put a short keyword in the keyword field, save it, and now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark.

3. Speed up your downloads
Download Manager Tweak Extension adds extra functionality to the existing Download Manager to help you download faster.

4. Search faster
To search with lightning speed just highlight the word or phrase with your mouse and drag the highlighted text into the search bar. Firefox will then automatically load up the search in a new tab, so you can stay informed faster. Read More»

10 performance tips for Firefox

April 15, 2009 by Jason

1. Enable pipelining
Browsers are normally very polite, sending a request to a server then waiting for a response before continuing. Pipelining is a more aggressive technique that lets them send multiple requests before any responses are received, often reducing page download times.

To enable it, type about:config in the address bar, double-click network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining so their values are set to true, then double-click network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and set this to 8.

Keep in mind that some servers don’t support pipelining, though, and if you regularly visit a lot of these then the tweak can actually reduce performance. Set network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining to false again if you have any problems. Read More»

Registry Tweaks to Enhance Your Windows XPerience – Part 10

April 06, 2009 by Jason

It’s time to continue from where I left off in my previous article regarding registry tweaks for your Microsoft Windows XP operating system. Therefore, in part ten of your tweaking saga we’ll go through a few more important tweaks for your Start Menu. So if the previous article caught your attention and you’re interested in finding out more ways in which you can easily customize the look and feel of your Start Menu, rest assured that this article won’t disappoint you either.

On the other hand, if this is your first encounter with the Microsoft Windows XP registry saga, you should start by going back a bit, to the first article, which explains the concept behind these articles and the few steps that must be followed before heading on to the tweaking part. Otherwise, it’s highly probable you won’t understand what’s with the bolded lines below and, more importantly, what exactly you should do with them in case the tweak sounds really appealing, so make sure you read the first article. Now that you’ve created your tweaks.reg file and wrote Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00, let’s continue our free tutorial on how to personalize your system’s Start Menu. Read More»

TOP 10 – March 2009 Popular Tips

April 01, 2009 by Jason

1. Windows 7 Calculator to Vista

2. Windows XP Automatically Logoff after logon

3. Vista SP2 RC

4. Downgrade Vista to XP

5. Windows 7 Driver Kit Documentation

6. Registry Tweaks to Enhance Your Windows XPerience – Part 9

7. Security Compliance Management Toolkit v2.0

8. Windows 7 IT Pro Guides

9. 12 Tips to Prevent Your Computer From Viruses

10. Windows 7 Compatibility

Read More»

Windows XP Shutdown Much Faster

March 21, 2009 by Jason

One of the inconveniences that XP brings is it sometimes takes a lifetime before it fully shuts down. You may be wondering why I still post topics on XP, it is because there are still a lot of people that are still using XP on their computers, and I guess some of them are experiencing the eternal shutdown problem on their XP machines. The main reason for this problem is that one or more application is hanging up to 20 seconds while XP tries to shutdown. To resolve this I have here a simple registry tweak to force Windows XP to shut down more quickly. Before you jump into editing your registry it is highly advisable to first create backup of your registry.

step1: The first thing you need to do is to open your registry editor. Click Start –> Go to RUN and type REGEDIT

step2: Navigate to the following keys HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop
Scroll Down and look for HungAppTimeout and change the default 5000 to 1000 then click OK Read More»