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Cool New Blue Track Mice From Microsoft

September 12th, 2008

It looks like lasers are out, with the new Microsoft Blue Track Mice.

These new mice use blue beams and wide angle specular optics architecture instead of laser. I have no idea what that actually means, but these mice are looking pretty cool.

The advantages of these blue beams is that the mice will be more functional on a variety of different surfaces. They should have no problem working on marble, granite, concrete, carpet, or pretty much anything.

These should be out sometime in November, so put them on your Christmas shopping list.

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Posted in General, Useful Stuff

Cool Open Source Tools

September 10th, 2008

These days there are some fantastic open source products on the market. A huge amount of time and effort goes into these products and the fact that they are free is quite amazing. You can find products for almost any task and you can setup a PC to do almost everything without ever having to purchase a commercial product.

Here is a list of some of the best open source products available, some of these you should definitely test if you haven’t done so already.

Firefox - By now everyone would have heard of Firefox, unless you have been living under a rock. This is a great browser, secure, stable and pretty fast. It is a nice alternative to IE and works on all platforms.

Thunderbird – Thunderbird is a great little email product. In our office here we pretty much use Thunderbird for 95% of our email needs. This was developed by Mozilla and is also a multi-platform product. We have found Thunderbird to be much more stable that products such as Outlook/Outlook Express.

OpenOffice – OpenOffice is the free alternative to Microsoft Office. It does pretty much everything you will need, and has programs that are equivalent to Access, Excel, Powerpoint and Word. We have discussed this previously – see the post here on OpenOffice.

Miro – Miro is a free internet TV and video player. It has thousands of channels can save YouTube videos and much more. Worth a look!

FileZilla – FileZilla is a free FTP solution. There is both a client and server version available, so it should be able to meet any of your FTP needs. The client is available for all platforms, but the server is currently Windows only.

Gimp – Gimp is an image manipulation program. It isn’t Photoshop, but it is free. So if you have basic image editing needs then check this out.

uTorrent – uTorrent is a free torrent client. It is very lightweight, fast and easy to use. Highly recommended for downloading torrents.

Apache – This is probably the greatest web server available and yes it is 100% free. It also powers most of the servers on the web. If you ever need to setup a web server for home or office or any other needs, then use Apache. It works great on Windows and Linux.

MySQL – The world’s most popular open source database. MySQL is a powerful database program that can be used for almost any database requirements. The most common combination is to use MySQL with an Apache server. This works extremely well and is also used on most web server configurations on the web.

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Posted in General, Useful Stuff, Windows Software

Prism Video Converter

September 5th, 2008

I was reading the latest version of a computer magazine lately and was happy to see they offered a free version of Prism video converter. Since my last video converter seemed to just not want to work after I upgraded to Vista I thought I’d give it a go.

If you want to give it a go you can download a version from download.com here

Basically the software lets you do all the video conversions you can do in most other conversion software, but with Prism I straight away liked to features;

Ease of output settings
Ease of adding files to convert

I have found with some other video conversion software that you need to have a great deal of knowledge on video and conversion to run the program. So I was pleasantly surprized when I found how easy this was to use.

This software lets you convert any video from any one of these formats;

avi
wmv
asf
mpg
3gp
mp4
mov
flv

So basically you can convert all your videos for things like Youtube, iPods, mp3′s etc.

Here is a screenshot of the program

Prism Video Converter

Here is a simple run through on how to convert a video;

Select add files

Prism Add Files

It will then list out the movie you selected;

Prism List Out

Now select your output format;

Prism Output

Now click the convert button;

Prism Convert

The software will now take a while for the conversion to take place but once done you will find your video has been converted and placed in the output folder you selected.

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Posted in General, Useful Stuff

Tags: prism video converter

Language Formats

August 29th, 2008

You can alter the way your computer displays numbers, currencies, dates and times through a simple edit in your control panel.

By doing this your computer will display € instead of $ every time the $ is displayed. If you change the language you will also notice all language on your PC will also change (it can also be done as a prank).

To change the language format on your PC just follow this;

Open your control panel
Open regional and language options
Click the Formats tab
Here you can select the new language you want
Click apply and OK
It also gives you a link to access many more languages

Language Formats

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Posted in Useful Stuff

Tags: format language

Speed Up Your Internet Explorer 7

August 19th, 2008

Here are a few tips and tweaks you can do to increase the overall speed of your Internet explorer 7, by doing these you should experience faster IE7 browsing.

Phishing Filter

This feature is designed to protect you from being tricked into accessing a dodgy website, but it does also slow down your website. If you do feel safe in turning off this feature just do the following;

Open tools
Under phishing filter click phishing filter settings
Scroll down to the phishing filter section
Check disable phishing filter
Click apply and you are done

Turn off your IE7 phishing filter

Turn off your SSVHelper Class

Your SSVHelper Class is a file which is part of the Java plug-in, it is basically a non-essential file and it does slow down your IE7. To turn off this feature just follow this;

Open tools
In manage add-ons click enable or disable add-ons
Go down to SSVHelper Class and click on it
Now underneath click disable and then click OK

Turn off RRS Feeds

You may not have this feature (automatically checking RRS feeds) enabled but if you do you will find it can slow down your IE7 quite a bit. If you want to disable this feature or check that it is not running then follow this;

Click tools
Open internet options
Click the content tab
In the feeds area click settings
Uncheck automatically check feeds for updates
Click OK and you are done

Disable ClearType

ClearType is a feature on that is designed to sharpen fonts on your Windows display, but it can also slow down the running of your Internet Explorer 7. If you want to disable your ClearType just follow these points;

Click tools
Open internet options
Click the advanced tab
Scroll down till you see Always use ClearType for HTML*
Click apply and OK

Disable ClearType on Internet Explorer 7

Run a Registry Clean

One of the simplest methods you can do to improve any application on your PC is to run a registry repair, this will clean up your computer and allow you Internet Explorer 7 to run faster. To run a registry scan just click the link below and follow the prompts;

Run a registry scan for Internet Explorer 7

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Posted in Internet Explorer, Useful Stuff

Tags: ie7 Internet Explorer speed

Generate a System Health Report in Vista

August 13th, 2008

Here is a cool tool found in Windows Vista that lets you run a quick scan of your computer and checks its overall health. The scan checks the operating system, all hardware and security settings within your PC and offers solutions to any problems found.

The results are shown in an easy to read format with solutions beside each problem, these include;

Errors
Informational
Basic system checks
Resource overview
Software configuration
Hardware configuration
CPU
Network
Disk Memory, and
Report statistics

These results can essentially solve many problems you have with your PC, the report also takes the guess work and trial and error out of identifying problems. eg: Maybe you think RAM is a problem, but it could just be your CPU consumed by a background process. Run this report before trying any drastic tweaks.

To run a system health report just follow these steps;

Open control panel
Click system and maintenance
Click performance information and tools
Click advanced tools
Click generate a system health report
It will take a moment to scan and then give you the results

Performance Monitor

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Posted in Useful Stuff, Windows Vista

Tags: report system

Speed Up Your Outlook Startup

August 12th, 2008

Outlook Express is such a good email program used by millions all over the world, but after a while you may get problems with startup speed and other slow errors.

I used to get so frustrated with the speed of my Outlook opening, it sometimes took up to 2 minutes just to open. This was just an annoyance when I needed to access emails fast. I discovered this cool tweak that you can do that will increase the speed of your outlook startup dramatically.

Basically, every time you get an email your Outlook will store it in a file, so after a while this file will become huge. You need to go through your emails and delete all the useless emails you do not need, this should free up some space and make your startup faster. The startup will become faster because your Outlook has to look through this entire file every time it starts up.

Even after you delete a bunch of old emails you may find that your Outlook still takes a while to start up. This is due to that fact that your outlook still has to look through the entire file for emails, whether it is full or empty, so you need to compact this file to make sure your startup is fast.

Follow these points to compact your personal folders file in Outlook;

Open up your Outlook
Click tools
Open up options
Click the mail setup tab
Open up data files
Click on settings
Click compact now
It may take a minute or two
Done

This should help you increase the startup speed of your Outlook and stop the frustration of waiting minutes to see emails, but remember also to regularly delete unwanted emails to keep your personal folders clean.

For more info on cleaning Outlook Express click here

Speed up the startup of your Outlook

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Posted in Outlook Errors, Useful Stuff

Tags: outlook speed startup

Installing New Fonts

August 1st, 2008

I just had a quick email from someone trying to add a new font to their PC but is having some serious trouble. Adding a new font is actually a really easy process, so just follow this;

Find the font you want – there are heaps of really cool free font sites out there
Download the font – usually comes in a .zip format
Extract the font file from the zip – one of the most common font file extension is .ttf
Open up control panel
Open appearance and personalization
Click install or remove a font
In the folders section you have to navigate to find the folder that your font is in
The font should be added to the List of Fonts section
Select that font and click install
Done

If you like doing things through Run you can do it this way;

Click start
Type Run
In the run box type this – %windir%/fonts
Here you are at the font section, just follow the tips from above

If you play around with your fonts and find some new ones you can really have some fun with them, good luck!

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Posted in Useful Stuff

Tags: fonts ttf

Improve the Speed of Windows Vista

July 8th, 2008

With the ending of an era with Windows XP we are all going to have to get used to Windows Vista. But one main complaint I hear from users and potential users is the worry with the speed of Vista, or the lack of speed by Vista.

Many people want a super fast operating system but unless you have a ultra fast PC then you may experience a slower operating system in Vista than you did in XP. Here are some tips and tweaks you can do to optimize your PC so that it will be much faster using Windows Vista;

RAM

With Windows Vista you need to increase your RAM over what you where using in Windows XP, I would suggest you use at least 2GB of RAM but the more the faster!

Clean Your Registry

Like in Windows XP your Vista registry can become blocked up so quickly that it will dramatically slow down your computer, so run this scan and improve your Vista’s speed – run a free vista registry scan.

ReadyBoost

ReadyBoost is a new but innovative feature on Vista, essentially you can use any data stick to increase your RAM. To run ReadyBoost just insert a flash drive and select ReadyBoost.

Turn Off Aero

If you do not have massive RAM or are running a top quality video card then you should turn off Aero Glass. To turn off Aero read this post – Turn Off Aero

Remove Spyware and Adware

Yes.. Windows Vista can be hit by spyware and adware! Well that isn’t a huge shock but the reality is that although the safety features in Windows Vista have been improved over XP the adware guys have also improved. So get yourself a Spyware and Adware scanner to remove all nasties and to prevent them coming back.

Run a Spyware and Adware Scan

Upgrade Your Drivers

If you upgraded your computer from XP to Vista then you will need to also update all your drivers. Just run this scan and it can update all your Vista drivers for you – Update Your Drivers

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Posted in Useful Stuff, Windows Vista

Tags: speed vista

Screen Rotation

June 26th, 2008

I thought I talk about a little graphics trick you can try to annoy your co-workers or friends, it will rotate their computer screen.

This little trick enables you to swing your screen around 90, 180 or 270 degrees. But not only does it just rotate the screen it also rotate your mouse, so if you move your mouse one way the cursor can move another way.

To setup screen rotation follow these points;

Right click on your desktop
Select graphics options
Select rotation
Here you can select how much rotation you want.

A little tip that may help you out if you cannot get the mouse back to make your screen normal is to use hotkeys, here are the hotkeys that control the screen rotation;