Things you didn’t know about Windows Vista..!!!

1. Partition unused space
Vista has a built-in hard-drive partitioning tool that’ll let you take unused space from your main partition and form an extra partition, say. a H: drive for storing photos and videos. It can also consolidate extra space into a single partition. The utility resides in the Computer Management console located in Vista’s Administrative Tools Control Panel.

2. Watch TV on your Vista PC
If one is not already built in, you can buy an external TV tuner and use Windows Media Center to watch TV and record through the handy program guides. For buildings or homes that are cable-ready, high-definition channels are unscrambled or ready to watch without a cable box,

3. Send faxes and scan documents
The odds are good that your PC has an integrated fax modem. Take advantage of it by using Vista’s built-in Fax and Scan utility (found in Vista Business and Ulti­mate editions). This same utility can also take advantage of that old scanner to image documents without your purchasing new, Vista-compatible software.

4. Have kids? Use parental controls
Go to the Control Panel and select User Accounts and Family Safety. Next, click the link that says Set up parental controls for any user. From there, you can block inap­propriate Web sites, set up a time schedule for playing games, limit use of instant-messaging software, and create boundar­ies for browsing the Internet. You can even print out an activity report for your child.

5. Conserve battery power
In addition to setting up a Power scheme, Vista can automatically crank down the brightness of the screen (via a slide bar or by percentage points) when a laptop is running on battery. Go to Control Panel \ Power options Advanced Settings j Display and set the brightness to 50 percent. This can add an extra 20 to 30 minutes’ worth of battery time for your commute home.

6. Turn off annoying prompts
Vista added the “A Program Needs Your Permission to Continue” prompt to help prevent you from inadvertently installing malware or making unauthorized changes to your computer. It’s annoying to see that dialog box constantly pop up. If you’re computer savvy, you can turn it off by deactivating User Account Control in the User Accounts Control Panel.

7. Two clocks for two time zones
If you work in different time zones, you can add up to two additional clocks on the sys­tem task tray. Left-click on the clock, select Change date and time settings, and go to the Additional Clocks tab. You can then enter the display name for the clock(s) and choose its time zone.

8. Boost compatibility
Before throwing your computer against a wall because a particular piece of leg­acy software is not working in Vista. try compatibility mode. Right-click on the program’s EXE file and choose Properties. Then click the Compatibility tab, check the box that says Run this program incompat­ibility mode for:, and select the operating system that worked best with the software.

9. Expanded shortcut menu
You can add useful options to the right-click menu on any file or folder. By holding down Shift as you right-click an item, add any file to the Start menu or Quick Launch toolbar, copy the entire path of the file or folder to the clipboard, or open a com­mand prompt window.

10. Get a health report from Vista
People get physical checkups, and so do computers. Vista can run a complete and well-organized diagnostic report high­lighting potential problems. In the Con­trol Panel, click System and Maintenance Performance Information and Tools. In the Tasks list along the left, click Advanced tools. The last item on the resulting list is Generated system health report.

11. Remove metadata from pictures
Pictures and documents have hidden data about the type of equipment used, as well as personal information about you. You can remove these details by right-clicking the file icon and selecting Properties. On the Details tab, click Remove Properties and Personal Information. You can remove sev­eral properties at a time or all of them by the checkboxes next to a property.

12. Create a shortcut to lock a PC
Slice steps off your system log-off rou­tine by putting a log-off shortcut on your desktop. Start by right-clicking an empty space on the desktop and then selecting New shortcut. In the space below Type the location of the item, type in run dl I32.exe user32.dll. LockWorkStation (remember to watch your spacing and case). Finally, create a clever name for the icon in lieu of the default “rundll32″—how about “Lock PC”? Then click the shortcut to lock your computer with ease.

13. Virtualize your keyboard
If you’re running Vista on a Mac via Boot Camp, you won’t be able to find the PrintScrn key a Mac doesn’t have one on its keyboard. Good thing Vista has a vir­tual on-screen keyboard built in. It’s in the Ease of Access folder, under Accessories, in the Start menu. You should see the esc key next to the F12key.

14. Bypass the log-on screen
You don’t have to be confronted by that eyesore of a log-on screen every time you boot up. Make Vista log in automatically by typing netplwiz into the Start menu search box. That will bring up the Advanced User Accounts Control, where you can uncheck the box that reads: Users must enter a user-name and password to use this computer.

15. Take smarter screen shots
Windows could always capture an image of you r desktop (with the Print Scrn key) or an active window (press Alt-PrtSc). With the Snipping Tool in the Accessories folder, you can snip a port ion of the screen or part of a Web site, document, or picture, and save it as an image file. Keep it handy by checking the option to display an icon of it in the Quick Launch toolbar.

Sphere: Related Content

War to the CORE...!!!

The gigahertz war has lost its importance.The War to the cores have heaten up.Whats up next...??.Wondering what am talking about.Its about the war between Intel and AMD.All these years they were fighting to prove oneself as the manufacturer of the processor with the highest clock speed.Now the trend has changed.Now,its for who manufactures the processor with highest number of cores.Who cares about the end user...?.
Intel and AMD ruled it over the first half of the decade equally.But things started changing in 2007.The first signs came in 2006 with Intel's Core Duo followed by Core 2 Duo,Centrino Core 2 Duo and quad core technologies in 2007.AMD on the other hand moved in slow motion.Its allure had been great performance and excellent prices,but AMD processors are no longer that much cheaper than Intel's offerings.
Its already been exaggerated that the AMD's defeat to Intel is expected soon.AMD will stay in the battle only if its Barcelona and Phenom,the quadcore processors from the company,ways to hit the market with a twist.Lets wait and see.

Sphere: Related Content

Everything You Wanted To Know About Torrents...!

Torrents have over shadowed every other P2P network to become the World's bandwidth hog. Here is everything you need to know about torrents.
What is a torrent?
Bram cohen is the man behind the torrent concept.When a file is stored in a server and the file is downloaded by millions of users,the servers bandwidth is shared by the million.To avoid such a congestion,the torrent concept is brought in.
How exactly does it work?
Lets say A,B,C and D all need file X[100MB] to be downloaded.The file X is stored in a server.What a torrent does is,it breaks the file into chunks, say 1MB.Now,the client A downloads the first part of the chunk say 0-25MB.B downloads 25-50 and C and D similarly.when all these clients called peers download these files, they upload the same which is set for download by the other peers.The same thing applies for other peers too.So instead of sharing the server's bandwidth for download the individual bandwidths are being shared.
Even after downloading ,if a peer stays online the he is called as a seed.Seeds are the ones which has completed the download of the file and still allows it to be downloaded using their bandwidth.
So ,more users online increases the bandwidth instead of slowing down the process.
Who are the trackers ?
A tracker is just an application that monitors the current status of seeds and peers downloading a particular torrent.When there are millions of peers and seeders and when the peers finish downloading and they still share the file becoming a seeder.This is where the tracker comes into play.The trackers updates and keeps the track of whats going on in the network.
How to make your own torrent and share ?
Every torrent client has an inbuilt feature of creating a torrent.All you have to do is to head to file --> new and create your torrent targeting your file.Now upload the torrent in any of the torrent sites.The torrent file consist of your IP address and the details about the file.
Note: You have to be online sharing the file till at least you create one seeder.
What are Share Ratios ?
Most of the older P2P networks died because they did not force the peer to upload the file what they are downloading.So the concept of share ratio is introduced in torrents.Share ratio is the amount of data you have uploaded to the amount you have downloaded.The torrent Network gives preference to those with share ratios of one and over and they get better speeds of downloads.
Top torrent sites:
Torrentz Isohunt Demonoid BiteNova Torrentscan

Top torrent clients:

uTorrent BitComet ABC BitLord TurboBT Azureus

Was this information useful...Do comment...
Cheers.

Sphere: Related Content

Install Windows By Booting From A USB...!!!(PART 2 for NTFS)

Thanks for the response I recieved through comments and mails for the Part 1 of my install Windows from a Pendrive.Few of my site's visitors were not able to access their harddisk drives in the dos mode because they used a NTFS file system.The boot disk I provided did not support NTFS filesystem.So am going to solve that problem here.
I will make it as simple as possible.The tools needed are:
1.NTFS floppy setup or NTFS4DOS
2.Win XP setup files(The I386 folder is enough).
All you have to do is to insert the pendrive in the USB port and run the NTFS floppy setup utility.Choose your empty pendrive and click start.This will create the bootable pendrive.
Now copy the I386 from the Windows setup that you have.Restart the system by setting the boot priority to USB.the system boots to the DOS mode.Now you will be able to access other drives too because it is a NTFS boot disk.Now enter the USB drive and copy the setup files to your harddisk.for that use the command
copy [sourcePath] [destinationPath]
Where the source path is the setup files in your USB and the destination path is your harddisk.Now run the setup from the copied setup files in your harddisk,say c drive.To run setup type,
a:\>c:
c:\>cd I386
c:\I386>winnt
Thats it.You are done.The setup starts.

p.s.This post is in response to the user(Nicky) comment in my part one .Thanks folk.

Sphere: Related Content