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How to Stay in Sync Across Multiple Gadgets and Desktops

2009-07-14T15:00:00Z

The life of a technology and gadget aficionado is filled with challenges. With so many amazing computing options available to us these days, we tend to go a bit overboard with the number of devices we own. In addition to the desktop, we live digital lives on our laptops, netbooks, smartphones, and even the work PC at the office. While each machine has specific functions and advantages, problems arise when we sit down in front of just one device and wonder if it has the latest version of our documents, contacts, and bookmarks.

Keeping your mobile life in sync is becoming an increasingly difficult task these days, and with each device you add to your lineup, the challenge multiplies exponentially. It becomes even more complicated when you start mixing and matching platforms that have conflicting file systems and format support. On the bright side, there has never been a better time to automate the process, allowing you to keep every aspect of your digital life in sync. This guide will educate you on the best ways to sync files, bookmarks, passwords, emails, and even your contacts / calendars, to any platform or device you may have. We deep dive into the major sync technologies being offered today; showing you step by step how they work, so you can decide for yourself what solution will work best for you.

Live Mesh

Price: Free

Syncs: Files (Online & Offline)

Pros: Excellent solution for Documents, or other small files you update often. Mesh works great if you want to sync information with computers that are constantly going offline and even allows for internet based remote desktop.

Cons: Its usefulness is somewhat limited compared to Live Sync if you’re working with more than 5GB of data.

Compatibility

PC: Yes Mac: Yes Linux: Read Only Mobile: Windows Mobile

Most of you have probably heard about Live Mesh before, but how many of you truly understand what it does? Live Mesh, to be honest, still represents a lot of unused potential. But even in its present form, it is easily one of the most innovative and ambitious sync concepts on the market. Mesh enables users on Windows, Macs, and even Windows Mobile phones to keep updated versions of folders both online, and locally across as many devices as they choose. Microsoft’s servers take care of distributing updated copies of your files to all machines as they come online, or if you’re using a device with limited storage such as a netbook or a phone, you can choose to access it solely from the cloud. Using Live Mesh with your documents folder for example, ensures that you always have updated copies of your work, which can then be automatically distributed to all your devices the next time they connect.

The primary innovation behind Mesh is the “Virtual Desktop”. This allows you to access a copy of any file contained within your synced folders without any extra software. This is useful if you’re constantly moving around to different machines and need to access the content from anywhere.

Now that we’ve got you all excited, here’s the downside. Live Mesh only works as designed with less than 5GB of total data, and dragging and dropping files into the online storage only works in Internet Explorer using ActiveX. As a result, Linux users will be able to view and download files on the virtual desktop, but cannot upload changes. Macs are able to participate fully with the assistance of the desktop client software.

The 5GB limit doesn’t give you much room to play, but it’s important to keep in mind that there are ways to get around this. The only problem with doing so, however, is that Mesh loses its advantage over another competing sync technology that we look at later on, Live Sync. If the 5GB limit isn’t a problem, and you’re working with devices that are constantly going offline, read on to learn how to create your own Mesh. Otherwise skip ahead to Live Sync to see if it’s better suited to your needs.

How-To: Create a Mesh (Mac & PC)

1. Add Your Devices & Install the Client Software

To get started, head on over to Mesh HQ, and click the big orange Sign In button on the greeting page. Once you have done this, you will need to login using your Windows Live I.D. (an Xbox LIVE or Hotmail account will also work). Once you’re past the login screen you will be greeted with a diagram of your mesh. You will need to add devices to the list to make it look like the one pictured above.

Click on the large orange + button, select your operating system, then download and install the client on each machine you wish to include. Once the installer is finished, it will automatically launch and prompt you to enter your Windows Live I.D again. After clicking next you will need to pick the name you will use to identify your computer within the Mesh. Be specific so that you don’t confuse your devices later on, but if you make a mistake, you can change it later. Here you can also decide if you will allow remote desktop connections to this machine.

2. Add Folders to Sync with your Virtual Desktop, or Just Other Machines

Adding a directory to live Mesh is as simple as right clicking the folder, and selecting Add Folder to Live Mesh. After doing so, you will see the configuration screen shown below which will allow you to decide if these files should be stored within your 5GB online storage queue, or only shared between certain devices.

If this was a massive folder full of photos and video for example, you might want to select Never with This Device as your Live Desktop option. For other computers you may wish to select When files are added or modified if you want each device to keep a local copy. Use your Live Desktop space wisely, 5GB goes by pretty fast, and unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t yet offer the ability to purchase additional space.

Files and folders will automatically begin to sync on the devices you specified, and using the tray icon or the live desktop browser interface, you can get an overview of the changes being made by reviewing the news section shown in the above screenshot. You can now interact with the files on any device within your Mesh, and any modification you make will sync instantly across your devices. Machines that are offline will pickup updated versions from the Live Desktop as they come online.

Microsoft Live Sync

Price: Free

Syncs: Files

Pros: Excellent solution for always on machines, and for those who don’t want to store their information in the cloud, but still want to access it anywhere. Live Sync works perfectly with both small and large folders, allows you to download any file remotely from your browser with zero router configuration, and is perfect for sharing files with family or friends.

Cons: 20,000 file per library limit can make syncing some Music and Picture folders will high file counts awkward to configure. As opposed to Live Mesh, all devices must be online to receive updated files.

Compatibility

PC: Yes Mac: Yes Linux: Read Only Mobile: Read Only

Microsoft Live Sync is a less complex solution to implement than Mesh, and what it does, it does silently and efficiently. Live Sync is a better solution for larger folders where changes are less urgent, and can wait for both machines to be online. This generally means it isn’t as good for documents that change unless your devices are always online, but other than that, the two platforms are very similar. In fact, with the exception of live desktop, Sync and Mesh are practically twins. With this in mind you might wonder, why would Microsoft offer two similar, but competing solutions?

The answer to this lies in the uncertain future of both technologies. Given the obvious overlap, it’s very unlikely that both services will survive, and according to inside information gathered by Windows blogger Paul Thurrott, Live Sync is the future. This makes sense when you consider that Microsoft views Live Mesh as an experimental platform for people to build applications on. Live Sync on the other hand, is a fully supported Service. Mesh will probably never disappear, but its functions and features might end up changing rapidly over time.

So long story short, if you’re working with large folders, or if you want to be able to access your hard drive from any browser worldwide, read on to learn how Live Sync works.

How-To: Setup Live Sync Libraries (Mac & PC)

The first step will be to download the desktop client for Windows or Mac, and once you have it installed, simply use your Windows Live I.D. to login. The Sync desktop client is pretty minimalistic, and for the most part, the entire service is designed to be managed through the website. Clicking on the tray icon for example will show you a list of any folders you are sharing, and also a link to the sync homepage. Using the web interface you are able to configure what folders you would like to sync / share, or even browse through your entire hard drive. This is a fantastic way to download any file off your machine remotely, even when you don’t have access to your own machines. Simply login to the sync homepage, point your browser to where you left the file and the download begins immediately.

1. Create a Personal Folder

Personal Folders allow you to select a directory on one machine, that you would like sync with any other authorized computer on your account. An authorized computer is any Mac or PC that has the Live Sync client installed, and is registered to your Live I.D. account. The diagram shown above will walk you through the steps we took to share the My Documents folder on our Macbook, with the My Documents folder on our desktop Windows 7 machine. These images were cut from the browser window to show you the flow of options from start to finish. In the final step, after identifying all of the machines participating in the folder sync, you will then be asked if you like Automatic Synchronization or On-Demand Synchronization. Automatic, as the name would suggest, tries to keep each location in sync whenever possible. On-Demand requires you to manually initiate the sync.

2. Create a Shared Folder

Shared Folders is a fantastic tool for sending and sharing large files with family and friends, but unfortunately, it has an artificial limitation that seriously limits the usefulness of the feature. Creating a shared folder is a simple matter on your end, but the email invite that gets sent out forces others to install the sync client before their Live I.D. is given access to the website. We suppose Microsoft is hoping this will help hook them into the service, and in reality, if you are collaborating on a project, this is a great way to keep versions consistent. If on the other hand, all you wanted was to let a family member download a zip file full photos, they will still be forced to download and install software they will never use, and simply don’t need.

3. Set up Your Machine to Securely Offer up your Files through Any Browser

The only thing better than turning any old PC or Mac into a file server, is doing it with next to no hassle, and with decent security to boot. There have been so many times we’ve rushed out the door only to leave a presentation or vital document sitting on the desktop of our home machine. These painful lessons have lead many to plunk down hundreds on expensive NAS file servers, or perhaps even experimenting with a home FTP. But everyone who has tried this has a common problem, the router. Every router, regardless of what you paid for it is primarily designed to do one thing, drop incoming packets. This helps to shield your machine from all nasty viruses and malware floating freely around the internet, but it also makes it really difficult to connect to your PC remotely. Live Sync takes the guess work out of the configuration, and amazingly, just works. As for the security, have no fear. All connections both through the website and through the sync service operate over a secure SSL connection.

To enable this feature, simply right click on the Live Sync tray icon, select More, and then click one last time on Settings. This will bring you to the screen shown above, which looks the same both on a Mac or Windows PC. Simply check off the box next to Allow Remote Access to This Computer to turn on the remote access feature. Once done, login to the Sync Website, Click on the machine you just enabled access to, then look for the link that says Browse. A sample of what the file tree looks like is below, and as you can see, it’s very easy to navigate.

Mobile Me

Price: $99 Annual Fee

Syncs: Contacts-Calendar-Email (Web & Outlook), File Support Up to 20 GB Included (Upgradable), Passwords

Pros: Works very well with Apple hardware, this includes Mac and iEverything. Mobile Me also does a really good job of keeping contacts, calendar, and emails in sync.

Cons: Very expensive. File sync options are very limited and aren’t any better than Dropbox. Mobile Me is difficult to recommend if you don’t have a Mac or an iPhone.

Compatibility

PC: Yes (Limited) Mac: Yes Linux: Read Only Mobile: iPhone

Okay this is Maximum PC right? Why on earth would we look at an Apple centric solution? Well, we looked at the Microsoft’s offerings, so aren’t you even a little bit curious what the competition has? To be fair, Mobile Me is also more than just an Apple exclusive offering, and they actually went to a great deal of trouble to make it work on PC’s. So the bigger question is, why would you want this, and what is it?

Mobile Me at its core, is a personal information management tool, and allows you to sync your contacts, calendar, and email both online, and through Outlook. This alone isn’t anything amazing, and it also isn’t anything Gmail doesn’t do for free. But where Mobile Me really breaks away is in its iPhone integration. Over the air sync of all Mobile Me services (except iDisk), gives Exchange like functionality to the average consumer.

So now that you know what it is, would PC users without an iPhone get any value out of Mobile Me? Probably not. A free Gmail account gives you the ability to sync Email and Calendar entries in Outlook as well, and iDisk is no better than DropBox. Mobile Me for the PC is also riddled with inconsistencies. For example, the two bookmark sync options available to PC users are Internet Explorer, or Safari. This is great if one of these is your primary browser, but if you try to visit www.me.com in Internet Explorer you’re greeted with the following.

The excuse that IE 7 and 8 have issues with web standards is cute, but everyone else seems to have figured it out, why not Apple? It’s clear they want us using their browser, and that makes sense but why not just say so? On the flip side, it’s great to see Apple taking the PC seriously as a platform by offering up more services for Windows. But when they don’t even support its native web browser, you have to wonder just how deep this commitment goes.

See the chart below for a quick comparison of the automatic sync features of Mobile Me, and what is offered on the Mac vs. PC. Things get even worse on the Windows side when you look at UI differences. Mobile Me for example integrates very elegantly with the iLife suite of applications such as iPhoto. Now I’m not saying all of this information doesn’t make sense, or that it’s even unfair, but you should clearly understand that Apple wants $99 even if you only have a Windows PC, and nothing else. The value proposition is even worse if you don’t have Outlook. In this scenario, you’re clearly better off with Google for your syncing your personal info and Live Mesh / Sync for files.

Sync Options	Mac	PC
Bookmarks (Safari)	YES	YES + IE
Bookmakrs (Firefox)	NO	NO
Calendar	YES	YES (Outlook)
Contacts	YES	YES (Outlook)
Dashboard Widgets	YES	NO
Dock Configuration	YES	NO
Passwords	YES	NO
Mail Accounts	YES	NO
Mail Configuration	YES	NO
Notes	YES	NO
Preferences (Control Panel)	YES	NO

Mobile Me on the Mac

The Mobile Me interface on the Mac is very clean, and everything just works. Compatible sync items show up on the configuration screen (which is built into OSX automatically). You can choose all the options, or just the ones that suit your needs. Certain sync items such as the dock, dashboard widgets, etc, get backed up transparently, but your contacts, calendar, email, and iDisk are accessible from the web interface. On the Mac iDisk is automatically configured for you allowing drag and drop functionality from within the finder, and the built in sync menu allows you to quickly enable everything else. Mobile Me is a great companion for your Mac or Hakintosh, and if you have an iPhone, this is pretty much a one stop shop.

Mobile Me on Windows

If you’ve read this far, you should now be fully aware of the limitations Mobile Me has on the Windows side. Above is a sample screenshot of the sync control panel for Windows. As you can see, the only option available to us is contacts, calendar, and bookmark syncing. Unfortunately in our scenario, Mobile Me bumped into another limitation as well. Apparently Outlook Sync is not supported when you are configured for Exchange. Our hopes were starting to raise a bit when we learned that the Windows version supports Contact syncing with Google Contacts, but that little morsel of joy was quickly dashed away when we noticed that Calendar sync was not.

Dropbox

Price: Free (2GB)

Syncs: Files , Passwords

Pros: Works on all Platforms. Dropbox also offers very reasonable upgrade pricing if you need more than 2GB of storage.

Cons: The free version only offers 2 GB of storage, no automated sync tool.

Compatibility

PC: Yes Mac: Yes Linux: Yes Mobile: Yes

How-To: Sync Files and Passwords with Dropbox

Dropbox maps to the My Computer menu on your PC, or the finder if you’re on a Mac. And because your drop box works just like any other local drive, syncing files is a simple matter of cutting and pasting. A shared dropbox will appear across all your devices, giving ever device access to your data. You can copy favorites, documents, or in the example we show below, partnered up with KeePass to offer a mobile password locker.

Everyone knows that good password security requires that you use passwords that are A) long, B) complicated, and C) different for every website and service you use. Of course, these three requirements also make it a total pain to memorize all the passwords you need, meaning that most people don’t follow the rules, either using one password across many services (a security risk) or writing their passwords down near the computer (also a security risk).

That’s where KeePass comes in. KeePass is a free, open source password safe. It allows you to generate a unique, totally random password for every site or service you use, while only requiring you to remember a single master passphrase. Whenever you attempt to log into a service, KeePass asks for your master passphrase, then automatically enters the appropriate password from your safe.

That’s all well and good, but what do you do if you frequently use two different computers (say, a desktop and a laptop)? You could use a USB drive to keep your KeePass password archive with you at all times, but that’s one more little bit of hardware you have to keep track of. Instead, use DropBox to keep an up-to-date copy of your password file on both computers, at all times. Just tell KeePass to save your password archive somewhere in your DropBox synced folder.

Worried about security? No need! KeePass saves your password in an archive encrypted with nigh-unbreakable AES 256-hit encryption. That means that as long as you pick a strong, long password, getting a hold of your KeePass file won’t do a hacker a bit of good.

Xmarks

Price: Free

Syncs: Bookmarks , Passwords

Pros: Works on all Platforms and most major browsers.

Cons: No Chrome, or Safari for Windows support.

Compatibility

PC: Yes Mac: Yes Linux: Yes Mobile: Read Only

Your first step will be to download the Xmarks plug-in for your browser of choice. Currently only Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari for the Mac are supported. If you're torn on which version to grab, it’s worth noting that only the Firefox version supports encrypted password sync. iPhone users should also keep in mind that only the Safari for Mac plug-in will allow for two way syncing.

Syncing Passwords with Xmarks

Once you have installed the Firefox Plug-in, and restarted your browser, the Xmarks setup wizard will automatically launch allowing you to make an account, or login. If you’re creating a new account, or if you haven’t enabled password sync in the past, Xmarks will supply a dialogue box like the one shown above allowing you to opt in, or out of the service. For those of you who are worried about security, let me put your mind at ease. Like KeePass, the passwords are stored on the Xmarks servers using very strong AES encryption. All of your passwords will be encrypted before transmission to the Xmark server, and can only be decrypted using the pin number you selected as a master password. You can rest easy knowing that not even Xmarks will be able to decrypt your passwords (assuming you picked a strong pin code).

Sync Bookmarks with Xmarks

Configuring Xmarks to sync your bookmarks is pretty easy, mainly because that’s exactly what it was designed to do. After installing the plug-in for your browser of your choice, the setup wizard will ask you to pick a user account and password, and that’s pretty much it. If you’re installing Xmarks on a second machine you’ll be presented with the dialogue box (shown above) asking how you would like to deal with the bookmarks already stored on your machine vs. what is on the server. You can merge the two databases, or throw away either.

Once you’ve synchronized, you can also access your list of bookmarks from any browser, no plug-in required. Simply navigate over to the website and login. You can also access a stripped down interface intended for mobile phones at http://mobile.xmarks.com.

Google

Price: Free (Isn’t it always?)

Syncs: Email, Contacts, Calendar, Documents

Pros: Works on all Platforms and browsers, as well as mobile phones.

Cons: Living in the cloud is a lifestyle choice, and not one you should enter into lightly.

Compatibility

PC: Yes Mac: Yes Linux: Yes Mobile: Windows Moble, Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia

Gmail – Sync All Your Desktop / Webmail Transactions & Merge Your Inboxes

Email is all the same, isn’t it? You probably hear us talk about Gmail here at Max PC a bit more often than competition for one simple reason, it really is better than the rest. Gmail has a lot going for it these days. The web interface is lightening fast, Google Labs allows you to enable tons of great plug-ins, and one feature in particular makes it stand out from the crowd, IMAP. (Internet Message Access Protocol) is a vastly superior solution to the traditional POP based email supplied to you by your ISP. It will allow you to access your mail from any email client, the web, or both at the same time, all while keeping your sessions in sync. You can read, delete, edit, save drafts, all while knowing that changes will ripple across your desktop clients. It’s so good in fact, many, including myself, have abandoned dedicated email clients almost entirely.

Gmail is one of the few free IMAP options available right now, but it’s important to know, IMAP is not enabled by default. To get started, simply surf over to the Gmail Homepage, signup for a Google account, and head into your new (or existing) mailbox. One in, scan along the top right for a link called Settings, followed by Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Once here, you can enable the IMAP service (shown below), and access the Configuration Instructions if you’re planning on still using a desktop mail client. Once you’re up and running with your mail client, you might even feel like dragging and dropping messages stored on your machine, over to Gmail. This will allow you to search, view, or access any message across all of your machines. You can also use a mail client to drag mail from Hotmail or other services over to your new email account.

In addition to keeping your email sessions in sync, Gmail offers an innovative service called Mail Fetcher. If you head back over to the Settings link along the top right, you can then click Accounts followed by Add a Mail Account You Own. Simply enter your email address, and setup the rules regarding incoming messages. You can tell Google to leave a copy on the pop server for safe keeping, or to automatically redirect incoming messages to a dedicated folder, making your email easy to sort.

Sync Your Gmail Calendar with Outlook

Using any webmail based service is the ultimate way to keep all your email, contacts, and calendars in sync. However, for a certain percentage of the population Outlook is a safety blanket they simply refuse to live without. If you fall into this category, it’s okay, you still have options. Google Calendar Sync allows you to manage your calendar both through Gmail’s web interface and using Outlook. Calendar Sync is currently compatible with Windows XP, Vista, and 7, and is designed for use with Outlook 2003 or 2007. We also recommend that you don’t try to install this if your outlook is configured for exchange. Trying to do so will be far more hassle than it’s worth.

Your First step will be to download Google Calendar Sync Client, and run the installer. Once this complete, you will see the above configuration screen which will allow you to input your Gmail Account details, and if you want 1-way or 2-way sync. When making your decision, we would recommend that you pick the option that most realistically matches your usage scenario. Calendar sync works well, but you can further remove the odds of conflicts or corruptions if you select 1 way sync. You can also configure the time between sync sessions, and the minimum selectable is 10 minutes.

Sync Your Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, or Nokia Handset with Google Calendar, and Contacts and More

Google offers a dizzying array of mobile optimized services for pretty much every popular smartphone on the market. The even better part about Google’s mobile service, is that all of the information is tied back to your primary Google account. This means that Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Docs, Reader, pretty much everything you love about Google is available in a portable format. To get started all you need to do is point your phone’s internet browser to http://m.google.com .Through this interface you can access your Calendar & Contacts, but what if want them to sync with your phone’s build in applications instead? Meet Google Mobile Sync:

Setting up Google Sync isn’t difficult, but it is important to keep in mind that your existing contacts and calendar on your phone will probably be overwritten, so make sure you are up to date, or backed up before proceeding. All Smartphone’s, with the exception of the iPhone, can install the sync application within the mobile browser and have you up and running in no time flat. However, if you’re on the iPhone you’ll need to dive into iTunes a bit to make this work. Click the following links for step by step instructions on the PC or Mac.

Microsoft integrates Bing with Hotmail

2009-07-09T17:49:46Z

From Microsoft:

Bing – Microsoft’s decision engine – has come to Windows Live Hotmail through a new feature unique to Hotmail, called quick add. Gone are the days of shuffling between multiple windows to search for a map to email to party guests or the latest viral video to share with friends and family. Quick add – powered by Bing – puts an end to the multi-window chaos so you can accomplish tasks faster, and allows consumers to ‘Bing and decide’ from the comfort of their Hotmail inbox.

Windows Live Hotmail customers can find and share information more easily with quick add:

Search for maps, restaurants, movie times, images, videos and business listings, all within your Hotmail inbox.

Insert maps, business addresses, restaurant and business reviews and more directly into the body of an email in a few simple clicks.

Preview and insert videos and images from the web without leaving your inbox.

To try it firsthand, visit hotmail.com and check out the right-hand side of the screen when composing a new message. Or, check out this demo and this blog post for screenshots of quick add, and more information about how Hotmail’s integration with Bing makes it easier for consumers to share information via email.

Nice!

Vacuum your Firefox databases for better performance

2009-07-10T15:28:22Z

Since Firefox 3.0, bookmarks, history and most storage is kept in SQLite databases. Also, the default history time span was raised from 9 to 90 days as it became more discoverable and useful thanks to the awesome bar, so depending on your browsing habits it could represent some pretty large databases.

Aas any other database, SQLite databases become fragmented over time and empty spaces appear all around. But, since there are no managing processes checking and optimizing the database, these factors eventually result in a performance hit. So, a good way to improve startup and some other bookmarks and history related tasks is to defragment and trim unused space from these databases.

To do this:

Step 1: get sqlite3, a single file command line SQLite database manager, for your platform (available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X).

Step 2: Copy the downloaded binary to your profile folder where all your .sqlite files reside.

Step 3: Close Firefox.

Step 4: From a command line prompt in your profile folder, run:

sqlite3 [SQLite database] VACUUM

replacing [SQLite database with the name of a SQLite file, like places.sqlite.

On Windows, to defragment all SQLite databases in one command, run:

for %a in (*.sqlite) do (sqlite3 %a vacuum)

I ran the script in a couple of machines resulting in a noticeable reduction of start up times after databases defragmentation:

Machine	places.sqlite size before vacuum	places.sqlite size after vacuum	Cold startup Before	Cold Startup After
Machine 1: 1 window, 20 tabs	10 MB	9 MB	11 s	8 s
Machine 2: 3 windows, 25 tabs	40 MB	27 MB	10 s	7 s

So if this is all good, why hasn’t Mozilla included this defragmenting procedure? The thing is they want to but still haven’t found the best way to do so. One of the suggestions so far has been to do it during an update: it has the advantage of been semi regular (about every six weeks), and already interrupts the user workflow (and requires the database files been released, turning Firefox off).

A good option for Windows users is IniFox, by InfoSpyware which simply packs sqlite3 and an interactive batch file that defragments all databases in your profile as described above. You will still have to download and copy, but you will avoid opening a console and repeating the steps for all the databases.

If you try this mechanism, please take some time to get your before and after times and sizes and share your results in the comments. For cold startups, you will have to restart your system to get valid results.

Compact Notes Organizer With Some Great Features

2009-07-12T01:28:14Z

Should I allow Outlook Express to compact messages, and how do I get it to stop asking me if I don't?

2009-07-10T16:00:00Z

About 6 months ago I started getting a message (apparently from Outlook Express, but even when OE is not running) saying "To free up disc space OE can compact messages. This may take up to a few minutes. -OK/Cancel". This has become very invasive and, even after OKing (and losing use of the commuter for several minutes), can pop up again within seconds/minutes and re-pop up within seconds of being canceled. Cause and cure? I've deleted a lot of spam and deleted messages in case these were the trigger.

My honest opinion?

Change email programs.

I'll discuss that option, the bug that you're seeing, and what you might do. But first, I'm going to spend a couple of minutes explaining why I hold that opinion.

Continue reading Should I allow Outlook Express to compact messages, and how do I get it to stop asking me if I don't?
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7Tutorials.com - Genuine Help For Windows 7

2009-07-05T14:53:39Z

Our editorial team is very happy to announce the launch of our new site: 7 Tutorials - Genuine Help for Windows 7. As the name implies, this site will be aimed at Windows 7 users and will offer quality tutorials for all users of the upcoming operating system from Microsoft. If you are already using a test version of Windows 7 or you plan to use it in the near feature, don't hesitate to visit www.7tutorials.com and save it in your list of bookmarks & favorites. For those of you who want to know more, we also have a little presentation called 'Reasons To Visit 7tutorials.com'. To see it, click on read more.

VideoLAN Releases VLC 1.0.0, Now Plays Everything

2009-07-08T19:34:11Z

The VLC media player was initially only the choice of the quintessential geek who doesn’t take no for an answer and “codec not found” for an error. However, it has now become one of the most popular media players around the world as nearly everyone wants to play almost everything. More than eight years after it first reared its dogged head, VideoLan has released VLC 1.0.0 aka Goldeneye. Goldeneye comes stuffed to the hilt with all new features, including live recording, instant pausing, frame-by-frame playback, new HD codecs, zipped file playback and a lot more.

10 Famous Antivirus Uninstaller / Removal Tool

2009-07-07T16:15:37Z

No. Please don’t get the wrong message here. I am not going to ask you to remove your antivirus and get your computer screwed out by some nasty computer viruses. I am listing these antivirus removal tool / antivirus uninstallers for those who did not like their current antivirus for any of these reasons: high detection of false viruses, annoying ads, failure to detect viruses, etc.

By using any of these tool, you can make sure the anti virus uninstalling process is smooth and all the unnecessary files are removed, so that the new antivirus (don’t forget to install one later!) can perform at optimal performance, without other antivirus interfering with the virus scanning process.

Here are some of the uninstallers of famous antivirus for home users:

1- Norton Removal Tool to remove Norton Antivirus. You can also use this tool to remove a failed / damaged Norton antivirus installation.

2- Avira Registry Cleaner to remove Avira Antivirus. Uninstall the antivirus first and run this tool to remove all the remaining files.

3- NOD32 Removal Tool to remove NOD32 Antivirus. Use this tool if you have problems removing NOD32 Antivirus.

4- avast! uninstall utility to remove avast! Antivirus. Also known as the aswClear tool.

5- BitDefender Uninstall Tool to remove BitDefender Antivirus. An alternative choice to uninstall your BitDefender AV without any hassle.

6- McAfee Consumer Products Removal Tool to remove McAfee Antivirus. Also known as MCPR.exe.

7- KAVRemover to remove Kaspersky Antivirus 9. Uninstalling Kaspersky may be not a good option. LOL.

8- Uninstallation 3 to remove F-Secure Antivirus. This will remove F-secure client utility up to version 7.

9- TISSuprt.exe (Trend Micro Diagnostic Kit) to remove TrendMicro Internet Security / Antivirus. You can find this file inside your Trend Micro Program Files folder.

10- AppRemover. If all of the above fails, try this. AppRemover enables you to thoroughly uninstall security applications such as antivirus and antispyware from your computer. Check out the list of antivirus applications that AppRemover can remove.

There you go, a list of 10 famous antivirus that you can remove easily with the correct antivirus uninstaller / removal tool. Make sure that you don’t forget to fresh install a new one!

Tags: antivirus, antivirus uninstaller, remove antivirus, antivirus removal tool, uninstall antivirus

Optimize WebPage for Printing Or Save As PDF for FREE with PrintFriendly

2009-07-07T06:59:57Z

Have you ever found an article that’s very useful and wanted to print a copy of it in case the website is no longer accessible or the page has been removed? Printing a webpage is easy by going to File and select Print in your web browser. However, normally a website contains advertisements, images and fancy designs to attract visitors but it’s not good for printing since you have to waste extra ink and paper to print unnecessary things that you don’t need. If you can save ink and paper, it also helps to save your money and the environment as well.

One method is to copy all the text and paste it to a text editor without any formatting to print. Doing this works but sometimes the formatting of the paragraph is all messed up and it is not the original like what you see on the website. I found a very cool website which offers free service to make a print friendly version of any webpage, as well as allowing you to save it in PDF format. You don’t even need to install any software or plugin for this.

PrintFriendly makes printing on the web better. You’ll save paper and ink, plus get great looking documents. Its special algorithm removes advertisements, navigation, and all the junk you don’t want to print. PrintFriendly use best practices in print Typography to format your document for great readability. You can even customize the page that you want to print by removing paragraphs that you don’t need.

First go to PrintFriendly’s website, enter the URL that you want to make it print friendly and click the Print Preview button. Within a few seconds, the print friendly page will be generated. There is a checkbox to remove images. If you see any paragraph that you don’t need, simply click on the paragraph will delete from the preview. You can also undo any changes by clicking the Undo button.

Once you’re done, you can either click the Print button to open the Print window or click the PDF button to generate a PDF file. If you own a website, you can also add a button to allow your visitors easily print the webpage they are in via PrintFriendly.

[ Visit PrintFriendly ]

Technorati Tags: printfriendly, print, ink, optimize, formatting

Five Best Online Image Editors

2009-07-05T16:00:00Z

Editing your images on a desktop image editor might be ideal, but sometimes you're away from your home workstation and need to do some impromptu editing. Check out these five options favored by Lifehacker readers.

Photo by karlfrankowski.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite tools for editing images online, independent of any downloaded or portable software.

You responded and we rounded up the top five nominees for best online image editor. All of the editors are free so don't hesitate to jump into any editor that catches your eye and give it a test drive.

Sumo Paint

If you're expecting online image editors to be anemic, you'll be surprised by the extensive features of many of the nominees like Sumo Paint. Sporting a toolbar, image navigator, swatches, and layers, Sumo Paint does more than just crop and rotate images. In addition to having layers, as some other editors do, Sumo Paint has support for blending modes and other advanced layering magic like drop shadow and outer glow. The brushes and ink tools offer a wide variety of shapes and textures. If you like some of the paint-centric features of Sumo Paint, you'll definitely want to check out the Gravity tool, which creates some pretty interesting abstract paint effects. Sumo Paint also supports drag and drop image opening for pictures you have stored in your Sumo Paint account. Sumo Paint doesn't require a login for use, but if you sign up for a free account you can store images online and participate in the Sumo Paint community by submitting your work and ranking the work of others. Photo by Randy Son of Robert.

Adobe Photoshop Express

Photoshop Express is Adobe's offering in the online editing arena. One of the first things you'll notice, and if you're an avid Photoshop user it's sure to elicit at least a chuckle, is that out of all the online image editors in the world, the one that looks the least like Photoshop is the actual legitimate Photoshop offering from Adobe. Nonetheless, the interface is easy to use and covers the basics nicely. One of the best features of Photoshop Express is the film strip view provided along the bottom of the editor when using a variety of the adjustment tools. Instead of just giving you a slider to adjust the saturation, white balance, and other subjective photo tweaks, Photoshop Express displays the changes incrementally, letting you pick your favorite from the gradient of choices. It's much faster for quick tweaks than fiddling with sliders. If you want to use a slider, however they haven't removed the feature; the more granular slider is underneath the pictures, allowing you to fine tune to your heart's content. Under the advanced feature set, you'll find tools like tinting, sketching, and distortion. Adobe Photoshop Express is free but, unlike all the other nominees in the Hive Five, it requires an account for you to use your own photos. If you just want to play around with it, the demo account contains sets of pictures for you to play with. Photo by pasotraspaso.

Pixlr

Pixlr takes a two-prong approach to image editing. When you visit Pixlr, you can opt to use Pixlr Express or Pixlr Editor—seen here—depending on your needs. Pixlr Express is a simple image editor with a right hand toolbar which covers basic tasks like cropping, rotating, applying basic correction filters, and so on. Pixlr Editor looks like a more traditional photo-editing application, complete with a toolbar, menu bar, and even navigator, layers, and history panels. If you're familiar with desktop applications like Photoshop and GIMP, it won't take you very long to find the location of tools like the clone stamp, selection wand, and gradient map. The Pixlr Firefox extension allows you to grab images and screenshots from your browser and send them to Pixlr.

Picnik

Picnik doesn't seek to emulate desktop editors with its simple toolbar design, instead opting to make the most popular tools as high profile and easily accessible as possible. Picnik has no Photoshop-esque sidebars, palettes, or other advanced features in the main editing window. The features it provides, however, are extremely intuitive and easy to use with tool tips that pop up to help you use the various tools. If you want to tweak your photo beyond basic cropping and color correction, you can find over 30 image filters and a variety of tools (like a blemish touch-up wand) under the Create tab. A premium version of Picnik is available for $25 a year and gives you access to more advanced tools, special effects, and other perks like bulk uploading. Photo by jurvetson.

Aviary Phoenix

Aviary Phoenix is an image editor that is part of the Aviary Suite of online editing tools, which—on top of image editing—boasts a vector and filter editor, among other tools. Aviary Phoenix has an advanced interface and plenty of options to help you edit your images, like layers, blending, and magic wand selection. You can use Aviary without signing up for an account, but with an account you can save your creations, collaborate with other users, and otherwise participate in the Aviary community. The Aviary Phoenix Firefox extension, called Talon, adds in an assortment of functionality like screen capture, quick editing of images you find online, and—unique among the Hive Five candidates this week—it adds support for pressure sensitive input devices. The premium version of Aviary Phoenix is available for $25 a year and unlocks advanced features and the ability to save your work to your Aviary account without adding it to the public area of the Aviary community. Photo by tinyfroglet.

Now that you've had a chance to check out—and hopefully play with!—the nominees for best online image editor, it's time to cast your vote in the poll below:

Which Online Image Editor is Best?(opinion)

See your favorite in the Hive? Can't believe your favorite didn't make it? Still chuckling that one of the least Photoshop-like offering is from Adobe? Let's hear about it in the comments below.

Love (or Disable) the New Tab Button in Firefox

2009-07-03T11:25:29Z

Love it, or hate it – Firefox got one more addition to it’s browser that seems to have gotten a mixed reaction from the fans. The open new tab button rests at the end of your tab bar in Firefox 3.5 giving you an easier user interface to open a new tab.

Clicking on the little “+” icon at the end of your open tabs, opens a new tab. Seems simple enough, and I do like the fact that it gives one more clean way for new users to instantly figure it out.

How do I remove the new tab button? Well, if you are handy with editing your userChrome.css file – this should be an easy customization to put in place. Just add this line:

.tabs-newtab-button {display: none;}

To edit your userChrome.css file, you must first locate it inside of your profile folder. Depending on your operating system of choice, that location might differ. Check out "where is my Firefox profile folder?” for more information.

So how do you feel, love the new icon or is it in your way?

Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!

© Mitch Keeler 2008 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!

GeekNewb: Get to Know These Windows 7 Hotkeys

2009-07-01T06:00:00Z

Even if you’re not much of a keyboard ninja, there are certain shortcuts that simply seem ridiculous not to know: Ctrl+V springs to mind as an obvious example. But even uber-geeks will agree that much of the time it really is a lot easier for the average user to just grab the mouse.

To this user, many shortcuts exist purely to confuse. Even the word-by-word Ctrl+Backspace combination seems mind boggling. Windows 7, however, provides us with some seriously useful shortcuts that just might seep into the keyboard vernacular of the mom-and-pop user. Here are seven (see what we’ve done there) of the most useful.

Windows+Left / Windows+Right

Depending on the initial position of the window, pressing either of the two combinations once or twice will bring your current active window to the side of the screen corresponding with the direction of the arrow key you pressed.

This allows exactly half of the screen to remain blank, where you may place another window through use of the same process.

This works equally as well use dual monitors, and allows the same process to occur for another two windows.

Windows+Shift+Left / Windows+Shift+Right

This shortcut is entirely dependent on the user having multiple monitors, but is incredibly useful to those who do. It simply allows the user to move a window from its current position on one monitor to the corresponding position on the other. Very, very useful.

Here the window is on the right-hand monitor…

And now the window is over on the left monitor…

Windows+Space

Allows the user to preview their desktop beneath the currently displayed windows. Useful for checking gadgets, etc, if you use them.

Windows+Plus symbol / Windows+Minus symbol

Zooms in on anything on screen. Similar to the feature on Mac computers. Solution to the lack of full screen functionality on the integrated video player in the new Firefox beta anyone?

Alt+Up / Alt+Left / Alt+Right

Directory navigation hotkeys.

Windows+T

Sort of like Alt+Tab, but not—it puts the focus on the taskbar, and continuing to hit the hotkey will pop up each preview without needing to use the mouse.

Windows+M

Minimizes everything in one fell swoop. Extremely convenient shortcut, but not really worthy of a screenshot.

Windows+Tab

Moves to Windows’ Flip 3D function, which allows you to flip through your windows in a large enough scale that it is possible to differentiate text etc.

Windows+Number

Okay, so this is actually shortcut number nine, but it’s kind of essential. This allows you to open the programs pinned to the taskbar in order from the left. So Windows+1 would open Internet Explorer in the screenshot below, Windows+2 would open the next, and so on.

These are, for once, all extremely efficient improvements by Windows from which the benefits extend even to the lowest level users- something we should surely encourage. Now feel free to throw away your mouse… but keep it in the top of the bin.

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Eastern Europe's Crisis Won't Wreck the World

2009-06-27T20:49:41Z

Analyzing the next stage in the crisis.

Microsoft Holds the Line on Windows 7 Pricing, Launches Limited Time Promotion

2009-06-25T13:00:22Z

This is from this morning's WinInfo, but I want to make sure everyone caught it.

Microsoft this morning announced its retail pricing plans for Windows 7. First, the good news: Contrary to rumors, the company is not raising prices. The bad news? It's not significantly lowering prices either. In fact, most versions of Windows 7 will simply cost exactly the same as their Windows Vista predecessors.

In the US, three versions of Windows 7 will be widely available at retail, Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. Pricing for the Upgrade versions of these products breaks down as follows:

Home Premium (Upgrade) - $119.99
Professional (Upgrade) - $199.99
Ultimate (Upgrade) - $219.99

Full product pricing includes:

Home Premium (Full) - $199.99
Professional (Full) - $299.99
Ultimate (Full) - $319.99

In each case, Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate is priced identically to its Windows 7-based predecessor. Windows 7 Home Premium (Upgrade) is $10, or 8 percent, cheaper than Windows Vista Home Premium (Upgrade). And Windows 7 Home Premium (Full) is $40, or 17 percent, less expensive than its predecessor. (Similar pricing is available in other markets as well.)

To help avert criticism, Microsoft and its retail partners will temporarily offer steep discounts on the Upgrade versions of Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional only. Consumers who preorder these products online between June 26, 2009 and July 11, 2009 in the US and Canada will pay just $49.99 for Windows 7 Home Premium (Upgrade) (a $70 savings) and $99.99 for Windows 7 Professional (Upgrade) (a $100 savings). The deals will be made available at Amazon, Best Buy, and Microsoft, and at other participating online retailers. Consumers in Japan, France, Germany, and the UK can also preorder Windows 7 for similarly short time frames, though the exact dates vary.

Microsoft also announced that it would allow consumers who purchase a Windows Vista-based PC between June 26, 2009 and January 31, 2009 to receive a free copy of Windows 7. Called the Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program, this program is global and completely free. Microsoft hopes it will address the problems caused by Windows 7 not shipping in time for the back to school PC selling season, which is currently underway.

The company also revealed that it will offer consumers in the EU the Full versions of Windows 7 only through at least December 31, 2009 because of antitrust issues there which preclude it from bundling Internet Explorer with the OS. During this time period, EU users (excluding the UK) will be able to purchase the Full versions of Windows 7 at the Upgrade prices. Traditional Upgrade versions of Windows 7 will appear in the EU eventually, Microsoft says, at which point it will return to its usual pricing structure.

There's a lot more going on here, including a few pricing issues that have yet to be resolved. For more information, please refer to my Windows 7 Pricing article on the SuperSite for Windows.

Details: Microsoft's Windows 7 price cuts, upgrade promotions

2009-06-25T13:00:00Z

Microsoft, trying to revive its flagship product in the middle of a recession, is pricing the primary edition of Windows 7 for home users 17 percent below the retail price of its predecessor.

The unusual move is one of a series of Windows 7 pricing announcements being made by the company today as it gears up for a scheduled Oct. 22 launch. Under the plan, Windows 7 Home Premium will be available for $199.99 in stores, $40 less than Windows Vista Home Premium. Even before adjusting for inflation, that matches the original price of Windows XP Home, released in 2001.

Microsoft also will offer current Windows XP and Windows Vista users an upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium for $119.99, or $10 less than the comparable Windows Vista upgrade price.

In addition, the company is rolling out a promotion designed to spur early Windows 7 sales, saying it will offer Windows 7 Home Premium upgrades for $49.99 and Windows 7 Professional upgrades for $99.99 to people who place pre-orders during the next two weeks in the U.S. and Canada, with different offers and time frames in several other countries around the world.

WINDOWS 7 RETAIL PRICES

Home Premium: $119.99 upgrade; $199.99 retail; $49.99 pre-sale promotion. Microsoft is positioning this Windows 7 edition as the primary one for home PC users. Includes Media Center PC functionality and new features such as Home Group, which simplifies the process of networking computers and devices.

Professional: $199.99 upgrade; $299.99 retail; $99.99 pre-sale promotion. This version is targeted to small businesses, with all the features of Home Premium plus others designed for people who work remotely from home.

Windows 7 Ultimate: $219.99 upgrade; $319.99 retail. The big enchilada -- with corporate-oriented features from Windows 7 Enterprise edition, such as BitLocker file encryption, as well as features from Home Premium and Professional.

The maneuvers reflect the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the Windows 7 release. In addition to the turmoil affecting companies around the world, Microsoft is trying to overcome the troubled tenure of Windows Vista -- which never regained its luster after hardware and software compatibility problems plagued its 2007 release.

Windows chief Steven Sinofsky, who took over after Windows Vista's development, is looking to make the Windows 7 release more smooth. Among other things, the company is being more deliberate in its communications with PC makers and other key industry players, making sure that Microsoft is confident in its timing and plans before going public.

Preliminary versions of Windows 7 have been greeted favorably. Reviewers cite new features such as simpler home networking and a "snap" functionality that lets users quickly adjust open windows to half the size of the screen by dragging them against the side. Software and hardware vendors are looking to take advantage of Windows 7's touch-screen technologies and other new features.

Now, with the Home Premium price reductions, Windows 7 appears to be "off to a good start," said Richard Shim, an industry analyst with the IDC research firm. "There's a lot of doom and gloom in the market right now, but there are signs that it could pick up toward the end of the year, and I think these pricing cuts will definitely be a good influence, to help spur that along," Shim said.

However, Microsoft isn't going as low as Apple is with its OS pricing. The Mac maker has said it will offer users of its existing Mac OS X Leopard the ability to upgrade to its upcoming Snow Leopard update for $29. Users of the older Mac OS X Tiger operating system will be able to move Snow Leopard through a $169 package that includes the operating system and the latest versions of Apple's iLife and iWork suites. Snow Leopard is due out in September,

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Prior to Windows 7's launch, starting on Friday of this week, Microsoft will offer a "technology guarantee" program to people who buy new Windows Vista-based PCs from participating retailers or PC makers. That program, running through January, will give those PC buyers free upgrades to Windows 7 when it comes out. The offer applies to PCs wih Vista Home Premium, Business or Ultimate.

The majority of Microsoft's Windows sales come through copies of the operating system pre-installed on PCs, not sold separately at retail, but the company doesn't publicly disclose the prices it charges computer makers.

Many computer users stayed away from Windows Vista and will therefore be deciding whether or not to shift to Windows 7 from the older Windows XP, either by upgrading an existing machine or buying a new computer.

The large remaining user base for the 8-year-old operating system puts Microsoft in "something of an unprecedented position" as it approaches the Windows 7 launch, said industry analyst Charles King of the Hayward, Calif.-based Pund-IT research firm.

"I think Microsoft needs to be very careful in the way that it positions Windows 7 for the many many dedicated users of windows who decided to stick with Windows XP," King said. "The issues around how those customers decide to upgrade will be of paramount importance (to the company) over the next few weeks."

Overall, he said, the pricing announced today "looks pretty fair."

Upgrade pricing for Windows 7 is available to current users of Windows XP and Vista, although people on the older operating system will need to conduct a "clean install," which doesn't preserve existing data or programs as a standard upgrade process does.

Apart from the lower Windows 7 Home Premium prices, and the pre-sale promotion for it and Windows 7 Professional, the upgrade and retail prices for Windows 7 are the same as they were for Windows Vista -- continuing Microsoft's practice of essentially holding the line on Windows pricing for consumers. By comparison, the full version of Windows 95 sold for $209, and an upgrade cost $109.

Windows Media Guide Beta

2009-06-24T18:36:55Z

I think this is new: I opened up Windows Media Player today in Windows 7 and saw the beta guide for the first time.

How much does my encrypted wireless connection protect me?

2009-06-24T20:34:46Z

I use a wireless internet connection (secured WPA-personal) and no one other than me knows the password for it. Can anybody/ISP see what I am doing on the internet? I use Skype and Yahoo Messenger to talk to my family overseas. Can others hear and see what I do on the Skype & Yahoo video? If the answer is yes, can you please tell me how can I secure it?

There are a couple of important potential misunderstandings of just how wireless security works, how far it works, and what you can do - if anything - beyond the reach of that security.

Let's look at exactly what kind of security wireless connections give you.

Continue reading How much does my encrypted wireless connection protect me?
Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
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Netbooks vs. Notebooks - Consumers are confused

2009-06-23T12:42:24Z

An online survey of 600 people carried out by NPD Group seems to suggest that consumers don't understand the difference between netbooks and notebooks.

Engineering Changes to ClearType in Windows 7

2009-06-23T07:00:00Z

One of the many passions held by Bill Gates is a passion for reading and so his desire to make reading on PCs a fantastic experience has been an effort ongoing for many years. In the 1998 COMDEX show, Bill Gates unveiled ClearType – hard to believe it was that long ago. Back when it was announced, very few of us had LCD monitors and those that did invested several thousand dollars in one that was 15” and 1024x768 (today one like that costs less than $100). The notions of smoothing and anti-aliasing have been around for many years and are common in the world of typography, animation, and games. ClearType took this to new levels by building on the properties of LCD panels. ClearType was subsequently included in Windows XP and continues in Vista and Windows 7—each release saw changes in the underlying technology, the fonts that support the technology, and the APIs available to developers. It is fair to say that over the years we have learned that there are a set of customers who simply find ClearType rendered screens less than appealing and wish to turn it off. We recognize this and want to make sure we provide the appropriate controls. ClearType is also part of the Windows platform and provides APIs callable and controllable by developers of applications. There is a conventional view that ClearType is a "visual preference" and through this post we want to show how there are elements that are such a preference but there are also elements that are APIs used by applications, just like applications can choose fonts, colors, and other attributes as required. This post goes into the details of Windows 7’s implementation along with some history and background. Greg Hitchcock is the development lead on ClearType and has worked on it since the start. He’s also one of the most tenured members of the Windows 7 engineering team with only 6 folks having been at Microsoft longer -- Larry is one of them :-)!

--Steven

Based on feedback, we want to clarify how font rendering works in Windows 7 and give some background on how we chose ClearType font rendering to be the default in Windows. For those that dislike ClearType and want to change the system default setting to bi-level rendering, as were defaults in Windows Millennium, the quick answer is:

Enter Appearance into the start menu search
Select Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows from the Control Panel
The setting that should be changed under the custom option is: Smooth edges of screen fonts, which should be turned off

The longer answer, as we will describe in this post, shows that changing the default setting is not as “black and white” as it may seem. As you have noticed, Windows 7 also includes a new ClearType tuner in the control panel which affords fine-grained control over rendering—we’ll talk about that some below as well.

ClearType

ClearType is a technology developed to improve both the appearance of font rendering and reading performance on computer displays. As most people spend over 80% of their time on computers reading on the screen, improvements in this area greatly improve the overall experience of Windows. The ClearType technology has continued to evolve and the latest improvements have been made in Windows 7, as discussed in this earlier E7 post.

In simple terms, ClearType works by using the underlying geometry of colored sub-pixels in the display as if they were full pixels—gaining extra resolution while at the same time using principles of human vision to remove the perception of color artifacts. Further details on the technology and how it uses human visual perception are described here. More specifically, the ClearType technology is optimized for LCD panels with red, green, and blue (RGB) striped sub-pixels that are oriented vertically, although it performs reasonably well on CRT displays (especially those that are aperture grille based) and even LCD panels with horizontally oriented RGB stripes. Although this might seem counterintuitive, through informal studies, we’ve found that about 70% of users prefer ClearType even on these non-optimal displays. Of the 30% who preferred other rendering techniques, their biggest concern with ClearType in these non-optimal cases was the loss of text contrast.

Other Types of Font Rendering in Windows

Given the complex world of many display types and a wide variety of users and their visual systems, how did we go about implementing ClearType into Microsoft Windows? Microsoft did not rush headlong into making ClearType the default rendering. The technology was first released in 2000 with the Windows CE product. The Windows CE environment is usually quite controlled in terms of the hardware used, so it was quite easy to verify that ClearType worked properly on each device, and either tune ClearType or adjust the hardware to optimize the onscreen reading experience. The first release of ClearType on the Windows platform was with Windows XP in 2001.

Bi-Level Rendering

Example of Bi-Level rendering. Note if your browser scales this image the text will not be correctly represented.

Prior to Windows XP, two types of font rendering were supported in Windows. The first type of font rendering supported was bi-level rendering, more commonly referred to as “black and white” rendering, but sometimes also called aliased text. With bi-level rendering, two colors represent the font, the foreground color and the background color. This was the first type of rendering supported by TrueType when Windows 3.1 was released, and also the essential method of displaying fonts in bitmap form from Windows 1.0. Bi-level rendering, especially when generated from outline technologies like TrueType, is very difficult to optimize for low screen resolutions. Significant effort needs to be put into the font hinting for TrueType in order to get the best bi-level quality. It can reasonably take a skilled person 6 months to a year per font of hinting time to get this level of rendering detail. That would be multiplied by four for a four-member family. If the character sets are larger, as in some system fonts, it can take even longer.

Font Smoothing / Grayscale

The second form of rendering, known as font smoothing, became the default rendering in Windows 2000 and was first released as an option for Windows 95 in the Plus! Pack. Font smoothing is a hybrid grayscale anti-aliasing technique designed to improve the contrast of fonts over traditional anti-aliasing techniques. There are two factors that differentiate font smoothing from more traditional text anti-aliasing.

First, traditional anti-aliasing works by overscaling the font outline data and then downsampling. Font smoothing uses the same technique, except that it applies font hints prior to overscaling the outline data. Although we don’t have enough space here to fully describe font hinting, I can simplify it enough to say that it often uses a method called “grid fitting” to snap the vertical and horizontal edges of the font outlines so that they are aligned with the pixel grid. In this situation, most horizontal and vertical stems of a font, when overscaled, cover 100% of the underlying pixels, and when downsampled return the text foreground color, which is usually black. Diagonal and round features of the font will not have full coverage of the pixel and thus will return some shade of gray, reflecting the coverage of the underlying pixel. It should be noted that when text displays the “jaggies” (or more formally aliasing) this usually occurs on round or diagonal parts of the glyphs—exactly the areas receiving gray coverage with this method. This way of anti-aliasing is beneficial due to the higher contrast of the stems in the font at a slight cost of some spatial accuracy.

The second differentiating factor is that the fonts determine the exact size that the font smoothing turns on or off. Most fonts that provide this level of information turn on grayscale anti-aliasing below 9 pixels per em (PPEM.) That is the equivalent of 7 points on a 96 PPI screen. Above 9 PPEM, anti-aliasing is turned off until the main stems of the font are around two pixels wide, which is around 13 to 20 points, depending on the typeface. Once the main stems are two pixels wide, anti-aliasing remains on as the sizes increase. Two pixel wide stems are usually chosen because there is usually enough “backbone” of foreground colored pixels to keep the stem contrast high. If the font does not have specific sizes for font smoothing, system defaults are used. There are independent defaults for both regular and bold typefaces. So although font smoothing was the default, most fonts, when displaying text at typical reading sizes, would render them bi-level.

Defaults for Font Rendering

With the addition of ClearType to Windows XP, there were now three types of font rendering available (Bi-level, Font Smoothing, ClearType). During the time period that Windows XP was being developed there was a clear transition underway from desktop systems with CRT monitors to laptops and desktops with LCD displays. Since this transition was far from complete, we felt that the default value for font rendering in Windows XP should be grayscale font smoothing, the same as Windows 2000. OEM’s who provide Windows XP on their systems could change this default, and in fact, by the time Windows XP SP 2 shipped, many of them had set the default to ClearType. It should be noted that OEMs can always change these settings as part of configuring a PC.

In Windows Vista, the system’s default font rendering was changed to ClearType. It is important to clearly understand what is meant by default font rendering. In Windows, the default font rendering is the rendering used when the application does not choose an explicit type of rendering. Some have confused this default value to mean that all applications must use this value. This view is inconsistent with the way text APIs worked when introduced in Windows 95’s font smoothing. In GDI, the API for choosing the current font has the rendering type explicitly as input. It is expected that there are situations where the application knows best what type of rendering should be used. For example, in displaying a print preview page with small text, traditional font smoothing might be the best choice for rendering. Likewise, if an application was targeting on-screen reading, it might be best to use ClearType as the rendering for that application. In some situations, like remote terminal services, the application might choose to use bi-level rendering to reduce the bandwidth of text information that needs to be sent to a remote client.

There are many examples where applications decide one way or another to use rendering other than the system default—just as applications that choose to use different fonts, colors, sizes, or other text attributes. The most typical example is in applications that wish to have reproducible layout and flow of documents. By being specific about which way to render text, the applications can be certain of how text will flow across different PCs. Another common example, as mentioned above, is Print Preview where the ability to properly render representations of higher resolution output, particularly for small text sizes, is much improved. We recognize that for some it is counter-intuitive that an aspect viewed as a “display” property is something that applications can choose to “over-ride”. We’ve designed rendering so that the default case is to respect the setting, but applications, including Windows itself, might have elements that require explicit rendering techniques.

Although each application can make the choice on a per-font basis of which rendering to use, the majority of applications choose the default rendering. Therefore, making the decision to change the default for Windows Vista was not taken lightly. The trends in the hardware displays were strongly showing a rapid movement from CRTs to LCD-based displays as we have shown in earlier blog posts based on the Windows XP and Windows Vista real-world telemetry. Even though there were still CRTs in use, feedback from Windows XP customers was positive on the quality of ClearType rendering on CRTs. After we made the choice, the feedback on the decision to enable ClearType as the default for Windows Vista was overwhelmingly positive.

Even with the default rendering set to ClearType, there are some scenarios that can change the default. If an OEM is providing Windows on their hardware, they can change the default. In some situations, and this was more common with font smoothing in Windows 95, the hardware may not meet the minimum requirements for the rendering technology. In the case of both font smoothing and ClearType, a minimum of sixteen bits per pixel display resolution is required. (When rendering to an off-screen bitmap in GDI, it is important that it not be the default color depth of 1 bit per pixel if you desire to capture ClearType text.) In some cases, when optimizing for system performance, font smoothing (both ClearType and grayscale) can be disabled. In a similar fashion, using Remote Desktop to connect to another computer or session usually disables ClearType by default.

Changing the Default Rendering in Windows 7

Windows 7 maintains the same defaults as Windows Vista. There are several ways for the user to change the default values for font rendering in Windows 7. For those that want the default rendering to be bi-level, the user interface for this selection is in the performance section of the Control Panel. From the root of the control panel you can access it by selecting System and Security –> System –> Advanced System Settings –> Performance (Settings…). An easier way is to enter “Appearance” into the start menu search, and then select “Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows.” The setting that should be changed under the custom option is: Smooth edges of screen fonts, as shown in the figure.

The option of no font smoothing as the default value is considered to be an uncommon setting, so it is a little more difficult to find than other settings. If the user prefers to change the default font rendering selection to the Windows grayscaling anti-aliasing technique described earlier, in Windows 7 that is now done through the ClearType Tuner.

ClearType Tuner

The quality of the ClearType text can be optimized for you and your monitor. The ClearType Tuner is a new control panel component for Windows 7. Because there are differences in monitor characteristics and differences between readers’ eyes, there are font rendering options that can only be optimized by a reader looking at text on their monitor. The ClearType Tuner uses various samples of ClearType, presented in the form of an eye-test, to make fine grained adjustments to the ClearType algorithms. Each wizard page tunes a parameter such as monitor gamma (relationship between voltage and brightness), your sensitivity to color artifacts, and your preference for letter heaviness.

In order to switch between ClearType and grayscale, the setting “Turn on ClearType” on the opening page of the ClearType Tuner can be toggled.

Either way, the user is taken through the rest of the ClearType Tuning wizard for two reasons; if an application explicitly enables ClearType rendering, it is useful for that experience to be tuned, and some graphics platforms have more fine tuning of the rendering for both gray rendering and ClearType.

Font Design and Font Rendering

The availability of higher resolution font rendering techniques like ClearType has had a significant impact on the design of fonts for onscreen reading. From the early days of the printing press, as new technologies and printing styles were developed, typefaces were redesigned to take advantage of those technologies. For example, many typefaces still in use today incorporate “ink traps” into the design so that ink would not clog up key features of a glyph. This is an aspect of making specific design choices in the font in order to work the best with the technology. In traditional typeface design, the term font refers to a typeface at a given size. So a 10 point Times New Roman would be a different font from a 24 point Times New Roman. In the days of metal cast typography, each of these sizes were designed by a punch cutter to be optimized for the medium for which they were to be used, often with changes in stem contrast, x-height, or character spacing for a given size. The advent of photo typesetting in the mid-twentieth century was a step backwards in this regard, as it used one size as a type master, and then used optics to scale that master size to any other presentation size.

Microsoft Windows has taken the more traditional approach to digital outline fonts, and through a combination of font hinting and new typeface design we attempt to optimize each size for the medium for which they were intended. With Microsoft’s initial release of TrueType for Windows 3.1, the traditional typefaces Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New were used as core fonts. In the creation of these fonts, one master size was chosen for the outline data, usually something around 10 or 12 point, and, similar to the technique used in photo-typesetting, the outlines could be scaled to any requested size for a given display resolution. But, going back to the more traditional ways, each size was carefully examined and changes were made to the basic design through font hinting—including changes to critical features like stem contrast, x-height, or glyph spacing. As earlier mentioned, hinting fonts to be tuned for a low-resolution medium like full pixels on a 96 PPI screen was very time consuming. To help in this process for Microsoft Windows, we commissioned or designed in-house new outline typefaces designs that were optimized for the world of 96 PPI bi-level rendering. These custom fonts include Tahoma, Verdana, Georgia, Trebuchet MS, and even Comic Sans MS. These fonts still needed to be hinted to tune the individual sizes, but because the typeface was designed with the medium in mind, it was a more straightforward process and less time consuming.

Even with typefaces tuned to the display medium, 96 PPI pixels on a screen are still larger than many of the features we’d like to show in a typeface—and that is where ClearType helps us. Therefore, with ClearType, it made sense to commission a new set of fonts that were optimized for this new medium. Now the existing fonts for Windows still work well with the technology, but this project was an attempt to get the very best design for onscreen reading using ClearType. This led to a new set of fonts that shipped and were tuned for Windows Vista. The ClearType Collection fonts of Calibri, Cambria, Consolas, Corbel, Candara, Constantia, the new user interface font Segoe UI, and the Japanese font Meiryo were designed for this medium. As part of the engineering work on these font projects along with the default setting of ClearType, we decided in the hinting process to do the fine, size-specific hinting only for ClearType, and not for bi-level rendering. This allowed us to focus our efforts on the fine levels of detail and quality for the vast majority of customers.

ClearType Fonts in Windows 7

A reasonable question for us to ask ourselves is what is the experience like in Windows 7 when bi-level or hybrid font smoothing is chosen as the default?

As mentioned earlier, not all applications will choose to render with the default settings. Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer will default in some cases to using ClearType rendering. Some applications that use fonts tuned for ClearType and not bi-level rendering may choose ClearType rendering to maintain the benefits of the font designs. Some applications need higher precision glyph widths like sub-pixel positioning or “natural width ClearType,” and would reflow if they were changed to bi-level or grayscale rendering. Other applications like Adobe Reader have their own built-in text rendering engine that is independent of the Windows graphics platforms. Likewise, platforms like Java on Windows also use their own rendering techniques.

In some situations with the Windows 7 Explorer, ClearType rendering will remain on so that Segoe UI will keep its optimal design. Changing the system font from Segoe UI to some other font could be problematic, leading to issues like reflowing dialog box entries, missing text due to wrapping, unlabeled buttons, etc. We know many would value global changes to the fonts used by Windows, but to maintain to reliably across resolutions, DPI, and languages to name a few issues means we cannot have total flexibility on the system font settings at this time.

Given the challenges of turning off ClearType, there are a few mitigations in the fonts to handle some scenarios where ClearType is not available. In the ClearType font Calibri, since it is the default font for Microsoft Office, an unusual technique was used to attempt to improve the quality of the font rendering when font smoothing grayscale was selected. In this case, as opposed to the normal situation where font smoothing was disabled at lower text sizes to remove the blur, at these lower sizes the font enabled grayscale in order to improve the character shape. Also, at a few key sizes, the Calibri font had some bitmap fonts embedded in the outline file. These bitmaps kick in when bi-level rendering is requested. These bitmaps were intended to handle the case where Calibri was being used in a Remote Terminal situation and the default for Remote Terminal was not set to ClearType for performance reasons.

ClearType Research on Performance

As mentioned earlier, one of the goals behind ClearType is to improve the performance of reading text on computer screens. We have supported several areas of research looking into measuring this work. The research is done at universities and published in peer-reviewed journals. We have another Microsoft blog, that among other things related to fonts, also describes some of the research work on reading performance. Since those blog entries give more detail and background, we’ll just describe some of the performance highlights.

We’ve measured an improvement in word recognition accuracy of 17% using ClearType over bi-level rendering.
We’ve found a 5% speed improvement in reading speed and a 2% improvement in comprehension (this is remarkable) using ClearType over bi-level rendering. A 5% reading speed improvement may sound small, but the cumulative effects can be huge given the amount of time people spend reading.
We’ve found the reading speed improvements of 5% continue over longer spans of text, and we’ve found that non-traditional reading tasks like document scanning are about 8% faster with ClearType over bi-level rendering.
We’ve found that reading sub-optimal text causes eye fatigue by increasing squinting and decreasing the blink rate. (This may seem obvious, but prior to this work there was no understanding of the physiological mechanisms of eye fatigue.)

ClearType Research on Rendering Preferences

Another research question we’ve asked ourselves is why do some people prefer bi-level rendering over ClearType? Is it due to hardware issues or is there some other attribute that we don’t understand about visual systems that is playing a role. This is an issue that has piqued our curiosity for some time. Our first attempt at looking further into this involved doing an informal and small-scale preference study in a community center near Microsoft. This was done with two identical laptops, one with ClearType and one with bi-level rendering. They were placed side by side and participants were asked which version they preferred. This was done with three different samples. Here were the results:

	Prefer ClearType	Prefer Bi-Level	No Preference
Sample 1	33	1	1
Sample 2	33	2	0
Sample 3	33	2	0
Average %	94%	5%	1%

Comments:

35 participants.
Comments for bi-level rendering:
Washed out; jiggly; sketchy; if this were a printer, I’d say it needed a new cartridge; fading out – esp. the numbers, I have to squint to read this, is it my glasses or it is me?; I can’t focus on this; broken up; have to strain to read; jointed.
Comments for ClearType:
More defined, Looks bold (several times), looks darker, clearer (4 times), looks like it’s a better computer screen (user suggested he’d pay $500 more for the better screen on a $2000 laptop), sort of more blue, solid, much easier to read (3 times), clean, crisp, I like it, shows up better, and my favorite: from an elderly woman who was rather put out that the question wasn’t harder: this seems so obvious (said with a sneer.)

Two other additional preference tests were performed with 28 of 30 participants preferring ClearType to bi-level rendering in one study and another with 52 of 55 participants preferring ClearType. Combining these three tests, we get 113 of 120 participants preferring ClearType rendering over bi-level rendering. It is important to note that in a forced preference test like this, just because someone preferred ClearType, it does not mean that they also don’t like bi-level rendering. It is just a preference towards ClearType.

Further examination of those who prefer bi-level rendering is of great interest to us and we continue to research this topic and to work with university researchers as well. We expect to see published papers on this topic in the future.

Future Research

Going forward, much of our research is in finding ways to make the highest quality text rendering more accessible to everyone. Each visual system has its own characteristics, and just as the ClearType tuner allows us to tune the algorithm for display characteristics, it would also be nice to tune for visual system characteristics. For example, in the United States 7% of the male population is color blind. We believe that we can improve the ClearType algorithm so that text for a colorblind reader is even better than for a reader without colorblindedness. Researching ways to improve text rendering for those with high color sensitivity and lower visual acuity would be just as important for us.

Conclusion

Making the screen the best possible place to read is an exciting opportunity for us. It blends the engineering challenges of working with many display technologies and human visual systems with the artistic challenge of creating a beautiful set of glyphs, where every subtle typographic nuance is important. In doing this, we need to keep in mind how the science of reading must guide us in making the experience optimal for us—humans. Each rendering technology has advantages and disadvantages for different people; depending on the application in use there are tradeoffs involved. Many of these issues go beyond the ability for people to easily discern choices. Our job is to work hard to provide a great platform for developers as well as tools that people can use to make choices and control how they use their technology. Our goal should be that the out-of-box experience just works. We think that, most of the time, we’ve accomplished this and we also recognize this area is complex and there is a wide spectrum of feedback.

The team at Microsoft working on these problems has been together since 1990, developing fonts and font-rendering solutions, and working to get a better understanding of the science of reading. The team is made up of engineers, type designers/artists, and psychologists and we work with many other experts throughout Microsoft in attempting to tackle this tough, yet vitally important task. You spend over 80% of the time at the computer reading, so it should be as pleasant an experience as possible. The following article from IEEE Spectrum describes some of the issues we deal with related to the technology, art, and science of text.

--Greg

Five Best Clipboard Managers

2009-06-21T16:00:00Z

Basic cut and paste gets the job done, but if you're going for speed and efficiency, you'll need a clipboard manger to keep your copy-fu strong. Let's take a closer look at five of the most popular clipboard managers.

Image created with Wordle.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite clipboard mangers. You responded, demonstrating that just because something is small and usually hidden from the end user doesn't mean it isn't ripe for tinkering and improvement. Increase your efficiency and cut down on the time you spend hunting for snippets of text with one of these great clipboard managers.

ClipX (Windows, Freeware)

By itself ClipX is a great clipboard manager capable of going portable with a simple command line argument. You can assign hotkeys to primary and secondary pastes off your clipboard log, but you can't assign a hotkey to a specific phrase. ClipX supports both text and image cutting and pasting. There are around a half dozen plugins for ClipX that provide additional functionality like clipboard search, a color picker that automatically dumps the color values into your clipboard, and a plugin that adds sticky clipboard entries you want to keep close at hand.

CLCL (Windows, Freeware)

If you've looked over some of the other clipboard managers in today's Hive Five and found them a bit overpowered for your needs, take a look at CLCL. It's an excellent compromise between the inadequate default clipboard and the advanced every-bell-and-whistle clipboard managers. CLCL allows you to access your clipboard history with a simple press of ALT+C or from the icon in the system tray. Frequently used clippings can be saved to the Templates category, and you can customize the paste hotkey based on the program you're using to avoid conflicts and set specify windows to ignore. Beyond that CLCL doesn't have a whole lot more functionality, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It stores the clippings you want, retrieves them with a simple keystroke-summoned menu, and is light on your system resources.

ClipMate (Windows, $34.95)

ClipMate has, out of the five clipboard managers featured here, the most ways for you to interact with your collection of clippings. The Classic view gives you a toolbar with drop down options, the Explorer view—seen here—is the master management panel where you can group and edit your clippings, and finally the ClipBar integrates right into the Windows Task Bar to provide a quick access list to your frequently and most recently used clippings. ClipMate features encryption if you need to keep your clippings secure when not in use, advanced paste that supports structured data like tabs and delineation, and even in a built-in screen-capture tool with selective capture. ClipMate is the only non-freeware entry in this week's Hive Five. A license lets you use ClipMate on two computers plus a portable installation, which would easily cover a single user with a desktop/laptop/thumb drive setup.

ArsClip (Windows, Freeware)

ArsClip is a lightweight and portable. It supports and stores pictures, formatted text, Unicode, and HTML. You can edit your clippings to include key stroke emulation to paste text into forms and other complex arrangements. ArsClip also supports switching between groups based on the program. If you only use a certain set of clippings while editing your blog, for instance, you can set them to only appear when you're active in Firefox. In addition to support for images, ArsClip also supports files, allowing you to store frequently used/pasted files right in ArsClip.

Ditto (Windows, Freeware)

Ditto is a portable clipboard manager with a hefty feature list. Not only does Ditto support plain text, but it can also copy formatting and even images. You can search your stored text clippings and synchronize multiple copies of Ditto together to update your clippings across computers. Ditto has full unicode support, so you can paste foreign and non-standard characters without a problem. You can group together your clippings to keep things organized by task or project, as well as assign hotkeys to frequently used clippings. On top of the user-defined hotkeys, Ditto sports over a dozen built-in hotkeys for entering, searching, and retrieving your clippings.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the contenders for the best clipboard manager, it's time to cast your vote:

Best Clipboard Manager?(polling)

Never used a clipboard manager before? Inspired to try one because of this list? Shocked your favorite didn't make the cut? Sound off in the comments.