Free Useful Software Reviews

Network Not Available – CorePlayer

2009-06-08T13:44:00.004+08:00

It used to automatically open up CorePlayer software and stream video when I try to watch video from YouTube. Until recently, it somehow errors out the message - “Network Not Available”.

At first, I thought it was due to the internet connection issue but it turns out is the setting in the CorePlayer software. The “Enable Network Access” option has been somehow disable without my notice.

Steps to Enable Network Access

Goto Menu->Tools->Perference
Select Select Page -> Network
Check or tick the “Enable Network Access”

Once the “Enable Network Access” has been turned one, it solves the problem. Hope it helps you too if you encounter a similar issue.

P/S: CorePlayer used to be a freeware which is called TCPMP but now it costs around USD 30. For free YouTube mobile application, you may want to just visit m.google.com/youtube with your phone. :)

Most Useful Feature in Google Chrome – New Incognito Window

2009-05-30T15:39:00.004+08:00

Althought I don't really like the idea that Google Chrome does not support Google Toolbar, the most useful feature in Google Chrome in my opinion is the New Incognito Window. At least this is true to me at this point in time. It is basically a “Private Browsing” mode. Basically you will see this guy when you’re in Incognito mode:

Steps to Turn Incognito Mode

If using short-cut key, you just need to press Ctrl+Shift+N or the following steps:

Click the Spanner Menu on your top right
Select the New Incognito Window

When you want to use “New Incognito Window”?

Protect Your Privacy. Especially if you’re not the only one use your PC or laptop and you would like to keep some privacy that you don’t want to allow others to track your browsing activities, this feature is the best for you.

Lazy to Clear Your Cache. As mentioned in the previous post that clearing browser’s cache is necessary to protect your confidential data for better security. If you’re using this “New Incognito Window”, you just need to close the window and everything is gone. You’re no longer need to manually clear browser’s cache.

To know about Incognito mode feature in Google Chrome, click here.

Use Clear Cache in Web Browser for Better Security

2009-05-17T15:29:00.004+08:00

If you visit any confidential website such as accessing your bank account, it is recommended to clear the cache of the web browser after using it. I realize not many people practise this therefore I’m sharing this with you.

The reasons why we want to clear the cache in web browser is because the cookies or whatever temporary information that stored in the web browser may becomes a loophole for hacker to retrieve your login information such as your user name and password.

So to be safe or to be conservative for better security, we should clear the cache every time AFTER we use our web browsers to access the confidential website.

Let’s see how we can perform those steps from different browsers below:

Steps to Clear Cache for ALL the Web Browsers

If the browsers have options for you to choose what I kind of data to be deleted, I usually select all of them. Let’s see the following example:

Firefox (Clear Private Data)

In Firefox, it is better to check the following (default is unchecked) if you don’t want to select all of them:

Cookies
Offline Website Data
Saved Passwords

Internet Explorer (Delete Browsing History)

In Internet Explorer, it is better to check the following (default is unchecked) if you don’t want to select all of them:

Form Data
Passwords
InPrivate Filtering Data

Google Chrome (Clear Browsing Data)

It looks like Google is doing a right thing which by default is to clear all the browsing data including the saved password, cookies and etc. I believe that is the right thing to do. Again, if I were you, I will clear all the browsing data especially the following items is a MUST in my opinion:

Empty the cache
Delete cookies
Clear Saved Password

Having said so Google Chrome has one very amazing feature called Incognito mode. In Incognito mode, you no longer need to “Clear Browsing Data” manually. What you need to do is to open a new window in “Incognito Mode” and once you close the windows, all browsing data (e.g. cache, cookies, password and etc.) will be gone. I really love this feature. Cool isn’t it?

Note: As you can see, different web browsers like to use different name (i.e. Clear Private Data, Delete Browsing History and Clear Browsing Dat) for clearing their browser’s cache data. The default items what data to be cleared are also different among all these browsers.

Should I Quick Format My Drive?

2009-05-11T10:26:00.003+08:00

Usually when you buy brand new hard disk from a computer shop, they will just perform a “Quick Format” for your hard disk.

The problem with the “Quick Format” it is completely useless. It takes less than 1 minute to format a 260G hard disk and if you perform “Normal Format’, it takes few hours to completely format the hard disk.

So next time if you buy a brand new hard disk, what should you do? You should REFORMAT the HARD DISK again. Check out what Microsoft says about Normal Format vs. Quick Format.

Note: Normal format is also known as Default Format, Regular Format, Full Format or whatever you would like to call as long as it is not Quick Format.

You only perform Quick Format for the following reasons:

You have performed full “Regular/Normal Format” before and now you would like to make clean hard disk.
You want to quick erase all the data in the hard disk

Best Performance Web Browser – Google Chrome

2009-05-01T23:13:00.005+08:00

Although I don’t like the idea the Google Chrome doesn’t support Google Toolbar, I can’t deny the fact that Google Chrome performance is really so far the best as compared to both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

At first, I don’t realize this until I pissed off with slowness while watching video in YouTube using Firefox. So, I just gave it a try with Google Chrome and surprisingly it loads way faster than Firefox. Perhaps I should change my mind? I really can't wait until the Google Chrome supports extension. When???

Let's see how Google Chrome rocks:

Source: news.cnet.com

You can also benchmark your browser by your own at futuremark.com (which I believe it should be more accurate). I have done mine and here are the results:

As you can see, Google Chrome is still the best among all these 3 browsers. Wait, look at the IE – can you see how it really sucks? Have fun to benchmark them by your own!

Best Tweaking Methods to Increase HTC Performance

2009-03-21T18:47:00.004+08:00

Although there are many ways available on the net to tweak the registry setting to improve performance of Windows Mobile for HTC Touch Cruise, I find that the most effective ways of doing this is to disable all the buttons of your HTC device.

To tweak the registy you need the register editor. You can use Total Commander or FdcSoft Task Manger to edit Windows Mobile's registry.

I find that a lot of these examples on the web such as the following are useless or do not really contribute a lot in term of the user experiences performance:

Don’t do This (No effect on performance):

(1) Tweaking TouchFlo setting (i.e. sensitivity and scrolling).
I have tested this and after disable the scrolling for example, it won’t save the memory consumption. Therefore no point disable the scrolling or change any sensitivity setting of TouchFlo

(2) Playing around with the font and file system cache.
I have tested and no effect.

(3) Disable HTC Task Manager.
This is a very useful feature therefore you shouldn’t consider to disable it at all.

Do This (it does improve the performances):

(1) Disable Large Start Menu

Go to "Start -> Settings -> Personal -> Large Start Menu"
Uncheck “Enable large Start menu”

(2) Disable ClearType of screen fonts
I personally do not do this because the font sucks after I disable the ClearType but if you don't mind, here you go:

Go to "Start -> Settings -> System -> Screen"
Select the "ClearType" tab
Uncheck "Enable ClearType"

(3) Disable keyboard input method that you don’t use
(disable=0 , enable=1)

For example, I only use one type of input method and disable the rest. You can do the same the following list out all the registry key for all the keyboard input types:

E.g. disable Transcriber: KEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F0034DD0-2AD4-11D1-9CB0-E84BE8000000}\IsSIPInputMethod\(Default) = 0
E.g. disable Letter Recognizer: KEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{42429690-AE04-11D0-A4F8-00AA00A749B9}\IsSIPInputMethod\(Default) = 0
E.g. disable Chinese Star (CE-Star) HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{903D7A20-A2E9-11D2-9272-00A0C919143A}\IsSIPInputMethod\(default) =0

More registry keys as follow for your reference:

TOUCH KEYPAD {198D503A-EFFE-4AFD-BC54-EED333C80E6D}
TOUCH KEYBOARD {62B00599-25D2-4E09-8C48-03BF26DB8517}
Letter Recognizer {42429690-AE04-11D0-A4F8-00AA00A749B9}
Block Recognizer {42429691-AE04-11D0-A4F8-00AA00A749B9}

(4) Disable the Useless Cube
Honestly, the HTC cube is completely useless. You can disable it here by setting the EnableCube to 0 in the following registry:

HKLM\Software\OEM\TFLOSettings

This does not help much because the following application still remains in the memory:

APLauncher.exe
Biotouch.exe
MediaHubMini.exe
QuickDial.exe

You need to kill all these 4 application using the FdcSoft task manager and use the Total Commander Explorer go to the \windows\ directly and look for these 4 files. Delete these files or you can copy these 4 files to other folder for backup purpose.

Note: Default explorer does not allow you to make any changes in the \windows\ directory therefore, you need to use the third party explorer such as Total Commander.

You need to replace these 4 files with the empty files (i.e 0 bytes file size). Download biotouch.zip and unzip it.

Use Total Commander Explorer to copy these 4 files to the \windows\ folder and restart your PC.

Conclusion

By doing all the above that I suggested, now my HTC boots up only with 39% used memory. :D

Best Free Advanced Explorer for Windows Mobile – Total Commander

2009-03-15T13:55:00.004+08:00

For some reasons the original explorer in the windows mobile disallow you to modify or delete some of the system files in ROM especially in the windows folder, therefore I’m looking for an alternative solution.

The best explorer so far in the industry (in my opinion) is the “Resco Explorer” but it is not a freeware! So, what should you do? At last, I found the free one and it is called “Total Commander” and I have been using for quite some times. I’m satisfied with it but may not be as good as “Resco Explorer” but it is still better than nothing.

Some common advanced features of Total Commander:

Zip and unzip (File -> Pack with ZIP )
Properties dialog, change attributes (File -> Properties)
Useful to hide files or folder that you don’t want to let other to see
Search function including text content (File ->Find files)
FTP client (Access through \\Plugins\ftp)
Registry Editor (Access through \\Plugins\registry)
LAN access (Access through \\Plugins\LAN)

It is not as user friendly as Resco Explorer but it is the best free advanced explorer that I have ever used so far.

You can visit the official Total Commander page and download Total Commander here for pocket PC or Windows Mobile.

Should I Install Safari Web Browser?

2009-03-08T23:44:00.004+08:00

If you have installed “Quick Time Player”, most likely they will install the “Apple Software Update” tool as well which force you to download and install safari web browser. This is the thing I hate Apple, why keep popping up dialog box and force me to install your web browser? *sign*

Honestly, Safari is famous in screwing up its security and I would recommend you NOT to use it. In my opinion, there are only 3 options that you should only consider:

Firefox
Internet Explorer
Google Chrome.

That’s it. Don’t install safari web browser because it doesn't safe. If you find the notification annoying, you can disable it from Edit->Preference... menu and in the schedule tab, choose never.

Best Free Multiple Monitor Software Solution – Synergy

2009-02-08T14:15:00.007+08:00

If you have multiple computers and you would to share a single mouse and single keyboard, synergy is the best software that you can use. The amazing part of this software is, they can share a single mouse and keyboard from a different operating system because the sharing goes through the TCP/IP. I've personally used it between windows and Linux machine. Wow! I just love it!

You can download Synergy software from sourcefo rge.net. Click on the download link on that page and click the binaries package. In the binaries package page, the *.rpm is for Linux system and *.tar.gz is for the rest of the Unix system which doesn’t run on Intel’s x386 architecture. The *.exe is for windows platform.

Once you have installed Synergy, you need to configure your machine to act as a server. Usually the one in the center acts as an server and the machine besides it act as client. You will see this configuration screen and click on the “Configure…” to configure your machine on your left and right.

First, you need to add all the machines into the list and click on the "[New Link]" to configure how do we want to link all these machines together. Try to play around with the UI and you should be able to get it. The "+" is to add into the list and "-" is to remove from the list.

Once the server is configured, just click the “Start” button to start the server. Then the next thing to do is to install the synergy in your client’s machine (e.g. your machines on your left and right) and connects them to this server.

In Windows, you can enter the server’s name in the configuration screen:

“Use another computer’s shared keyboard and mouse (client)”

In Unix, you can run the following commands to connect to the server:

synergyc –f "server_host_name"

I love this software because I can have 3 monitors in front me (each monitor is from different machine or even different operating system) and I can control them using only one mouse and one keyboard. Cool, isn't it?

Games Explorer in Vista is Useless

2009-02-01T02:09:00.005+08:00

I don’t aware there is a "Games Explorer" in Vista until I read some article about Vista. Not really a big deal but surprisingly some people just love it. They must be kidding me? What so special about this feature? I just don’t get it. Is the big icon really that impressive? I even have a difficult time to find where this “Games Explorer” is located. In case you also have no idea where it is located, it is located at:

Start->Programs->Games->Games Explorers

Games explorer automatically adds a link to each game that you have installed. If some games those don’t appear in the Games Explorer, you can just drag and drop the game shortcut. Do you think that is useful or necessary?

Fastest Way to Speed up Windows Mobile – HTC Touch Cruise

2009-01-29T16:40:00.004+08:00

There are many ways to speed up windows mobile and particularly to HTC Touch Cruise (I’m not sure if this is generic to every other mobile devices, but you can give it a try), I found that to disable all the button contributes the biggest speedup. So this is what I do in the Start->Settings->Buttons:

I disable all the buttons and set all the buttons to "None". Once it is done, I found that the speedup is tremendous. The only most useful button in my opinion will be the Button 3 - Camera which you can still enable it for convenient purpose while you're taking photo. Hope this tip helps.

p/s: One of the things that I’m VERY NOT satisfy with PDA is the slowness in the software. Disable all the button seems really speedup for at least HTC Touch Cruise device and I hope it is applicable to your mobile device too.

Is TMC.exe a Trojan Horse in MapKing?

2009-01-29T15:11:00.010+08:00

If you have been using MapKing 2007 or the later version in Windows Mobile, most likely your anti-virus will detect a “TMC.exe” file as a Generic Downloader.x - Trojan Horse. It is located at:

“Program Files\MapAsia\MapKing2007\TMC.exe”

Apparently it is NOT a Trojan and it stands for Traffic Message Channel which is used to deliver traffic and travel information to drivers. However, if you do not use the traffic service or no such traffic services provider available, you can safely remove this TMC.exe. I personally do not use it, so I will just delete it.

p/s: MapKing is the very popular GPS mobile software in Asia (i.e. Singapore, Malaysia, China). It is not a freeware.

Best Free Video Conference Call Software – Windows Live Messenger

2009-01-10T21:40:00.003+08:00

Although I seldom give credits to Microsoft but this one I can’t deny it because I’m an independent honest reviewer. :D

Honestly, Microsoft really screws up in branding. At first, it is called “Windows Messenger” (now still available). Later, it is called MSN Messenger and now it is called “Windows Live Messenger”. What the heck? I think the MSN branding is the most successful branding name. Who the hell people want to call “Windows Live Messenger” instead of MSN? *Sign*

I have been testing Skype, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger and it turns out that Windows Live Messeger is the best. At first, I thought Skype is the best among these 3 as it used to be an industry leader in VOIP technology but it doesn’t seem so. I tried Yahoo Messenger too and surprisingly it is not as smooth as I expected. At last, Windows Live Messenger is the smoothest in both voice and video. Perhaps you have different experiences?

I recommended to use Windows Live Messenger for video or voice chat. In fact, I'm thinking if I should totally remove Yahoo Messenger since now we can link to Yahoo Messenger's friends from Windows Live Messenger. This probably saves up some of the resources.

You can download Windows Live Messenger here.

P/S: My testing was performed on December 2008 and I have been using Windows Live Messenger for Video Conference call since then and do not encounter any major issues until now.

Top 1 Reason NOT to Use Google Chrome

2008-12-30T00:20:00.002+08:00

I guess I do not need to talk about the good things about Google Chrome as all of you can find the Google Chrome key features here. If you want to try it out, you can download Google Chrome

What I’m really looking about this new Google Chrome web browser is use less memory footprint and with all basic browser features. It seems like Google has fulfilled my requirements EXCEPT that Google Chrome does NOT support Google Toolbar or vice-versa.

Google, you must be kidding? Google toolbar is my “must” application when browsing and it is going to defeat the purpose if I open Firefox (for Google Toolbar) and Google Chrome at the same time. Please fix it Google, your product doesn’t support your own products. Don’t you think is funny?

P/S: If Google Chrome doesn't support extensions (the way how it was designed), then I think Google Toolbar features should be built into the Google Chrome. Perhaps not all the features but the key one (e.g. bookmarks and PageRank). I will wait until Google Toolbar is supported, then I will only give it a try.

Related Topics:

Why Mozilla Firefox? See the reasons...

Check Download and Upload Speed

2008-12-26T00:51:00.003+08:00

Sometimes we just want to make sure our Internet Service Provider (ISP) doesn't cheat our money. We pay for this speed and at least we can get the speed that we're paying for. This is the website I usually play around with - www.speedtest.net

You can:

Test using recommend server (the place nearest to your ISP)
Test the connection speed in any server location that you want in the World.

P/S: You can also play around with the "My Summary" and "Global Stats" tabs at the top. It provides quite some useful information.

Can’t Connect to Remote Computer but previously is okay

2008-11-21T01:54:00.006+08:00

If you are able to connect to your remote windows machine but out of a sudden you fail to connect to the remote machine, this is post is the solution for you. However if it has never been working all the while, you should google it and it probably due to the firewall configurations.

Basically what you want to do is to remote restart your windows machine. That’s it. This is the fastest way to solve this problem assuming it did work previously. Somehow I have experienced this few times myself and I have no idea what causes the failure.

To Remotely Restart Your Windows Machine, you need to open your command prompt and perform the following commands:

shutdown /r /f /m \\my-remote-host

* /r is to shutdown and restart your PC. Without /r it is shutdown and you will never ever to wake him up again “remotely”.

* /f is to force to close any running applications. I’m not sure without this, it will be shutdown or restart probably. At first I tried without /f and it doesn’t work. So, I’m using to force to close any running application.

* /s m is to specify your windows host or you can put in the IP address (e.g. //123.123.12.34). Remember to put the “\\”.

* For more help just type “shutdown /?” in your command prompt.

Of course the drawback of this is you will lose any work in progress data in your remote windows machine. If you know exactly what causing remote desktop doesn’t work, you can try use “tasklist” and “taskkill” command to remote kill any process in the remote machine.

Example of the usage:

tasklist /s my-remote-host
taskkill /s my-remote-host /im outlook.exe

Perhaps outlook.exe causing this? I have no idea...

Using Google as World Time Clock

2008-11-10T03:35:00.005+08:00

Accidentally find out that we can actually use Google search engine as World Time Clocks by using the following search query:

Current Time "location"

For example to check time in Malaysia:

You can also check current time in more specific location. For example to check time in San Jose:

For example to check time in Maynooth, Dublin (This is where I’m right now :D):

The only thing it won’t work is I put in multiple locations. You don't see the displayed clock. For example:

So I guess this is fastest time to check world time clock assuming you have the internet access. :D

How to delete an undeletable file in Windows?

2008-11-10T00:14:00.006+08:00

As you might have already faced this issue many times, somehow Windows (XP or Vista) always has a problem to delete files or folders occasionally. What is wrong with Windows? I have no idea… It shouldn’t happen if we have close all the programs but somehow it doesn’t work.

Here are the few versions of our friend:

Cannot delete file: Access is denied
Cannot delete folder: There has been a sharing violation
Cannot delete file: It is being used by another person or program
Cannot delete folder: Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

So what we normally do is to “restart” our PC and delete the file or folder after restart but it is not efficient. So you may want to try the following method to delete the locked files or folders by Windows:

(1) Close all open programs

(2) Open a Command Prompt window and leave it open.

Start->Programs->Accessories->Command Prompt

(3) Kill the Windows Explorer (i.e. explorer.exe)

Select “Shut Down..” from the Start menu.
Hold CLTR+SHIFT+ALT and press the CANCEL button.
Go back to the Command Prompt Window and CD to the directory where you want to delete your files or folders (i.e. del /f, rd /s)

(4) Run again the Windows Explorer (i.e. Explorer.exe)

Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to run the Task Manager
Click File->New Task(Run…)
Type Explorer Open text box and click OK.
Close the Task Manager

Does it work? I hope so…

Best Task Manager for Windows Mobile (FdcSoft TaskMgr)

2008-10-05T11:10:00.003+08:00

I just bought a HTC Touch Cruise few weeks ago and played a lot with software to be installed in this guy. I have almost installed 20 applications (excluding the games), I found that one of the most useful software utility is the Task Manager from FdcSoft TaskMgr.

3 Reasons to use FdcSoft TaskMgr:

(1) Task Manager from HTC slows down your mobile performance since it is running at the background. Windows Mobile is already bloody slow, still want to load the background stuff? With FdcSoft TaskMgr, you do not need to run in background and run it when necessary.

To disable the HTC Task Manager, perform the following:

Go to “Start -> Settings -> System -> Task Manager -> Button”
Disable "Enable the "X" button to end running programs"
Disable "Enable Quick Menu on Today screen"

(2) FdcSoft TaskMgr shows more details information (e.g. Applications, Processes, CPU Usage, Services, IP Config and a lot more). You can also close all running applications as what you can do in HTC Task Manager.

(3) Registry editor under “RegEdit” page is the most useful thing that I used often to tweak the performance of Windows Mobile in my HTC device. So far, I have been tried 2 registry editors software, this “RegEdit” from FdcSoft TaskMgr is still my preference.

Click here to download FdcSoft TaskMgr and to see other people’s review.

Unable to Install Real Player 11 – Workaround

2008-08-17T14:41:00.004+08:00

If you download the real player 11 from the official website, it is very funny that when you click “accept” during the real player 11 installation and it nothing happens. I thought this is a bug that Real Player will fix this very soon and it doesn't seem so. When I search through the web and it seems like some people do have this problem and do not have the solution.

So, the temporarily workaround is to download the full real player software version from filehippo.com and I tried it works. Click here to download the Real Player 11 from filehippo.com

In case you’re not aware why Real Player Version 11 is so useful is because it can download any flash streaming video (e.g. youtube.com and etc) with just right click your mouse. To learn more about it, you can read my previous post - Fastest Way to Download Video from YouTube.

Related Posts:

Can't find the best video codec? Try K-Lite Codec Pack ...

Undo "Clear Offline Items" in Outlook

2008-06-01T12:45:00.003+08:00

Some tips to share or to avoid from accidentally delete all your emails in your inbox MS Outlook. When I’m cleaning up and organizing my emails in MS outlook, I accidentally click the “Clear Offline Items” in the inbox properties page causes all my important emails are gone.

However, it can be recovered if you are using a Microsoft Exchange Server e-mail account in Cached Exchange mode which I believe most companies setup their outlook in this way.

So what I do is to click “Send and Receive” button to synchronize all the emails in the server back to my Outlook. This is how you can undo the "Clear Offline Items" in Outlook in case one day you accidentally click the "Clear Offiline Itemes" in MS Outlook.

Use Google or MS Word as Dictionary

2008-05-11T13:41:00.003+08:00

Sometimes when you don’t even know how to spell a word, Google and MS word come into play. This is what I usually do. Although the best dictionary WordWeb has a suggestion capability but usually it doesn’t do a very good job.

Let’s take a look at spelling a word “Gentlemen” and I don’t know how to spell it and I spell it as “Gentalment”. In MS Word I can right click the word and it shows me the suggested correct spelling. To check the meaning of the world I can just press “Shift + F7” but usually this MS Word dictionary sucks. To check the meaning, I would suggest to use WordWeb.

Another method is using the Google Search Engine (my preferable choice) but only if you have the access to the internet. It comes out something like below “Did you mean: gentlement’s”

When you click on it, it comes out the Wikipedia’s definition. However, I do not really like Wikipedia’s definition too. The explanation is just too long for me. So I would still prefer to use the WordWeb to check the meaning.

So this is what I did to check a word spelling and it's meaning:

With Internet

Google It
WordWeb It

Witout Internet

Winword it
WordWeb it

p/s: Too bad the OpenOffice does not have suggested word capability. I hope one day they will support it.

Btw, I don't think this is something new. I believe a lot of people have been doing this especially using the Google as dictionary.

Vista is Very Slow! Any Solutions?

2008-03-31T20:51:00.007+08:00

I bet majority of people are facing the same issue – slowness when they migrate from Windows XP to Windows Vista. You may ask, what are the solutions?

The simplest solution is to turn OFF all the windows visual effect. However you will lose all the Vista nice looking interfaces (GUI). No one is aware of you’re actually using Vista. So, how do you keep the Vista interface without scarify performance?

Instead of choosing “Adjust for best performance”, you can select the “custom” in the performance options windows.

Let’s look at the cool 3D feature in Vista (i.e. Windows Button +Tab), when do you actually use it other than just to show off? It is a completely a useless feature. To disable that, you basically just uncheck the “Enable desktop composition”.

To keep the vista GUI without scarify any performance, I disable all the windows visual effect except for the following:

Show preview and filters in folders
Show thumbnails instead of icon
Smooth edges of screen fonts
Use visual styles on windows and buttons

Well, I like the preview and showing thumbnails. Without that, it doesn’t seem like I’m using Vista. Smooth edges of screen fonts makes the fonts easy to read I suppose. The last visual styles on window and buttons are the most important thing which enables the whole Vista GUI.

At last, why I want to use Vista GUI?

Is it because I want to show off? Is it cool? Nope, it is because it makes my fonts easy to be read in my laptop with 14 inch screen. I have tried many options including changing the font size, turning on Vista GUI is still the best solution. It really makes everything easy to read. I don't feel any performance drop as compared to disable all visual effects.

Hope this can help boost your windows performance but still enjoying the Vista experience at the same time.

P/S: You can also run defragment to improve your system performance.

Related Posts:

Open a RAR File with Free Software Utility

2008-03-20T13:09:00.006+08:00

I’m not really sure why the un-archive RAR utility is not come by default in windows since it can open various compress file format.

How to open a RAR file?

If you receive or download a *.rar file and unable to open it, you probably have heard of using the WinRAR to open it. However the problem is this WinRAR is evaluation copy! If you’re okay with evaluation copy - trial version, you can go ahead to download WinRAR software here.

To completely open the RAR with a free tool, you should try 7-Zip open source software.

Since 7-Zip this is the open source, don’t expect it is 100% free of bugs. I have been using it and I noticed there are few bugs here and there (e.g. browse button doesn't work). These bugs are usually minor and can be worked around pretty fast. Enjoy!

Download 7-Zip here.

Sound Recorder in Vista is Completely Useless

2008-03-12T21:54:00.005+08:00

I’m sad to say that the sound recorder in MS Vista really sucks! A lot of useful features are gone after switching from XP to Vista. I really don’t understand why they want to do that. Did they do it in purpose? Some said it is for copy protection? Record it illegally? It doesn’t make sense because Windows Media Player has the recording capability.

From this:

To this:

Some of the cool features like increasing and decreasing the volume of recordings, adding echo, reversing, editing the file and etc have no longer there in MS Vista. The worst part is you CANNOT playback what you have recorded. You must save it and play it with Windows Media Player. What the heck?

With this new sound recorder, you can basically do 2 things only – record from microphone or line-in and save the file. That’s it. It is really inconvenient every time I’m trying to record a sound and playback.

Some workaround suggested steps are:

Copy the c:\windows \System32\sndrec32.exe file from a Windows XP to Vista and run as Administrator.
Right-Click the file and choose Run as Administrator.

Please don’t do that, it doesn’t work. I will suggest you to get any new recording software. I haven’t tried out any yet. If you have used any good one, please share.