Illustrations

Speed up your system boot

2010-11-18T20:42:00.001-06:00

A tiny software startup from Israel is trying to make your PC less frustrating. Soluto which is currently in beta achieves it by speeding up your boot time and fixing annoying system slowdowns.

The basic idea behind Soluto is to use the experience of thousands of PC experts to help the masses. This software runs as a background service that watches your PC as it works, detects slowdowns and tries to analyze the cause. By comparing those events and possible causes against a database of apps, drivers, and other software it can suggest solutions that you can implement with a click or two.

Once you've installed the software and rebooted your PC, Soluto springs into action, tracking every single process that runs during the boot process, and then allows you to easily drill down into the list of processes to see exact times for each one. Further the applications are grouped into "No-brainer" or "Potentially removable" groups.

Once you've identified an application, you can drill down into the details and control it directly from this screen. You can Pause the application, which will effectively remove it from the boot process. Or you can Delay it, which will get you to a working desktop a little quicker. The graph next to the buttons shows you what other users did, so if you really have no idea what something is, may be you can use the wisdom of the crowd.

You can also go into the advanced section to find more about the process such as when you installed it, why it runs in your boot, Soluto recommendation, how much of your boot time the process consumes etc.

Overall the software worked really great. Its very lightweight and so far its recommendations have been reasonable. It has helped me bring down my boot time to 1:16 minutes.

I think the real innovation that Soluto is bringing to the table is in its PC Genome knowledgebase. Eventually, it will consist of a database of applications derived from the Soluto agent installed on users’ PCs.

Check out this short video which does a great job of explaining the software, how to use it, and how it can help you troubleshoot the boot process:

Good luck with Soluto!

Sync Firefox across your devices

2010-11-10T21:15:00.001-06:00

If you have got multiple Firefox installations across different computers then these 2 add-ons are a must.

Firefox Sync

This Add-on from Mozilla Labs lets you stay in sync with your Firefox across different computers. You can access your bookmarks, history, passwords and even open tabs across all your devices using this Add-on.

Siphon

This extension syncs a list of Add-ons between browsers, with easy installation and deletion buttons. It also saves your Add-on list if you ever need to reinstall Firefox. Once you have created an account and logged in, Siphon keeps track of what you have installed, and also what you remove or add later on. You can choose whether to sync the changes, or keep them on the local Firefox installation only.

I was using Xmarks for a long time to sync my bookmarks and passwords. But recently they announced that they are shutting down and I decided to switch to Firefox Sync. But it looks like they are trying to come back from near death by evolving to have both a free component and a premium component. Lets hope they survive the tough times and emerge profitable.

Also for those who need a cross browser password syncing, I recommend LastPass. LastPass is a secure password manager for all your web passwords. Like other web-focused password managers, LastPass puts all of your individual passwords behind one master password.

Do you shutdown your PC at night?

2010-11-03T20:53:00.001-05:00

Do you normally shutdown your PC at night? Or you forget it most of the time? In this era of “Going Green”, everyone is expected to shut down down the PC and save energy when you are not using it. That’s right – only when you are not using or when the PC is idle.

We are humans and we tend to forget. Here’s a nice solution to let the machines do the job for you. You can configure Windows to automatically power down at night, if you’re not using the PC at that time. All you need to do is to create a task to shutdown (or hibernate) your computer, triggered after a certain time, but dependent on idleness.

Let me walk you through the whole process in Windows 7.

First open up Task Scheduler (in the start menu type task scheduler) to create the new job. Click on the Create Task link on the right-hand side.

In the create Task window, give the task a name, and check the box for “Run with highest privileges”.

In the Triggers tab, click New, and then setup a daily schedule to fit your needs.

In the Actions tab, click New, and then enter shutdown in the Program box, and /S into the parameters box.

In the Conditions tab check the box to only start the task if the computer is idle for more than 30 minutes. Also choose to stop the task if the PC isn’t idle.

In the Settings tab choose to restart the task every 30 minutes if the task fails.

Save the task and that’s it – you don’t have to worry about shutting down your PC at night anymore.

Remove Items from Right-Click Send To Menu

2010-11-01T22:13:00.001-05:00

Has your Right-Click Send To Menu Items have grown big? Do you want to remove some unwanted Items from that list without downloading any tool?

In Windows 7 you can do this easily without any hassle. To remove items, first simply navigate to the following directory to find all Send To items.

C:\Users\{YourUsername}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

Select the items you want to remove and hit the delete key and that’s it.

Tip: If you are having trouble remembering the path/directory then try this. Just type “shell:sendto” in Start Search and hit Enter.

Is your computer’s power profile optimized?

2010-10-31T13:32:00.000-05:00

Have you been getting a low battery back time on your laptop lately? Do you know whether the battery is completely worn out and needs replacement? Or is it some power hungry programs and setting that is killing your batter backup time?

Off late I had problems with my battery back up time and I decided to do some research on this. I came across several articles and small utilities that is helpful to make the decision process easier for you. It turns out that the modern day batteries come up sensors capturing a lot of detail including the wear level and you need only some program to read it. If you are running Windows 7 on your laptop you have good news. Windows 7 comes with a “Power Efficiency Diagnostics Report” in the OS itself.

Here’s how to create a detailed report.

Type cmd in the search box to launch the command-line program.

Right click on it and click Run as Administrator

At the command prompt, type powercfg –energy and press enter

You can see the message “Enabling tracing for 60 seconds”

At the end of this tracing you will receive a brief listing of the the energy efficiency problems found on your computer. But it won’t be detailed. However it also creates a more detailed report in a file named “energy-report.html”. You can find the path to this file in the command's output. The detailed report will provide you enough details to decide whether you need to change the battery or make some adjustments to your power settings. For example, in my case I learned that my battery has work out 44% and hence it recharged only to the 56% of its designed capacity. You can find this out by going to the Battery Information section of the report. The report is a bit technical and is recommended only for advanced users.

For better management of your battery, I recommend using a small utility called BatteryCare. Its is a software created to optimize the usage and performance of the modern laptop's battery. It monitors the battery's discharge cycles and helps improving its lifetime. The features include monitoring of discharge cycles, automatic switching of power plans, control over windows services during battery power and CPU/HDD temperature reading.

You can find more details about it at BatteryCare website. It is definitely worth checking out.

Credit Card Minimum Payments

2010-06-03T21:41:00.004-05:00

Personal Finance Sofware Mint.com

Nokia E71

2009-03-20T19:39:00.001-05:00

I have always been a big fan of Nokia like many others. Over the years I have used various Nokia models and I always liked their user interface, ease of navigation and especially the keypads.

In last January when I decided to upgrade from Nokia 5300 to a Smartphone, I was in a state of confusion. Blackberry, iPhone and Nokia E-series was in contention. After a lot of re-search I was convinced that E71 was the right choice for me.

The styling of E71 is just awesome - metal, sleek and shiny. The build quality is one of the best and has a very solid qwerty keyboard. More...the E71 is super quick. I’m currently running a ton of apps concurrently and using loads of data on both cellular and wifi simultaneously. The 3.2MP camera does a fine job - not great, but substantially better than most phones. One of the biggest ‘wow’ factors of E71 is the predictive text feature. Btw Joel loves it too!

Here's a list of my favorite applications on E71

Truphone for SIP calling. If you are a Skype user then you can use the beta version of Skype lite

Fring - multi-client IM/voice chat

QuickOffice (I got it for a dollar through a deal). E71 comes with the application preinstalled, but it’s only the viewer portion

Opera Mini browser

Gmail for mobile

MagicKey - remap any button on your E71. You might have to hack your E71 to install it.

DivX player for watching movies

SmartConnect – makes it easy to setup Access Point priority groups. You can find it in the Download! application on your Nokia E71

Google Maps with street view

Nokia PC Suite – last but the least…Nokia’s PC software to connect your Nokia device to a PC

Here’s a list of my favorite add-on/accessories

Stereo Headphone Adapter

Reusable Screen Protector

Here’s some Tips and tricks that I have learnt over time

STICKY FUNCTION KEY - A quick double press on the bottom left ‘function’ key locks it.

ONE TOUCH MUTE - mute a call by pressing the button between the volume keys present on the right hand side of the phone.

TIME & DATE – When phone is locked and the screen is blank, hit the Navigation Button to display the time and date

AUTO FOCUS - After activating camera press T key on a keyboard and keep it pressed for few seconds.

I will keep updating this list.

First look at Windows 7 beta

2009-01-28T09:45:00.004-06:00

Earlier last month when Windows 7 beta version was made available for download I thought I will have a look at it. I downloaded it from Microsoft's site (I have to say after a lot of struggle). Since I didn't have a spare PC/laptop to get it installed I decided to install it on a VirtualBox.

I initially thought of using Microsoft's Virtual PC. But after reading some of the experiences of user's I decided to drop this and use VirtualBox instead. The major reason for choosing it was it’s support for Windows 7.

First, you have to download VirtualBox and install it. During the installation on a Windows system (XP or Vista), you might receive a warning that you are going to install an untested software.

Don’t worry about it, click continue anyway when those boxes appear and finish the installation.

The file you have downloaded from Microsoft’s site is a CD disk image. Fortunately, since we are going to use it on a VirtualBox, you won’t have to actually burn it to a CD to use it.

Once you have installed VirtualBox and you have the Windows 7 beta installation CD image, you’re ready to create your virtual machine and install Windows 7 beta. Launch VirtualBox to create a new machine.

The wizard will start. click Next to continue.

On the next screen make sure you select Windows 7 as your operating system. Click Next.

On the following screen you have to select how much memory you would like the virtual machine to have.

I think the minimum requirement for Windows 7 is 1GB of RAM, so be sure to set it to at least 1024MB. You can set it to more than 1024 if you want. Click Next.

On the following screen you have to create a new virtual drive for the system. Click on the button labeled New to continue.

A new wizard to create the virtual hard disk will pop up. Click Next to continue.

On the next screen I would recommend using the default option of a Dynamically expanding storage. This will make sure that you won’t use any more disk space (on your main system) than what is necessary.

On the next screen you have to set the disk location and size. Since you are using a dynamically expanding drive, the size of the disk is somewhat arbitrary. So set it to 20-50 GB to be safe.

Click Finish to complete the wizard.

Once you have completed creating the virtual machine, you will have to configure it to use the Windows 7 disk image. Select your virtual machine, click Settings, and navigate to the CD/DVD-ROM section.

Check the Mount CD/DVD Drive checkbox and click the ISO Image File radio button. Then click the folder icon and then browse to where you saved your ISO image and select it.

If you have a multi-core processor, there’s an option you’ll want to enable to speed things up on the virtual machine.

Go to the General section and on the Advanced tab enable the Enable VT-x/AMD-V checkbox. This allows VirtualBox to take advantage of machine virtualization capabilities of your processor.

Go to the Audio tab, and click the Enable Audio checkbox and select Windows DirectSound for the Host Audio Driver.

Once you have the machine configured, click the Start button to turn on the virtual machine.

You will now see the Windows 7 installation begin. Just follow all the prompts and install Windows. If you need to get back to your main computer at any time, the hotkey to release control of the virtual machine is the Ctrl key (default) on the right side of your keyboard.

Once you’ve installed Windows 7, you can install the guest additions. The guest additions will provide better video and audio support to the virtual machine. The guest additions also allow you to better integrate the virtual machine with your main system.

To install the guest additions, you will have to press the right Ctrl key on your keyboard, go to the Devices menu and select Install Guest Additions…

During the guest additions installation, click the Install button whenever prompted. Once you’ve installed the guest additions, reboot the virtual machine. Upon rebooting, all of the virtual devices should be working.

Now that you have the guest additions installed, you will be able to share the clipboard, access to files on the main system, and move the cursor seamlessly in and out of the virtual machine.

That’s it. It took me less than 45 minutes for the install and to activate the OS using a product key provided my Microsoft.

The first warning I received was that the system did not have a anti-virus software installed. I clicked on recommend a anti-virus program, which included AVG paid edition. On the AVG site it even stated that it was in fact compatible with Windows 7 (wow for a beta OS – well done).

Honestly, the only difference I see in Windows 7 Beta is simply a few adjustments to the interface (better taskbar, slightly better navigation and menu’s).

I think the big question that most people will want to know is about performance. Is Windows 7 faster than Vista/XP? My opinion is that it does appear to be quicker. But you have to remember that any clean install of Windows always seems faster in the beginning (isn’t that so?). I believe the system will need to be used before any judgment can be made as to performance improvements.

Some of the professional tests seem to indicate that Windows 7 has a better boot time.

I will leave it here and continue to experiment with the beta release.

Fix java.lang.ClassNotFoundException

2008-11-06T21:18:00.011-06:00

One of the most common exception that a Java software developer encounters during the development of a program is nothing but ClassNotFoundException. If you are a developer think how many times you have encountered this exception and the hours you spent finding the right jar to fix it. Well its not that hard any longer. Here are some sites that will help you.

jarsearch.com

JarSearch.com is the tool of choice for software developers and software engineers searching for the jar file of a missing class. You can search for packages or classes.

findjar.com

findJAR.com is a JAR search engine that helps to find JAR files containing required Java classes. Simply enter the name of the class or the JAR file you are looking for and start your search. findJAR.com can be used to easily resolve NoClassDefFoundError and ClassNotFoundException problems.

docjar.com

This is another jar search engine that helps you to find the jar files. It also provides a plug-in for Eclipse. So without leaving your IDE, you can access thousands of Java APIs, and search Google.

jarfinder.com

Jarfinder provides a huge searchable database of classes and jars from a wide variety of Java projects. This makes it easy to resolve ClassNotFoundExceptions or NoClassDefFoundErrors.

Lost CD keys?

2008-09-21T20:50:00.010-05:00

In case you have lost your CD-keys and serials from your favorite game or software then it can be a cumbersome task to reinstall it.

Normally the product key is located in the original CD or sometimes in the original manual. If you've lost your product key you can often find it in the Windows Registry but this can be very difficult to do.

There are some free key finder programs available to help in these situations.

SoftKey Revealer

This software can recover CD-keys and serials from over 700 software. Also you can save your recovered data as plain text document (txt) or as Microsoft Word document (doc).

Game Key Revealer

This software can recover CD-keys and serials from over 500 games. Also you can save your recovered data as plain text document (txt) or as Microsoft Word document (doc).

Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder

The Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder is a freeware open source utility that retrieves your Product Key (cd key) used to install Windows from your registry. It works on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008, Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007 family of products.

Win Keyfinder

Win keyfinder retrieves your Windows XP, Win 2000, Windows Me, 98, 2003 and .NET Product keys from the registry and display it for you.

WinGuggle

WinGuggle is a small application that can set, change and backup your Original Equipment Manufacturer's Information. It can also get your Windows Vista and Office Product Key.

Speed up Acrobat Reader

2008-09-21T10:49:00.005-05:00

If you are fed up opening PDF files found in search results because of Acrobat Reader's painfully sluggish startup time, take a break. Try these to improve the startup time.

Adobe Reader SpeedUp

Adobe Reader Speed-Up significantly decreases the amount of time required for Adobe Reader to start by disabling most of the least used plug-in. This has been created as an effort to automate
the process of speeding up Adobe Reader's launch time by disabling the majority of plug-in that are completely useless for most users. It supports most of the version of Acrobat Reader.

Installing this program is very easy.

Download the zip file and extract the files to a folder. Double click on the file "Reader SpeedUp.exe" and start using the program.

Manually disable the plug-in on startup

You can disable the plug-in from loading at the startup. Simply navigate to Reader\plug_ins folder in your installation directory (default:- Program Files\Adobe\Reader x.0) and copy all the files and folders except EWH32.api and anything that says print/search to the folder Reader\Optional.

Some other tips that may improve the performance

One feature of Acrobat Reader is that when you open a PDF link in your browser, Acroread.exe stays in memory. You can use the Windows task manager to kill the process or start and exit the full application to pull it from memory. The other option is to tell Acrobat to launch the full application rather than the browser plug-in. To do this, start Acrobat Reader, go to Edit->Preferences->Internet and uncheck the box labeled "Display PDF in browser". This solves the in memory problem and I think makes for a generally better user experience.

If you are not satisfied even after trying out all these options then its time to try out the free alternatives like Foxit.