Microsoft launched a new website demo for Windows 7, where you can test drive many features of the new version of Windows, without need to install it.

Everything is going to work inside a web browser, with a couple of clicks. That’s the only purpose of the website.

If, for some reason, you don’t want to test it online, you can also download or watch videos that demonstrate the new features of Windows 7.

But before you go to the site, you first need to meet the minimum requirements to be able to see it properly.

Minimum requirements for Windows 7 online demo

Microsoft Windows:
Only Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows 7 are supported.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or later:
Only Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or later are supported. I would never recommend you to use Internet Explorer but for this occasion, there is no other way.
If you do not have IE 6 or later, you can download it here

Screen Resolution:
The Virtual Demo sessions are best viewed at a screen resolution of 1024×768 or greater. Otherwise you may experience clipping of content.

US English Keyboard:
These online Virtual Demo sessions are in US English and only support US English Language Keyboards.

Cookies Enabled:
You must have cookies enabled to run these Virtual Demo sessions.
To enable cookies, follow these steps:

• Select “Internet Options” from the Tools menu.
• Click on the “Security” tab.
• Click “Custom Level” button.
• Scroll down to the “Cookies” section.

To enable:

• Set “Allow cookies that are stored on your computer” to “Enable”.
• Set “Allow per-session cookies” to “Enable”.
• Click “OK” to save changes.

ActiveX Control:
The Microsoft “Virtual Machine Remote Control” Active X control is required by this site. If you do not have it installed, you will be asked to when launching the Virtual Demo. There are instuctions relating to this located during the install.

Just a few more notes

If you meet all of the above requirements, then you’re good to go. However…

Once you have passed the requirements, you may have need to wait a few moments while you experience the Windows “start up” since it loads a full-functioning version of Windows 7 Professional, so you can take a look and try all of the new features, without having to install the full version on your own computer.

From there on, you can follow the instructions on the website itself, because I found it to be very user friendly.

Now go ahead and visit Windows 7 Online Demo Website, and don’t forget to share your thoughts here in the comments.

I said two accounts, but no it’s not limited to two accounts only. You can open as many accounts as you want, on the same site, all at once.

The same applies to all membership websites. You can access multiple accounts at the same time, on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Hotmail… whatever.

I bet you knew how to do this by using different browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE…), and keeping them running all at once. But that just eats up your RAM memory, and makes your desktop look clogged. So no, we’re not going to use that method.

There are three ways to accomplish this. It all depends on which browser you want to use. You will see all three covered here, step by step, as always.

Use Firefox To Login With Multiple Accounts On Same Site

Firefox is famous for its extensions and add-ons, so you guessed it. You need to install a Firefox add-on which will help you do this.

Click to Install CookiePie Firefox Extension (Firefox users only)

It’s fairly easy to use. After you’ve installed it and restarted Firefox, just login to Twitter (for example). Then open a new tab and right click on it. Then find the “Toggle On/Off CookiePie” option and click on it to start the extension.

You can see that a cookie appeared on the right side of the tab, which means you can type-in Twitter url, and then Twitter will ask you to login again. But this time you can do it with different account. The image below explains it all.

If you want to see all of this put to action, check out this video below.

Couple of things to consider when using CookiePie Firefox extension:

- Gmail has recently implemented tougher security to its service, so it is aware about other connections in other tabs or windows. Which means this extension, unfortunately, won’t work when using Gmail. Huge disappointment, I know. But developers of the CookiePie are trying to fix this.

- It also runs on Flock/GNU IceWeasel.

Use Google Chrome To Login With Multiple Accounts On Same Site

This one is a well known feature of Google Chrome, but in case you did not know about it…

Google Chrome comes with the “Incognito mode”, also known as “Private mode”, which allows you to login to two different instances of the same website.

1. Login to desired website in Google Chrome.

2. Click on the Tools icon (top right corner) and in the menu, select “New Incognito Window“. Or even easier method is to use a keyboard shortcut. Press Ctrl+Shift+N to open a new Incognito Window.

3. Go to the same website and you should now be able to login with another user account.

Use Internet Explorer 8 To Login With Multiple Accounts On Same Website

This is also one of the features that is only available in Internet Explorer 8.

IE 8 is packed with a “New Session” mode that allows you to start a new window with a brand new session.

1. Open IE8, go to desired website and login with your first account.

2. Then Go to File –> New Session. This will open a new window. Navigate to the same site and you should be able to login with your other account.

I wouldn’t go for this method, since it’s almost same as if you opened two different browsers and logged in to your accounts. Because IE 8 will also open a new window…

And that should be all!

If you know some additional methods for any of these browsers, share them with us in the comments.

RC will stop functioning on June, 1st. That does not mean that you can use it properly to that date, because Microsoft will start shutting down your computer every two hours, starting from March.

That’s why it is time to make a decision to either buy the final version of Windows 7, or go back to your old OS, like XP or Vista (not my recommendation).

If you decided to go for Windows 7 final version, then you need to know that you can’t just upgrade to final version. Microsoft demands that you install a new copy of Windows 7, which means deleting all software that was once installed and maybe even losing some data.

To skip all those problems, here is a workaround that will enable you to simply upgrade your Windows 7 RC to the final version, without need to install a clean copy and delete any software or data on your PC.

This is the error message you will see if you try to upgrade:

Just a quick note before we begin:
The Windows 7 beta and RC versions were Ultimate edition, so you’ll only be able to upgrade to Final version if you are installing Ultimate Edition.

Follow these steps to enable the upgrade:

You will need to edit a file inside the Windows 7 installation DVD. And to be able to edit files, you need to extract all files of the DVD to your hard drive.

1. If you have a DVD, then just copy all files to a new folder on your PC.

If you use ISO image to install Windows 7, you can extract the files from ISO by using 7-Zip archiving software, which is free, and you can download it here.

2. After you’ve extracted the files, Find the “sources” folder and open it.

3. Inside that folder, find the file named “cversion.ini“, and double click to open it.

4. You need to change the “MinClient” value to some number less than the current number of the build you are using (e.g. build number of RC version  is 7100). So for the RC release, you need to change it to “7000″.

Don’t forget to leave that zero, near the value edited, as it is. (it should look just like on the image above)

5. Now just launch the setup.exe right from there (hard drive) and upgrade the system. Or if you prefer, you can burn these files to a DVD and then install it… That’s up to you.

When you launch the setup, you should see the welcome screen, like on the image below. Go ahead and click Install Now.

When you get to the point where it asks you about the type of installation, choose the “Upgrade” option.

When, or if, you reach the Compatibility Report screen like in the image below (if it doesn’t show up at all, you should be happy), you’ll see the list of applications that might not work once you have finished the upgrade.

To be honest, this is not 100% accurate, because, from my experience, many of them will work without any problems. But just in case, uninstall them, and then install them again, after the setup finishes.

After you finish all those steps, you should see that Windows 7 started installing.

Now go get a cup of coffee and find something to do in the meantime, because this will take a while to finish.

You may think that this window pops up with a reason, so you shouldn’t disable it, right? Well, if you are not so familiar with Windows, and don’t know much about computers at all, then you should probably leave it enabled.

But if you know that the software you installed, actually IS working, and Windows 7 still gives you this message, then I’m sure it gets pretty annoying. That’s why you should definitely disable it.

Here’s another reason to consider. Windows 7 displays this message even if program is installed correctly and it works 100%. This is why the sentence “This Program Might Not Have Installed Correctly” has a word “might” in it.

This is how it looks:

Now let’s see how to disable it and finally stop the annoyance.

This message pops out because “Program Compatibility Assistant” process runs in the background. In fact, this service starts right at the system startup, so it’s even slowing down the System’s startup time a little bit.

Follow these steps to disable it:

1. Click the Start button on your taskbar.

2. In the search box, type “services.msc” (no quotations) and hit Enter.

3. When new window opens, find “Program Compatibility Assistance Service” in the list (see image below).

4. Right click on it, and then click “Stop” (image above)

Now we have finished the first part. We stopped it from running in the background. But if we restart computer, it will automatically run with startup again (remember?) and will continue to show you that message. To stop it from running with the system startup, we will do just a couple of additional steps.

5. Once the service is stopped, right-click on it again. Now go to “Properties”. In a new window, find the option “Startup Type“, and on drop-down menu of it, select “Disabled” and click OK. (image below)

Now you just need to restart your computer.

To confirm that you did everything right, open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and look for “PcaSvc” in Services tab. If you don’t find it… Congratulations the service has been disabled!

First of all, I created a new design for Gnoted. That was the most time consuming part of the whole scenario. A couple of months ago, I started to learn CSS and web design in general, and practiced a bit every day. Now this was meant to be my final test, to see if I can do it all on my own – Make a new WordPress theme.

I designed and wrote code for it, from scratch. I have literally started with empty paper and an idea… Many hours and long nights went into it, and I really did my best to take care of every single, tiny detail to make everything as perfect as I possibly can. And now finally, everything is finished. That means I can start writing posts again.

But first, let me take you through some of the aspects of the new design:

New logo

I’m sure, the first thing you noticed when you came here, was the big bold logo at the top. If I’m right, then I did my job well. I wanted it to be that way.

I intended it to be simple, catchy, bold (obviously) and without any graphics. Just letters organized in an appealing way. Among other things that I learned about design, was typography, so I wanted to implement that on my “final exam”.

Attention to detail

One of the most important things that makes design different, is attention to details.

Notice the subtle shadow on the menu above. It is not obtrusive, but fits beautifully into the whole design and creates a great feel overall.

You can see this implemented on the images above, too. Even better, go ahead and hover over the image above and notice the shadow around it.

All of these details were created using the latest CSS 3 web design standard. That’s why some of you, who use Internet Explorer, are not able to see many great details and effects. Internet Explorer doesn’t support CSS 3 and thus it’s very limited.

Here’s another opportunity for me to recommend you download a browser (Firefox or Google Chrome) that will help you experience the web to its maximum. Once again, stop using Internet Explorer, it’s old, slow, limited and it simply sucks.

Short descriptions of posts on home page

Are you tired of long introductions on some posts, when all that you want is to just see what the post is all about?

I was guilty of this one too. I used to write long intros instead of just getting straight to the point. In most cases, visitors just scan the page and leave if they don’t find something interesting fast.

That’s why I decided to write a short description of each blog post that is displayed on home page, and explain how can that blog post be of value to you. If it gets your attention, you read on, if not, you keep scanning the page. No need for frustration and wasting your valuable time.

Cool search results

I won’t post image to show you this one. I will let you experience it yourself. For example, if you would search for “Windows” by clicking the Search button on the navigation above, the results page would look like this. See? It’s easy to scan and it’s organized pretty well.

How old design looked like

For those of you who are new to this blog, you might want to know how this blog looked like and what’s the difference.

Ok, that would be enough about the design. If you want to see more, then just look around.

Now, maybe you wonder what that second part of the blog post title means.

My new name

As many of you know, my name was Gennice. And I’m not female! :) My name would exactly be “Gènnice” which is a male name in France. But here in the US, people get confused sometimes.

So i decided I can’t take it anymore… :) I went through the whole process of changing IDs and all other documents into my new name - Dennis! I wanted to be similar when it’s pronounced like my other name, so I went for Dennis, and I really like it.

So, everybody who once knew me as Gennice, can now call me Dennis. Although you can call me however you like as long as you know that I’m a male. That was the main reason I changed my name.

That’s it! Now let’s enjoy the new start with new design and new name (no, I’m not crazy, and yes, I love it)!

If you’re not shortcut-type of person, and don’t usually use shortcuts when working on your computer, you really need to reconsider that habit now.

At least when it comes to Windows 7 (or any other operating system) where you do so many things. Sometimes, there’s simply not enough time and you need some speed to tackle your daily tasks.

That’s why knowing these will definitely be of huge help. It gets a little bit hard at the beginning, because you need to remember all (or some) of them and try to make yourself really use these instead of just “knowing” them.

But eventually after a week or so, you will get completely used to it and you’ll notice how much time you save just by using them.

Here’s the list of 22 windows 7 shortcuts worth knowing (I’ve also included a couple of universal shortcuts that work on XP and Vista too):

Ctrl + Mouse scroll wheel
Change the size of icons on the desktop

Windows logo key + Tab
Cycle through programs on the taskbar by using Aero Flip 3-D

Ctrl + Windows logo key +Tab
Use the arrow keys to cycle through programs on the taskbar by using Aero Flip 3-D

Windows logo key + T
Cycle through programs on the taskbar.

Windows logo key + Spacebar
Preview the desktop.

Windows logo key + Home
Minimize all but the active window.

Windows logo key + Shift+ Left Arrow or Right Arrow
Move a window from one monitor to another.

Windows logo key + number (1 for the program that is nearest to start button, 2 for second nearest and so on…)
Start the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number. If the program is already running, switch to that program.

Shift + Windows logo key + number
Start a new instance of the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number.

Alt + Windows logo key + number
Open the Jump List for the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number

Ctrl + Windows logo key + number
Switch to the last active window of the program pinned to the taskbar in the position indicated by the number

Ctrl + Shift + Esc
Quick Direct launch of Task Manager ( no need for ctrl+alt+del and then choose Task Manager from the list. This starts it automatically.)

Windows logo key + P
Choose a presentation display mode

Windows logo key + D
Shift to Desktop / Minimize all windows

Ctrl + W
Close the current window

Ctrl + Shift + N
Create a new folder

Shift (when you insert a CD)
Prevent the CD from automatically playing

Right or Left Ctrl+Shift
Change the reading direction of text in right-to-left reading languages

Windows logo key + M
Minimize all windows.

Windows logo key + Shift + M
Restore minimized windows to the desktop.

Windows logo key + L
Lock your Computer or switch user

Shift + Delete
Permanently Delete the selected item without moving to the Recycle Bin (be careful with this one)

If you use a shortcut that you think is very useful, share with us in the comments below (except those like ctrl+c… I guess pretty much everyone uses them).

There are so many online and desktop applications, tools and services that help you send tweets from almost everywhere. So why is this one so different?

I like this one because it is pretty simple and yet it saves you plenty of time when it comes to regular updating your Twitter status.

First of all, this is not a Twitter app or a web service. It’s a simple Firefox Add-on called TwitterBar.

TwitterBar allows you to post to Twitter from Mozilla Firefox’s address bar. A small Twitter icon will be located on the right of your address bar. You post your tweet by clicking on it. If you want to see how many characters you have left, just hover your mouse over it.

Clicking the Twitter icon when visiting a webpage will send a tweet containing the URL of the webpage you are currently viewing. You can adjust if you want some pre-text to show up in your tweets sent this way.

For example, if you are on Google homepage and you click the Twitter icon, it will send a tweet like: “Currently Browsing: [link to google homepage]“. Of course, the pre-text can be disabled and you can write whatever you like instead.

There is automatic URL shortening service included so when you post link it will shrink it via is.gd or tinyurl (whichever you choose).

After you install TwitterBar, it will ask you if you want to install OneRiot along with it. OneRiot is a social search engine that allows users to find the hottest news, videos, blog posts, and microblogging and social networking buzz. I did not install it, because it’s not required and I don’t need it… Anyway, it’s up to you to decide that.

Here’s a screenshot of TwitterBar options so you can see what you can customize and adjust:

That’s it! This Firefox add-on really saved me some valuable time and I hope it will do the same for you. Enjoy!

I can not say exactly how much faster, since it all depends on your computer specifications (processor, RAM, hard-drive and stuff like that…), but from my experience, this tweak decreased the time to boot-up for about 9-10 seconds.

Now you see how great this registry tweak is and it will get even better when you see how simple it is to apply. I will do my best to show you step-by-step and make it plain simple and of course with screenshots included.

How to make Windows XP start faster:

1. Click on “Start” on the taskbar.

2. Click “Run” located in the start menu.

3. Then in the “Run” panel, type: “regedit” without the quotation marks. (that will open up the Windows registry editor)

4. Then click on “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE” and expand it.

5. Then click on “SYSTEM” and expand it.

6. Then scroll down, and expand “CurrentControlSet”.

7. Under that, expand “Control”.

8. Then, under that one, locate and click on “ContentIndex”. (so when you click on it, it needs to be highlighted and it’s options need to show up in the right panel of Windows XP Registry Editor)

So to sum up, here’s where you need to navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ ContentIndex

Let’s continue… You have just 6 more steps until the finish line!

9. When you have clicked on “ContentIndex” and it is highlighted and you see the options and parameters on the right side of the panel… Among those, you need to scroll all the way to the bottom and find the Registry key named “StartupDelay”.

10. Double-click on it and a new window panel will pop-up.

12. The new window has a field to enter value (and a default value entered already). But before you change the value, you need to change the base from Hexadecimal to Decimal. Take a look at the screenshot below to see what I am talking about:

Now when you change it to Decimal, it displays a different value (480000 instead of 75300).

13. So now, all you need to do is change the value from “480000” to “40000” (forty thousand)

Many people ask me if they can change it to an even smaller value than 40000, but I would not recommend doing that. I tested it and it doesn’t work. I did not feel any difference in boot-up time when I change it to value less than 40000 (and no, you can’t put 0 either).

14. After you’ve completed all the steps above, click “OK” and close the Registry Editor.

And one just one little thing you need to do to finish all this registry tweaking…

15. Restart your computer.

Now you can notice big difference in time that your system takes to boot-up. Mine was faster for 10 seconds than usual. How much faster does your Windows XP boot now? Share in the comments below!

So how did it happen? Well I was stuck with loads of work and deadlines offline so I didn’t have time to write so much during past 2 months. And I will use this opportunity to say that I’m really sorry about that. (won’t happen again) But I had to work on a project that demanded my whole day of dedication to it, plus it had strict deadline.

After I came back to managing this blog and logged in to Wordpress admin area, first thing that I saw was that huge pile of pending comments. When I think about how much time Iwould need to waste going through all those comments… It just doesn’t feel really good.

I just wanted it all gone. Even if there is some legitimate comment in there, it’s not worth anybody’s time to sort through that mess to find them.

So my question was: How do I delete all pending comments in an efficient way? I knew I could delete 20 at a time using the bulk action “mark as spam”, but still, that was a lot of time wasting.

Then I looked around those comment moderation options and looked for better way to do this. Preferably, to be able to erase all pending comments in one stroke, in one click.

What I found was pretty surprisingly easy way! Actually there are three ways to do this. One is much more efficient than the others in my opinion, but little more work involved. Anyway, I will show you all the ways you can do it, so you decide which one to use. (the second one is recommended)

1. Delete all pending comments with plugin:

1. Download and install the “Delete Pending Comments” plugin here on official WordPress plugin directory.

2. Click on the link for “Delete Pending Comments” on the sidebar in your dashboard under “Comments”.  It will then ask you to type in a sentence to verify that you want to delete all pending comments. (screenshot below)

3. Done! All your pending comments are deleted with one click. (even those that were not spam)

Note that this plugin is compatible with WordPress versions from 2.7 to the latest.

And now, here’s the second, more efficient way to do this. This way is much better (recommended) because you can still keep and publish natural, genuine comments, while still deleting all spam comments.

2. The “Akismet Way” to delete all pending (spam) comments:

If you have installed Akismet (I think I don’t need to elaborate here what’s Akismet and what does it do, because it’s pretty much the famous plugin for WordPress spam protection…), it has an option to scan the whole queue for spam and automatically handle it. That would be the quickest and most efficient way: one button press.

But in order to do this, you MUST have Akismet installed first and WordPress API key configured. (learn more about WordPress API key)

Now if you have everything set and ready, here’s how it goes:

1. Click on the comments link on your admin area sidebar

2. Click the “Check for Spam” link located at “Edit Comments” page. (this is the “one click” we are talking about)

3. Akismet will move all spammy comments to spam category and leave you only with genuine comments from real readers so you can approve them, and not waste your time on spambots.

And the third way…

3. The “phpMyAdmin” way:

This one is for those that are little more tech savvy. It involves little messing with your SQL database. Actually, the point is to log in to your phpMyAdmin and manually delete added entries in the SQL database.

I will not write about this way of doing this, because Kian Ann of Blogopreneur already wrote a nice post with detailed instructions on how to do it.

There you go! Now you have three ways to delete all pending comments. I hope this was easy to understand and apply, and I hope you enjoyed reading the post as much as I did writing it. If you know any other way, share it in comments.

So what do you think, which way was the best and the easiest?

It is kind of strange though, that the official announcement of the release hasn’t yet spread fully over the net. Even the link to download the latest version of ZoneAlarm on their official website leads to a page at Download.com where you can download only version 8 (I hope they will fix that soon).

It seems that the news about the new version of ZoneAlarm doesn’t seem to have got past the ZoneAlarm forum…Yet. But who cares. You can download it right now and enjoy the internet security that this famous firewall provides.

So what are the major changes and add-ons in the latest version of ZoneAlarm (9.1)?

1. One of the most important things is that this version of ZoneAlarm is now fully compatible with Windows 7. That means you can relax and don’t need to worry whether it will crash your system or cause any conflicts with other installed software on your computer (which could, yet again, lead to system failure).

2. There is a new browser security toolbar included with installation. This is helpful if you happen to go to some malicious website that tries to install some kind of malware on your pc. But I also think this browser toolbar will suck in additional RAM memory and if you have many add-ons installed (Firefox anybody?), then it could become pretty messy. (but only for those with less RAM capacity)

So let’s sum up the features that this ZoneAlarm Browser Toolbar has:

- Spy site detection
- Signature and heuristic phishing detection
- Website safety check and rating (pretty useful)

That’s it! Here’s the link to official download page of ZoneAlarm 9.1 where direct download is available.

Download ZoneAlarm 9.1 Windows 7 compatible.