I had mentioned Xunlei Thunder in one of my earlier posts (Six Ways to Bypass Torrent Connection Blocking and Throttling).I had stated that, “Xunlei is faster than most other popular torrent clients like uTorrent and BitComet”. Well, I was wrong. No, Xunlei is fast. In fact, it is faster that pretty much everything else. However, I was wrong in assuming that Xunlei is less popular than some of the more familiar names like uTorrent and BitComet. As it turns out, Xunlei Thunder is the most popular torrent client in the world.

Most Popular Torrent Clients

uTorrent’s market share may have doubled in a year, but according to TorrentFreak, Thunder blasted uTorrent’s market share away in the latest survery. So, how come most people have never heard about Xunlei Thunder? This is because Xunlei is available only in Chinese.

Thunder is a capable download manager which supports HTTP, FTP, MMS, RTSP, eMule and BitTorrent. All the basic features you expect from a download manager are present in Thunder. However, it lacks the multimedia downloading abilities of Orbit or the power of Internet Download Manager (IDM).

The default installer of Xunlei Thunder is riddled with all sorts of crapware in addition to being an adware. However, a modified English version provided by HeHeHunter doesn’t include any malware or advertisements. In fact you don’t even need to install it since the modded version of Xunlei is available as a portable utility.

Download Xunlei Thunder English (Portable Green Edition with No Ads) (10.42 MB)
License: Free
Version Reviewed: 5.8.13.699
Operating System: Windows all

The gods have listened! Finally, we have a playable massively multilayer online cricket game! Howzat is a free online cricket league developed by the Singapore based Game Ventures. It’s not easy, to take a game as complicated as Cricke,t and make it simple enough for a browser based game, without losing all its charm. And that’s the task Game Ventures had at their hand. They needed the game to be simple, easy to learn and at the same time addictive. So how did they fare? Let us find out.

Creating a new account is quick and simple. Howzat integrates itself with Facebook and actively encourages you to challenge other friends or share match results. While signing-up, you will be asked to name your team and choose a country. Due to licensing issues real player names aren’t used. However, the names aren’t as ludicrous as in some of the other games. If you wish you can manually edit player names later on.

Batting in Howzat is straightforward. One the opponent has picked a delivery, you will be provided time to adjust your batsman’s position in the crease (left or right). After this, you can play a stroke by simply selecting the area through which you wish to hit and pressing Z (normal shot) or X (lofted shot). Timing matters, but the game is a lot more forgiving than some of the other PC based games.

Normally, bowling is the least interesting part of a cricket game. Thankfully, Howzat has succeeded in making bowling fun. The bowling mechanism is simple yet effective. Howzat’s bowling meter is a combination of the swing/spin gauge and speed gauge. It is divided into three zones – each of which indicates the direction of movement of the ball. Each individual zone is differentially coloured to indicate delivery speed. Select reddish region if you want to bowl a quickie. Use the yellow region for delivering slower balls. Fielding is completely automatic.

The overall gameplay is quite good. Each match is of 5 overs. Shots are a bit limited and mostly go in the same direction. But, this handicap is compensated through the limited field settings available.

You win points for completing a game. The amount of points you win depends upon the rank of your opposition, result of the match as well as your performance. There are various achievements (such as getting a hattrick or scoring more than 50 runs in a match) and level ups to keep you going. You can use the points to improve the skills of individual players.

The graphics are what you would expect from a Flash game. It isn’t great, but it doesn’t look silly. For a game that is a few MBs in size, Howzat offers a decent level of realism. Surprisingly enough, it is the multiplayer aspect which disappoints. There is no way to create your own tournaments or leagues. All you can do is participate in individual matches. If Howzat expects users to keep going this is something they must include in the future.

In the end Howzat is a fairly engaging game available at an unbeatable price. The gameplay as well as presentation is quite good. Kudos to Howzat, for at least trying. If you are a cricket fan, go ahead and give it a try. You may just get hooked.

Now, let us take a look back at the year gone by in JibJab style.

Opera was the first browser to demonstrate the <video> element. Back in 2007, it released a special labs build to demonstrate the concept. Since then a lot has happened. The video element was added to HTML5 standards specification, although the codec itself was not specified due to a lack of agreement between major browser manufacturers. Safari, Firefox and Chrome got around to adding support for the video element in public builds. And with today’s release, Opera finally catches up with the rest.

As expected Opera will be using the open source Ogg formats: the Vorbis audio codec and the Theora video codec. This means that Safari will remain the only browser which is backing the proprietary H.264 codec. The implementation itself has improved a lot and includes support for native controls, scripted controls and cover art. Opera hopes to include full screen playback, subtitles and media fragment URLs in the future.

Opera will be using the GStreamer media framework to improve playback performance. On platforms where GStreamer is natively supported (e.g. Linux and FreeBSD) Opera will be using the system-implemented version. On platforms like Windows and Mac where GStreamer is not natively supported, Opera will be using its own implementation of GStreamer. This means that Opera will be able to play video out of the box in Windows and Mac, however on Linux you will need to have at least the GStreamer “base” and “good” plugins installed.

The New Year build is the first opportunity for UNIX users to try out Evenes (Opera 10.5). The previous release didn’t ship a UNIX build since it wasn’t’ quite ready. Opera Software has been working on a substantial overhaul of the UNIX build. It has ditched the QT framework.Evenes is capable of using just the X11 drawing primitives. It will however, support any toolkit provided by the desktop environment. The current build supports GTK and integrates with GNOME fairly well. However, KDE integration is still incomplete and hence not included in this release.

Also missing from this release are features like print and drag-and-drop. Mac users will also miss out on the video goodness, since GStreamer for Mac isn’t yet ready.

Download Links for Opera 10.5
For Windows
For UNIX
For Mac

 
This is build is intended only for testing. It may be prone to crashes and behave in an unexpected manner.
 

As far as system maintainance tools are concerned, Registry Cleaners fall in the gray area. Although many experts insist that we don’t need them, their number seems to be ever-increasing. I am among the believers, and I speak from experience.

Last month Uniblue released RegistryBooster 2010, which they claim is a major upgrade to RegistryBooster 2009. The GUI is more or less the same with some minor adjustments here and there. The major new features are:

Damage Level Indicator: This indicates the potential impact of registry errors on the PC performance. A high damage level indicates that RegistryBooster believes registry issues are seriously degrading system performance.
Improved Compatibility: RegistryBooster 2010 supports Microsoft Windows 7, Vista and XP 32 and 64 bit compatibilities.
Performance Improvements: RegistryBooster 2010 is smaller and faster. Registry backups are noticeably quicker. The scanning algorithm has also been improved. One thing which I found really annoying in RegistryBooster 2009 was its tendency to run in the background and auto start with Windows. Although this behaviour can be changed easily (under the Settings tab), they persist even in RegistryBooster 2010.

I had reviewed Uniblue RegistryBooster 2009 in great detail and had concluded that the performance benefits are real. If you already have RegistryBooster 2009, then there isn’t any compelling reason to upgrade to 2010. However if you don’t own a Registry Cleaner, RegistryBooster 2010 is worth a look.

Download Uniblue RegistryBooster 2010 (3.02 MB)
License: Shareware – Full version retails for $29.95
Version Reviewed: 4.6.1.19
Operating System: Windows XP, Vista, 7 (x86 and x64)

 
This blog is an Uniblue Systems affiliate. Click here if you do not wish to use the affiliate link.
 

This article is written for 32 bit operating systems. Unless explicitly mentioned, Windows 7 and Vista refers to the 32 bit edition of the respective Operating Systems.

Couple of months back, I had blogged about a peculiar Windows 7 issue which could cause a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) if the system had 4GB (or more) RAM. I managed to find a fix for that issue. But, I had another minor niggle to figure out. Although I paid for 4GB of RAM, Windows refused to use more than 3GB. If you have 4GB or more RAM then you are probably familiar with the following screen.

Computer Properties displayed installed memory as 4GB but at the same time stated that only 3 GB is usable. So, where did the remaining memory go?

As it turns out, chunks of your RAM are reserved for various purposes and are not available to the operating system. For example, PCI Express support will reserve 256-768 MB depending upon the graphics adapter. Due to this Windows always displays less than 4 GB RAM as the amount of usable memory. Depending upon your hardware, anywhere between 2.75 GB and 3.5 GB of RAM will be available to the OS.

But, what if you have more than 4 GB RAM? Even on a system with 32 GB RAM, 32 bit editions of Windows will display less than 4 GB of memory. This is a known limitation of the Windows Vista and 7 x86 editions.

Microsoft claims that it is not their fault and is instead a limitation of the 32 bit architecture. At first glance this seems correct. 32 bit processor using 32 bit registers should be only able to address up to 4 GB of RAM (2³² = 4G). However, this is not actually true. The main reason being a feature called Physical Address Extension (PAE).

PAE makes it possible to address more than 4 GB of memory using 32 bit registers, since the registers aren’t used to store the physical address. Instead, the registers store linear addresses, which are mapped to physical addresses using the page table. This feature has been available since the days of Intel Pentium Pro. In x86 processors additional address lines are provided so that up to 64 GB can be addressed when using the PAE mode. If you want to learn more about Windows memory addressing, go through Geoff Chappell’s notes.

Windows Vista and 7 have two kernels – one which doesn’t use PAE and one which does. They are NTOSKRNL.EXE and NTKRNLPA.EXE respectively. Both of them reside within the Windows/System32 directory. Can you guess which one you are using? If you have a modern machine, then chances are that Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is enabled in your system and in that case you are already using the kernel with PAE enabled.

How to Enable More Than 4 GB Memory

Before getting started, keep in mind that this patch involves modifying the kernel. Do no proceed unless you are confident. Most security products will identify these patches as malicious since they modify the Windows kernel.

Download the appropriate patch for your system (links at the end of this post). I haven’t tried the Windows Vista patch, but I can confirm that the Windows 7 patch works. The Windows 7 patch is in Russian language. To begin patching click on the big button (refer to screenshot). After this a command prompt window should appear. Press Y.

On restarting the system, you should see two entries in the Windows Boot Menu – one being the older configuration and the other being the one with support for more than 4 GB RAM. If you don’t want to be prompted every time, press Win + R, type msconfig and hit Enter. Under the Boot tab, reduce the timeout value (to something like 3 sec). If you wish, you can simply get rid of the older configuration by deleting it. But I wouldn’t recommend this. If you get a water mark (Test Mode) on your desktop after restarting, type mcbuilder.exe in the Start Menu and press Enter.

Windows Vista Patch

Windows 7 Patch: Step 1 (Click on the button)

Windows 7 Patch: Step 2 (Press Y)

This patch will allow the OS to use more than 4 GB of memory. However, it does have a limitation – more than 3 GB of memory cannot be allocated to a single application. This patch is mainly targeted at systems with more than 4 GB of RAM. However, in some cases installing this patch on 4 GB systems will also lead to an increase in available memory (which may not necessarily result in performance improvement). This may appear to be a bit strange since Windows 7 and Vista are technically capable of addressing up to 4 GB of memory. Obviously, there is a logical explanation for this behavior. But, I won’t discuss it here. Refer to Geoff Chappell’s notes on Physical Memory Map if you wish to explore the issue in detail.

Warning: The patches described in this article are kernel patches. They may result in unexpected hardware issues and expose your system to malicious exploits.

Download Links:
4GB Memory Patch for Vista 32 bit (SP1 and SP2) (Mirror)
4GB Memory Patch for Windows 7 32 bit (Mirror)

[Image Courtesey: Brajeshwar]

TouchFreeze is a tiny freeware which automatically disables the touchpad as soon as you start typing. TouchFreeze is the kind of app I love. It does only one task and does it well. The quietly sits in the system tray and works its magic as soon as you begin typing. It is extremely light weight and consumes less than 1 MB of memory.

I had been searching for a quick way to toggle the touchpad. Linux users are lucky enough to have syndaemon, but Windows users don’t really have too many options. Thanks to Raymond for discovering this gem. Even if your laptop has a dedicated key for deactivating the touchpad, give TouchFreeze a try. It is definitely a lot more convenient. There aren’t any configuration options. There isn’t even any interface. Everything is automatic. All you need to do is install the application and start it.

Download TouchFreeze (251 KB)
License: Open Source (Free)
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Operating System: Windows all

Av-test.org and Av-comparatives.org have been extremely busy over the past couple of months. Both of them have been busy testing various aspects of some of the most popular security products in the market. Let’s take a look at what they found.

Antivirus Performance Test

Security suites are notorious for having an adverse impact on system performance. In fact, “What is the Lightest Antivirus?” is a frequently asked question in tech support forums. Few months back, I had reported on the performance impact of internet security suites, based on a test conducted by PC Mag. At that time Norton had emerged to be the winner with Kaspersky, Avira, Zone Alarm and Panda as close runner-ups.

Av-comparatives.org recently released the results of its own performance tests. They conducted a series of benchmarks which included file copying, archiving/unarchiving, application installation/uninstallation, application launch, file download and Worldbench tests.
None of the antivirus utilities had a significant impact on encoding/transcoding and archiving/unarchiving speeds. However, eScan, FSecure, G DATA, Microsoft and Trustport did slow down file copying significantly (more than doubled the time required to copy a file). Interestingly enough, everyone but eScan performed significantly better on subsequent runs (mainly to Fingerprinting). When it came to slowing down application installations/uninstallations Bitdefender, G DATA and Trustport were the biggest culprits. Trustport also increased application launch times by more than 100%. These three were joined by AVG in the file downloading hall of shame. AVG, Bitdefender, G DATA and Trustport more than doubled file download durations.

Throughout the tests Avira performed admirably and this was reflected even in the WorldBench scores. eScan, Trustport, Bitdefender and G DATA were once again at the bottom of the pile.

Thanks to an outstanding all round performance Avira was the overall winner. Kingsoft, F-Secure, Sophos and Kaspersky also performed commendably and finished in the top five.

Real World Tests

Both Av-comparatives.org and Av-test.org performed dynamic tests in order to assess the real world performance of various security products. Both the firms went to great lengths in order to emulate real-world infection scenarios. The final resulsts are fairly similar. In both the tests Norton and Kaspersky performed admirably and were among the best performers. However, the big surprise was PC Tools Internet Security. Although PC Tools managed to detect fewer threats than Kaspersky and Norton, on the whole it managed to block a greater number of malwares. Avira and Microsoft also performed laudably. However, Avira also returned a large number of false positives.

Best Antivirus Software

Av-test.org also conducted some tests in association with PC World to determine the Best Antivirus Product. I couldn’t find any performance charts, however you can find the in-depth product reviews over here. It appears that G Data, Avira and Norton had the best detection rates. But, Avira ended up getting penalised for a poor UI and the lack of features. PC World ended up giving the highest ratings to G Data, which (in my opinion) is too bloated to be seriously considered. Check out this article if you wish to find out which antivirus product has the best detection rate.

FixWin is a portable utility developed by the folks at TheWindowsClub.com, which provides a quick fix to common Windows problems. It includes solutions to fifty problems commonly experienced by Windows 7 users. The problems are grouped into five categories – Windows Explorer, Internet & Connectivity, Windows Media, System Tools and Additional Fixes, and include everything from missing recycle bin to locked task manager. In fact, FixWin is capable of doing some of the tasks of Virus Effect Remover.

FixWin doesn’t do anything you yourself wouldn’t be able to do. In fact most of the fixes are as simple as changing a single registry key. But, why take the trouble of scouring the internet for solution and digging through the registry when FixWin is offering a one-click solution? Fixwin is one of those utilities which you should always have in your collection. You never know when it may come in handy.

Download FixWin (174 KB)
License: Freeware
Version Reviewed: 1.1
Operating System: Windows Vista, 7

Chrome still won but Opera managed to outperform Firefox and Safari. But this test is developed by the folks behind Chrome, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that Chrome performs well in it.

The next test I tried was Sunspider. I dropped non-competitors like Opera 10.20 and Internet Explorer 8 to save some time.

Once again Firefox wasn’t even close to the other browsers. Opera was the best performer here, followed by Safari.

Finally, I went for Peacekeeper. Due to some odd reason, the test just refused to run on Firefox 3.6 Beta 5. I tried thrice and ended up getting the same error. But its rather unlikely that Firefox would have been able to make a difference anyway. So here are the results:

Opera winning once again. So, in 2/3 tests Opera managed to outperform Chrome. Opera has always had a snappy rendering engine and thanks to a super fast ECMAScript/JavaScript engine Opera is the fastest browser on earth – once again. Congratulations to Opera on regaining the throne.

Download Opera 10.50 (pre-alpha): Windows Mac
License: Freeware
[This build has several known issues and is intended only for testing]

Note: Builds used for testing are: Opera 10.20 Alpha 1, Opera 10.50 Pre-Alpha, Firefox 3.6 Beta 5, Safari 4.0.4, Chrome 4.0.249.43 and Internet Explorer 8.

I have been a loyal Launchy user for a long time. I fell in love with it the very first time I had tried it. Since then I have toyed with numerous similar utilities – Enso, SlikRun, RunIt, Executor etc. But on each occasion, I found myself going back to Launchy. FARR or Find and Run Robot is yet another application launcher. It promises to be the ultimate program for keyboard maniacs. But, can it deliver? Let’s find out.

Installation was quick and painless. Unlike many other Donation Coder programs, it didn’t immediately prompt me for a license key. Once installed, FARR should be good for a year (after which you will need to obtain a new free license key). At first glance FARR appears to be similar to Launchy. Press they hotkey to bring up the search windows and then begin typing to get instant results. However, the differences become apparent as you delve deeper.

A quick glance at the option and it becomes evident that FARR is not something intended for faint hearted. Very few programs offer as many configuration options as FARR. I won’t discuss them in detail, since FARR is configurable enough to fill up a dozen blog posts. Instead, I (highly) recommend that you go through the excellent screencasts available at Donationcoder.com.

So how is FARR different from Launchy? The biggest difference is that FARR doesn’t index anything. FARR actually searches the entire Start Menu (and any additional locations you may have configured) as you type. The advantage is that you will always get the latest results. But, the disadvantage is that it takes a bit of time. The developers are confident that this is a positive feature. However, after using it for a couple of days I am not so certain. FARR is quite fast and only takes one or two seconds to finish searching. But, I would definitely prefer instantaneous results over a short waiting period. The good thing is that once you launch an application, FARR remembers it. It will always be included in future searches and hence will be available instantly. FARR also remember 20 most recently performed searches and you can scroll through them using Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down.

FARR uses heuristic ranking to improve its results. It keeps track of factors like how many times an application has been launched, how recently has it been launched, what search strings have you used in the past and so on. In other words, FARR actually gets better with time.

You may have noticed that in the above screenshot, a number (rank) has been associated with each result. You can directly launch any of the results by pressing Alt+# (where # is the rank). This is a handy feature and something I hope Launchy will add in the future.

As I mentioned earlier I won’t delve deep into the capabilities of FARR, but no article on FARR can be complete without at least a brief mention of its most powerful feature – Alias. An alias is basically an advanced search command which can be configured to trigger different actions. To get you started FARR ships with few built-in aliases. In order to use an alias just type its name followed by the arguments. E.g. if you want to find out more about the artist Poets of the fall just type “music Poets of the Fall” and select the action you wish to perform.

To top things off, FARR also supports plugins which can infinitely extend its capabilities. DonationCoder.com houses several impressive add-ons which do everything from integrating with Remember the Milk and tweeting to changing tabs in Firefox.

My only real grudge with FARR is that it doesn’t index the start menu. The developers should definitely consider adding this option in the future – at the very least as a non-default option.

FARR is a remarkable application. It sits quietly in the background, uses very little resources and jumps into action whenever you need it. FARR is a huge productivity booster and once you get used to it, other alternatives like Launchy will appear dumb in comparison. Once again, I have only scratched the surface in this article. Install FARR and go through the documentation or the screencasts to get a better idea about it.

P.S. I love the fact that mouser used Opera browser in his screencast.

Download Find and Run Robot (5.6 MB)
License: Freeware
Version Reviewed: 2.80.02
Operating System: Windows all

(Image courtsey: FlySi)

New Skin (with more glass)

Tab bar merged with the Title bar – ala Chrome

Improved UI

Annoying dialogue-boxes have been removed. Various features like Wand and Find are now integrated into the UI.

Improved Find

Safari anyone?

Windows 7 Integration

Jumplists and taskbar thumnail tabs

Per-Tab Private Browsing

Opera supports private tabs as well as private windows. When in private browsing mode no browsing history is recorded.

Presto

New rendering engine

P.S. Detailed review coming up later.

Update: Check out my Visual Tour of Opera 10.5 for more information about this build. In the meantime Opera has officially responded:

There are some reports about an old internal build of 10.5 being available. Don’t run it, the official build on Tuesday is much better and you don’t risk getting nasty trojans on you pc.

If this build is quite old then there is still hope Carakan may make it to pre-alpha.

Few month back, Lifehacker had published a great article on using Firefox to fix the web’s biggest annoyances. This article is obviously inspired by Lifehacker’s efforts. With a little bit of effort Opera users can easily achieve most of the stuff mentioned by Lifehacker. So, without wasting more time let’s get started.

Blocking Unnecessarily Obnoxious Ads

Opera comes pre-loaded with a content blocker. In order to trigger it right click on an empty spot on any webpage and select “Block Content” from the context menu. You can manually block any element by simply right clicking on them. However, manually cleaning up the entire web is a tiresome job. Fortunately for you, other people have already done the hard work and there are plenty of filters available for Opera. If you want a comprehensive and regularly updated filter you should check out pgl.yoyo.org and fanboy.co.nz/adblock/. Both of them support Opera’s Url Filter format. You need to simply copy the contents into a text file and save it. After that, mention the path to your URL Filter file over here.

Having a large Url Filter has its own side-effects including increased start up times. If you notice any significant performance degradation try using Tamil’s optimised urlfilter.ini, instead of the aforementioned filters. Another simple option is to use the Adsweep UserJs.

If you are prepared to do a little bit of work you can take a look at Ruzanov’s brilliant Adblock Plus add-on for Opera. It’s the closest analogue to Adblock Plus available for Opera.

Turn Off Auto-Playing Sounds

LifeHacker suggests using a flashblocker to disable those annoying and loud flash advertisements. Luckily for us, there is a FlashBlock add-on available for Opera. It relies purely on UserCSS and UserJS and was developed by Ruzanov. Download the Zip File and extract the FlashBlocker.css file to your user styles folder like \profile\styles\user. The FlashBlocker.js should go to your UserJS folder. If you haven’t yet specified a UserJS folder you can do so from here. Keep in mind that the actual location of \profile folder depends on whether you installed Opera in single user mode or multi user mode. Click here to find out where your profile folder is located.

If you are on a slower connection and regularly use Turbo then you need not go through all this hassle. Opera automatically blocks all Flash content in Turbo mode.

You can also directly disable Sound in Webpages from Tools –> Preferences –> Advanced –> Content.

Prevent Sites from Resizing Windows and Disabling Menus

You can easily disable JavaScript annoyances such as raising, lowering, resizing and moving of windows (tabs) from Tools–>Preferences–>Advanced–>Content–>JavaScript Options.
As far as disabling those “Disable Right Click” scripts is concerned, you need not bother. Almost all such scripts don’t work in Opera, as Opera is designed to ignore them.

Disable the Blink Tag

The <blink> tag has to be one of the silliest features ever. Its serves no purpose other than annoying the hell out of a reader and giving him a headache. It’s beyond me why Netscape even added this feature in the first place. However, even more bewildering is the fact that other browser manufacturers deemed it to be a good idea and followed suit. Fortunately for us there is a simple bookmarklet called Stop Blink, which can instantly kill all blink tags in a page. There is also a userscript for disabling the blink tag, but I don’t know if it works for Opera.

Click, Click, Clicking Through Multiple Pages

The Opera equivalent of AutoPagerize for Firefox is oAutoPagerize. oAutoPagerize consists of a couple of UserJS scripts. If you prefer to do this using bookmarklets, PageZipper is another pretty good option, which works on a large number of sites. Of course the AntiPagination bookmarklet mentioned by Lifehacker also works in Opera.

Block Animated Favicons

I have never been really troubled by animated favicon. But if you loath them as strongly as Lifehacker, you can try this UserJs/UserCSS, I haven’t tested it personally, but the developer promises that it would work in Opera also.

Stop Pages from Auto-Refreshing

This isn’t a very common phenomenon, but sometimes web pages misuse the meta refresh tag to automatically refresh the page and increase the page-view figure. You can easily block the Meta Refresh tag by disabling Client Refresh or installing the No Meta Refresh UserJS. Thanks to Tamil for this tip.

Greasemonkey and Stylish Can Handle the Rest

Indeed they can. Greasemonkey’s abilities are present in Opera out of the box. In fact many Greasemonkey scripts are fully compatible with Opera. As far as Stylish is concerned, you can employ UserCSS to do most of the task. Check out my earlier article on Stylish for Firefox and Opera for more information.

Did you find these tips useful? Do you have any more Opera tips? Don’t forget to let us know.

Once upon a time life was simple. While setting up your internet connection, you simply had to enter the DNS servers you had received from your ISP and forget about it. Most of the chaps didn’t even have to do that; Windows’ was smart enough to automatically figure it out. But then along came OpenDNS. It promised speed. It claimed to rid you of your ISPs pathetic DNS server and help you get to the page you wanted faster.

Life was still great. You were satisfied with OpenDNS, content with knowing that your DNS server was faster than your friend’s.

But as they say, good things never last. Even before you realized there were dozens of similar services each touting to be faster than the rest. The market was filled with the likes of DNS Advantage, ScrubIT, TreeWalk DNS and Google Public DNS. You had more alternatives than you ever wanted. How was one supposed to know which one is really the fastest? Confusion and chaos reigned.

Ok, enough of my babble. So, how do we know which DNS server is the fastest? We can’t rely on other users benchmarks, since the results often depend upon one’s geographic location. The simplest way to determine your DNS server’s speed is to use the DNS Benchmark tool released by GRC. DNS Benchmark comes with a list of all popular public DNS servers and automatically includes the DNS servers being used by your system. You also have the option of manually adding any DNS server you wish to benchmark.

Using it is simple. Just click on Run Benchmark. It will automatically test all the nameservers present in the list and sort them in descending order of performance. Like any truly smart software, it offers a helpful summary and list of recommendations based on the result of the benchmark.

GRC has built a reputation for developing high quality freeware. DNS Benchmark is no different. Like all GRC freeware, DNS Benchmark is a tiny download which doesn’t require any installation. Use it, if you want to find out which DNS server is fastest for you. In my case, I found my ISP’s DNS servers to be the fastest. SpeakEasy and DNS Advantage lost out by a narrow margin. OpenDNS was handsomely beaten by my ISP, but it still managed to outperform Google.

Did you get similar results? Or were they completely different? Don’t forget to let us know.

Download DNS Benchmark (150 KB)
License: Freeware
Version Reviewed: 0.0.3630.1
Operating System: Windows all (Linux and Mac through Wine)