Tag : Vista
How to get the most out of your notebook battery in Windows 7
<Date: 2009-06-19> <Category: Windows> 2 CommentsWindows 7 does an excellent job of improving battery time and efficiency. But here’s a little tip to get that extra bit out of the battery of your notebook or netbook.
- Go to Power Options by typing it in the start menu search field or via the control panel. It’s also accessible using the system tray Power Options Jump List.
- Which ever is your current plan, you can change it’s plan settings or create a new one if you wish to. For this article we’ll stick to changing the settings of a current plan. I’ve got Balanced selected as shown in the image.
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Microsoft Security Essentials will send your personal information back to Microsoft
<Date: 2009-06-18> <Category: Microsoft> 3 CommentsMicrosoft has recently released a free anti-virus solution that proves out to be better than almost all paid solutions available for consumers out there. We did a detailed review of the AV earlier and you can read it at the link given in the post. But during extended usage, we came across the following. Turns out that it’s true, there’s no such thing as a free meal. The Microsoft SpyNet membership is a part of Microsoft Security Essentials ( Read Review), which you can’t disable or walk out off, and has 2 types — Basic and Advanced. Both of them have one thing in common though, which says
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Windows 7 RC vs. Vista SP 1 – Gaming Performance
<Date: 2009-04-25> <Category: Microsoft, Windows 7, Windows Vista> 4 CommentsAdrian Kingsley over at Hardware 2.0 has done another comparison between Vista and 7, keeping XP out this time, and based on gaming performance. He doesn’t reveal any accurate numbers for his benchmarks as that is against the Windows 7 RC EULA ( I wonder if using a leaked build is against that as well?! ). The benchmarks have been run on a fairly powerful system, with graphics cards ranging from mainstream to enthusiast performance, an Inter Core 2 Due E8500 processor overclocked to 3.6 GHz, 4 GB of RAM and pixel killing games like Crysis Warhead, Far Cry 2 and Left 4 Dead, all at a resolution of 1,680 x 1,050. 32 bit versions of both OS were used.
Boxee for Windows is the ultimate streaming Media Center
<Date: 2009-04-16> <Category: Microsoft> Only 1 commentUse XP’s theme for Windows Live Messenger in Vista/7
<Date: 2009-04-01> <Category: Windows, Windows Live> Only 1 comment
Microsoft going the Steam distribution way for games
<Date: 2009-03-25> <Category: Microsoft, Windows> 5 CommentsArs Technica has an interesting story on Microsoft from GDC 2009. Microsoft made announcements for updates to Games for Windows and new anti-piracy measures. Microsoft announced ‘DRM-less’ games which would come with anti-piracy protection but wouldn’t be called DRM. According to Drew Johnston, product unit manager for Windows Gaming Platform:
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Network Utilization Gadget for Windows Vista and 7
<Date: 2008-12-30> <Category: Windows, Windows 7, Windows Vista> 4 Comments
Call it the best feature or worst of Windows Vista, but the Sidebar is undeniably very useful. I find it more useful than OS X’s Dashboard or Yahoo Widgets to an extent. Although, it’s a fact that the sidebar takes a lot of memory in Vista and slows down the boot so it’s better kept disabled at startup. In 7, the sidebar is integrated into the shell, and no longer as a separate application. Also, it seems to run faster and doesn’t slow down boot.
One gadget I’ve always liked since I started using Vista has been Network Utilization meter. It’s a nifty little gadget that beats all its competitors by a long mile due to its features and ease of use. It’s so useful that it should be available in the default gadgets for Windows 7. The network utilization gadget does exactly what it says. It shows you how much transfer speed you are getting from your network, whether it’s Ethernet, Wireless or Bluetooth. It’s great to have the current transfer speed of your network or Internet connection at your fingertips
, and it can also be used to shut up those ‘innocent’ ISP support dudes who just load up Google or Yahoo and claim your Internet is working fine, when it’s not.
This gadget includes both bar and line graphs, with different interval choices, as well as a bar view that shows on double clicking the gadget. The update interval/refresh rate of the gadget can be changed through the options as well. I personally keep mine at 0.5 seconds which is the minimum it offers, 10 seconds being the maximum. The Scale can be changed from 56kbps to an STM-1 connection and all different types in between. If you’ve got multiple network adapters, you can manually select the currently active one too. If you click on the resize button, it can also double up to its size. Even that option is configurable as you can change the size from 50% to 200% of its original size.
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The popular and controversial torrent tracker, The Pirate Bay has come out with a video converter named ViO. It converts virtually any video format file into a compatible format for your iPod, iPhone, PSP, cell phone, PDA, Pocket PC or PMP. It can compress files up to 20% of their original size and claims to convert media faster than any other tool available today.
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Microsoft Answers is here to help Vista users!
<Date: 2008-12-20> <Category: Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista> No commentSarah from Channel 10 blogged about Microsoft Answers (beta). It’s a 
website aimed at those who need help and support for rather mildly technical issues they encounter with Vista. Clearly, it’s aimed at novices from the questions I’ve read on it so far.
You can post any query you have and the community at Microsoft Answers will help you in the best way possible. There are already a lot of questions answered so you might just find the solution through some googling searching.
