When I first tried to run a command in Windows Vista i expected to find the function at the same place where it is in Windows XP. When I opened the Vista start menu I was a little bit perplexed to find the Search in the place of the run command. Sure, I was able to simply press Windows + R to open the run command but I somehow still missed that function. I soon found out that it would be possible to customize the start menu and add the run command to it again.
Send Windows to Nirvana with an animated cursor
One of the many disadvantages of every new Windows edition is the fact that the operating system becomes more and more bloated. Microsoft adds new features to Windows which could then be used to exploit the system.Instead of concentrating on fast efficient systems they produce heavy systems that look shiny but have problems under the surface. Recently a vulnerability in Windows Animated Cursor Handling was discovered. In order for this attack to be carried out, a user must either visit a Web site that contains a Web page that is used to exploit the vulnerability or view a specially crafted e-mail message or email attachment sent to them by an attacker.
Remotely Access your Music Collection with Winamp Remote Plugin
If you ever wanted to access your mp3 collection remotely the Winamp Remote Plugin which is currently in beta status might be exactly what you are looking for. Once setup you can access your music collection from any web browser using a normal Internet connection. The computer with the music collection that streams the content has to be connected to the Internet as well. Just download and install the Winamp Remote Plugin and create a new account. This is important that only you, and everyone who is having the username and password, is able to connect and listen to your music collection.
Thunderbird 2 Release Candidate 1 Download
Look what is appearing on the Mozilla ftp site today: The release candidate 1 of the upcoming mail client Thunderbird 2. Developers claim that it has zero bugs at the moment. That is probably the main reason they announced community test day which is actually today. So, if you want to take part and test the release candidate and provide feedback to the Mozilla developers download it right now from the official Mozilla ftp site. It should be noted that Thunderbird is still only a release candidate and you should take extra precaution before you use it.
Weekend Fun Tails Gear
Tails Gear is one of those Japanese arcade shooters that make it pretty difficulty for average gamers to see more of the game than just a few levels. If you ever played games like Ikaruga you know what I mean, they live of extreme amounts of enemies and bullets that they send your way and you have to move the ship more than carefully to avoid death. Graphics are excellent as is the gameplay, you always see some kind of sequences when you finish a level and move on to the next. One of the interesting features of the game are the satellites of your ship that shoot on their own and can stay in a place for tactical reasons.
DM2 Windows Enhancements
DM2 is a pretty interesting windows enhancements open source program for Windows 2K and XP. The application can be downloaded from Sourceforge and does not need to be installed at all and can be run from any location of your hard drive. Once installed it adds a small icon to your system tray which can be clicked to configure the functionality. It adds by default several interesting new ways to interact with open windows in the operating systems. The minimize, maximize and close buttons get new functionality when you right-click them. A right-click on minimize sends the window into the system tray even windows that can normally not be minimized to the system tray.
Open Office 2.2 released
The open source alternative for Microsoft Office Open Office has been released today. In version 2.2, users will immediately notice the improvement in the quality of text display in all parts of OpenOffice.org. The reason for this is that the previously optional support for kerning, a technique to improve the appearance of text written in proportional fonts, has now been enabled by default. OpenOffice.org’s unique pdf export function has also been enhanced with the addition of the optional creation of bookmarks feature, and support for user-definable export of form fields.
Taking a look at Microsofts Anti Spam Solution
Microsoft advertises its Anti Spam program Windows Defender with the slogan spyware protection for free but is it really a good alternative to other anti spam and spyware programs like ad-aware and spybot search and destroy. It is only fair to compare Microsoft’s anti spyware software which is available free to other free solutions that can be used and downloaded for free as well. Microsoft’s Windows Defender came under heavy fire recently as two competitors released studies that were supposed to prove that Windows Defender had – by far – the weakest spyware and spam detection rate.
10 Tips to speed up Opera 9
Opera is already a very fast browser, but if you would have the choice between fast and faster than fast, what would you choose ? I took the liberty to compile a list of 10 great tips that speed up Opera in several unique ways. Many of the settings can be changed by simply going to Tools > Preferences in Opera but some can only be used by accessing not so obvious ways like ini files.
Please note that everything that I’m describing here worked fine on my computer. It speed up Opera and increased my browsing experience with it tremendously. While most tips will work for any users no matter their connection to the Internet some tips might only increase performance for broadband users.