Windows 7 Home Premium is one of three Windows 7 editions that Microsoft has designed for the mid to high end market segment (the other two are Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate). Home Premium is the first Windows 7 edition that comes with all basic features included (Windows 7 Home Basic and Windows 7 Starter both miss certain features like Windows 7 Aero, Windows Media Center or Windows Touch). This edition does lack several features that Microsoft has reserved for the more expensive editions Professional and Ultimate.

It is usually not that easy to evaluate all the different editions to find a suitable one. Even users who buy a pre-build PC system should make sure that the included operating systems meets all their demands. Windows 7 Home Premium’s main advantage is its price and the fact that it offers all features that Microsoft would consider essential. Here is a small overview of those features:

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Tags: microsoft, windows 7, windows 7 editions, windows 7 home basic, windows 7 home premium, windows 7 professional, windows 7 starter, windows 7 ultimate
Categories: Windows

If you are like me you use IMDB to look up movies that you read or heard about. The process to look up these movies was a bit tedious if you originated from a different website, say a shopping site, forum or website that listed one or multiple movie titles. To read the review on IMDB one had to copy the movie title from the website, open IMDB in the web browser, paste the movie title in the search box at IMDB and locate the correct result.

IMDB Movie Review is a Firefox add-on that aids the Internet user in this task. It basically offers a shortcut to the IMDB site by selecting the movie title, right-clicking the selection and triggering the IMDB Review link that is appearing.

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Tags: firefox, firefox-add on, imdb, imdb movies, imdb reviews
Categories: Browsing, firefox

Lately it has been a veritable onslaught of distribution releases: Ubuntu 9.10, Fedora 12, Mandriva (article coming soon) , Debian 5 (article coming soon), and many more. With all of these releases it’s been a real treat to kick the tires and see just how the various distributions put their spin on Linux. Another distribution to release recently is OpenSuSE 11.2. OpenSuSE serves as the base for Novell’s SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. In some ways, it’s to SuSE what Fedora is to Red Hat. But unlike Fedora, OpenSuSE doesn’t live on the bleeding edge. Instead, when a release of OpenSuSE hits the pipes, you can be sure that what you are downloading is a well-tested, solid, trouble-free release.

And like most popular Linux distributions, OpenSuSE offers a Live CD. Most everyone can stick in a CD, boot it, play around with it, and double click the “Install” icon. But what about the full-blown, standard installation DVD? Is that more difficult than the Live CD? I’m glad you asked, because in this tutorial I am going to walk you through the installation (complete with pictures) of OpenSuSE 11.2.

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Tags: GNOME, Novell, opensuse, SuSE
Categories: Desktop Manager, Linux, Open Source, Tutorials Basic, software

File hosting services such as Rapidshare, Megaupload or Depositfiles are immensely popular on the Internet. They offer a comfortable solution of sharing files with other users over the Internet without having to cope with email attachment size limits which usually make large sized file trades very uncomfortable. Some users want to make sure that their uploaded files will be available for other users to download. A good way to achieve this is to upload the files to multiple file hosting services to have mirrors if one of the file hosts should take a file upload down (due to inactivity, transfer limits or other issues).

Load2All can upload files to multiple file hosting websites at once. The service currently supports 19 different file hosting services among them Rapidshare, 2Shared or File Factory. Each file host can be selected on the main page individually.

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Tags: file host, file hosting, file hosting service, load2all, upload files
Categories: Online Services, The Web

Firefox users have a great number of add-ons at their disposal if they want to download videos from video portals. Some of these add-ons are very specialized and only compatible with one video website while others support dozens if not hundreds of different video sites. The comparison in this article will concentrate on the top rated Firefox video download add-ons based on the ratings at the official Mozilla website. It will only include add-ons that support multiple websites and work in all versions of Firefox 3.

Each add-on is tested if it can be used to download videos from the following sample video portals: Youtube, Dailymotion and Gametrailers. The main goal is to see if the add-ons can download Youtube videos, dailymotion videos and gametrailer videos including the way these downloads are offered. We will take a look at the video portals that are supported by the add-ons and possible usability issues.

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Tags: download-videos, firefox video download, firefox-add on, video download, youtube videos, youtube videos download
Categories: Browsing, firefox

If you ask Windows users how they switch between applications then a majority will likely state they they use the Windows taskbar to do so. But there are others who prefer a keyboard shortcut like Alt-Tab to quickly bring another running program or window to the front. The free software Switcher offers another possibility. The now abandoned program was initially designed to be compatible with Windows Vista but tests have shown that it is fully compatible with Microsoft’s latest operating system Windows 7 as well. Best of all, the application is available as a portable version as well.

Switcher will display a configuration menu after installation which can be used to configure the program. This starts by choosing one of three view modes, animation and appearance settings or the window style over filters, keyboard shortcuts and detailed advanced settings.

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Tags: application switcher, portable software, switcher, windows software
Categories: Windows, software

Microsoft has changed the theme management in their Windows 7 operating system. There is still a lock in place that is keeping users from installing themes that have not been signed by Microsoft but the overall theme manageability has improved. It is for instance now possible to save and load basic themes which opens up several new possibilities like sharing them with friends and family or installing the same theme on multiple computer systems running Windows 7.

This new option made it possible for Microsoft to offer a multiple of the themes that they offered for previous operating systems. The Windows 7 Personalization Gallery over at the Microsoft website contains download links to dozen of themes from country specific themes to sponsored themes. Every Windows 7 user can create basic themes with custom wallpapers, sounds, mouse pointers or desktop icons.

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Tags: windows 7, windows 7 theme, windows 7 theme patcher, windows 7 themes
Categories: Windows