Windows XP will be the dominant operating system for the next years even though Microsoft released the successor Windows Vista just a few days ago. The major disadvantage of Vista is that it is hardware hungry and poses problems to users of Windows XP who would like to change but can’t because of the hardware of their computer.

My good friend Everton posted a comprehensive guide to optimizing Windows XP which should be useful for everyone who is still running Windows XP. He posted a nice mix of known and lesser known tips that should be at least partially useful for most users. Had to wait with the post because Everton experienced a hard disk failure on his site.

continue reading "The complete guide to optimizing Windows XP"

If you are looking for an easy way to convert divx movies for special devices such as mobile players, pdas or mobiles you should take a look at the excellent freeware application Pocket Divx Encoder. Pocket Divx Encoder can be unzipped and run from that location without installation. You may select a device from the list if you want to encode the files for that device, it is possible to change the device later.

Just follow the five steps to convert the divx movies, you can add an unlimited number of movies to the list to convert everything in one run. Just select the first movie, add a new name if you do not want to overwrite the original file and take a look at the options. Change the video and audio quality which is a good way to reduce the file size if you don’t want the files to grow to big.

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Windows has no obvious method to lock folders, even administrators have no obvious way of locking folders. Locking folders could be important if you want to hide certain files or folders to prevent someone else from seeing them or altering the contents. You never know what your children could do until they do, so better lock the important folders.

Locking folders can be easily done with just two batch files that protects the contents. This is no fool proof method of course and everyone who is computer savy is able to counter this. You need to create two textfiles, add one line of code to each and save them as .bat files to make them executable.

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Taking pictures while you are on holiday is one thing, linking those pictures to Google Earth using the geolocation feature is the next level. Instead of just showing the pictures that you have taken you can now show the viewers the location the picture was taken in Google Earth.

Only a few digital cameras support that the geolocation is automatically added to the Exif data of the picture, but don’t worry if your camera can’t do it automatically. Panorado Flyer makes it easy to edit the data and add the geolocation to the image. This is done by using Google Images to find the location that the image was taken and adding the coordinates found using the context menu.

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We all known that quite a few spammers make big bucks by offering software like antivirus, antispyware or hard drive utilities whose main function is to either spy on the user or spam him. Those products are quite common nowadays and it is difficulty for an inexperienced user to remove the software completely again.

Rogue Remover is a little freeware application that scans your hard drives for installed rogue antivirus, antispyware and hard drive utilities and removes them if you choose it. The process is not complicated and even inexperienced users should be able to use rogue remover without help.

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