The build in Windows search is slow, really slow compared to a software like Locate that indexes all of your files on all hard drives and offers almost instantaneous results. But let us start at the beginning. Locate32 is a small software for Windows that works like updatedb and locate on Unix machines.

While you can buy hundreds of different calendars each year depicting celebrities, comic book heroes, nature, animals and landscapes you could be inclined to create a custom, unique calendar to either use by yourself or give to someone that you like very much. Custom calendars can make great gifts, especially if the person who receives them feels connected to the pictures of the calendar.

Not every game runs perfectly with the default settings. Some drop in performance more than others when increasing quality settings such as Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic-Filtering while others show no gain in quality when raising certain settings.

Hard Drives can be terribly noise makers in computers. This is especially true when you are one of those users who buys silent pc hardware and uses fan regulators to lower the noise of system fans. When the noise of those fans is lowered other noises can probably be heard that you did not recognize before.

A non fixed Microsoft Excel 2007 has calculation issues with certain numbers. Two scenarios exist that result in a false value being shown as the result of a calculation. If the result of a calculation is a number between 65534.99999999995 to 65535 the result will be shown as 100000 instead.

If you are one of those users who think that the burning suite Nero is way to large and contains way to many unnecessary tools you might want to take a look at Nero 8 Lite and Nero 8 Micro. I have written earlier this year about both versions for Nero 7 and would like to take the opportunity to write about the new updated version.

Another week has passed and it’s time again for the software updates of week 44. One of my readers asked me the last time how I kept track of all the software updates and I would like to take the time and answer his question. I do have several websites in my feedreader but also use software portals like Betanews or Softpedia to keep track of what is being updated throughout the week.

Every software that is starting during system startup is delaying the system boot process. You might not notice an increase if the software is small but there are applications like those from Norton for instance that can delay it by more than a minute. It is therefor always a good idea to check which softwares are starting during Windows startup and get rid of any that are not necessary.

The beta version of Yahoo Messenger 9 has been released yesterday and can be downloaded from the official Yahoo Messenger Beta website. The new Instant Messenger supports Windows XP and Windows Vista only and should be more or less bug free. Changing to the new version is only advised if you know what you are doing, a backup of the settings would be advised as well.

Folders in Windows look all the same which serves the purpose of being able to recognize them immediately. While this might be nice for novice computer users advanced users might want to change the appearance of some of the folders to make them stick out from the rest.

How are you writing down notes when working with your computer ? Do you create text documents and write the notes in there, do you use Post-It notes and stick them to your monitor or desktop or do you prefer to use a software like Shock Sticker which combines the Post-It functionality with that of the text document ?

I was always puzzled by the fact that uninstallers would not delete all data, folders and files created by an installation script but would leave traces of that program on the system. What sense does it make to keep registry settings, config files or empty folders on the system if the user opts to remove the software ?

Self Image is an Open-Source hard disk imaging tool. It is capable of backing up hard drives or partitions even if those partitions or hard disks are not mounted in Windows. This means that it is for instance possible to backup a Linux partition in Windows using Self Image.

I don’t want to make a big fuss about it. I tried lots of softwares that record Internet Radio streams and found one that was the perfect fit for my situation. I prefer a software that would function as my main music player and be able to record Internet Radio streams over a software that would have the ability to record the streams but that I would never use to listen to music.

A new version of the blogging plattform Wordpress has been released today. It is an advised update for every webmaster especially for those with register_globals enabled. A security vulnerability was found that can be exploited if that setting is enabled.

Watching videos at Youtube and Google Video is not really that comfortable. The search is pretty basic, as are the categories offered and the options to change settings like when viewing it are limited as well. There is also no way to create your own categories at those video sites and fill them with videos that you found.

It is Wednesday again and this means it is time for the weekly software updates. I collect information about the software updates of the last seven days and list all updated softwares in the list below. Only applications that have been mentioned at Ghacks before will be in the list.

Oxygen Office Professional was formerly known as Open Office Premium, so basically a modified version of Open Office with lots of extras that remind me of the extras that ship with Microsoft Office. The extras include more than 3400 images including clip arts and photos, more than 90 fonts, templates and sample documents, VBA support, better PDF support and lots more.

Google increased the storage limit for Gmail users just recently who have now roughly four Gigabytes at their disposal with the option to add even more storage that can be purchased in the account settings. The maximum amount is currently 400 Gigabytes of storage which would cost $500 per year.

I was looking for a way to keep track of my expenses and earnings and found the software Buddi to be sufficient for my needs. I’m using it mainly to analyze my online activities, the earnings of my websites and the expenses that I have monthly. Buddi has a nice way of displaying statistics that give a quick overview which should be sufficient for most users.

Windows Live Photo Gallery made a big leap forward with the release of the newest beta version 2.2. The greatest enhancement over previous Live Photo Gallery versions is the ability to publish pictures directly on Flickr with a stamp of approval from Flickr. Another aspect will please many users. Before this beta users had to install Windows Desktop Search to work with it which is no longer needed for Windows XP users.

Instantbird plans to be for Instant Messengers what Firefox is for web browsers. The first version with the number 0.1 does show a lot of promise but naturally lacks the stability of a software that has been developed for years. It uses the Mozilla rendering engine to render IMs and the Pidgin libpurple to connect to the various networks.

I described a way to compress the Windows registry manually yesterday. The process itself was not really complicated but it involved booting into DOS to complete the changes to the registry that have been made by the process. Tehmul (more of that please) commented in that article pointing to a software named NTREGOPT (NT Registry Optimizer) which would optimize the full registry and perform the replacement during the next system boot automatically.

Listing all installed multimedia codecs is an easy task if you use the software Installed Codec from Nirsoft. The software scans the registry in two places looking for installed codecs displaying them afterwards in a list that can be sorted in a few different ways.

I’m posting weekly software updates to keep everyone up to date on what software was released in the last seven days to make it easier for everyone to just go right to their favorite software developer and download the latest version of their software.

RightLoad adds the ability to upload selected files to a ftp directly which removes the step to start the ftp client, choose the ftp server, browse the local hard drives and the possible location on the ftp server. All this can be set in RightLoad which should be a really useful software for most webmasters who regularly upload files to their ftps.

I always keep my notebook in sight when I travel around or sit in a public place like a library or Internet cafe. Not only because of the fear that someone could grab and steal it but also because someone could install software, invade my privacy or use the notebook for malicious activities.

If you have bought a TFT monitor you might want to consider using a software like Dead Pixel Tester to see if it has any dead pixels. This could for instance be useful to see if it is possible to get the current monitor replaced by a new one because of to many dead pixels.

Zoogmo offers a way to securely backup personal data and store that data on so called partner computers. Partner computers can be anything from USB devices, network computers or even the computer of your friend that you can access over the Internet. The advantage of this approach is that you backup will be stored in an encrypted form on an external computer so that it remains accessible in the case of a computer crash.

If you experience troubles playing movies using the DIVX codec that is installed on your computer you might want to take a look at a bundle of fixes for DivX that is called All In One Fix. This is not intended for users who use ffdshow for instance to play movies, only for those who are actually using the DIVX codec.

The title of this article might be a little confusing at first glance. Why would someone want to scan files in a directory for certain strings and output them in a new file ? Few ideas come to my mind why this could be useful. Imagine that you were surfing a website with lots of images that you liked very much. You could download those images manually or use the software Win Text File Patch to scan all files in your browsers cache for a certain string and output them in a new file.

I’m a regular at several webmaster forums where I tend to read up on the latest trends and techniques. While forums are great for exchanging and gaining knowledge they have one disadvantage and that is that one needs to be online to be able to read what has been written there.

I don’t understand why no one did create a software that would connect people form around the world to jam with each other and create music that way. This is one natural application that would make it easier for everyone from beginning musicians to bands that are separated and need to jam with each other.

Microsoft Office 2007 uses a new standard to save documents. You might have noticed that the documents saved are no longer named document.doc but document.docx. While this is not per se a problem for users with Office 2007 it is a major one for everyone else.

I don’t like to take my purchased movie DVDs with me when I travel but still love to have some of my favorite or new movies with me in case I would like to watch a movie on my notebook. I could of course burn those DVDs and take the backups with me but this is not ideal in my opinion. I do not like to carry any media with me when traveling.

If you share a computer with several other users you might have noticed that it is not possible to set a differing screen resolution, refresh rate and color depth for each user. Windows XP forces each user to use the same resolution, refresh rate and color depth which is a great annoyance.

It is Wednesday again and that means it is time for taking a deeper look at software updates that have been released in the last seven days. This week has not seen that many updates. Only eleven softwares were updated which is a new low for a week.

Updatestar seems to be the most comprehensive software to scan your system for installed applications and check whether updates for those found are available. I did try several similar applications like Secunia Personal Software Inspector in the past but was somewhat disappointed by the small amount of softwares that could be detected.

Clicking on Start, All Programs, the folder of the software that you want to start and finally the software is the normal way to start applications using the Windows start menu. Unfortunately though it closes every time you have started a software from it which means that you have to follow the same path again if you want to open another application from it.

Taking Windows Registry snapshots can be a way to analyze changes that have been made to the system during a set period of time. The time being of course the days, hours or minutes between the first and second snapshot.

Hotkeys can really speed up the daily working routine in Windows. Instead of using the start menu, shortcuts on the desktop or the Windows Explorer you simply press a few buttons which start the software automatically.

I recently discovered Qliner Hotkeys which is in my opinion close to perfect. The real advantage of Qliner Hotkeys is that it displays a graphical keyboard of all hotkeys currently in place. Users can drag and drop softwares around and browse their system for applications to add to spare keys.

Just a quick login into Gmail at work to see if I received any new mails. Oh, no. My Boss is coming. What now. Panic ! If you experienced a situation like that, be it at work, school or even at home you wished for a function to quickly hide any window that should not be open right now.

The open and save dialogs in Windows have the nasty habit of not remembering any of the changes that you made while using them. I prefer a wider window to be able to read all filenames, navigate more easily through the folder structure and have more details in sight all the time.

Windows Vista has that feature build in that lets you flip through all the open Windows by pressing Alt + Tab. This feature is called Windows Flip in Windows Vista and is available in all editions of Vista except Home Basic.

It is sometimes important to concentrate on a task at hand and blend out everything that is not related to it. This could be the case when reading an interesting article, editing a Microsoft Word document or playing a flash game. Everything around the needed area could be a distraction.

I never use the Send To menu in Windows. Never saw a reason why I should use it but I know that some love it to send files quickly to a defined folder or attach them to an email. As usual it is rather complicated to manipulate the Send To menu in Windows directly which is why users who would like to do so have to rely – as always – on third party developers.

The makers of CCleaner and Recuva have created a new software called Defraggler which is a defragmentation software for Microsoft Windows 2000 up to Windows Vista. Defraggler introduces some new features that most – if not all – other defragmentation softwares are missing.

I collect softwares that have been updated and publish the list on each Wednesday here at Ghacks. This is mainly done to make it easier for everyone to keep an overview of what has been updated in the past week. It should be noted that I only mention applications in this list that have been introduced in a former article at my site.

If you prefer Open Office over Microsoft Office you might find the following plugin for Open Office useful. The so called Writers Tools for Open Office are a set of new functions that are added as a new menu in the software.

Winston was asking me if I would know a way to merge one or more pdf files so that the contents of all the files would appear in one pdf file at the end. A quick research revealed a software pdftk – pdf toolkit -which can be used to merge and split pdf files. Many shareware softwares exist that do the same thing but pdftk seems to be one of the few that can merge pdf files for free.