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.

Categories: Operating Systems, Software, Tools, Windows

Kline over at Connected Internet posted an interesting article detailing 10 simple ways to speed up Windows Vista. I actually tweaked Windows Vista right when I unpacked my notebook which had Windows Vista Home Premium preinstalled, got rid of a lot of useless stuff that I did not need anyway.

Categories: Knowledge, Operating Systems, Windows

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.

Categories: Operating Systems, Software, Tools, Windows

While the automatic update function in Windows XP and Vista is a good way to keep your system up to date with the latest patches it has the nasty habit to nag the user after downloading the patches to the computer. I suppose everyone has received a message that asks the user if he wants to reboot now or reboot later in XP or the dialog box that asks you to restart your computer to finish installing important updates in Windows Vista.

Categories: Knowledge, Operating Systems, Windows

If your itching to get your hands on the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 you could try the following fool-proof method that downloads the new service pack right from the Microsoft Windows Updates server. Currently, only a beta version for Windows Vista is available but that is probably better than nothing at this time.

Categories: Operating Systems, Security, Windows

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.

Categories: Operating Systems, Software, Tools, Windows

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.

Categories: Operating Systems, Software, Tools, Windows

UAC is the Windows Vista User Account Control. UAC is basically another way to protect the computer from the user, or the user from himself. Much like those ‘Do you really want to delete this file ?’ questions UAC asks the user to give an application additional privileges even if he is currently logged on as the administrator. So, it is basically asking the user the question ‘Do you really want to execute the following application ?’.

Categories: Operating Systems, Windows

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.

Categories: Operating Systems, Software, Tools, Windows