Days Of The Geek

Review+giveaway! EaseUS partition master 9.0.1

2011-08-16T11:19:00.002+01:00

EaseUS Partition master is a popular alternative to the 'Partition Magic' software, that is widely used by many professionals and large companies in the computer industry.

It supports all the typical features you'd expect in a partition manager; Resize, copy, convert, format, create, etc. However, EaseUS partition master also has some very advanced features, not generally available in consumer products. It supports extending and merging partitions, defragmentation for improving system performance, the ability to wipe data off a disk even if it has no partitions; insuring complete data protection, Disk surface testing, support for hardware raid and removable devices, and much much more.

Perhaps the selling point for this software, however, is it's boot cd; the program gives you the option of creating a boot cd using either Linux or Windows PE (pre-installed environment). This allows you to perform disk maintanence even if your opperating system fails to boot, or could come in useful for destroying data on old unwanted computers.
To find out more about EaseUS partition master,visit the

Product Page.

And now's your chance to grab a copy - for free! I've temed up with EaseUS to give 10 of you days of the geek readers the chance to obtain this software completely free from EaseUS. Here's how to enter:
1. You must be following @ashleycox2 on twitter (
http://www.twitter.com/ashleycox2
).
2. Tweet this;
"
Check out http://daysofthegeek.blogspot.com where @ashleycox2 is giving away 10 copys of EaseUS partition manager for free! Grab a copy now!
"
3. I will choose 10 randem people from the list of mentions, and will send you a direct message with the details you need.

So what are you waiting for... grab yourself a copy now!

OSX Lion: worth the upgrade?

2011-07-22T13:23:00.000+01:00

I could start this post the way I usually do; apologising for not having posted in a while, etc etc. However, this time, I actually have an excuse.

On the 20th July, apple released Mac OSX Lion in in the app store. As mentioned in some of my previous posts, OSX lion has over 250 new features, and is distributed exclusively through the app store, rather than being shipped on physical media such as DVD's. Personally, i'm not a big fan of this internet distribution; apple have made lion's installation very easy for new or inexperienced computer users, so much so that it's almost too easy for those of us who want more customisation, such as the ability to do clean installs or customise what gets installed and what doesn't. However, it is still possible to perform clean installs/customisations, if you restore the disc image to a external drive, or burn it to a dvd yourself. Some internet resources are reporting that apple will be selling OSX lion on usb drives in august, though it's looking like these will be pretty expensive.

Apples new method if distribution through the app store also means that, if you chose not to upgrade to snow leopard, you must upgrade to snow leopard before you can upgrade to lion, as downloading lion requires the app store which is not being made available on the older mac operating systems.

So, in my opinion, is this even worth the trouble of downloading?

Yes, definitely. Lion is awesome. Obviously, having been out for less than a week, there are still problems to be worked out, and 1 or 2 things that are almost completely broken. However, the average computer user probably won't notice these things at all.

Some of the things I like:
Full screen apps; full screen apps is an awesome feature. It's especially helpful when making tutorial videos/presentations, as everything (everything) else is hidden so your viewers cannot see the rest of your applications/desktop. You can also have multiple applications in full screen mode at once, and you can switch between them.
The 'all my files' option in the finder, as it's name suggests, shows you all your files. However, they are grouped and sorted automatically, so if you've forgotten where you put a particular file it makes it much easier to find it.
Conversations view in mail makes it easier to sort through your emails, particularly when you have a lot of emails in 1 mailbox, as it groups messages form the same conversation together. You can archive, delete, and perform other actions on the entire conversation, instead of the separate messages.
Safari has had a lot of work done to it. It's got the upgraded webkit engine, so is now much faster, and now no-longer has a pop-up download window, instead showing a button in the toolbar when files are downloading. Annoyingly, there is still no way to have the "do you want safari to remember this account?" box never show up when you log into a website.
Launchpad, apple's IOS-like applications home screen for lion, iso a really cool new feature; when you download an app from the app store, it goes into the launchpad instead of into the dock, keeping the dock free of too many applications.
It's fast; lion definitely has some speed improvements over snow leopard; applications load faster, and the system seams to boot much quicker.

Things that still need to be worked out:
iTunes 10.4, despite it's 'performance improvements', is still slower than i'd like.
the auto-correct sometimes corrects things, even though you told it not too.
The system won't see any of my networked drives, such as my dns-323 nas drive, or any networked windows 7 pc's.

Things I just don't like:
Lion now has a feature that remembers open windows in applications when you quit them, and can also re-open your applications/windows when you shutdown and restart the computer. I find this incredibly annoying, particularly if an application locks up, or if I was watching a video in safari. However, you can press cmd option Q to completely quit an application, there is a checkbox when shutting down or restarting to control whether it re-opens your windows or not, and you can disable this entire feature in the general section of system preferences.
No clean install; I know most normal users aren't really going to care if they do an upgrade or a clean install; however, some of us actually do. Personally, I like to do a nice fresh install of a new operating system, instead of upgrading and having to remove the left-overs of the old system later. Infact, I upgraded my macbook originally, and then clean installed the next day due to loosing a lot of hard drive space because of my old snow leopard system.
The recovery partition - the recovery partition is a good idea, though it does worry me slightly. As anybody who buys a new mac mini will see, the mac comes with no recovery media; no discs, no usb drive, etc. (i'm not sure of the other new macs, i've only seen mac mini unboxings). This is due to the fact that lion now includes a recovery feature, that can be used to perform disc checks, brows the support site if the system is not bootable, or even reinstall lion from the existing hard drive. I suspect that apple are going to start using this method of recovery, instead of shipping recovery media with macs.
However, this means, for example, if you have one of these macs with no recovery disc, and the hard drive crashes, that you can't reinstall your os. It seams to me that apple are doing what the other computer manufacturers are doing with these stupid computer recovery systems that don't generally work, and aren't going to provide some way of restoring the system if the hardware fails. However, apple's system is almost worse, as you will need another mac to download lion from the app store, in order to create a dvd or bootable drive to install it on your other mac.

In conclusion, OSX lion is definitely worth the upgrade. Just make sure you create a bootable copy of the OSX lion installer on a dvd or usb drive in case something goes wrong. Lion has some great new features that will make using your mac easier and more enjoyable, some features that will be great once they're fixed, some features that will get on your nerves (but almost all modern operating systems have auto-correct), and some things that, in my opinion, we're just not ready for yet.

What web design software to use?

2011-06-22T21:40:00.000+01:00

I've been designing websites for over 2 years now; I won't bore you with the details, but I started using google sites, progressed to microsoft word, then learned to code. Since then i've moved on to designing advanced web applications in php, sql, etc...all using the same software. Infact, i've become so used to notepad, that if microsoft ever decide that it's no-longer necessary to bundle it with windows, i'm not sure what i'll do. Like when a computer user uses windows xp for 6 years, then has to use 7, or worse, vista. It's a big step in terms of the UI, the new features, and just generally how it does things.

Recently, however, I decided it was time for me to move away from notepad, to a more advanced editor, with specific features for code editing. I wanted something with line numbering. Better line break support. Built in ftp/web publishing options. Therefore.. I installed dreamweaver 8.

Part of the 'macromedia' studio 8 package, Dreamweaver 8 is an older version of adobes market leading web design software. It has hundreds of features, designed to make a web developers job easier.

I installed it, fired it up... wow. so many options. Where to start! Dreamweaver allows you to manage several sites. It allows you to view those sites (stored in folders on your physical disc and on the server) and all the files associated with them. This is more of an annoyance to me, as I'm so used to managing my files myself, and dont' need my code editor controling the design for me.

The code editor is, surprisingly, good. It has severl optoins that you can configure, the ability to insert and complete automatically several of the html tags, but what's great about it is that all this doesn't get in the way. No buttons covering the code window; no annoying pop-up preview windows. I also like dreamweavers options to preview the document in any browser of your choice, via a customisable list in the file menu. Many code editors i've used have their own built-in preview system, which typically uses the default html engine for your opperating system; however, developers chould always preview sites in a range of different browsers to ensure compatability.

To cut a very long story short, dreamweaver is a great code editor. It has some awesome features that I can see will, at some point in the future, be very useful. However, for the time being, i'm sticking to notepad.

Mac OSX lion - the 8th major release of mac OSX with over 200 new features

2011-06-07T20:00:00.000+01:00

Those of you who follow days of the geek will remember my post a while back, reviewing Mac OSX lion, and giving some of my first thoughts and impressions on the new features. Yesterday, apple announced the release of Lion at the WWDC (world wide developers conference) 2011, to a croud of around 5200 people.

Mac OSX lion includes several impressive new features, including:
launchpad - An iPad-like interface for accessing and launching your applications quickly, no matter where they're located on your system.
Mission control - an easy way to view all your open apps.
Full screen apps - the same method of viewing apps used on the iOS platform.
All new mail view - Mail now has a all new layout, similar to mail on the iPad. The new favorites bar provides quick access to your folders, search and other features, and conversation views let you browse through threads of messages quickly and easily.
Auto save - saves your documents while you work to avoid loss of data in the event of a crash. The new 'versions' feature works with auto save to allow you to recover and restore previous versions of your documents, and to move parts of documents from one version to another.
New speech voices - since mac OS 9 and earlier, apple have included a number of text-to-speech voices with the OS. The release of OS 10.5 Leopard saw a new voice, Alex, a massive improvement on the other voices. Alex has a very natural sound, and even breathes inbetween certain punctuation marks to make listening more natural. IN mac OSX Lion, apple is including a range of high quality text-to-speech voices, in 23 different languages, with more higher quality voices available to download.

For a detailed list of the new features in mac OSX Lion, see
Apple's 'what's new' article

One of the main concerns of people who wish to upgrade to lion is the way lion will be distributed. With the 10.6.6 update to Snow leopard, apple introduced the new mac App Store, enabling users to search for and download apps easily, much like the app store on the iOS platform. Apple will be distributing lion through the app store; you can go into the app store on lions release date and pay the $29.99 for the Mac OSX lion download. The upgrade downloads directly to your mac, at which point you follow the instructions to upgrade. Once you have bought lion in the app store, you can install it on all your other authorised mac computers simply by signing into the app store and re-downloading lion. However, this has it's disadvantages; those who are still running leopard (or earlier) but who have a supported mac that they wish to upgrade will first have to upgrade to snow leopard, in order to download the lion upgrade.

However, if like me you'd rather have your opperating system on a physical optical disc, see
This article
For instructions on how to burn a Lion boot disc. NOte: thsi still requires Snow Leopard, as you require the downloaded lion upgrade from the app store.

Lastly, the system requirements: Lion will require a minimum of an intel core2duo CPU to run (core i3, i5, i7, and xeon processors are of course also supported), 2 GB ram, and around 4GB space for the download. Core duo and older machines will not be officially supported, though there have been hacks to install the developer preview on these machines, and it is likely that this will be true for the final version.

Tutorial: basic flat-file php news system.

2011-05-23T20:15:00.001+01:00

Over at
Webdevforums.com
I wrote a tutorial on creating a basic news system in php. The main features of this system include:
News categories
The ability to create categories and articles
Static php pages
full meta keyword and description support
and a few other things.
Happy reading!
Tutorial: PHP news system

Review: Update checker

2011-05-22T18:32:00.001+01:00

It's time for another Days Of The Geek review. Sure, it's not often I review products, but this one is so amazing, I decided to give it a go.

Update checker is a free piece of software that, as it's name suggests, checks for updates to software on your computer. It can be downloaded from
FileHippo.com, and as you'd expect, it uses their freeware database to search for and download the updates.

Upon launching the program, you are presented with the checking for updates screen, and then taken to your browser to view the updates found, along with a download link for each one. The program also shows you new beta updates for your software titles, great if, like me, you like to have the latest and greatest software.

The application has a few settings that can be tweaked, though these are all pretty self-explanatory; a language choice, default browser settings, customisation of the results page etc.

In conclusion, Update checker is an incredibly useful program; its low resource usage, eas of use, and just overall awesomeness has made it one of those programs I just can't live without. So why not Download it now!

Free get Aomei Partition Assistant Professional Edition 3.0 (worth $29)

2011-05-21T10:32:00.000+01:00

Taken from the website: "Aomei Partition Assistant 3.0 is comprehensive disk partition management utility which held Partition Manager software and three wizards (Extend Partition Wizard, Partition Copy Wizard, and Disk Copy Wizard) together for Windows 7/XP/2000/Vista, Server 2008/2003/2000. It provides powerful and professional features to manage hard disk drives like partition/disk manage and data transfers with highly data security guarantee. As partition magic alternative, Aomei Partition Assistant has been widely used by many companies as well as individuals all around the globe with fine reputation."

From my personal experience, Partition Assistant is an awesome program. I've successfully used it several times with great results. And now, they're offering the chance to get it for free:

Free get Aomei Partition Assistant Professional Edition 3.0 (worth $29)

2011-03-19T17:19:00.000Z

If you use a mac for web design, you'll definetly, at some pint, need a plane text editor for coding. 'Text Edit' comes to mind... but wait! Isn't text edit a rich text editor?

Yes, it is. However, text edit can be used for plane text too. Here's how:

Open text edit with a new file, or load a file you have already created.
Type your code or what ever you want to type.
Press cmd shift T, or select the option in the format menu on the menu bar to 'make plane text'.
Go into the save as dialog, and type the file name, with the extention for example index.php or contact.php
Press the save button.
If you get a dialog box, asking if you want to keep .txt or use .php, click "use .php" and text edit will remember your choice.

Sending html eMails using outlook express

2011-03-19T17:13:00.000Z

If you're still using windows XP or earlier, and using outlok express at your eMail cient, there may come a time when you need to send an HTML file as an eMail; the below steps show you how it's done:

Firstly, create an html file in your favorite editor. I'm not going to cover how to do this, as that's not what this tutorial is for.
When you have a .htm or .html file, open outlook express, and create a new message.
Fill out the to:, and subject fields, and the cc field if you wish.
Move focus to the message body, and click insert>text from file.
In the "files of type" box, select html file.
brows to your html file and click open.
All done, send your message, and when it is opened your html file will be displayed!

Howto: Open a .pages File in Windows

2011-03-11T20:01:00.000Z

Being a mac user, one of my most used applications is the 'iWork' suite of productivity applications. It includes the pages, keynote, and numbers applications. While these applications do offer a certain amount of compatibility with Microsoft Office, they aren't exactly what you'd call cross-compatible, and extra steps must be taken to export your mac files if they need to be opened in office. Recently, I needed to open a .pages file in windows, so I began researching a way to do it. Here are the basic steps:
1. download and install
Win Rar.
2. using winRar, open yoru .pages file.
3. Inside the archive, navigate to the 'quick look' folder.
4. extract and open 'preview.pdf'

Some notes:
obviously, this being a .pdf file, you need a pdf reader (adobe reader or similar). If you wish to edit this file, you will also require a pdf editor. And, finally, in some cases this doesn't allow you to export all pages of the file, though in my case, it worked brilliantly!

Why DaysOfTheGeek?

2011-03-01T19:52:00.001Z

Many people have asked my why, I decided to name this blog 'days of the geek'. I realised, i've never really taken the time to explain why and how this blog started, so thought i'd atempt to do just that in this post.

Over the last few years, i've been using the internet more and more. I'd read many blogs from people that enspired me. They ranged from the technology blogs, to general life blogs, to blogs that are a mixture of the 2. If it's a blog... i'd probably read it. ANything from too the major technology blogs to music blogs over on
Paramore.net
and loads of people from the live journal community. Apart from the occasional podcast, I'd never done any blogging myself, so thought i'd give it a try. I decided my blog should be just that - my blog. General life, thoughts and ramblings, tech reviews now and then... And... in case you haven't already guessed, i'm a computer geek. SO... there you have it, there's my long-winded explanation. That's where days of the geek comes from.
I've since expanded DOTG into an online community site, so head on over to
http://daysofthegeek.com
and check it out!

Mac OSX 10.7 lion - first thoughts

2011-02-27T18:42:00.000Z

Even though I promise, pretty much every post that i'm going to post more on this blog, it just never seams to happen. However, here I am again... with another (hopefully) interesting post.

In apple's "back to the mac" event, they gave us a sneak preview of the upcoming features in the 8th major release of mac OSX, Mac OSX 10.7. As many people had prodicted, apple named this version lion, and many of the features found in this new version are enspired by their iOS platform for iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Earlier this week, I had the chance to download and install the developer preview of mac OSX 10.7 lion. Without knowing quite what to expect, I wasted no time in upgrading my mac. Before I get started, the mac specs:
Early 2009 mac mini; 1.83 ghz intel core2 duo; 2 GB ddr2 667 MHZ ram; 80 GB external harddrive (2 partitions of 40 GB); and the built-in intel video adapter with 64 mb or vram.

I used my portable external harddrive so as to avoid replacing my current install of snow leopard. The system runs surprisingly well on a usb harddrive. To begin, I partitioned the drive into 2 partitions, installed lion from 1 partition onto the other, and in about 25 mins I was presented with the lion desktop.

So...?

From what i've seen of lion so far, I love it. It's fast, stable (for a developer preview) and packs tons of new features everybody will love. THe most notable of these features being the new full screen apps, which adds a button to supported apps to full screen them. This is one of the features apple took from the iPad, and makes creating tutorial videos a snap. Mission control is a new way to see everything on your mac, even windows hidden in the background. The macintosh text-to-speech system has been updated to include hundreds more voices (the majority of which must be downloaded and are unavailable at this time). The new launchpad, enspired by iOS, is a new way to organise and sort your apps. It presents you with a screen just like the iOS homescreen, and allows you to sort apps into folders, and launch your apps with a single click.

I could go on for ages about the new features in lion, but I think i'll wait until the final release.

Here is a video of steve jobs introducing lion in the 'back to the mac' event:

Experiencing new, (old) computers

2011-01-02T12:45:00.000Z

It's the start of a new year; so firstly, i'd like to wish everybody a happy new year, and all the best for 2011! With the new year, comes christmas. Along with some christmas gifts this year, I received some money from family, and therefore decided to treat myself to a 'netbook', one of the portable computers designed for light mobile computing.

We walked into the shop, and within 10 minutes left again, with a netbook. My first impression was great! The box was small and light, and from what I saw in the shop the netbook was perfect; fast, quiet, relyable, with extremely good battery life. This soon changed however...

I powered up the netbook, and was soon presented with the windows 7 welcome setup screens; after completing the setup, the netbook restarted and began setting up all it's hardware and software. 20 minutes later, the netbook restarted again, presenting me with the desktop. It was from here the entire experience went down hill. The netbook came preloaded with so much pre-installed software, it made the machine very unusable. I should point out here, this netbook included the standard netbook specifications; 1.66 GHZ attum N450, 1 GB ddr2 667MHZ ram, and a 250GB sata harddrive. Unfortunately, due to the huge amount of preinstalled software, this specification just couldn't handle the load. With windows 7 starter, a certain anti-virus software, a huge number of games, and lots of titles from the manufactorer, it was no wonder this little netbook couldn't handle the load. At times, the laptop would slow right down, to the point where the mouse pointer would freze and jump around on the screen. After removing all the pre-installed software, the netbook didn't perform much better; probably due to the left-overs from the software. It was very disappointing; the computer itself was excelent, but ruined by the software, defeating the purpose of having a mobile computer.

So, a note to netbook manufacturers: Cut down on the pre-installed software! If you must bundle too many useless software titles on your computers, supply us with a installation dvd for windows , along with the necessary drivers.

God mode... the windows 7 super control panel.

2010-12-18T10:49:00.000Z

Part of windows 7is the new, supposedly improved, control panel. With all the items organised into different categories, it can sometimes be difficult to find that feature you're looking for; yes, you can just click the category button and select iether large or small icons, but another feature, 'god mode', makes life so much easier.

Think of god mode as your "super control panel". GOd mode allows you to create a folder, give it a name, and when this folder is opened shortcuts are automatically provided to change almost all the settings available in the windows 7 control panel. The difference? They're all grouped together, in an easy to locate format, much like drives are grouped in the 'computer' folder, or folders in a library.

TO try out god mode:
Locate and open the folder where you want to create your god mode icon. Create a new folder by clicking file>new>folder or click the folder icon in the toolbar. Name the folder to:
ControlPanel.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
Note: you can change the words "ControlPanel" but make sure to keep the end the same or this will not work. Also make sure you don't remove the brackets or the dot.
That's it; when you open your newly created folder, you should see a huge number of control panel options.

Windows 7 VS 95... new or old pc?

2010-12-16T16:28:00.000Z

Recently I received an old windows pc, from 1996. With an 8086 syrix CPU, 32 mb ram, and a 2 mb video card, I wasn't expecting huge performance from this computer; however the results so far have been impressive. So much so, I decided to do some tests, to see if this old computer could out-perform my windows 7 computer built last march. The results are by no means completely 100% accurate, but...

The first testFirstly, The pc specs:
windows 95: 166MHZ CPU, 32 MB Ram, 2 MB video card, 1.5 gb harddrive
Windows7: 2.66GHZ CPU, 4 GB ram, 1 TB harddrive.

, as with any computer, the bootup speed was the most important test. The windows 95 computer surprised me here, managing to boot to the desktop in an impressive 21 seconds, whereas windows 7 managed 43. This test was made slightly unfair, due to the windows 7 pc being my main pc, and therefore running all my apps, and having everything loading at startup etc.

The next test is application load times. The windows7 pc clearly wins here, due to it's faster components. A sata harddrive instead of IDE, with an internal data rate of approx 250 mbps. A faster CPU, more, faster ram all help to boost app load times.

Application responsiveness is noticeably different, windows 7 completely outshining 95 at multi-tasking. However, when it comes to running 1 app at a time, the windows 95 machine performed equally well.

There are a few tests I've been unable to perform, many of them due to
the windows 95 computer not currently being connected to the internet;
however, it's handled everything i've thrown at it so far.

The last test was the shutdown test. Here, windows 95 really did
shine, managing to shutdown to the "it is now safe to turn off your
computer" screen in an amazing 9 seconds. The windows 7 pc, probably
due to the amount of applications it needed to shutdown, shutdown in
40 seconds, almost as long as it took to boot.

In conclusion, the windows 95 and windows7 computers both have
performance advantages and disadvantages. I can't honestly say I could
switch to 95 as a primary OS, but it does still work fine and for old
dos games it's perfect. As for windows 7... i've already reviewed
that, so check back through the blog archives!

Review of windows 7 - my thoughts

2010-11-01T19:43:00.000Z

Windows7 is microsofts latest windows operating system. With loads of cool new features, massive speed improvements, more customisable security, and a redesigned taskbar, windows 7 is a deffinat improvement over Vista. Over the past year, i've been testing out windows 7's many features and improvements, on both new and old hardware. So, here is my short review; what's great, what's not changed, and what's just plain annoying?

The Taskbar.
Let's start with the taskbar. The new "superbar" is a windows version of the mac OSX "doc". It allows you to pin icons there for your frequently used applications, giving you 1 click access to those applications. It also allows you to access the applications 'jumplists', giving you instant access to, for example, the open tabs in internet explorer, or the recently played list of tracks in media player. WHen you've pinned your icons to the taskbar, and aranged them, you can use the windows key with a number to launch them. For example, windows key+1 for the first, windows+2 for the second, etc.

The start menu.
The windows 7 start menu hasn't change much from that found in vista; it still has the familiar search box, tree-style menus, and expandable shutdown icon. The search features are now more inteligent, and provide better and faster results. There is also now no clasic start menu option, as there was in windows vista and XP. This means, that if you prefer the start menu of windows 2000 or earlier, you must now use 3rd party add-ons. Microsoft, however, still provide a windows clasic theme for you to use, which is lighter on resources if you dont' want the arrow interface. To cut down on the resources, but keep the windows 7 look and feel, use "windows 7 basic"

The control panel.
The control panel is a massive improvement over previous versions. The category view is cleaner and finding the feature you're looking for has never been easier. There is no clasic view button, but to get the "clasic view" back simply click on the category button and select either large or small icons.

Windows media player 12.
Windows media player 12 is the new version of media player that ships with windows 7. While still not quite as good as iTunes, microsoft have made some real improvements in this version; when I launched it, the interface appears cleaner and buttons are labled correctly, the setup wizard was easier to follow, and it automatically added all of my music and found the missing tags online, leaving me with only 3 unknown songs, whereas iTunes left me with hundreds, if not thousands. This feature instantly impressed me; so I began experimenting with all it's new features; and was further amazed to find that list navigation was easy, the search feature worked, and was impressed (as mentioned above) with it's intigration with the windows 7 taskbar, allowing you to resume your playlist where you left off.

Other overall improvements.
As mentioned above, speed is one of the major changes in windows 7; no doubt about it. It's fast. The bootup time on my pc (2.60 GHZ, 2GB ddr2 ram, 500GB 7200 RPM hdd) is just over 23 seconds. With it's new prefetching, superfetching, and other features, it loads applications almost before you've clicked on the icons. Microsoft have also made the security features more customisable. One example of this is the User account control. User account control is a small background application that puts up an annoying prompt if an application tries to do something only admins can do, or if you change a setting on your computer that could have some bad affects. IN windows vista, customisation of this feature was limited; you could iether turn it off, or leave it on. HOwever, in widnows 7, there are now 4 customisation levels, that allow you to control the UAC prompts. TO disable it altogether, just drag the slider to 0.

The bad.
You may be thinking by now that I'm a huge ms fan, and I love everything about windows 7. That's not true. I like windows 7... it's windows; need I say more?. It does however, have it's bad points.

NO mail client.
Windows7, for whatever reason, no longer includes a default mail client. SO, the user is required to provide a mail client for themselves; or you can download windows live mail as part of the essentials package. Personally, I use and recommend mozilla thunderbird, though any version of outlook, window live mail, or anything else you prefer should work.

Compatibility.
WIndows7's compatibility is far from bad; in fact it's pretty good, and should run anything vista can. The only compatibility issues i've noticed, are issues when running old games that were designed for xp... but let's face it, who plays those anyway?
Microsoft do provide a freely downloadlbe package of windows XP, in a windows virtual machine, called "xp mode". It's free if you run 7 professional or ultimate, and is basicly the free virtual pc, and a free virtual machine of windows xp. Personally, I prefer VMWare; the performance of virtual pc is far from perfect, infact it's pretty slow and can be really unresponsive at times. However, it's free...

so should you upgrade?
Hmmmmmmm.......... probably. Chances are, if you're reading this and you don't have 7, you've got vista or XP, unless you've got a mac:). If you're running xp, it's getting outdated, and is time to upgrade. XP is nearly 9 years old... and they still install it on netbooks. Old OS, new hardware. the two just don't (or shouldn't) go together. If you're running vista, you'll love windows 7. It's loads faster, more relyable, and more customisable. So... everybody upgrade.

Tweak and speed up your windows computer.

2010-10-28T15:02:00.000+01:00

This is a guide that will show you how to increase the speed of your computer. While these tweaks may not make your computer as fast as a fresh reinstall of windows, You'll be amazed at what your computer can do!

Notes and Warnings.

Please make sure you have a backup of your working system before you start.

Make sure you have the licance keys for both windows and any programs, in case you need to reinstall windows for some reason.

Use all these tweaks at your own risk - I am not responsible for any damage to your computer or files.

If you are unsure about any of these tweaks, don't do them

Make sure you create system restore points.

Have fun, enjoy the guide and a faster computer!

What You will Need.

A computer with windows. Mac and linux guides are coming soon.

All software used are given in the sections they are used in.

OK, let's get started.

Speed up the boot menu.

If you have only 1 operating system on your computer, you do not need the boot menu to appear, and can save some time on boot-up. Here is how to disable it:

Go to start>control panel. You can also type control.exe into run... dialog box.

If you have not done so already, switch your control panel to clasic view. To do this in XP, click the "Switch to clasic view." button. If using vista, click "clasic view" link. If your using windows 7, click the catagory button, and then click small or large icons. If using old version of windows, it's already in clasic view!

Click "system." The system properties dialog will appear. If you are using windows vista or 7, you will need to click "advanced system settings. If a UAC dialog appears, allow it.

Click the advanced tab, and then click "startup and recovery."

This is where you have to make a choise. If you have more than 1 system on your computer, such as windows and linux, change the value in the "time to display list of operating systems" edit box to something smaller than the default (30). If you only have 1 system, and you don't want the boot menu, you can uncheck the "time to display list of operating systems" checkbox.

Click OK.

Close the control panel, and restart to see the boot time difference.

Disable the unwanted visual effects.

If you are visually impaired, or if you care more about performance than nice visuals, you can disable the visual effects.

Go to the system properties, mentioned in the step above.

Click the advanced tab, and then click "performance."

On the visual effects tab, change the setting in the list of radio buttons to "Ajust for best performance". If you don't want to loose them all, you can select "custom" and then choose from the tree-view which ones you want. When you're done, click OK, click OK in system properties, and close control panel.

Tweak the services.

Services are background applications that start every time your computer starts. These services control your computers software, such as the event log. You can disable services you don't need. For example, on a desktop computer that does not need wireless internet, you can disable the wireless services.

Go into the control panel, and then into administrative tools.

Open the "services" application.

You are then given a big list of services, with information about what each service does. For more info about the service, you can press enter on it to view it's properties.

To disable a service:

Open it's properties, iether right click and select properties, or press enter on the service name.

In the startup type box, change the value to "disabled," or on vista and windows 7 "startup (delayed)

Click OK.

Make sure you know what the service does before you disable it. If you don't know what it does, you can look up the name of it on
Google
And you will get hundreds of pages telling you what the service does.

When you're done, close the services app.

Note that you can also get into the services app by going to start>run... and typing "services.msc" (without the quotes).

Startup Items SLOW Down Startup...

One of the ways you can really increase the speed of your computer is by removing old startup items, or any apps you don't need to start up. For this, you will need a program like
CCleaner.
CCleaner is a computer cleaning and repair tool. You could use MSConfig, but I find that CCleaner does a better job. I'll give the instructions for MSConfig as well though if you want to do it that way. Please note you will need CCleaner later in this guide. So let's get Startups!

Install CCleaner, and open it.

Click (or tab to) the tools button. Then, click "startup.

You will then see a list of the programs that start when your computer starts. Select a program and click the "disable" button to stop it starting up. I recommend that you don't delete the startup items just in case you need to re-enable them later.

Be careful not to remove anything you're not sure about. If you don't know what one of the items is, look it up on
Google
or
Conduit Search.
And check before you disable it. Some drivers will put themselves in the startup items list.

When you're done, close CCleaner.

Note that with some screen readers, when you have clicked "disable" to remove an item, you will need to alt+tab out of the window and then back in again.

If you want to do it with MSConfig, here's how:

Go to run... on start menu or press windows key+R.

Type "msconfig" (without the quotes) and press enter.

in the system configuration utility, click the "startup" tab. There is also a services tab, but it's better to use the services app.

Once in the startup page, you will see a list of your startup items. Uncheck any of them to disable them.

When done, click "OK" or "close" and restart your computer.

If the system configuration utility pops up when you have restarted your computer, check the "never show this message or launch the utility again" checkbox, and click "OK.

If you disabled a lot of items, you should now have a much faster startup!

A little speed tweak for computers with duel core or quad core CPU'S!

There is a little speed tweak if you have a duel or quad core CPU. Here's what to do:

Go into msconfig, mentioned in the step above.

Click the "boot" tab.

Click "advanced options"

Then check the box labeled "NumProc=" or "Number of processers=" depending if you are on XP or older, or vista and 7.

When this box is checked, a combo box will appear. In this box, you can select the number of processers. Select 2 if you have a duel core or 4 if you have a quad core processor.

When done, click OK and then close the utility. Restart your computer.

Check your hard disks for arers.

If you reset your computer using the "hard reset" button a lot, it's likely you have harddisk arers slowing you down. To check for arers using the MS Check disk utility, do the following:

Go into "my computer" or "computer."

Right click (or press applications key) on the drive you want to check and click properties.

On the tools tab, Click "arer-Checking check now..." button.

The Check disk dialog window will appear. Check all the boxes and click "start." If your computer needs to be restarted, restart it and leave it. You will probably not get any sound, but you will hear hard disk activity. Just wait till it's done. It could take longer than 2 hours on larger drives.

When your computer boots back up, you will have a arer free drive.

Remove unwanted drivers.

Old unused drivers can slow down a computer. The best thing to do with these... is to remove them. Get a program like
Driver Magician.
Or you can use the device manager, by following the instructions below:

Right click (or press your applications key) on the my computer or "computer" icon on your desktop or start menu.

In the menu, click properties.

In the system properties, click the hardware tab, and then click "device manager.

In the device manager, expand the catagories in the tree-view and look for any drivers you don't need. If you find any, right-click (or applications key; shift+F10 also works) on them and click "uninstall."

If you are given a confirmation dialog, click "OK" or "Yes" to remove the driver.

When you are done, restart your computer.

Please note: do not remove any drivers if you don't know what they do, as some are esential system drivers. Make sure you have backups of your drivers, either from driver magician or other backup software, downloaded from internet, or on a CD.

Update your drivers.

Updating your drivers can really boost your computers performance. You will need to buy a program like
Driver magician.
- It's the easiest way i've found and i've never had any problems with it. It's the same software I recommended in the above step. To update your drivers using it:

Open driver magician.

Click the updates menu on the menubar, and then click "driver update."

A drivers update dialog will appear. It will take a few secconds or a few minutes to analise your system. When it is complete, you will be given a list of the drivers that can be updated.

To update a driver, select it and click the "download" button.

It will open up the download link in internet explorer (or your default browser, such as firefox) and you will be given a normal download dialog box.

ASave the file anywhere on your computer, and then install the drivers using the driver installation instructions. If it is a .zip file, it will normally have the instructions in the package. If it is a .exe file, run it and follow any on-screen instructions.

Do this until all your drivers are up-to-date.

When you have finished, close open windows and restart your computer.

Put a shutdown icon on your desktop.

You can put a shutdown icon on your desktop. To do this, open up notepad - start>programs>accessories>notepad. Or type notepad into your start menu's run dialog. Then, in your notepad document, type the word "shutdown" but without the quotation marks. Then, go to the save as item in the file menu. Type in the file name, "shutdown.bat" making sure you put quotes around the name. This is because if you put quotes around a name, notepad will not add a .txt extention to the end of the file. Then, save on your desktop or anywhere you like. Then you should have a batch file, that when opened, will shut down your computer. You can do this for restart as well - just type the word restart into the notepad document instead of "shutdown" and save it as "restart.bat" keeping the quotation marks around the file name.

Save some disk space by removing old system restore points.

System restore, can use a lot of disk space. I've known it to use about 50 GB on my computer (until I disabled it.) If your computer has been working properly for the last few weeks, you don't need your old restore points, so why keep them. To remove them, do the following:

Go to start>programs>accessories>system tools>disk cleanup. You can also type diskmgr in the run... box.

If you have more than 1 drive in your machine, a drive selection dialog will appear. Choose the drive you want to remove the restore points on (normally drive C:\) and click "OK."

Wait for disk cleanup to scan your drive. When it is done, look through the list of stuff you can clean. Check any boxes you want to clean - recycle bin, temp files, temp internet files... Anything that's in that list should be OK to clean. Then go to the "more options" tab.

Click on "system restore clean up..." button.

A dialog will appear asking if you want to delete all but the last restore point. Choose yes, and wait for it to remove the restore point files.

When it is done, click the "OK" button in disk cleanup.

A dialog will appear asking if you're sure you want to delete the files. Click "yes" or "delete files" button.

The disk cleanup utility will delete the files and then exit.

Add more RAM.

RAM (random access memory) is one of the main components of your computer, used to run your programs. Less ram means a slower computer. I recomend you have at least 1 GB of ram.

Use tweaking utilities to do the job for you.

There are a number of cool tweaking utilities out there. Here a few:

Windows XP powertoys - tweak UI.
Totalidea software - tweaking software for vista and windows 7 and XP.
XPLite, 2000 Lite, and 98 Lite - strip down windows and make it the way you want it.

Also check out the tweaking guides:

Here.

Back to the speed tweaks!

Improve boot times even more...

You can improve your boot times even more with this tweak:

First, restart your computer twice, each time wait 1 minute after everything has loaded.

When that is done, paste the following line into the run... dialog box in start menu:
Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
And click OK or press enter.

You will notice a lot of disk activity. Wait about 10-15 minutes for the computer to finish. You will not be notified when this is done.

Tweak the computer with Tweak UI, mentioned above.

The Microsoft "power toy" Tweak UI, is a free program that lets you tweak some hidden settings of windows. Install and Open tweak UI and make the following settings:

Under "general: Uncheck "optimise hard disk when idol." This will defrag your drives, but there are better tools than the windows defragmenter. They are given near the end of this guide.

Under "taskbar and start menu:" Uncheck "show name on start menu," "warn when low on disk space (unless you have a drive below 80 GB).

Note that these will not really speed up your computer, so these are optional.

Clean your drives...

Use the ccleaner program found
Here
To clean your drives. Open CCleaner, in the tree-view select what you want to clean, and then click "run cleaner." Click OK to the warning that files will be removed. CCleaner will then remove old files. When done, close CCleaner and launch the windows disk cleaner. Check everything, and then go to the "more options" tab. Click "system restore clean up..." button. Click yes if you want to delete all but the most recent restore point. (Note: Only do this if your computer is working fine, and has been for the last week or 2). When all restore points are gone, click OK. You will then be asked if you want to delete files, click "yes" or "delete files." Disk cleanup will exit when it is finished.

Finally, defragment your drives with a good defragmenter.

There are many defragmenters out there - some are good and some not so good. The best 2 that I've found are
Smart Defrag.
and
JK Defrag.

Follow the user guide for JK defrag. Here are instructions for smart defrag:

Launch Smart Defrag.

If this is your first defragment since applying these tweaks; or after cleaning your harddrive, select all your drives or partitions in the list view.

There is a drop down list/combo box next to the drive list view. Select "deep optimise" in this box. Then click the start button and give it about 1-2 hours to complete.

I recommend checking the "turn off computer" checkbox so that smart defrag will automatically shutdown your computer when it has finished.

End of guide!

Well, this is the end of tweak guide version 1! There will be more guides... and some for mac and linux as well. This is just the basics to get you started. Remember, backup! backup! backup!

What to do with an old computer?

2010-10-28T14:55:00.000+01:00

If you're like me, you will have used a few computers in your time. Undoubtedly, some will have died and been thrown away; but you may still have some sitting around that you're no longer using. If you've been wondering what to do with that collection of old computers, check out the list below for some ideas!

Turn it into a FTP Surver. FTP survers are a great way to share files, and with an FTP surver you can access your files from anywhere. Use a program like:
The Free File Zilla Surver

Turn it into a gaming machine. Got loads of games on your computer filling it up? Why not put them on that old computer! Anything with a CPU over 1 ghz should work fine.

Use it to teach yourself about the most advanced parts of an operating system. What happens if you delete windows registry or system 32 folder. What happens if you remove gnome or any desktop from linux. What happens if you manage to delete the "library" folder in mac OSX. This is your chance to find out! *NOTE* Backup everything before doing any of these things.

Does it have a big harddrive? Why not get a usb harddrive case and put it in, and build a external harddrive! Then you can always have a backup of your important files.

Install another operating system on it. It's quite interesting if your into computers, to install linux or a completely different operating system on it. another interesting OS to try,
React OS.

Take it to pieces. If the computer doesn't work, or if it is so old it won't run windows ME or even 98, (try windows 3.1 or dos) Take it to pieces. "What does a CPU look like?" "What is inside a harddrive?" "What does ram look like?" All these questions (and many more) will be answered if you take your old machine to pieces! Please check out my
Podcast
Where I demonstrate taking some of this stuff to pieces.

Give it to somebody else. There are people who arn't fortunate enough to have a computer, and if you know one of these people, give them your old computer.

Install windows 95 and jaws 3. See what old windows was like. Try web browsing and playing music. Try and get an audio editor going on this computer!

Turn it into an audio workstation. Get a good soundcard (creative audigy or better) and record and mix all your music on it.

Turn it into a jukebox. Load all your music onto it, install some software like winamp or iTunes, plug it into a amp and you have a music system!

Word processor. Install an older version of windows (this gives you more drive space for documents) and an older version of office, or the free
Open Office
or
Jarte.
And you have a simple, relyable word processor!

If it has a floppy drive, and a 50 MB or larger harddrive, try installing dos and even windows 3.1!

A web design computer. Are you a web designer? Do you have quite a big website you are always working on? Then an old computer is perfect. Put your web files on, install some webpage creation software (or just use notepad) and create your website on it!

That's all for the moment, but if you have any other suggestions, please
Contact Me and I will add them here!

Blog 160 - the all new micro-blogging service!

2010-10-17T18:07:00.000+01:00

IN the last few years, Micro-Blogging has become a popular form of communication on the internet. Made popular by the social networking site 'twitter', micro-blogging allows you to post updates of a limited amount of characters (usually 100-200 characters.) These updates can either be viewed on your public timeline, or in the timelines of anybody who is following you. You can follow other site users whom you find interesting, thereby receiving their updates.

Twitter is used by millions of people all over the world, both as a business and colaberation tool, and a social networking tool to communicate with friends, family, or anybody else you choose. However twitter does have it's downsides; if you wish to post images, videos, or files with your updates, external services must be used; meaning you must have editional accounts on, and rely on, other websites. This is where Blog160 comes in.

Blog160 is a free micro-blogging service, offering many of the features and functionality as twitter. It has a twitter-compatible API, allowing you to use it with twitter clients with minimal configuration, and can even be connected to your twitter profile, so you always have the best of both services. Blog 160 takes micro-blogging 1 step further, with the introduction of several new features:

Attachments on posts-Users can attach videos, links, images, and files to posts, removing the need for external services.

Facebook and twitter integration-Integrate all your favorite social networks profiles into blog160. Post to one from another, automatically import settings and profile information, etc.

RSS feeds-Blog 160 allows you to import RSS feeds into your account. These feeds can be from a blog, website, or other service. The system checks the feeds every 10 minutes, and publishes new content from your rss feeds in a post on your account, which can be viewed by your followers.

Groups and multiple networks-Blog160 allows you to create and participate in groups, and completely individual networks if you so wish.

With this feature list, blog160 is fast becoming the next microblogging service. SO what are you wating for; go to
Blog160.com
and check it out!

Changing technology... changing settings!

2010-08-25T18:34:00.000+01:00

It's really annoying, how everything in this day and age of technology thinks it knows better than the humans it was created by, from your super high end 8 billion inch tv to the latest kenwood food mixer. OK, maybe not the mixer, but you get my point:(

We wired a 5.1 system into my soundcard; actually went quite well for once. Of course, when I want headphones (most of the time) I must turn off 5.1 settings or get my ears blow off. all very well... but, when I start my computer, the soundcard detects my 5.1 is plugged in and switches back again, so I have to change it when ever my computer crashes (5000 times a day) and when I need to restart (another 3000) I have to change it all back. Please, creative, if I want my 5.1 system on, i'll turn it on. If I set my card up, leave my settings alone! OK, my fault. Stop using high end speaker systems, just leave the neighbours alone and use the headphones.

Low cost or free version of jaws?

2010-07-12T09:45:00.000+01:00

It's been a long time since I wrote on this blog. Finally got round to posting, thought about something to post about, so here goes:

BAVIS (blind and visually impaired services) have created a petition, for a free or low cost lite version of jaws, called "jaws lite." This version of jaws will be smaller and lighter, with jaws stripped down to it's basic screen-reading functionality, and none of the added extras. It will be free or low cost for all users.
Read more and sign the petition!

Testing windows 7 on old hardware.

2010-05-15T14:22:00.000+01:00

I've read the articles, and watched the videos on youtube. And it's true; windows 7 can run on old computers, and yes, the computers are actually usable.

I've been thinking of making the switch for a while now, but wanted to try windows7 before I go install it on my main pc (a 2.66 ghz duel core with 4 gb ram.) I'd been reading about how you could install windows 7 with 512 mb ram, and a very small single core CPU, so I thought it was time to try it. Here are the pc's specs:

1.21 GHZ AMD Athlon XP processor.

512 MB ram (according to system information, there is only 480 mb).

30GB IDE Harddrive running at 7200 RPM.

16 MB onboard video card.

Dvd RW drive.

Onboard lan, USB 1.1, ps/2 mouse and ps/2 keyboard.

As you will see from the specs above, this pc is very small and underpowered compared with my powerful duel core mentioned above. However, surprisingly, this pc runs windows 7 perfectly.

No, I'm not going to install all my games on it; and i'm not going to atempt to use it for video editing or audio editing, but as a simple computer for day-to-day tasks, it works pretty well.

The boot time is a little slow (it takes 52 seconds to boot) however, once everything is booted, it runs like a dream. Applications run smoothly, sound is brilliant, and the computer stays at a cool 42 degrees, which for this computer is a great improvement considering it would go to around 56 when running xp.

People have asked me "if i'm going to upgrade to windows 7, I have to buy a new pc, right?" My answer is generally no. If you have a reasonable pc, with anything over 1 ghz and 512 mb ram, try installing windows 7 on it before you rush out and get the fastest gaming computer you can buy. However, if you have a pentium 2, it's not going to run windows 7.

Record screen and audio to a movy using quicktime on mac.

2010-04-20T19:49:00.000+01:00

Well, i've spent ages looking for a program that would let me make video tutorials on youtube, even though I'm completely blind and cannot use a camera. I looked everywhere for a freeware program that could record my screen as well as audio. I found some that could only record the screen, some that were audio recorders only, and some that costed almost as much as a mac itself.

I was playing around on my macbook this evening, and I found the "new screen recording" option in teh quicktime player's file menu. Basicly, this allows you to record the screen... and also allows you to record the audio! When you select the option in the file menu, or press ctrl cmd N, you are given a window that allows you to set your options and start the recording. In the options menu, you can set your audio device and quicktime will record from this device, as well as the screen itself. So, set your options, and hit the start recording button!

A window will appear saying that the window will be hidden so it doesn't get in the way when recording from the screen etc. It tells you how to stop the recording when the window isn't there; the easiest way being to press ctrl cmd esc when quicktime is in the forground. Hit the "start recording" button, and the window will dissappear. Start talking, and carry on with your video; anything you do on your mac will be recorded. For example, if you open safari, the viewer will be able to see the webpage, as well as the safari window.

When you're finished, go back to quicktime and press ctrl cmd esc, and the player window will appear. The video will have been saved to your movies folder, and, using the share button, you can send it to iTunes, Youtube, or simply keep the .mov file.

Get apple's for free!

2010-04-19T12:39:00.001+01:00

It's my second post in about 5 minutes; time for me to ramble on about apples. Not those big juicy green things you eat, the company that makes the computers you see on the shelves in stores and think "I just have to have one of those"

Of course, i'm talking about mac's, iPods, iPhones, and of course iPads. However, the prices of these things are high; a mac mini, costs about 510 pounds in the uk.

Recently, however, I found a site that is giving these away... for free! This site offers a number of items, such as the 21.5 inch iMac, the 27 inch model, iPhones, iPod touches, etc. All you have to do is sign up, complete 1 simple free offer, get a few people to do the same, and the item will be sent right to your house! So, to get started, click this link:
http://apple.freebiejeebies.co.uk/263776

Enjoy!
P.s: try at your own risk.

First post...

2010-04-19T12:32:00.000+01:00

well, Eventually, i've finally posted my first blog post. Not much to say;)

Perhaps I should introduce myself?

I'm Ashley Cox, creater of
http://www.ashleycox.co.uk/

and
The AC Tech Podcast.

I'm into technology, and have been for years. My first computer was an intel pentium 4 pc with 256 mb ram and 40 GB harddrive; so, as you can probably tell, i've only been using computers for about 7 years.

Not much else to say... check back often as I will be posting more on here!