sparx

Google's feed reader has undergone a major facelift. Thank God that the developers realised that the old scrollable interface just wasn't practical enough for users with lots of feeds. Categorization has always been a requirement to handle feed overload. New features: * Expanded view and list view (similar to Gmail, list view shows only the title and a small snippet, while the expanded view shows the entire post) * Simplified sharing functionality (just click on the share link, and add snippets from blog posts to a public page. You can share that page with your friends, so they can read your favorite pieces.) * Infinite scrolling (no upper bound for how many blog posts you can read and instead of clicking to read the next post, you can just scroll) * Unread counts (can't count more than 100 items) * Mark all as read

Depends on the program in question - if they require certain registry entries to be set, then they obviously have no way of accessing those entries in Vista as they've been installed under Win XP. I suggest you re-install the apps under Vista, in the same location as that installed under XP. naturally save any custom templates / option files so they aren't overwritten by the freshly installed ones.

Regardless of which backup solution you adopt, you must remember this - VERIFICATION OF DATA INTEGRITYBig words, quite geeky sounding too, except what they imply is something that most of us tend to neglect. Out of the entire spectrum of users, very few of us actually take regular backups. An even smaller percentage of those back-uppers (for lack of a better word in my vocabulary) do so regularly and at a fixed schedule. An even more miniscule fraction routinely check the integrity of their backups. DVDs / Optical Media (BluRay) can get scratched, Hard Disks can get bad sectors and someone might decide to put your entire collection of backup tape media next to an MRI machine ;-) [for the uninitiated, an MRI machine has extremely powerful magnets which can easily wipe data from magnetically stored storage devices]. The backed up data has to be kept safe form physical hazards like fire, water and even inherent environmental moisture not to forget fluctuating temperatures. And obviously - keep your backups in an off-site location. At regular intervals, check your backup to make sure that the data stored can be retrieved. Don't save data in spanned archives, for that's just inviting disaster. If a single archive in a spanned set goes wonky, you'll be left without access to the rest of the files in the archive. It's better to create separate archives for the folders / files that you wish to backup.

There are many such tricks that have already been posted in these forums. Have a look around, son and don't forget to search before you post.In any case, I don't think it works in Win XP, Server 2003 and Vista. Could anyone check and confirm please?

I've tried Azureus, Kazaa Lite, EMule and Limewire for at least 2-3 weeks each before I settled on Shareaza. It's fast, the interface can be configured to one's liking and the fact that it is developed on the Open Source software premise also helped to make up my mind. Naturally, no adware or malware are embedded / included in it. Latest version is 2.2.10. available on the official site, although it hasn't been updated in almost a year now, but it still works just as well. Speaks volumes about it.

Stay with what you have now. Wait for the 2007 edition of Symantec products because Symantec have *finally* listened to their consumers and users and have designed the latest round of products to be very light on resources (lighter than any of their previous releases) and simple to use while still making sure that they deliver the performance which saw them being the most used security product. Norton Internet Security 2007 is now available for purchase as a direct download from the Symantec Store. The new interface is quicker and much more responsive in early pre-release testing than its earlier avatars but is still not as lean on resources as other packages like Kaspersky.

Ever wondered why your PC takes so long to boot up? Ever consider why so many techies and geeks swear off Symantec and McAfee products? How about those seemingly traitorous thoughts you might have had sometimes about ditching Windows and jumping on to the Tux bandwagon (read Linux)... Well, there are solutions, but this post is more to point out one man's efforts towards finding and spreading the truth about startup times of programs. That's Oli Warner of ThePCSpy.com and here's the low down on his experiments so far: A PC with Windows XP SP2 was loaded up with some of the more common programs in use today. These programs were spread out over a wide-ranging diaspora of everyday use apps. Security Software: Norton Internet Security 2006 McAfee SecurityCentre Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0.0.303 BitDefender v10 Office Software: Microsoft Office 2003 (v11) OpenOffice 2.0.3 Chat Software: Windows Live Messenger 8 Yahoo Instant Messenger 8.0 AOL Instant Messenger 1.5 Preview Trillian 3.1 Basic (with all plug-ins) Gaim 1.5.0 (again with all plug-ins) Codecs and Fonts: Apple QuickTime 7.1 DivX 6.3 K-Lite Codec Pack 2.76 FULL 100 Fonts 1000 Fonts Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Download Software: Kazaa 3 (+included crapware) Azureus 2.5.0.0 (+ Java Runtime) uTorrent 1.4 BitComet 0.7 Compression Utilities: WinRAR WinZIP WinAce 7-Zip Other Applications: Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition Adobe Photoshop CS2 Macromedia Studio MX 2004 VMWare Workstation 5.5.1-19 Java Runtime 1.5.0.06 .NET Framework Runtime 2.0 DirectX 9.0c I can't really post the results because I haven't obtained his permission, but suffice it to say that Norton Internet Security was the worst offender, having added 43 seconds to the startup time of a newly installed Win XP installation. Just imagine what it'll do to the startup time after your registry gets filled with age. Terrible! Next on the list, was the 1000 fonts that were loaded adding 30 seconds to the startup time! So, it proves what the geeks have been saying for ages - the fewer fonts there are, the quicker your load times will be. There's a nice bar graph depicting the results and I hope the bloatware developers and Symantec can have a look at it and more importantly learn from it. Protection is useless if the user is hassled so much that he / she refuses to use it.

you also need to make sure that the recording output needs to be set up correctly in the volume control panel. If you can't see a visibly moving sound graph, the software can't "hear" the music being played. Of course, if it's a plain network connect error, have a look @ firewall / blocking software and allow Tunatic to access the net.

I'm getting older and I just can't remember all these tips and tricks ;-). Merely saving them would entail my having to manually perform the required editing within the registry. Personally, I'm a big fan of the GUI, so I'd much rather have a decent looking but workable interface where I can pick and choose the tweaks I'd like applied. Most, if not all, of the above listed tweaks are present in a number of tweaking utilities available with just a quick web search. Here are two of my favourites: 1. Microsoft TweakUI - One of the rarer instances where Microsoft has named a product which users will find easier to know the function of by looking at its name. v1.33 is older and is meant for users running Win 9x / ME / NT and Win 2000. The newer TweakUI PowerToy for Windows XP is one of those listed on the PowerToys page and needs at least Win XP SP1 or Windows Server 2003 to work. Lots of easily customizable options and explanations are provided. A tree style listing categories on the left and the actual tweaks available on the right make it very easy to work with. 2. Group Policy Editor: Although not an out-and-out tweaking software per se, it still has the ability to make changes to the UI and to other Microsoft components of the OS like Internet Explorer, Outlook Express and others. Very powerful, not for the faint of heart but worth taking a look if you love tweaking stuff to your staisfaction. Only available on Win XP Professional - you'll need admin rights to run it. START > RUN > gpedit.msc An excellent guide for GPO. Heed the warnings well ! 3. X-Setup Pro: The big daddy of tweaks! Supported by a community which frequently adds tweak and hacks that can be downloaded straight into the program. It has unfortunately gone shareware now, but here's a link to an almost as capable last known freeware version 6.6. It's largish in size ~4.1 MB but it also has the features to match - backups can be created, experimental plugins can be disabled depending on the user's level of proficiency etc. What I like best is the RECORD mode which logs all the changes made to the registry and allows you to save it in a corresponding REG file. There are other tweakers like FreshUI too, but I've found X-Setup more than capable and beats the others hands down.

some hard disks and optical drives have also been known to make very audible noises, especially as you claim after a period of inactivity of a few weeks.I'd suggest you also check by leaving the case open and then booting up. Keep your ears peeled to locate the source. You can in the meantime, disable non-essential peripherals one by one to narrow down the source of the noise.As you've already surmised in more cases than not, it's the fan that's the culprit, so don't discard that theory under any circumstances either.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LINUX This is the text of the usenet post that Linus Torvalds sent on 25 AUG 1991. Hello everybody out there using minix -I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-) PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(. Linus Benedict Torvalds, Aug 25 1991 You've come a long long way from there, Tux. And thanks for scaring the pants of Microsoft along the way.

My choices in IM clients were dictated more by the inceasing number of contacts who started using different services. Took the plunge with Mirabilis ICQ in 1997 - some months before the takeover by AOL. Also used Yahoo Messenger for a while until the start of the millenium when most of my contacts were MSN Messenger users. Naturally, I couldn't just get rid of the other clients, because most of them were exhibiting the kind of brand loyalty that a marketing man gets wet dreams about, so I turned to multi-protocol clients. Trillian was the first and it was good while it was free. It did all that was expected of it and connected to all 3 protocols at once without the overhead of the pretty and overly fancy individual clients. I was later introduced to GAIM and always being one to fly the OpenSource banner, I decided to try it out for a few weeks (of course - the fact that I was playing around with Knoppix and other *nix flavours at the time also pushed me to use the same client on my Windows partition too). I am now a huge fan of the Open Source Miranda IM. Unbelievably large collection of plugins allows the user to customize it to a very large extent. There's also support for so many different protocols, some of which I haven't even heard of . But then comes Google Talk with its simplistic interface and it's innate ability to conduct voice chats all embedded in a client smaller than some images that I've seen. I was hooked. Now it's a combination - for most times I use Miranda for communicating with all 4 protocols (ICQ / Yahoo / MSN / Google Talk). For vox chats - I switch to Google Talk. I'm now championing the cause of , a web based multi-protocol messenger service that functions within a browser window, has full support for Firefox and also keeps logs of the chats you've had so it's easy to dig up references to any topic you might have discussed with your friends earlier. It's being continuously developed and new features are being added regularly.

As so many users here are recommending GoDaddy, I'd also like to chip in again with an added incentive - a 10% off discount code. Chris Pirillo, a leading techie and part of the fabled LockerGnome group of sites has just started a comic strip called BLaugh. This is in turn sponsored in part by GoDaddy which is offering this 10% discount code to readers. No need to subscribe or give out your email. Just enter the code bLaugh at the GoDaddy checkout screen to avail of the savings.

This is true only for motherboards that support dual channel memory. Also, the two memory DIMMs need to be placed in appropriate slots for the full effect to be obtained. Although, nowhere near double as fast, dual channel RAM controllers will easily result in 20-30% increase in efficiency. For dual-channel memory to work, both DIMMS must be of identical capacity and operating frequency - you can't expect a 400 MHz/256 MB DIMM to work in conjunction with a 533 MHz/256 MB DIMM. More info here.

My condolences for your loss. Remember his life and the memories. Celebrate them.