Omkar™

Windows® Vista is a high-end OS. Lets go to the basics: why do we use an Operating System (OS)? To gracefully interact with our hardware and provide a baseline for our software to allow them do things we want to with the help of the hardware. Have a glance at the 'Minimum Requirements' for using Windows® Vista. As Darasen has rightly quoted in this topic, So lets put it straight:Windows® Vista uses much of your hardware to run itself, leaving little more, 'leftovers', for your games, applications. Well, suppose you do have that high-end hardware config, allowing you to run Windows® Vista & leaves much for your 'hardcore gaming', then as GeorgeT quoted, Bottom line: If you're happy using your current PC with Windows® XP, then its the best you can get. Windows® Vista is only feasible if you plan to upgrade your hardware & meet with those specs, which also will give you just the same performance as on WIndows® XP, nothing more! So much for Windows® Vista??

That's some exaggeration, FirefoxRocks! But yes, I believe most of us 'ripe' internet users have visited such a website for reasons of their own. The last time I recall doing that is 'cause one of my colleagues quoted me 'the only' website to get some relatively out-dated (all regards to current supersonic trends to bilateral change) stuff. You do expect loads of 404 errors ("damn, dead end!") on such old, rusty sites which are either hosted free (with ADs) or are owned by someone who doesn't care about the (obliviously meager, for him) hosting costs he keeps paying for it. Nonetheless, if you're desperate for that something and have been told that this is the only stinking website on the entire WWW that hosts it, then you would take the effort to find it (and instinctively more to snap out of it as soon as you grab hold, and make a point to comment about your visit to your referrer!). The other day I came across a site that had all its links configured to open in new windows! Thanks to Firefox, they just counted more tabs, but that is something you'd never want. Imagine the side-navigation links opening up new tabs and clotting your browser to more smudged pages of the insane website! But the truth remains, that its the World Wide Web. There're good sites, and there are bad sites. And there are sites like these (!) If they've got what you're looking for, you gotta stand it all!

Well I glanced through the release notes for SP3 (had my fingers crossed & luckily there were no Genuine Advantage checks for the meagerly 324KB pdf download, phew! 'cause going through that ordeal diverts you from what you were originally doing on your sparingly-compatible Firefox on the Microsoft website & makes you forget what & why you were trying to download in the first place!) and the summary says it all. Unlike previous service packs, this pack is intended to - So basically if you have been updating XP regularly via Microsoft Update, you don't need to have this. If you haven't been updating (or haven't ever done that) and are still living with it, you don't need to have this. Don't you think Microsoft is undermining the importance of its own updates by publishing such comments in their own articles? What we can make out of this is, choose your own updates. Fortunately, the 'white paper' describes in detail the abstract contents of SP3 and apart from NAP it clearly states that nothing has been ported to XP from superseding versions of Microsoft's products. (This too, doesn't seem to be of any deemed importance to most XP users and virtually all Microsoft WindowsÂŽ XP Home Edition users!) So is WindowsÂŽ XP SP3 next on the list of downloads for this week? Most probably not.

Thanks a ton, guys!I was actually upto uninstalling my programs with this nuisance (left with only ~52MB) of free space on C:! SpaceMonger worked out perfectly for me! So here's the culprit(s): %temp% revealed a ~1GB file, which turned out to be an isolated image of a really old CD burn (sometime around Feb '07) - maybe Nero left it off unsolicited (though it usually doesn't!). System Restore was the one actually swelling up the drive. Everytime I used to uninstall some programs to free up disc space, it make a restore point, eating up the same amount of space again! Believe it or not, System Restore hold(ed) ~3.5GBs of data! Damn that! System Restore was disabled in CP. Stealth operations, is it?! Also, since I was into SpaceMonger, I found a couple of ancient movies I had on my HDD, which I don't happen to recall viewing since they got in there in the first place! But we aren't let-goers of Digital Media, are we? Burn(t) 'em down DVDs! So that freed up another ~5GB of space - considered a bonus, I should say! At the end of it, I'm happy to have resolved the issue effortlessly, thanking you!

A few days ago, I had a lil' 'Low disk space' balloon popping up from my taskbar saying I was running out of space on C: (I could hardly believe it!) But ever since I got this 4th PC, I've been keeping the C: partition purely for Windows (with some obvious experiences 3 rounds of fire!) But then I had NFS UG-2 on it this time, so I ripped it off freeing ~1.7GB of space. Now my partition is worth ~10GB. The next day, it pops up again, saying I have less than 200MB left on C:! How on earth is it possible for ~1.7GB worth free space getting hogged up in 24hrs without me intentionally doing anything?! So the immediate concern was malware/virii. So is there any such malware that fakes Low Disk Space warnings, or does really fill up free space by junk data?! Of course, I scanned my PC using Spybot S&D, which found the usual tracking cookies n stuff. And Avast! Antivirus, which found a trojan horse worth a few cents. Nothing down there. Problem still persists - everytime I free up space squeezing something out of C:, its back to <200MB! Help!

Ever wondered while copying GBs of data from one place to another on Windows, staring at the file copy animation dialog (which actually give newbies the 'feel' of copying ~ for Xperts, the HDD LED is good enough! ) - and at other times, when you've added a new disk drive (USB Mass storage, or such sort) when on slower systems, opening My Computer shows that (darn) 'Searching for items' animation? Well I was thinking of seeing something better than that puffed-up yellow torch looking around for items in there! Anyone having eXplored Windows® directory structure could tell me where Windows® keeps these animations? And what type are they? AVI (Sure hope so!) I'd like to spice up the visuals and replace these with some (more) geek animations... Having customized everything else (tight from the cursor to Window Title Bars) ~ this is the only thing that somehow 'doesn't fit in'... I wonder if this is possible? If you do look into it, please let us know!

Have anyone's ears been keen to pick up the Nat Geo Jingle evrytime it play on the NGC (National Geograpihc Channel)? Its at the end of every promo or whilst the 'Coming Up' list!I'd like to have that sound in my collection! Can anybody find an mp3 or any other format for this jingle? I checked YouTube, but there's nothing that plays this jingle..Hope you guys can figure out what I'm talking about!

Its a world of wireless connectivity, and a hoard of I/O devices to choose from! And all of it applies to music needs! When it comes to listening to songz all day, I'd prefer the headphones, rather than the sound-system making the society aware of it just for the bass! Now there's an online radio station that I'd like to listen to all day ~ but I'm roaming around my place all day - you know its not possible to be in the same room forever! But I'd like to have it uninterrupted! So instead of using the sound system on my PC, I'd use the headphones on my cell phone! You see, I've got a Bluetooth™ Dongle for my PC and a Sony Ericsson™ Z550i Cell Phone (which obviously support Bluetooth™) I have the Walkman Series DeepBass headphones with MegaBass™, n they're as often in my ears as I'm awake with 'em! I'd love to listen to this online radio channel on those beauties! I was wondering whether its possible to stream the audio output from the PC to the cell phone via a Bluetooth™link? Can you suggest any software that would allow me for this? Software applies to both PC and cellphone (Z550i supports Java™ applications) All help is appreciated! P.S.:This is not to be thought of as streaming audio from the cell phone to a Bluetooth™ Headset! And please excuse the over-usage of the trademark, its just that it looks so geek!

I've not been very keen on doing a PhD in Microsoft® Office Applications, but when it comes to using Excel for more complex processes, its much more than just deriving a formula for adding 2 cells! One of the engineers in my Dad's office was driven nuts by 'the way things work around here'! They sell carbides and similar industrial tools and like everyone, they've got a pricelist and stock list. Now, the not-so-anticipated part of the available data and resources is the way it is presented. Here's what the dilemma is all about: The pricelist contains Product ID of particular inserts/carbides (which is a 5 digit pure numeric) AND the Grade corresponding to that carbide. These are just 2 of the many attributes associated with each carbide type. The stocklist contains the same Product ID, but not the Grade. Now, when the engineers does his job, he's got to include the Grade in the stocklist he presents to the customer. And he's sitting all day there cascading 2 excel windows and simply adding a new column in the stocklist for the Grade and manually looking up the Grade corresponding to each Product ID in the pricelist, copying it to the right cell in the stocklist. We were looking for something that would create a database of the Product ID and the corresponding Grade, and a macro that would look up the data and append it to the required document. Now is this possibleusing the (seemingly vast) resources from Microsoft® Office ~ if yes, can somebody please guide me into simplifying this cumbersome task? We'll be using Microsoft® Office XP Professional Edition.

Thanks everybody, the problem has been resolved. I just had to adjust the settings for ICS/NAT Gateway in Z|A. I just wonder, I have Z|A Pro on the host computer, but there's no firewall on the laptop (I mean its got the Windows one, that's as good as nothing! ) - so does this Z|A protect the laptop too? Does the data flow to/fro the Internet by the laptop filter through the Z|A Firewall? Or do I have to install Z|A on the client laptop too? And yes ~ I'm not exactly sure how ICS works on clients. I mean each client has got its own IP address in the local subnet. That's not nothing to do with that of the Broadband Service. My ISP automatically allocates me a dynamic IP address each time I connect, but if I share this connection with my laptop, which appears on the local subnet, is it that for the ISP it apprears as if the transactions made to/fro the laptop are coming from the c\same IP address as the host computer?

I liked the GetVideo extension for Firefox, and it does pretty much its job ~ just that my Download Manager doesn't seem to get what's going on doesn't take over the download automatically. I didn't like the FLVPlayer, though. Its got nothing! It just Plays the given FLV File/URL and nothing else! My cell phone supports 3GP files, I wonder if I could get 'em converted to 3GP somehow?! Besides, isn't this illegal? I mean there must me some reason Google didn't make a link for downloading the movies straight.. How else would they get repeated visitors to their site?! But it doesn't look like it as I found this extension on Mozilla's official website!

I'm in complete agreement with all above! Admin!! ~ your role to play!

I've been using ZoneAlarm Pro for about an year now with my personal desktop to be protected with all the various Internet Connections I've opted for. Most recently, I've been using Broadband over my Ethernet LAN card, and Z|A protects my PC perfectly fine! But now, I wish to share my Internet connection with a laptop over Wireless LAN (Ad-hoc connection). I've successfully configured both systems for the wireless connectivity, and have enabled ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) for my broadband connection with the Wireless Adapter. Note that I'm not using a router, and am connecting directly to the laptop using a secure Ad-Hoc connection! Everything works well and fine and I can access the Internet from both systems, as long as Z|A is not interfering! As soon as I start Z|A, it block off access to the ICS only! I can still the the laptop in my workgroup and access its shared resources! Just that I cannot use the Internet from the laptop any more. Z|A detected the Wireless Network when it was first established, and I've configured it to be in the Trusted Zone. It shows the following Network config: IP Address : 192.168.0.0 Subnet Mask : 255.255.255.0 (I guess nobody could have settings more default than these! ) Now, my desktop (the host with the Broadband connection) has a static IP as 192.168.0.1 and the laptop has an automatically assigned IP by DCHP. The Default gateway for the laptop is again 192.168.0.1 Can anybody figure out why Z|A is getting against my wits?! I liked it so much for the best firewall against the Internet! Guess its not oiled up enough to handle WLAN Connectivity... P.S.:I tried the ZoneLabs Instant Support, but its just a bot that can answer to simple questions. As you can see, mine is actually a scenario!

Hey, Jimmy89, that article was really helpful (keeping aside the childish methods Microsoft uses to convince their users! ) Well, I did exactly what it said, and hurray! I got the 2 computers to see each other and connect wirelessly! Here's what happens- Both computers are connected to the same Wireless Network (Ad-Hoc), with an automatically assigned Private IP address (It takes a while for 'Acquiring Network Address'). I've checked the 'Share Internet Connection' on my desktop for the Wireless connection. Now is that all? I mean they're connected BUT on both computers, the received packets seem to be 0! (Damn!) Another thing, I have one Ethernet card for my desktop and I connect to my broadband through this card. While activating ICS, I selected this LAN to share. Now, help me out if i appear a bit confused, but there's just one LAN port and I cannot select my Broadband connection to share with ICS. It works only with LAN connections. So do I have to do something more?! And yes, the fact remains, that I cannot use the Internet via the laptop!

Can anyone please help me out in setting up a Wireless LAN Network on Ad-Hoc (Peer-to-Peer) with the following scenario? I have a Broadband Internet Connection via Ethernet to my Desktop. Its comes in directly from a DSL modem & doesn't have a router. Both my Desktop & Laptop have WLAN radios. (And they're very much tried & tested!) Both have Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional with Service Pack 2. Here is what I need to do: Connect wirelessly between my desktop & the laptop AND share the Internet connection among them. I do not have a wireless Gateway/Router, so it'd have to be peer-to-peer. The usability should be such that when I have my desktop working and connected to the Internet, the laptop should connect wirelessly later, and use the Internet Connection. Can you please explain me how to achieve this using either Windows® Zero Configuration Wireless Settings, or by any third-party software.