Win-doze

Conflict!

Posted on September 21, 2008 by Aditya

There was this info on LuisDS’s Flickr page that Microsoft’s new ad campaign “I Am A PC” was made on Mac. He even had a screenshot of it.

Am I A PC?

Notice that the Software is “Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh “. LOL! And the e-mail id is sean@windows.com! But as Lithium1377 said “it would make sense. if you are going to be creative, go mac!”

So I went to Microsoft’s ad page, and downloaded the same picture. In the picture properties in Windows, i saw:

I Am A PC on a PC

The Software is now “Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows “. Are the properties affected by the OS? No! Microsoft ripped the old image and put up as new one, with changed metadata or saved in Ps CS3 for Windows.

These guys can’t even edit metadata… I wonder if Sean still has his job.

But all this is not new. Why does Microsoft make everything in Adobe Flash, when they have it’s competitor Silverlight? Only Steve Ballmer knows ;D

Boost Up Your Computer

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Aditya

Yes! This tutorial is the ultimate guide to boost up your computer and make it work like never before. There is no need for any additional software.

This tutorial consists of two parts:

Part I – Change Appearance

1) Click Start

2) Right-click on “My Computer” and click “Properties” in the drop down menu.

3) In the Properties dialog box, click on the “Advanced” tab.

4) Under the Advanced tab, click “Settings” under the Performance frame.

5) In the Settings dialog box, choose the “Adjust for best performance” option, and click OK twice.

You will now have a Windows-98-style desktop. Of course this is not what you wanted, but this speeds up performance considerably.

Part II – Remove Startup Components

1) Hit Windows Key + R (shortcut for Run) –or—alternatively access it from the Start menu.

2) Type msconfig and hit enter or click OK.

3) In the System Configuration Utility dialog box click on the “Startup” tab.

4) See? How many startup programs are enabled!! Click “Disable All”.

5) Enable only those programs which are required at startup. I enabled ashDisp (because it was the avast! Antivirus program) and µTorrent (because I want downloads to continue as soon as I start up my computer.

6) Click OK. Click Restart on the message that follows.

7) After restart, you should see this message. Check the “Don’t show this message or launch the System Configuration Utility when Windows starts” box and click OK.

You should now see a considerable change in your computer performance.

If these don’t work, contact me via comments or run a virus scan using avast! Probably, your computer is virus infected.

Google Chrome: Google’s Hit at Browsers

Posted on September 9, 2008 by Aditya

As Google was close to it’s 10th Anniversary, they decided to launch it’s new browser known as Google Chrome. As usual, it’s in Beta and I feel it has a long way to go before it actually reaches a stable version.

After downloading Chrome, which is an online installer, I fired it up and met with this:

Click for a high-res image

Strange, isn’t it? I’m not quite used to a blue browser interface, except when I use Konqueror on Mandrake Linux, or Firefox on Ubuntu. The nice thing is that there isn’t large amounts of clutter on the window, so you can concentrate on browsing alone. Whereas in Firefox and IE, the buttons make me mad.

Like Opera, Chrome has a list of thumbnails of recently viewed pages. This makes it easy to access certain sites. Notice that there’s aslo a “recently closed tab” box which one finds in Firefox only after extensive. Without exaggeration, it can be found in the History tab. 😀

Although Google Chrome is pretty good, it’s still in the Beta version (as I said before) and will remain in the Beta version for eternity, I guess (just like Google Talk).

Also, Chrome’s tab handling is absolutely pathetic. Have a look at this: How the heck am I gonna know what these tabs contain?!?

And if you look at the tab handling for Firefox, it’s impressive. Much better than Google Chrome.

What a Nice Way To Handle Tabs!

Plus Google Chrome slowed down my PC. I don’t think any broswer needs a dual core processor to run. Can’t browsers run on Pentium4s with a decent 2.4 Ghz clock speed?

However, Chrome’s crash handling impressed my, big time. It’s one of the main reasons why I use Chrome. Every tab in Chrome is treated as a separate application, not a part of an application. It also has a built-in task manager to kill unresponsive tabs. Note that it’s the tab that becomes unresponive, not the browser itself.

Task Manager Inside Chrome

Once opened, one can see a Windows-style task manager, with an “End Process” option and also “Stats for Nerds” which gives a detailed analysis of each tab

The Task Manager.

Stats For Nerds

Notice that Firefox 3.0.1 takes up almost 4 times the memory as Chrome does, but still Chrome hangs… Wonder why.

Chrome cannot be run from “Run…” (WinKey+R). But when you type “firefox” in the bar, then it works! So Firefox has an easy access.

As far has the Acid3 Browser Test is concerned, Firefox 3.0.1 receives a lower rating (71/100) than Chrome (75/100), although Linktest failed in Chrome…

But still I prefer Firefox. Chrome has a long way to go to have a passsionate club of users. Firefox has dozens of them. If you still love the Chrome looks, get a Chrome theme for Firefox.

Boost Your MTNL Broadband

Posted on September 5, 2008 by Aditya

This post deals with the terrible MTNL service and connections and how to make your TriBand work like a dream.

Everybody knows that MTNL made the Broadband dream come true. We were through with the slow dial-up connection and finally upgraded to broadband! Yeah!

But now, the service is absolutely horrible. Of course Airtel Broadband rocks and provides better service than MTNL, but its way too expensive. All we need to do is make some settings and tweak the settings a bit to make the Internet work like a charm.

Follow these steps:

1) Open Internet Explorer only. Firefox will not do.

2) Type 192.168.1.1 in the address bar, and a login window will appear, Type admin in the username as well as in the password field.

The Login Screen

3) Now you should face an image which looks like this. Click WAN on the sidebar.

The Home Page

4) Now, you should go on to this page. Enter the settings as shown in the picture. In the username field, enter your telephone number – the one through which your broadband is connected. In the password field, enter your CA number which is given on your telephone bill. However, the CA number can also be derived from your phone number. If your phone number is 27xxxxxx, then your CA number will be 2041xxxxxx.

If you changed your password on http://www.register.bol.net.in, then you should enter that password.

When you’re through, click Apply.

The WAN settings page.

5) Click on the Tools tab at the top of the page and click System. Now click Save and Reboot. This will take some time, and the page may not reload, But that does not matter. Don’t panic if you get a “Page Not Found” error or something like that.

The System Page

That’s it, you’re done! Now the net should work like a charm. If it doesn’t, I offer my heartiest condolences.

Posted on August 14, 2008 by Aditya

This is a post about why Windows sucks big time and why Ubuntu Linux or practically any Linux version can give any version of Windows a run for its money.

Reasons to use Windows

There are basically three reasons to use Windows:

Microsoft Office 2007 (because OpenOffice.org can never give such awesome text effects; and I’m still trying to figure out how make this work with WINE)
iTunes (because Apple does not offer support to Linux and iTunes doesn’t run on WINE. Although I can use Rhythmbox to transfer songs to my iPod, but still adding photos, making playlists is not possible. And Ankur Bannerjee does not like Rhythmbox and I agree with some of his points too.)
Safari (because it does not work with WINE either and it’s text rendering is awesome; although it is quite buggy and unstable)

That’s it, folks!