One thing I like to do is point out the extra software applications try to sneak in during installation. Especially it that software can definitely be considered “Crap-Ware”. I have found a couple of instances of this while reinstalling Trillian on my Vista machine.
The first example to rear its head is the Weather Channel Desktop. Unless you are a extreme weather enthusiast there is really no reason to install. Even if you are a major weather enthusiast, there are a lot better applications out there to choose from. Just uncheck the box next to the license agreement.
After that the next one to show up is the Ask Toolbar. Unless your default search engine is Ask … again there is not reason to install this. I make sure and uncheck both boxes on this screen and continue with set up.
In my opinion Trillian is one of the coolest IM clients out there, and remembering to take time to read the installation screens can save unneeded software removal at a later time.
If you open up a lot of PuTTY windows just to keep connections open, you might be interested in an updated version that supports minimizing to the system tray. I find this very useful for opening tunnels that I wouldn’t otherwise need to interact with on the desktop.
As regular readers know well, I’m a huge fan of using AutoHotkey to automate my entire computing experience… but in Windows 7 and Vista there’s a serious limitation since you can’t run a script as Administrator by default. This means that your hotkeys can’t interact with windows running in Admin
If you can’t figure out how to turn on the Details or Preview panes in Windows Vista Explorer, you aren’t alone. This question popped up on the forum the other day, so I decided to write up the answer for everybody’s benefit.
I have decided that J River’s Media Jukebox is now my music player of choice. I did an initial review in a previous post. Now let’s cover the various features included in this application. Today I will cover how to rip you CD’s into your favorite format.
I was browsing our forum earlier today when I noticed a question from a reader asking how to select a date range when searching for files in advanced search. This is something that was extremely easy in XP, but seems to be much less intuitive in Vista.
In the Customize View window click on Fields.
In my IT experience I have noticed that sometimes Remote Desktop can run painfully slow. Here are a couple tricks to speed up the process. We will change the display settings first. Sure it won’t look as fancy, but when working on computers remotely, you just need the functionality.
This article was written by our very own whs, one of the most helpful forum members.
One of our favorite readers wrote in today asking how to tell if his Word 2007 installation was running Service Pack 1, since he couldn’t find the About dialog, which got me thinking… I bet most people don’t know where it is!
If you’ve used Windows Vista for any length of time, you probably already know that using the Win + Space key combination will bring the Sidebar and all the gadgets to the front… but how do you send it back behind your open windows?
