There are times in life when people can’t help but cry out “why has this taken so long?” and today could indeed be considered one of those days as Microsoft, in conjunction with UK Child Protection Agency CEOP have released a child-friendly version of their Internet Explorer web browser

The browser is essentially IE9 as standard with some additional web links and Jumplists embedded into it, and the browser’s content protection feature already turned on.  There is a dedicated startup tab for the “ThinkuKnow” website, where children can get online safety advice, and a kid-friendly jumplist with quick links to services such as their online Safety Centre.

With so many more children now online and at much younger ages than ever before this will be welcomed by parents both in the UK and elsewhere, where the parental control features will still work.

While kids can see CEOP links in the Jumplist, parents will see a different jumplist where they will be able to set the age range of their child or children.  From this IE9 will take over and block any inappropriate content.  There are also settings for both teachers and vulnerable adults, making the browser useful in places where computers are accessed by mentally handicapped people you might not wish to view such material, or where you might not want inappropriate web content appearing in a classroom.

Now I should point out that this is no catch-all and occasionally some things will filter through, but as a general idea goes I have to take my hat off to Microsoft but chastise them equally for taking so long to get around to it.  Frankly this feature should have been built into Windows years ago.

You can download the modified browser from the ThinkuKnow website and if you have young children, the browser supports children up to 16 years of age, then it can only be a worthwhile addition to the family PC.

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When you have two or more computers and you want to share important files between them there are several ways you can do this.

Method 1 & 2     Using your Wireless Connection

Providing you have a wireless connection you can use either HomeGroup or Network connections.

HomeGroup

Network

Method 3            Purchase a Belkin USB File Transfer Cable

Another way is to buy a Belkin USB Transfer Cables. This allows you to quickly transfer files from one computer to another.

The beauty of this cable setup is you can copy folders/ files from PC to PC without the need to install drivers for the operating systems. It is particularly useful for mobile users wishing to transfer files such as photos, music, videos, documents and many other files from their main computer to their laptop and vice versa. Once you make the connection it is a simple drag-and-drop operation.

Despite the high-speed transfers this equipment provides, it is a pain to have to do this if you have two or more computers as I do. So this takes me to the next option – Windows Live Mesh.

Belkin USB Transfer Cable

Method 4            Using Windows Live Mesh

This in my opinion is the most efficient way of keeping all your computers up-to-date. When you make changes to files in a Synched folder on the main computer the file is automatically updated in the target computer(s).

Windows Live Mesh in Action

A Brief History of Windows Live Mesh

Curious about its origins I checked it out in Wikipedia. This is a brief summary of the developmental history of Windows Live Mesh.

• November 3, 2005 – Microsoft bought FolderShare from ByteTaxi Inc. on, making it part of their new Windows Live feature.
• March 10, 2008 – Microsoft released its updated version renaming it Windows Live FolderShare.
•  April 23, 2008 – Microsoft released the Live Mesh technology preview. The data synchronization system allowed files, folders and other data to be shared and synchronized across PCs and up to 5 GB on the web.

Note: The Live Mesh software was made available for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and other platforms. It included a cloud storage component, called Live Desktop, an online storage service, allowing synchronized folders to be accessible via a website.

• June 24, 2010 – Microsoft released a beta version Windows Live Sync “Wave 4″.
• August 17, 2010, – August 29, 2010, after some more updates, the service was officially re-branded, Windows Live Mesh. The cloud-based SkyDrive synced storage was increased to 5 GB.
• September 30, 2010 – The final version of Windows Live Mesh 2011 (Wave 4) was released on as part of Windows Live Essentials 2011.

 Installing Windows Live Mesh

1. As Windows Live Mesh is part of the Windows Live Essentials package you need to go to this Microsoft website: www.explorelive.com/windows-live-essentails
2. When the website opens look for the small box labelled “Get Windows Live Essentials and select “Download now”.
3. Select Run.
4. Your UAC will most likely intervene, select Ok.
5. In the “What do you want to install” window choose which components you want. Check Windows Live Mesh and select Install.
6. When the installation is complete in the “Done!” box, click Close.
7. In your All Programs menu you will find Windows Live listed. Select it. pic 7

 Note: If you are using Windows 8 Preview Windows, Windows Live Mesh will be featured on the Metro menu.

Note:  If you are running Windows 7 or earlier you will find it listed within Windows Live Essentials under All Programs.

Tip! Windows 8 Preview

In the Metro menu, right-click on Windows Live Mesh’s button and in the lower section of the Metro screen select Advanced button. When the pop-up menu appears, choose Pin to the Taskbar. In future when you want to use it click this icon on the Taskbar.

Tip! Windows 7

For easy access to Windows Live Mesh, open All Programs menu, select Windows Live Essentials and in the sub-menu right-click on Windows Live Mesh and in the pop-up menu choose, Pin to Taskbar. In future when you want to use it click this icon on the Taskbar.

In my next article I’ll deal with setting up Windows Live Mesh with my other networked computers and saving data on Microsoft’s SkyDrive.

Ways and Means to Share Files – Part 1 is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

We’ve heard about the recent attempts by the US Congress to pass legislation regarding downloads. It seems that the legislation is on hold after an outcry that surprised most Congressional leaders. One of the larger issues involved is privacy because, users expect a certain amount of privacy while they surf the net. And going to websites for download purposes would expose that user. In a larger sense, privacy also involves data protection and application protection. In that vein, Microsoft has recently been involved with this issue.

Data Privacy Day

On January 28, Data Privacy Day will be celebrated. This is an international holiday with the purpose to raise awareness and promote privacy education. The National Cyber Security Alliance is coordinating and promoting the event within the United States and Canada. Given some of the recent events, involving Anonymous and potential Congressional legislation it is good to harken back and look at the environment. At the event Microsoft speakers will be addressing Microsoft’s Tracking Protection software.

Tracking Protection

Tracking Protection lets you filter out content in a page that may have an impact on your privacy. As you know, many webpages include content from other (third-party) websites. This program helps you identify different types of content.

How it Works

When content is loaded from a third-party site, standard information, including your IP address and the address of the webpage you’re viewing is sent to each of the third-parties that have content in the page you’re viewing. If the website you’re visiting has a business relationship with the third party, then more information about you may be sent. Then over time, these third parties can build a profile of your browsing history by using “cookies” and other techniques.

But now, you can filter out content from any website by using Tracking Protection Lists. So, you can have “Do Not Call” lists for content. When you add a Tracking Protection List, Internet Explorer will prevent your information from being sent by limiting data requests to websites in the list.

Tracking Protection and Do not track

Tracking protection is not the same as do not track. They are complimentary. The most important difference is that the Do Not Track protocol is an honor system. When a consumer attaches a “do not track” imperative, they hope that sites will honor their request to contain tracking. But this is an ongoing issue. Because what sites must do to in order to honor that request is still under discussion. Also, it is not clear who is to monitor and enforces that, and how. There is a sort of honor’s pledge that sites make, but it is not enforceable. Consequently for some people that that’s not enough. That being the case, if an honor system can’t resolve the issue, then perhaps put the focus on the consumer to derail any information from being perpetrated. That said, that is why Microsoft is advancing Tracking Protection. Microsoft’s trusted data tracking protection only works with IE9.

The Tracking Protection Working Group Charter

Tracking Protection is now a standard under development at the W3C and the momentum over the last year has been encouraging. Indeed, according to Microsoft, when they released IE9, there were only five tracking protection lists available. However, several months later, there are over twenty lists worldwide from six different groups.

One group, EasyList is an open community effort to help filter unwanted content. It is available as a Tracking Protection List. They have had over 250,000 subscriptions to their list.

Another list comes from TRUSTe who is one of four preferred providers of TPLs used for the new IE9 Tracking Protection feature. Their Data Collection is a new program for ad and data companies that collect consumer data on other company websites or use data collected to show more relevant ads. This program certifies the notice, choice, and privacy practices around data collection and usage.

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Problem: Say you are working on a project with several people who are located on a different city, or even a different state. Furthermore, some may be using a PC or a MAC. You put together a document and want to save it on the cloud, but will the others in the project access it? And what if others decide to modify the document and save it, will others be able to access the most current document?

SkyDrive and Office

Here is a solution, use SkyDrive. With it you can store all your files in one place, so everyone can access the latest version. You can also use free Office Web Apps for basic editing from any browser.

Here are some of the things you can do with Web Apps:

• Upload documents to SkyDrive
• Edit documents
• Share your documents
• Work with others on projects
• Embed a presentation on a webpage
• Embed a spreadsheet on a webpage

But what makes this solution even more inviting is that SkyDrive and Office Web Apps integrate with the Office apps installed on your PC or Mac so you can work together on documents in the cloud right from your desktop apps. With the right setup, you can work together on a Word doc or PowerPoint presentation with your teammates at the same time. Creating an account is easy and free. Start with a Windows Live account.

Next create a SkyDrive account and a Web Apps account. Then once you have the Web Apps and Windows SkyDrive, you can follow several tips to make your work easier.

1. Add SkyDrive.com to your desktop for quick access
2. Create one space for the team that’s easy to find
3. Capture meeting notes, brainstorming notes, and to-do’s more efficiently than email.
4. Access SkyDrive docs right from Word, Excel or PowerPoint—online or offline
5. Use Word co-authoring to ensure your team’s plan flows nicely
6. Use version history to avoid disasters

These tips can help you manage a project and keep the documentation easy to use. Plus because SkyDrive can be accessed anytime and anywhere you are not limited to when or where you can work on the project.

Note that you must have a Windows Live ID to access SkyDrive.

Source: Microsoft SkyDrive

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There was a time when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser had a healthy 95% of the overall browser market.  This didn’t even mean that their main opposition on the PC had the other 5% as you had to factor into this the Apple Mac on which people ran Safari.  Sadly this was the time of IE6 where the browser had little or no competition and, as such, innovation was stifled as Microsoft felt they had nothing to compete against.

The birth and fast growth of Firefox fortunately changed all that and now the horribly buggy and insecure nightmare that is IE6 is firmly on its last legs, supported only in some businesses where the cost or redeveloping bespoke web apps is prohibitive, and in emerging computing markets such as China.

Now the latest figures released by StatCounter show that IE usage worldwide has dropped below 40% for the first time (IE still sits at 52% according to Net Applications), a drop of almost 10% in the last year alone.  The figures also show that Google’s Chrome browser is now firmly in second place with extremely steady growth, overtaking Firefox which has been dwindling ever so slightly.

Behind these figures will be the birth of smartphones and tablets, almost all of which run a non-Microsoft browser and things such as the Browser ballot screen, seen by EU residents, where Microsoft ask Windows users to choose which browser they want to use.

With Windows 8 Microsoft are beginning the fight back as the new Metro version of IE10 is embedded deep into the operating system and there’s no indication yet that Mozilla or Google are developing Metro versions of their own browsers.  In fact it’s really quite cunning the way Microsoft have gone about this with Metro as, because of the way Metro apps are generally styled, it will probably be difficult for anybody to tell different browsers apart from one another.  Microsoft are no doubt counting on this to help grow IE market share once again.

How successful this strategy will be remains to be seen but it’s very clear that Google are doing the right thing with Chrome, in fact their browser is very hard to criticise at all, unlike Firefox which many consider to be heavy and bloated.  Innovation with Internet Explorer tends to come only every couple of years but Google offer far more frequent updates, as Mozilla do, and are therefore able to respond to the needs of their customers far more quickly.  With Windows 8, Microsoft have said that the Metro version of IE also won’t support any plugins (Flash, Acrobat etc.) making this a place where rivals could seize the opportunity.  With its stripped-down approach though, it’s likely that any Metro version of Chrome would go the same way.

With Windows 8 not due out until the very end of this year we can expect these figures to continue their current trend.  This could see Chrome and IE converge in the summer as both sit equally on around 35% market share.  At this point the battle really will begin and Chrome could very likely be the world’s most popular browser by the end of the year, something not achieved by any browser since the early years of Netscape Navigator in the 1990′s.

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As the most up and coming Internet and financial super-power in the world, it should hardly come as a surprise that China has become the latest target for cyber-criminals.  In recent attacks some 45 million people have had their personal details stolen and now the BBC is reporting that the ten largest search engines in the country have signed an anti-phishing scheme to help combat this new wave of online crime.

What the BBC isn’t saying though is that, according to Microsoft’s own figures on the IE6Countdown website China is the only country left in the world where the horribly buggy and insecure 6th version of Microsoft’s web browser is still in common use.  As of today the figure for China sits at 27.9% of all browser usage in the country.

By comparison to this the next most exposed countries which include South Korea, Japan and India sit at 8.9%, 6.5% and 6% respectively.  Western countries are faring batter with the USA at just 1%, the UK at 1.8% and Germany at just 1.1%.  The Scandinavian countries are definitely faring best though with 0.5% of browsers in Denmark being IE6, 0.4% in Finland and Sweden and just 0.2% in Norway.

While the worldwide usage of Internet Explorer 6 has dropped massively in the last two years, it is in far eastern countries where its fared poorly.  In China, the government of which doesn’t approve of Microsoft’s globalist tendencies, the latest versions of Windows have failed to make significant inroads and much of the country still uses older, pirated copies of Windows XP.

The software piracy market in China and surrounding countries is huge and opens up all manner of other problems including pirated and cracked operating systems and software coming pre-loaded with malware.  China presents a particular problem with that one country accounting for more than 50% of all IE6 usage worldwide.

The Chinese government are working with search engines and banks to do what they can to limit the spread of malware and provide better security online, but this will involve a great deal of public education.  Of course there are many free alternatives to IE6 but people in the country just don’t seem to be using them.

The problem doesn’t just end at the desktop however as company servers, presumably also running older and possibly pirated software are major targets for criminals.  The BBC reported that “On Christmas day, the hugely popular Tianya chat site revealed that the login names and passwords from 40 million of its users had been stolen. All risk being plundered by attackers as the information was held in plain text.”

China currently has around 485 million web users and the number is growing exponentially.  Microsoft previously released cheaper versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 for emerging economies including China but with wages in the country a tiny fraction of what they are in the rest of the world the company isn’t willing to even release sales figures.

The problem continues to be exacerbated as newer versions of web browsers and other software won’t install or run on Windows XP, despite mainly being free products that the people in these countries can use to protect themselves.

How is IE6 contributing to China’s growing Cyber-Crimewave? is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

It’s always the way when you share a PC with other people at home.  You go online to do some last-minute Christmas shopping and the next person to use the computer will see and the websites you’ve visited in the browser history that, very helpfully, suggests websites you may want to visit again.  Sites like Amazon are even worse offenders, offering up all the items you looked at last, some of which you’ve probably bought for people already!

You can delete your browser history, or at least try to remember to do this.  Alternatively you can do all your Christmas online shopping at a friend’s house or at work.  The best solution then is to make sure that your web browser doesn’t store any information about what you’ve been looking at online and modern browsers do support this.

In Internet Explorer it’s called InPrivate mode, Chrome calls it Incognito mode.  When you use your browser like this it won’t store any information about what you’ve been doping online or what you’ve been looking at, which is perfect.  It also won’t allow websites to store information about your activities either so the likes of Amazon won’t show up your purchases to the rest of the family.

It’s easy to switch on these modes too.  In Internet Explorer click the Cog (Settings) icon in the top right of the window and from the Safety menu select InPrivate Browsing.  In Chrome click the Wrench (Settings) icon and then select New Incognito Window.

Useful for more than just Christmas, these secret browsing modes are also very useful at birthdays and for… I heard that!  Yes, it’s true that some men choose not tell their wives and partners about this particular feature 

So if you’ve got some last-minute Christmas shopping to do, and you’re going online to do it.  Don’t let your web browser spoil the surprise and use a private browsing mode to keep that special present a secret until it’s opened excitedly on Christmas morning.  Merry Christmas all 

Last Minute Online Christmas Shopping? Try InPrivate Mode is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

Microsoft Office 2010 ships in many different editions. There are two core groups, Home and Business, each with a distinct set of editions available. Each edition offers access to a set of Office programs, with the more expensive editions usually offering additional programs that go beyond the Excel, Word and PowerPoint set of tools.

And then there is Microsoft Office Starter 2010. Starter is the only Office version that is available for free. It is a limited edition that only contains versions of Microsoft Word and Excel. Considering that those two programs are the most used in Microsoft’s Office suite, it is fair to say that this could be quite sufficient for the majority of users.

The main limitations are that Office Starter is ad driven, and that both Word and Excel do not offer their complete feature set to the user. Most users on the other hand may not even notice that functionality is missing.

Microsoft Office Starter 2010 was up until now only supplied to OEM manufacturers who added it to some of their computer systems. The Office suite came preinstalled with those purchased computer systems. There was no option to download and install Office Starter as a end user. Until now, that is.

Here are the Microsoft Office Starter 2010 downloads (please note that the installer needs to download files from the Internet during installation).

Microsoft Office Starter 2010 English [download]
Microsoft Office Starter 2010 French [download]
Microsoft Office Starter 2010 German [download]
Microsoft Office Starter 2010 Spanish [download]

The server stores other language versions as well, just replace the language identifier in the web address, e.g. en-us with another country language identifier like it-it to download the Italian version of Office Starter 2010.

You are not asked for a product key during or after installation. There are certainly alternatives, Libre Office for instance for desktops or Google Docs for users who prefer cloud based applications.

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Microsoft has been aggressively pushing Internet Explorer 9 as the best browser for Windows 7 since it’s been released. Currently Internet Explorer 8 is the most dominant version of IE but Microsoft is working hard to change that. Their latest campaign for Internet Explorer 9 see’s them giving away freebies and prizes to users who install IE9 and then pin certain sites to their taskbar. Once you do this you can win prizes like 3 months free at Slacker radio or $5 off your next live nation ticket from Ticketmaster.

Now not all of these offers are available immediately, but they will come on stream between now and December. I think the main thing Microsoft are trying to do here is to get users to try out the new pinning feature which was introduced in IE 9. It’s actually quite handy and allows you to pin websites to your taskbar just like you can already pin programs. It also adds jump lists to them.

If you want to check out the site for yourself , just click this link

But what happens if you’re not running IE? Well the site will show you the following messages.

If you’re running alternative browsers like Chrome or Firefox you’ll see

 ”Where’s the love? … Upgrade to Internet Explorer to pin these sites and get the free stuff.”

And if you’re running Mac OS X, I’m sure you can imagine that Microsoft aren’t too impressed with you.

“Oh Nooooooo… You’re using Mac OS which doesn’t support Internet Explorer 9 and Site Pinning.”

It’s a clever marketing move by Microsoft alright, the only problem is that these offers are only valid in the US so that rules out me and a lot of our readers as well I’m afraid. Microsoft do have a UK version of their site “Beauty of the web” but they don’t appear to have a similar offer running.

Here’s the site again if you want to check it out. Beauty of the web

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With Windows 8′s developer preview making its rounds on a number of PC’s, we figured it was just a matter of time before someone figured out how to bring the fullscreen/tablet flavoured apps to the Windows 7 desktop.

It appears that the first app to be ported over to Windows 7 is the metro Internet Explorer 10 browser found in the dev preview of Windows 8. You may be familiar with the look of the browser in Windows 8 if yo have used a Windows Phone device. The browser is limited in chrome, bearing only one toolbar which combines all of the buttons and address bar. You can also invoke a tabbed browsing slide down drawer from the top by right-clicking on the screen. The version of MetroIE available right  now supports only single tab support, but multiple tabs are coming soon. It’s a work in progress.

To get the MetroIE browser working in Windows 7, you’ll need to have the latest Internet Explorer 10 developer preview installed and also download a small file from the devs Deviant Art page. Keep in mind that this is a small hack that will give you only the metro version of IE, so if you prefer to use regular IE for browsing, you may want to avoid installing the software. I’ve had no issues with the download, but you will be downloading at your own risk.

You can download the MetroIE browser file here.

MetroIE Lets You Bring Metro Internet Explorer to Windows 7 is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

You, as the owner and user of your computer are supposed to be in charge of the situation but in reality unless you take certain precautions such as setting up a firewall and installing a decent antivirus program the hidden nasties – virus programs and other forms of malfeasance, will take over your computer unbeknown to you.

Having said that remember that there are other less hostile threats around. These sometimes occur when you download and install a new application. Some by design want to wrest control of certain vital functions on your computer such as add their version of Search or their own special Toolbar in Internet Explorer, while others are harmless.

While many of these freeware applications appear to have great potential, say an Internet Radio Player or something else, you are well-advised to keep your wits about you when installing the program to make sure you only let in what you want. Otherwise the damned thing will take over your computer.

Here are two examples of useful applications that try to take over the controls of Internet Explorer. The two are RadioRage and Crawler Radio. Both during the installation phase want to take over as your Search Engine and control your Homepage. Well, it’s up to you whether you let them (at least they ask for permission).

RadioRage Installation Options!

Radio Crawler Installation Options!

If you decide in their favour you could end up with your Internet Explorer looking somewhat cluttered with Toolbars all over the top!        

Toolbar's Galore!!!

Both RadioRage and Crawler Radio applications are great for listening to Internet Radio stations but all free applications come with add-ons you may not want. So always read the information in each installation screen, “keep your wits about you” and uncheck any options you don’t want.

Now there’s nothing wrong with trying out different applications BUT you can take precautions by performing a System Restore prior to taking the plunge.

Pre-Installation Safeguard

1.      Click the Start button.

2.      In the Search box, type “Create a system restore point”.

3.      The System Properties window opens. In the lower section, labelled “Create a restore point right now . . .”, click the Create button.

Creating a Restore Point

 4.      The System Protection window opens. In box, type in a suitable recognizable name.

Naming your Restore Point

5.      Next, click the Create button.

6.      Windows 7 gets cracking and creates a Restore Point.

Restore Point Created!

Coping with Post-Installation Blues

Well, you’ve installed that great new application and suddenly find it is a proverbial pain in the neck. Your next step is to get rid of it. Well there are two options. First of all you can uninstall it but you may find it leaves its imprint still on your computer. The second option is to Use System Restore. This is where it pays dividends to have taken this initial precaution.  Creating a Restore Point saves the day.

1.      Click the Start button.

2.      In the Search box, type “System Restore”.

3.      In the Search Results box, select “Restore your computer to an earlier time”.

Reversing the Installation!

4.      The System Restore Recovery window opens. Choose “Open System Restore”.

5.       The Restore System Files and Settings window opens, click the Next button.

6.      The System Restore window opens. In it you’ll see the Restore Point you created. Choose a point previous and click Next.

Choosing a previous Restore Point!

7.      System Restore gets to work repairing the error you made when installing that aberrant application.

Warning: When System Restore is at work don’t turn off the computer. Leave it to its own devices.

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Have you ever wanted to run Android apps on your Windows 7 desktop,laptop or tablet? Even just to try them out or play around with them? Well now you can thanks to a new program released today from BlueStacks. It’s called the BlueStacks App player and has just hit the Alpha stage of development. It’s taken 10 engineers 2 years to get the project this far. The basic player lets you run several preloaded Android apps and then install up to 26 others, as well as sync apps from an Android phone to your PC.

Some people have reported that the app doesn’t always work first time around, but eventually once you get it installed it places an Android Gadget on your desktop. Clicking on the gadget opens up a menu from which you can launch an array of the pre loaded Android apps, including Bloomberg News, Drag Racing, Talking Tom 2 and Alchemy amongst others.

The applications can run in full screen using a new type of virtualization technology. Of course, the problem with running Android apps on your desktop is that they’ve all been optimised for use on touch based devices, so unless your running Windows 7 with touchscreen, you’re going to find it a bit tricky using a mouse and keyboard. While the app is currently limited to just 26 apps, the company hopes to lift it in the future with a premium version, which will also allow for the installation of premium games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Dungeon Hunter 2, as well as apps which have been designed to run on ARM based devices.

Credit:Cnet

For now the app is only available on Windows, but they are working on an app for OS X as well

This is really a great little app and if it continues to develop I think you’ll find it’ll take off. Developers will be keen to get their apps in it as it will open up the whole Windows market for Android developers, it will also be especially good if they can get it working on Windows 8 as well which will probably find itself on a larger number of touch enabled devices.

It just goes to show, that by having an open OS like Android and Windows, developers really can do anything that they want.

You can download the app now for yourself at BlueStacks.com

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Utilising speech recognition is a great alternative to keyboarding, mousing, and using touchscreen technology. Each will have their advocates but I am firmly in the quarter of speech recognition.

For a long time now I have been using speech recognition to perform the majority of my tasks on my computer. My interest goes back to the very beginning when Kurzweil was the only player in the game.

After Kurzweil’s demise Dragon Naturally Speaking arrived on the scene. Back in 1997 I purchased Version 2 and was impressed. This program has a long history of updates. Each new version proved better than the previous one. The table below shows the developments over the years.

I am currently using Dragon 11. Nuance recently issued Dragon 11.5 SP 1 which can be downloaded from its website. This improves on the already excellent version 11. While I have tried Windows 7 Speech Recognition program, I prefer Dragon. At least Dragon’s maker, Nuance keeps improving their product, hence Dragon 11.5 SP1 while Windows 7′s version of Speech Recognition remains static. Maybe Microsoft are going to surprise us when they release Windows 8 but I’m betting they are hooked on Touch Screen Technology and will leave their speech recognition much the same. Who knows at this stage! Time will tell!

Dragon Timeline

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Editions

In Australia the following Windows editions are available:

• Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 Premium Mobile
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 Home
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 Premium Wireless
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 premium
• Dragon 11 Legal Australia
• Dragon 11 Professional with Bluetooth Headset

 In the United States and Canada there is a medical edition available. Mac users are not left out as there is a version for Mac computers called Dragon Dictate 2.5.

Dragon works with most applications. This Includes Internet Explorer, Live Mail, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Outlook, WordPerfect, and more. With Dragon you can send e-mail messages, create tasks, schedule meetings surf the Web, surf the Web; post to Facebook or Twitter, and more just by voice.

There seem to be few limitations to this valuable application.

Setting up Dragon

When you install Dragon 11 on your computer it takes you through a rather involve set up that covers many aspects.

• Naming Your User Profile
• Choosing Your Age Group
• Choosing Your Region – there are seven regions – Australia, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia.
• Selecting Your Speech Device  (I use a Logitech microphone headset)

Dragon English Dialects

Once this phase is completed Dragon creates your Speech Profile. You might think you are finished then but there but there are still more steps to follow.

These include positioning the microphone, checking the volume setting and testing the quality of your sound system. It is important to get a good pass in the latter. If the sound level is too low you’re in real trouble.

Next comes the training phase. You can choose not to do this but you will be better served by going through the process. In the training session you will be required to read the passage of text and when you complete the Dragon will spend some time adapting a voice profile.

Training Text Selection

The next stage is optional where Dragon wants to personalise your vocabulary. This involves searching through e-mails and My Documents folder.

When this is completed it asks for permission to improve your speech accuracy. Again take this option.

In the last screen Dragon asks for permission to perform a “data collection” which involves regular checking usage data back to Nuance’s home base. This is entirely optional.

Finally, you have reached the end of a lengthy setup procedure and you will now be able to put Dragon through its paces. Next month, I’ll put together an article showing some of Dragon 11.5′s features.

So why not give Dragon a go and I’m sure you’ll be delighted.

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As most users work with their computer they create large documents, pictures, images, video files and audio files. The time will come when you will be hit by a sudden realisation that your system has slowed down due to the accumulation of duplicate files scattered throughout your hard disk.

The answer to this problem is to utilise duplicate file finder software to find duplicate files on your computer and eliminate them thus freeing up clogged hard disk space. This has an additional benefit of increasing the speed of your computer system.

To ensure you have a healthy operating system consider running duplicate file finder software.

After researching the Web, I have come across five free Duplicate File Finders that will find duplicate files on your hard drive. Some, in my opinion are better than others but nevertheless here is the list.

•  Duplicate Cleaner
• Fast Duplicate File Finder
• CloneSpy
• Duplicate File Finder
• DoubleKiller

Here is a brief summary of what each of these applications do.

Duplicate Cleaner

This application helps you painlessly remove duplicate files from your computer. It has a well laid out easy-to-use interface.

This application is available from the following website:

http://www.ilovefreesoftware.com/20/windows/system-utils/duplicate-cleaner-find-duplicate-files-by-content.html

Fast Duplicate File Finder

This efficient and easy-to-use free application help you quickly remove duplicate files from your computer. It is well laid out easy-to-use interface is a good choice.

This application is available from the following website:

http://www.mindgems.com/products/Fast-Duplicate-File-Finder/Fast-Duplicate-File-Finder-About.htm

CloneSpy

If you indulge in a lot of Internet downloads the chances are you will duplicate files unwittingly. This application can be used to delete redundant files or move them to a specific folder or export them to another location.

This application is available from the following website:

http://www.clonespy.com/

Duplicate File Finder

This application has a friendly interface suitable for computer beginners. It searches for duplicate file contents irrespective of the file name. Once found duplicate files can be deleted or moved or copied.

This application is available from the following website:

http://www.ashisoft.com/

DoubleKiller

This application is fast, compact and easy to use. It removes people that files from your system. It finds files using the following criteria – name, size, modification date and content.

This application is available from the following website:

http://www.bigbangenterprises.de/en/doublekiller/

So there you have it, the choice is yours!

Having said that, my particular choice is Fast Duplicate File Finder. In my next blog, I will explain why I have chosen this one and will explain how it operates.

It will be interesting to hear other users’ opinions about finding and removing duplicate files from your computer system.

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LiveSide.com is reporting that the SkyDrive service which is very much a part of both Microsoft’s and Windows Phone’s future is going to be changing their plan. Currently, Microsoft offers an unbelieveable 25 free Gigs of online storage for any type of file you wish. Microsoft’s plan, according to this report, includes changing the available storage for photos and documents to unlimited and the 25GB cap will only be for other files types which are uploaded by the user. This is all supposed to come about in the Wave 5 upgrade for Windows Live. So to summarize:

Unlimited storage space for all Office documents
Unlimited storage space for all photos
25 GB of free storage for everything else

Currently, SkyDrive has about 70 million users. Whose to say how many of them are active users or are even aware that the space is available online for their documents storage. Last year, I took the time and made the move to back up all of my documents and photos onto SkyDrive. It was one of the smartest things I have done because I reformat often and every time I do, I seem to lose a picture album or Word doc that I didn’t mean to delete. Now, all of my files are up in the cloud, so I can access them seamlessly from my Windows Phone, my work PC or my home PC anytime, anywhere. So, this change of available space to unlimited for pics and docs is definitely a welcome move and now I can start backing other important files up to SkyDrive without worrying about filling it up.

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What’s being touted as a possible new Windows 8 AccuWeather app is really a Windows 7 app. As we now know, Windows 8 is going to be a touch-first Windows OS with the classic desktop version of Windows baked in for users who wish to switch to the older interface. This is considered the “no compromise” Windows version and, I believe, is the right way to go for a software company that heavily relies on a ton of customers and businesses who need that backwards compatibility, but who need to move into the new era of computing.

That being said, a bunch of new Windows 8 apps are popping up here and there and this includes many speculating that the AccuWeather app is one of those coming apps for the new platform. Unfortunately, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the app in the video below is a Windows 7 slate silverlight-based app. This is not to say that AccuWeather isn’t working on an official Windows 8 app, they probably are as we speak.

The app does look like apps we’ve seen demoed for the new version of Windows and does heavily take its cues from the Metro design language. The AccuWeather app even looks and feels like the AccuWeather app on Windows Phone.

Click here to give the app a try on your Windows device and check out the incorrectly labeled YouTube video of the app in action:

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CCleaner is a free product from Piriform. It is an all-in-one application containing a set of useful tools for cleaning up your computer.  All of CCleaner’s tools are available by selecting the appropriate button from the button toolbar on the left. I have found the most useful ones were Cleaner (See my article: Spring Cleaning your Computer) and Registry (See my article: Defragmenting your Computer the Easy Way ).                                             ).

Accessing Tools

The Extra Tools

In addition to the aforementioned, check out the third button, Tools. This  contains four useful tools. They are:

• Uninstall
• Startup
• System Restore
• Drive Wiper

The Uninstall Tool 

The Uninstall Tool

This feature is quicker to use for uninstalling applications than going through the tedious process of Control Panel to get to Uninstall or Change a Program.

The Startup Tool 

The Startup Tool

This application takes you directly to the “Startup” folder where you can disable or enable programs. It is similar to using “msconfig’ to access the Startup folder the System Configuration tabbed window.

The System Restore Tool

The System Restore Tool

This feature lists all System Restore points and allows you to remove them. Of the four tools this is probably the least useful.

The Drive Wiper Tool

The Drive Wiper Tool

This feature can be used on a select drive to wipe free space or to completely wipe all files. I would urge caution when using Drive Wiper. See my article: Living Dangerously – Wiping Your Drives

So there you have it! A free application containing a useful set of tools. Think about downloading it!

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The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores configuration settings and options on Microsoft Windows operating systems. It contains settings for much of the information and settings for software programs, hardware devices, user preferences, operating system configurations, and much more

It is the master control center for your PC’s operating system and all its applications. Many performance problems are caused by corruption within the Registry resulting in these sorts of problems – slow Windows start-up and shutdown, poor application startup times, just to name a few.

Cleaning, compacting, and optimizing your Windows registry can go a long way to improving your computer’s performance.

While it is inadvisable to go poking into the Registry unaided and there are a number of good applications that can do this for you, the simplest one I’ve found is a tool called Registry, part of Piriforms’ CCleaner.

Cleaning the Registry

Open CCleaner and then select the Registry button from the vertical toolbar.

The Registry Cleaner screen opens. You will see a series of checked boxes on the right of the toolbar. All of these are areas need checking.

Press the Scan for Issues button.

Opening screen for Registry

When the scan is over, all the issues are shown in the right-hand window.

Registry scanned displaying Issues

To fix them, press the Fix selected issues button.

Registry asks an important question!

Before any issues are fixed Registry asks you if you want to make a backup file.

When dealing with the Registry it is a good idea to make a Backup file.

To do this click the Yes button.

Creating a Registry Backup file

Next, My Documents folder opens displaying the backup file. Click the Save button.

Once you save the Backup files, Registry displays its Fix It dialog box. You then have the choice of fixing each individual flagged problem (tedious) or biting the bullet and selecting Fix All Selected Issues. This is your best choice.

Registry's Fix It dialog box

A new dialog box opens showing Registry has completed the job. Click the Close button to shut down Registry.

Registry finishes the task

The final window states there are no issues now in your Registry. You can now close CCleaner.

No issues left in your Registry

You have successfully cleaner “junk” out of your computer’s Registry.

Made a Big Mistake?

Having just cleaned your Registry you realize maybe you’ve made a big mistake. Well, it’s a simple matter to activate the “.reg” file you have created and restore the deleted values to the Registry.

Here’s how you do it!

1. Go to the folder where you have saved the “.reg” file.
2. Double click on it.
3. Windows UAC will ask you to confirm. Click the Yes button.
4. The Registry Editor opens asking if you wish to continue. Click the Yes button.
5. The Registry Editor confirms that the “keys and values” have been added back to the Registry.
6. Click the Ok button.

You have set matters right with the Registry restoring the deleted values.

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Using the Cleaner tool

As mentioned in previous articles, CCleaner is a free application from Piriform. In this article I’ll show you one of its major features, a useful cleaning application called Cleaner that you can use to rid your computer of redundant space wasting files.

When you open CCleaner, it defaults to its first feature, Cleaner. Its purpose is to locate unused and unwanted files on your computer within Windows and Applications directories.  

In the Cleaner window there are two tabs, Windows and Applications. To switch from one to the other, press the appropriate tab.

Locations for Cleaner to check

When you look at either the Windows or Applications window you will see a list of folders.  Some boxes are checked while others not. Cleaner automatically checks the checked folders searching for files that it considers redundant.

You can decide where you want Cleaner to search. Just uncheck any ticked box if you do not want that folder checked.

Note: You must uncheck folders you do not want checked before pressing the Analyze button.

Once you click the Analyze button, Cleaner begins analysing the files in the checked folders. It does Windows and Applications at the same time. When it finishes it displays a list of files to be removed.

Results of Analysis

The next step is to press the Run Cleaner button. Before Cleaner removes the unwanted files, it displays a cautionary dialog box asking you to confirm your wish to proceed.

Clicking the Ok button gives Cleaner the go-ahead. Should you have a change of heart press the Cancel button.

Cleaner asks for permission to proceed

The final screen shows a list of removed files from both locations – Windows and Applications.

Cleaner has removed these files

Cleaner is a simple to use and a quick way to rid your computer of space wasting useless files.

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Drive Wiper

In CCleaner, under Tools is a useful application called Drive Wiper. It enables you to completely wipe all, and I mean all data files and information on the drive. This type of application is not for the faint hearted.

Fearful of its consequences, I put it to the test using a 1 gig flash drive loaded with several types of files – documents, pictures and music clips.

After opening CCleaner, I selected Tools and clicked Drive Wiper. In its window I checked the Stick Drive (F:).

In Drive Wiper’s window I checked the box for the Removable Drive. This was my 1 gig flash drive loaded with files.

Select Drive to Wipe

In the Wipe section, I clicked the arrow button and chose “All data will be erased”.

Choose type of Wipe

In the Security section, I left it at the default setting “Simple Overwrite (1 pass)”. There are other options. The illustration below shows them.

Choosing Security

After these preparations, it was time to bite the bullet. I clicked the Wipe button and held my breath.

CCleaner blinked and issued a warning of imminent action. This safety device is well thought out, giving a faint hearted time to rethink.

Biting the bullet I typed “erase” in the box and pressed the Ok button.

Taking the plunge

I held my breath and the destruction of my files on the drive commenced. What happened next was a two-part operation. First of all, the drive was reformatted and in the second phase, it was wiped.

Drive Wiper at Work

After Drive Wiper I checked the flash drive and it was ready to go. I was the able to begin re-using it.

So ended my venture into the unknown!

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The Zune PC software acts as the companion application for Zune devices and Windows Phones. If you purchase a new ‘Mango’ Windows Phone or update your current phone to the 7.5 software, you’ll need to use the new Zune 4.8 PC software along with your device. I’ve been using the 4.8 software for a few months now along with the beta version of Mango and there are no noticeable differences that I can see.

The 4.8 version of the software is now available for download via Microsoft’s download center, so if you are dying to get a hold of the new client, you can find it here. To update your current Zune software version, click Settings > Software > General, and then click Check For Updates.

Here’s the changelog for the new software:

• Progressive updates: In Zune 4.8, you only have to click the update button once for multiple updates. Once an update is finished, the software automatically checks for more and repeats the installation process until your phone is completely up to date.
• Streamlined backup. By synching media separately from other phone content, we’ve lowered the overall time it takes to back up your phone. The backup file is also more compact, so it should take up less space on your computer.
• Skip phone backup: If you don’t have enough room on your computer to store a phone backup file, you’ll now have the option to skip this step so you’re not blocked from updating your phone.
• 48-hour movie rentals
• Parental Controls now support M-rated (Mature) content
• Option to hide purchase confirmation dialog for faster app checkout
• See what apps are compatible with the Windows Phone you own.

The software also acts as an excellent Windows 7 media library organizer for your current music and video. If you haven’t yet tried the Zune PC client, I would highly recommend giving it a try.

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Recuva, a File Recovery Application

Everyone, from time to time, has accidentally deleted files from their computer thus loosing valuable information. Well your worries are over! Piriform has created a free application called Recuva that can recover most deleted files.

To help you on the path of recovery Recuva provides a Wizard to guide you through the recovery process.

Recuva's Opening Screen

Once the Wizard opens, click the Next button to move onto the next screen.

The second screen, File Type, is where you choose the sort of files you want to recover. Select the appropriate radio button and then click Next.

Choosing a File Type

The next screen is File location. Here you need to choose the location where the lost files may be.

After choosing the location the next screen offers you the choice of a “normal” scan or a “deep scan”. The latter takes a long time to complete.

Choosing the Scan

After scanning is complete the results window opens. Much in this recovery program depends on whether the file(s) are overwritten. If this is the case well it’s “too bad how sad!”.

Found Files window

In the example above, the files are colour codes – Green is recoverable, Orange a poor option for recovery and Red has been overwritten, thus unrecoverable.

Select the files you wish to recover by ticking the boxes. Then click the Recover button and Recuva opens the Browse to Folder window. Here you choose the location for the recovered files.

Placing the found files

Tip!  As I don’t like losing my recovered files again, I usually create a new folder on my Desktop for them.

Click the Ok button. Recuva deposits the recovered files in the appropriate folder.

Files recovered

Finally, click the Ok button to confirm. You have successfully recovered the deleted files.

Recuva for Advanced Users

Some users cannot be bothered with Wizards. If this is you, and you want to skip using Recuva’s Wizard, check the box in the opening screen and when Recuva re-opens taking you straight into file recovery.

Advanced User Screen 1

Recuva defaults to Drive C. So if you wish Recuva to search in another location click the down arrow button and choose the drive. You need to decide what sort of files you are searching for also.

The illustration below shows you what to do.

Advanced User Screen 2

 Once you have made these decisions, click the Search button and Recuva gets to work.

I’m sure you’ll find it a useful addition to your stable of enhancement applications for Windows 7.

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Defraggler, a Useful Tool

A useful alternative to Windows 7′s Disk Defragmenter is Piriform’s Defraggler. This is a free application from Piriform (www.piriform.com). It provides an alternative to the inflexible Windows 7’s Disk Defragmenter which doesn’t go beyond defragmenting your entire hard drive at one go.

Defraggler allows you more flexibility. You can schedule it to operate late at night, early in the morning, or any time of day. In addition you can set it to defragment exactly what you want, an entire file, a folder, or a single file. This feature is available in the Settings menu.

Putting Defraggler to Work

If you are in a hurry, launch Defraggler, click the drive you want to defragment, and then click the big Defrag button.

Opening Screen

More Options

Other defragment options are found in the Action menu. These include the ability to perform a quick defrag, defrag individual folders or drives. To access this select Quick Defrag Drive from the Action menu.

Action Menu options

Defraggler provides a better choice. Think about giving it a go and I’m sure you’ll appreciate its useful features.

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It is ages since I’ve written a blog about Windows 7. Well, after this hiatus I decided to draw Windows 7 News & Tips readers attention to four useful little tools available from a website called Piriform. Its web address is as follows: www.piriform.com

They are:

• CCleaner
• Defraggler
• Recuva
• Speccy

Note: I’ve already dealt with Speccy in a previous blog. See “Ever wanted to check your Computer’s Hardware Components” Published 01/07/2010.

When you access Piriform’s website check out the four applications as per the illustration below:

Piriform 1

After you do that a larger screen opens providing details about each application. For more information just click the button labelled More Info. On the other hand if you want to take a punt on the program click the button labelled Download. I am sure you will find these applications of value.

Piriform 2

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Microsoft has released a Fix-It to diagnose installing and uninstalling problems. While it is usually not a problem to install or uninstall most Windows programs, it can happen that programs will not install or uninstall properly.

Installation issues are often caused by missing dependencies, for instance when a program that requires the Microsoft .NET Framework needs to be installed without the proper Framework version installed on the system.

Problems uninstalling software can often be resolved with third party software like Revo Uninstaller which scan the system for leftovers after the uninstallation process.

Sometimes however it is not that easy to resolve those issues. Microsoft Fix-It programs are standalone applications designed to diagnose and resolve a specific problem. In this case, the Fix-It resolves the following issues related to installing or uninstalling software in the Windows operating system.

• Removes bad registry key on 64 bit operating systems.
  Windows registry keys that control the upgrade (patching) data that become corrupted.
• Resolves problems that prevent new programs from being installed.
• Resolves problems that prevent programs from being completely uninstalled and blocking new installations and updates.
• Use this troubleshooter for an uninstall only if the program fails to uninstall using the windows add/remove programs feature.

The program offers to diagnose and resolve issues automatically, or let the user fix the issues manually.

It then asks the user if the issue is installing or uninstalling related. For uninstalling related issues, a list of all installed programs are displayed in a list with an option to select the program causing the issues from that list. It is furthermore possible to select the not listed option if Windows was not able to find the program reference.

If that is the case, users can enter the product ID, a unique code, to uninstall the program.

Windows users who run into program install or uninstall troubles should definitely run the Microsoft Fix-It to see if it resolves the issue. The portable nature of the program makes it ideal for repair DVDs or application collections.

The program can be downloaded directly from the Microsoft Support website.

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The latest figures from Microsoft, about the Xbox 360, shows that it has led in sales in the console market for the seventh consecutive month.

Microsoft finds that Xbox 360 continues to have its biggest year in Xbox history despite the economic slowdown, which has also affected the video-game console market. However,  in July alone, the Xbox reached $250 million in sales, beating out the other game consoles.

XBox 360 with Kinect

At the market share level, the Xbox 360 holds 45% of the market, and selling more than 277,000 units in July. So for the fifth month in a row, Microsoft has held a market share number over 40%.

Kinect

Kinect for Xbox, the motion sensing input device is also making an impact. This technology is a webcam-style add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360 console, it enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 without the need to touch a game controller,

Download figures for Kinect Fun Labs show that it has garnered more than 1 million downloads in only two months.  Some games like “Fruit Ninja” are now part of the Kinect family as “Fruit Ninja Kinect.” Microsoft anticipates that by the end of 2011, the Kinect games library will triple and Xbox will debut new partnerships with the likes of Ultimate Fighting Championship and Disney to the platform.

The game, “Gears of War 3” will launch next month and more major launches to follow during the holiday season.

Kinect for Windows SDK

In February 2011, Microsoft released a non-commercial version of Kinect, the software development kit (SDK) for Windows. The release of a commercial version is set for later this year. The SDK includes ‘Windows 7′ compatible PC drivers for Kinect device. It provides Kinect capabilities to developers to build applications with C++, C#, or Visual Basic by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. With these tools, developers should be able to stretch their imaginations and produce more robust and fun games.

Source: Microsoft

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It might be a bit late after the launch of Internet Explorer 9 a few months ago, but Microsoft have today launched a new website called BuildMyPinnedSite.com.  The site provides guides, tools and sample code to help you build Favicon, jumplist, notification and preview controls into your website.

It’s a good idea and will be useful for many people.  Microsoft say of the new site…

Today, we announce that BuildMyPinnedSite.com is available worldwide in 38 languages and 40 geographies, making it easier than ever to enhance your site with pinning. BuildMyPinnedSite.com provides you the ideas and all the code you’ll need to enhance your site with pinning in just a few easy steps and less than 15 minutes of development.

They go on to details what they say are the benefits of using the latest browser technologies on your own websites.

• Engagement – Sites get an average of 50% more engagement through pinning
• User Behavior – IE9 users visit a pinned site 30 times per month on average
• Share Growth – In just 5 months since release, IE9 share on Windows 7 exceeds 25% in the US and 18% worldwide.  More consumers will be pinning their favorite sites to their taskbars.
• Site Readiness – More than 12,000 top ranked sites, like Facebook, Yahoo, and ESPN already take advantage; WordPress.com made pinning available to their network of over 20 million blogs. When other sites take advantage of pinning, more users learn how to pin.

The main website itself is somewhat of a departure for Microsoft having a very different layout, and taking a different approach to other sites by the company.  It’s actually genuinely well laid out and easy to use.

How useful it will be for people overall though will remain to be seen.  Despite IE9 being one of the fastest and most secure web browsers available today, Internet Explorer is still losing market share to Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.  Microsoft have released an excellent product that is at least as good as anything the competition can produce, however it might prove to be too little, too late for the company to regain the trust of consumers bitten too many times by security scares and bugs.

If you’re a web developer interested in developing taskbar functions for Internet Explorer in Windows 7 or Windows 8, you will find this an invaluable resource.

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Keeping up with the security patches, upgrades, and other software features that Microsoft frequently provides can be daunting. This is especially so if you are an IT manager and must deploy the updates on many machines. Microsoft now has a solution.

Microsoft will release the Windows 7 Pro Pack for SBS 2011 Essentials add in to ensure a minimum level of security, threat and data protection on all deployed Windows machines. It will also provide folder redirection to simplify and improve reliability of backup for mobile users. This product is geared to those administrators who have the Microsoft Small Business Server 2011 essentials program.

SBS 2011 Essentials

Here are some of the features that come with SBS 2011 Essentials. Managers can:

• Protect business data through automated backup and restore capabilities
• Run both on-premise and on-line (cloud-based) software
• Organize and access business information from almost anywhere

The Windows 7 Pro Pack Set up

It takes about six mouse clicks to set up the program and it enables an instant cache of folders when a user connects. All the folders that contain changes are to the server as backup. This way it protects people who move in and out of an office environment.

With the Pro Pack offline users save their material as they normally would, but the data is automatically replicated to the server when they are on the network and then backed up by the server. When users make changes, the information is also updated to the server as well.

Security Updates

The Pro Pack also makes it easy to deploy all upgrades and security features. By running the program, the administrator chooses which files to download and install. The baseline is set and a file is sent to all computers that allows them to install the downloaded file from the server.

Source: CRN

Microsoft Small Business Server

Windows 7 Pro Pack for SBS 2011 Essentials is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

Here are some MP3 tools that are handy to have. They let you create your own playlists, audio stream, or rip songs to MP3 files.

Playlist Creator

Playlist Creator you can create playlists easily and quickly. This is a fast operation where the composition and creation of a playlist is done within seconds. All you have to do is add all desired files, enter the name of the playlist and save it to a location and one moment later your first playlist is already done. The easiest method for adding files to the playlist is by using drag and drop from Windows Explorer.

Download: oddgravity

http://www.oddgravity.de/app-opc.php

2. RipShout

RipShout is a program that reads a ShoutCast MP3 stream from Internet radio stations and rips the songs to MP3 files on the the user’s PC, and writes their IDv3 tag. While recording, RipShout can play the songs through it’s internal mp3 player or append the songs to Winamp’s playlist.

RipShout works with Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7. But it requires the .Net 3.5 framework from Microsoft.

http://www.rumandcode.com/RipShout/

3. Music NFO Builder

An ultimate freeware utility designed to automatically build: nfo, m3u, pls, sfv, md5 from mp3/mpc music files.
You can read files quickly and easily through selected drives and directory and also list them on listview style window.
It is very useful for make info files and checksums and playlist files to posting binary files to usenet.
Here are some of its features:
- Support for MPEG Audio, MPEGplus (MPC)
- File info: size, length, bit rate, sample rate, mode, version, layer
- Including ID3-tags (versions 1.0, 1.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4), APE-tags 2.0
- Generating nice NFO files, checksums (SFV/MD5), and winamp playlists (M3U, PLS)

http://nfobuilder.com/music/download/

MP3 VCR

This is a freeware Shoutcast / iTunes compatible Internet radio station and recorder.  It records MP3 streams easily and it comes with the drag and drop interface that is simple to use. It is also has an ICY-compatible title extraction . Plus it acts as a MP3 playback program too. Save your favorite radio stations as presets! It also comes with 18 pre-configured stations to chose from.

http://www.mp3vcr.com/

Download MP3 Tools is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

Normally if you want to watch digital TV in more than one room, you need to pay for multiple set-top boxes or build multiple media center PCs each with their own separate TV cards.

More hardware is usually needed if you want to stream live TV to another location or to your phone.  With DVBlink you can not only add these capabilities and more, but better still, it only costs 40 Euros.

With DVBlink, one Windows 7 media center PC can act as a server and any TV tuners in this machine can be shared with other Windows 7 PCs either via Windows 7 Media Center or Windows Media player, and the live TV stream can also be  viewed by any web browser, including mobile phone browsers.  The diagram below best shows how DVBlogic works:

In my DVBlogic setup, I have my main W7MC (depicted on the left) connected to my main TV.  Inside I have 4 DVB S2 cards (Hauppauge WinTV-Nova-HD-S2) cards, that allow me to watch and record up to four channels at a time (in the latest version of DVBlogic, W7MC’s limit of 4 tv cards is removed and up to 8 cards can be utilised by one machine).

DVBlogic allows me to share these cards with the devices on the right i.e. other PCs, mobiles, tablets, UPNP enabled devices like Playstation 3s – whatever.   Virtual tuners are also created for other PCs, so they can schedule their own recordings. The software uses smart tuner sharing, so if two or more devices are watching say the Discovery HD channel, then only one tuner is used rather than two or more.

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Adding DVBlink has allowed me to significantly reduce my satellite TV costs.  In my home I have 4 media center PCs and using DVBlink has allowed me to do away with 3 additional set-top boxs and also the additional Sky multi-room fee – that’s nearly £600 for the extra 3 set-top boxes and £125/pa for the multiroom service.  For just over £300 I have 4 TV cards and the ability to watch TV wherever I want at anytime.

If you’re a Windows Phone 7  user, yopu can also download TW TeeVee that allows you to watch live TV on your handset.

More: DVblogic, TW TeeVee

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As of August 1, the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) is available for download. This is a suite of technologies that helps improve compatibility and increase asset management, reduce support costs, and improve policy control.

The MDOP technologies give customers’ better control of the desktop. This can significantly reduce the total cost of ownership of the operating system and entire application management lifecycle.

Features of MDOP 2011 R2

The New Main Elements include the

• Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM)
• Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolkit (DaRT) 7.0
• Microsoft Asset Inventory Service (AIS) 2.0.

During an earlier release the elements then were:

• Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) 4.6 SP1
• Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) 2.0
• Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) 4.0, AIS 1.5
• DaRT 6.5
• Microsoft Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM) 3.5.

Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM)

Here are the main features of the MBAM set of tools:

1. Streamline BitLocker Provisioning:  Simplify BitLocker provisioning as part of their Windows 7 deployment or they can have the user enable it after their deployment.
2. Generate out of box reports: Generate compliance reports with out of box reporting.
3. Retrieve recovery keys: Quickly and easily retrieve recovery keys using a webpage specifically designed for helpdesk use.
4. Protect recovery keys: Store recovery keys in an encrypted database to guarantee that they are protected.

Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolkit (DaRT) 7.0

This set of tools helps users easily recover unusable PCs, or rapidly diagnose problem causes of issues, and quickly repair unbootable or locked-out systems.

The key updates include:

1. Remote diagnostics and recovery: Here software based remoting allows helpdesk staff to securely diagnose and recover PCs with DaRT without having to visit the user’s PC or having to reimage the PC.
2. Flexible deployment option: You will have the option to choose the right deployment method, or combination of methods, to suit individual needs or requests.
3. Increased customization: IT professionals have the ability to create DaRT images that restrict end-user access to tools while making these same tools available to Helpdesk and IT staff.

Microsoft Asset Inventory Service (AIS) 2.0

This cloud based asset management service can help IT managers make good inventory control decisions:

1. Updated/localized UI and improved software reporting: Provides users improved inventory capabilities.
2. Increased scalability and language support: Support for up to 100,000 clients to be supported per account and will also now be available in 11 different languages.
3. Comprehensive view of software installation: Customers get a complete view of the software installed on enterprise PCs, manage software and hardware assets, and forecast future needs.

Source: Microsoft

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack Just Released is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

Graphics are almost a part of everything on the Internet. The standard graphics formats jpg, png, bmp and others vary in size and dimension. While it is possible to modify the images, there are times when the tools available through MS Paint are not enough. So here are three graphics tools that you can use to adjust your images.

Caesium 

You may need to reduce the size of your picture. With Caesium you can reduce it by up to 90%, and still preserve the original quality. You can save a lot of space and quickly upload your pictures on the web (to sites like Facebook, or MySpace) saving a lot of time. Another benefit is for Webmasters who need to optimize the images in order to avoid prolonged loading times for their visitors. The software allows you to view instantly the compression results, helping you to decide how much optimization you need. You can also set different compression levels to each image, which saves a lot of time.

Download

 FastPreview

Here is an enhancement to Windows Explorer. FastPreview displays a thumbnail preview of images directly inside the context menu. So what happens when you click on the thumbnail? It will open viewer and the image will be scaled to fit automatically on your screen. The viewer offer lossless rotation plus a variety of resampling methods. It also has viewing features and offers support for more than 30 image formats. It allows shell integration with EXIF, ITPC and XMP information to the Properties dialog.

 Download

FreeSizer

Do you want to resize copies of your pictures? Then use FreeSizer. This easy tool lets you quickly create resized copies of your pictures that you can send by email or uploaded to the web. How do you do that? Simply drag and drop one or more photos into the list, then select a resizing profile of your choice and click a button. You do not need to perform any extra configuration. FreeSizer comes pre-configured for most popular uses.

Download

3 Graphics Tools to Look At is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

Metro UI. For all we know will be an integral part of the Windows 8 operating system. Part of Metro UI is a tile based design that you may have seen on one of the new Windows phones or on a screenshot of the new operating system. The tile based design is controversial, and it is not clear how it will be implemented in the new operating system.

Windows 7 users who like the idea of adding tiles to their operating system for easier access to features, information and programs can now download and run a program called Pulmon which brings the design to the Windows 7 operating system.

Pulmon is currently offered as a beta version. Make sure you create a backup of your important files before you run the program. While we did not experience any issues on our systems, it is still important to have the means to recover the OS if you should experience some on yours.

The program displays the available tiles in the upper half of the interface on first start. All tiles there are currently not displayed on the desktop. A click moves them to the lower half of the interface, and at the same time on the desktop. You can now move the tile freely on the desktop until you find a suitable location for it.

Here is a list of supported tiles in this version of Pulmon. The developer has made an announcement to add more features and tiles in future versions of the program.

• Internet Explorer, Control Panel, Users – Open
• Date and Time
• System State – Shutdown, Restart, Hibernate and Lock
• Webby – Tech site links
• System Information

Pulmon needs to be running in the background. When you close the application, the tiles disappear as well. The biggest issues currently are the lack of customizations and the small selection of tiles available.

Pulmon

Download

The program is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 versions. (via)

More: Pulmon

Pulmon, Windows 8 Tiles For Your Windows 7 Desktop is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

Splashtop, a San Jose California based company with offices in Asia, has a remote desktop product that makes connection to your PC from a remote location easy to use and fast.

Formed in 2006, Splashtop has a variety of products that allow fast remote connection to remote computers. Currently, Splashtop is installed on 40+million PCs around the world. and the hardware compatibility List covers over 600 platforms.

Windows Version

With Splashtop Remote Desktop for Windows you can connect either PC-to-PC or PC-to-Mac to provide remote access support including full audio and video. Here are the requirement to receive connections using Splashtop Remote Desktop app, your computer needs to have:

• Windows 7, Vista, XP, or Mac OS X 10.6+
• 1 GB of RAM
• 1.6 GHz or faster dual-core CPU

Features:

• Watch high-definition movies and videos (up to 30 frames per second), streaming from PC or Mac
• Play interactive 3D games with low latency such as World of Warcraft, StarCraft, or EA Sports games
• Setup with ease through its simple, intuitive interface
• Latency is low with access and video and audio streaming up to 15 times faster than other remote access systems.

SplashTop Remote for Windows is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

Even though Microsoft’s IE9 is only a few months old, Microsoft has something it can claim that other browsers can’t. It is a good malware blocker; indeed, it is better than the other browsers.

What makes the IE9 Malware Blocker stand out is that it has two components for the SmartScreen Filter. One is URL Reputation, which is included in IE8 and Application Reputation, which is new to IE9.  IE9 caught an exceptional  92% of the live threats with SmartScreen  URL  reputation, and an additional 8% with Application Reputation.   IE9 with SmartScreen offers the best protection of any browser against socially engineered malware.  Protection against malware targeting European users matched broader findings from the Q3 2010 global test.

One of the biggest problems discovered in 2010 and going into 2011 are socially engineered malware URL. This is a web page link that directly leads to a download that delivers a malicious payload whose content type would lead to execution, or more generally a website known to host malware links. These downloads appear to be safe, like those for a screen saver application, video codec upgrade. They are designed to fool the user into taking action. Some security professionals refer to these threats as “consensual” or “dangerous” downloads.

How does IE9 become a better malware blocker? Essentially, this is due to browser protection, which has two main functional components. The first is the foundation is an “in-the-cloud” reputation-based system which scours the Internet for malicious websites and categorizes content accordingly; either by adding it to a black or white list, or assigning a score (depending on the vendor’s approach). This categorization may be performed manually, automatically, or using both methods. Some vendors will utilize feedback from user agents on their customers’ endpoints to report back to the reputation system automatically, providing information relevant to the trustworthiness, or otherwise, of applications and files downloaded from the Internet.

The second functional component resides within the web browser and requests reputation information from the in-the-cloud systems about specific URLs and then enforces warning and blocking functions.

IE9 works better than the other browsers because of the in-the-cloud operation. Microsoft, with its search engine Bing, and now Azure, is constantly scouring the Internet for Malware sites. It then performs blocking functions as a result of the in-the-cloud operation.

Source:

NSS Report

IE9 a Better Malware Blocker than Other Browsers is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

Innovative keyboard input company Swype recently announced that they’ve received a great deal more funding from existing investors which will allow them to further expand their market for their innovative keyboard software. Swype keyboards are found in nearly 50% of all Android devices shipped and allow the user to “swype” through the letters of the words they wish to type.

The Swype method has proven to be a quicker way, in some scenarios, to type on a mobile device when compared to a more traditional tap-to-type method.

The additional $2.5 million in investments into the now-profitable company brings hopes that they can move their keyboard over to other platforms like iOS, Windows Phone and even Windows 7 tablets. While the company CEO, Mike Sherry, noted to AllThings D’s Ina Fried that Windows 7 tablets with Skype will definitely come to fruition very soon, Windows Phone handsets with Skype might need to come by other means. Microsoft has locked down the Windows Phone OS in many ways making it hard for software like Swype to break through, but Microsoft’s deal with Nokia, which allows Nokia to make greater changes to the OS creates a hopeful loophole for Swype to introduce its software into devices. It’s also worthy to note that Nokia is currently an investor in the Swype technology. 

Source: The Examiner

Swype Eyeing Windows 7 Tablets and More is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

Mango packs about 500 new features into Windows Phone, per Microsoft, so picking one favorite is quite difficult, but if I had to I’d probably have to say Internet Explorer 9 mobile. In the initial release of Windows Phone 7, the browser included was a hybrid of IE7 and IE8 and was still better than many browsers on other platforms out there, but it certainly had its flaws. Microsoft hopes to close some of those gaps with IE9 in the Mango release. I’ve had some time to play with the Mango beta and I’m pretty pleased with the direction of the native browser. Here are my thoughts. (for a full overview of many more features, see Mike Halsey’s post)

The first thing you will notice when opening the browser for the first time is that the address bar is now coupled with the toolbar making leaving more room for the viewable area of the webpage. You’ll also notice that the address bar-toolbar combination is now at the bottom, which to my knowledge, has never been done before, but I could be wrong. When I first saw the bottom-dwelling address bar I was hoping that it had been moved for testing purposes only and was hoping it would be back at the top come final release. Well, the address bar is staying at the bottom and you’ll no doubt love the change. I was skeptical at first, but after using it, it just makes sense. Your thumbs are usually planted toward the bottom of the phone’s screen anyway, so having the address bar right beneath them definitely saves time and the combination toolbar solution really makes for some noticeable real estate for viewing web pages. The address bar also now appears in landscape mode as well, which was an obvious omission from the initial release.

The con with the new layout is that the favorite, add favorite and recent buttons have now been relegated to a sub menu which appears when you press the ”…” button. A menu comes up with IE’9s browser options: tabs, recent, favorites, add to favorites, share page, pin to start and settings (Another change I noticed is that when the menu bar is up a small status bar drops from the top of the screen with your time, battery, wi-fi and carrier signal strength). What this means is that you must tap the ”…” button, pull up the menu and select “Tabs” to navigate to the tabs page, when before, it was just a tap at the bottom of the screen. Not a huge issue, but a noticeable extra tap. The pivot for favorites/history is now also removed in the beta, so instead of being able to switch back and forth between the two on a single screen, you now have to go back to the toolbar menu and select them individually.

Real world usability for IE9 is close to the previous version in Windows Phone except it does seem a bit faster at loading pages thanks to the now full GPU hardware acceleration baked in. Pinching, scrolling and panning is still smooth like butter and even better in this release. Flash support is still not included and may never be for that matter, but we’ll have to wait and see there. HTML5 is the new technology being touted in this version. Microsoft has recently gone full steam ahead with their support for the HTML5 markup and it’s evident in IE9 mobile. Being a mobile browser, you may not notice most of the HTML5 goodies (HTML5 test site here), especially if you are like me and have the browser set to mobile web-page view by default, but it’s nice to know that the HTML5 capability is there. Rendering is much better on many webpages in this version of IE. The only exception, for me, is the mobile version of Yahoo!, which renders as a text-only mobile webpage. Every other site I’ve tried renders beautifully.

In conclusion, the new and improved Internet Explorer mobile for Windows Phone Mango is definitely an upgrade over the previous version in initial releases of the OS. The speed, compatibility and standards compliance is greatly improved and the new location of the address bar is refreshingly welcome, even if it means a few more taps to get to some options. IE9 mobile is just one of the major changes coming in Windows Phone this Fall and being a WP7 user, I can’t wait to see what the Windows Phone team hasn’t yet revealed.

A Look at IE9 Mobile in Windows Phone Mango is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

The Windows context menu that is displayed when you right-click on files for instance is automatically optimized by Microsoft. This basically means that you won’t see all available context menu items when you right-click. Items that are hidden by default can be displayed by holding down the Shift key while right-clicking.

When I right-click a program in the Windows 7 Start Menu, I see only six items in the menu. This includes options to Open the program, Run the program with administrative privileges, pin it to the taskbar or startmenu, remove the item from the list or open its properties.

By holding down Shift you get about four times the options. From scanning the program with antivirus software to troubleshooting compatibility, editing it or opening its file location.

Take a look at the two screenshots below. The first shows the standard right-click context menu, the second the menu when Shift is held down.

The free software Always Full Context has one single purpose: To enable the enhanced context menu on all right-clicks. All a user needs to do is to run the program on the computer. Every right-click afterwards will always display all context menu items in Windows Explorer. It has to be noted that it only works in the default system file browser, and not on the desktop or the Windows start menu.

Some may see this as a limitation, and an option to make this the default setting everywhere would be welcome.

The program is currently in beta, and offered as an AutoHotkey script. Users who do not want to install AutoHotKey on their system can download a pre-compiled alpha version instead that they just need to execute after download.

AlwaysFullContext can be a handy addition for users who regularly have to hold down the shift key to access hidden context menu entries. The program is compatible with Windows 7, and should work under previous versions of Windows as well.

Always Display All Right-Click Context Menu Items In Windows Explorer is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

Are you annoyed at the disordered files of your computer? Are you driven mad by searching files without any results? Do you feel like you are at your breaking point when your files are missing? Can you bear that your secret files may be seen by others?

Take it easy. There are many methods to conquer these problems. We will introduce a series of files management softwares to help you manage your Windows 7 PC.

File Manager

This software is for file management in order to help users merge and cut mass files. You can index file names, add a word to the beginning of the file names and change file names extension.

Seeker

This is a file searching software with an ultra-Fast File Search engine. Searching for files or inside of files Seeker can handle it. All results from Seeker can be viewed in one of four advanced reporting modes.

BackUp Maker

This software is for files backup. BackUp Maker is the professional solution for creation of data-backups. The ease of use as well as the range of functions enables you to create backup tasks for saving files and folders with a lack of time.

Lock Folder

This software is for files encryption. Lock Folder is a new security tool that lets you lock your files and folders with your personal password. Now nobody but you can access your most sensitive information. Locking folders and files also effectively protects you from malicious programs.

ZipGenius

This is files compression software that can compress files in several compressed archive formats. ZipGenius can create and handle several archive formats, including ZIP, RAR, CAB, ACE, 7-Zip, ARC, SQX; also, it can read and decompress CD/DVD images in ISO9660 format.

DoubleKiller

This software is for files deletion. DoubleKiller searches duplicate files by comparing any Combination of file name, size, modification date and content. When the scan is finished, a list is displayed and you can manually or automatically select the files to be removed.

Do you have any other file managers you want to recommend to readers?

6 Free Softwares To Manage Your Files is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

With so much information floating around your computer and your daily life, here are 3 personal information manager programs that can help you coordinate and plan your time effectively and efficiently.

Interactive Calendar

Interactive Calendar is a free but feature-packed desktop calendar that is customizable  which makes it great to use and look at. This calendar software, unlike those of its competitors, renders the calendar grid right on the wallpaper, which  integrates with your Windows theme. It also increases the speed of the refreshes and updates the material without a hitch.

Another advantage of Interactive Calendar is the degree of visual customization it supports. You can access and control many aspects of the calendar’s appearance such as cell spacing, font size, position on the screen, color, and opacity.  You can use a dozen skins that come with the program or load your own images to serve as background for the calendar. The program also supports three interface variations, which allows it to blend perfectly with any Windows theme

Download

Golden Rules Organizer

This is a well-structured personal organizer and goal system. It supports three planning levels: mission & values, projects, recurring and one-time activities. The organizer includes planner facility, a diary, time tracking, contact lists, hierarchical notes/bookmarks on any subject. Data is available to spreadsheets, printed, reported, and exported/imported. It provides backup and recovery facilities. Moreover, while it was designed for professionals, it is also suitable to novices.

Download

Typhoeus Stickies

Typhoeus Stickies is accessible by its icon in the  taskbar; so within a short period of time you can create or edit text notes utilizing color, formatting and even images. You can create lists or just create beautiful documents. The program allows for more than just the creation of useful stickies, you can organize your views, any way you want, and store small pieces of information or fully fledged documents.

Download

3 Personal Information Manager Programs to Look At is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

According to Forester Research Windows 7 has reached 21 % of the corporate desktop market. However, Windows XP is at 60%, down from 69% a year ago. Overall, Windows has close to 90% of the corporate desktop market with Mac OSX reaching 11% and Linux just under 1.5 %.

One thing that is important here is that hardware is aging, and the biggest factor preventing the move to Windows 7, which was a necessary hardware upgrade, may no longer be the holdback. Hardware advances in the last five years can make Windows 7 reside on a natural environment. Now buying new hardware naturally makes Win7 a standard OS for companies to move to.

Another factor making the move to Win7 a more natural move is the decline of Vista, which at one time reached 14% of the desktop market. However, that was in 2009. Even more important is that since the release of service pack 1, Vista’s presence has dropped by half in the corporate world.

Perhaps the biggest reason for the successful move has been the inherent strength of the Win7 OS. Publicly it ranks high. So far, there has been nothing but food words spoken about it. Microsoft, moreover, has made sure that issues about performance or security have a quick response. The days are gone when everyone had something negative to say about Vista. Instead the talk is about how good the features are, and curiously expect Windows 8 to be even better.

The Browser Market

On the other hand, IE is not doing as well. It continues to lose market share to Chrome and Firefox. Figures from last month show the browser market:

• Internet Explorer – 43.5%
• Firefox – 27.9%
• Chrome – 16.8%
• Safari – 7.3%
• Opera – 2.2%

The challenge may be that Microsoft has to many balls to juggle at one time, such as the OS, the Windows Phone 7, the Azure cloud, Playbox and so on… It may be losing the browser war because it’s attention is split in too many directions.

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If you have multiple partitions on a hard drive, windows7 will allow you to extend or shrink the size of your partition.

Here are the steps.

Step1:

Go to the Control Panel.

Step 2:

Select System and Security then Select Administrative Tools

Step 3:

Select Computer Management

Step 4:

Select Disk Management

This image shows just how much room is available to extend the first partition to.

Step 5:

Next start the Wizard.

Now you will notice that on Disk0 I have two partitions, one that is allocated, and one that is unallocated.  However, I can extend the partition on the allocated one.

Step 5

Here is where I will start the wizard to extend the drive partition size.

Note: This format will not remove data from your existing partition, so it is safe. If you feel uncomfortable about doing anything to your partition, you might want to back it up first. This can reduce your anxiety.

The other thing that is worth pointing out is that you can increase your disk size without actually having to buy another disk. So it is a money saver.

Also, remember that this program is a modified partition manager. You don’t need a third party program do your partition updates if you only need to shrink or extend the size of the partition.

Finally, note that while we have talked about increasing the size of a partition, it is also possible to shrink the size of the partition. There is a wizard that will do that as well.

How To Increase the Partition Size in Windows 7 is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

What does Bitlocker do?

Bitlocker prevents access to any files stored on the drives shown below. It does not prevent you from working with your computer, But it does prevent unauthorized access to it.

Step 1:

a)  Go to Control panel.

b)  Select System and Security

c)   Select Bitlocker Drive Encryption

Step 2:

You must select a drive to encrypt, the C drive of the Flash drive.

Step 3:

a)  Click the link to “Turn on Bitlocker” for the Flash drive.

b)  Next Enter the password to unlock the drive.

Step

a) Save the Recovery Key or Print It.

b) If you click” Save the recovery key to a file,” it pops up the folder automatically.

c) The recovery key is now saved.

Step 5:

You can now begin to encrypt the drive.

a) The encryption process starts:

b) When the encryption completes, you will see this popup:

And you are done.

The Bitlocker encryption screen now looks like this:

Step 6

You can manage the Bitlocker, which will give you the following screen.

You have five choices on how the manage the Bitlocker feature.

Notes:

Here are some things to remember about BitLocker.

You can use BitLocker to protect all files stored on the drive where you have the Windows installation, i.e., the drive where the operating system sits. You can also use it fixed data drives, such as internal hard drives or flash drives.

Here is where there is an advantage to using BitLocker. Whereas the Encrypting File System (EFS) program, which enables you to encrypt individual files, BitLocker encrypts the entire drive. Here is the key to BitLocker. You can log on and work with your files normally, but BitLocker can help block hackers from accessing the system files they rely on to discover your password, or from accessing your drive by removing it from your computer and installing it in a different computer.

Automatic Encryption

When you add new files to a drive that has BitLocker encryption, automatically encryption occurs on the file. However, note that files remain encrypted only while they are stored in the encrypted drive. When you copy the files to another drive or computer, they are automatically decrypted. If you share files with other users, such as through a network, these files remain encrypted while stored on the encrypted drive; however, authorized users can access them normally.

Operating System Check

If you encrypt the operating system drive, for example, Drive “C”) BitLocker checks the computer during startup for any security risk elements such as a change to the BIOS or changes to any startup files. Moreover, if such a security risk appears, then BitLocker will lock the operating system drive and require a special BitLocker recovery key to unlock it.

Warning

Make sure that you create the recovery key when you turn on BitLocker for the first time; failure to do so could mean that you would permanently lose access to your files.

You should also note, that if your computer has the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip, BitLocker uses it to seal the keys that are used to unlock the encrypted operating system drive. When you start your computer, BitLocker asks the TPM for the keys to the drive and unlocks it. A Trusted Platform Module provides methods for the secure generation of cryptographic keys, and limitation of their use.

Here is the general outline of the TPM chip:

If you encrypt data drives, regardless of whether they are fixed or removable, you can unlock an encrypted drive with a password or a smart card, or set the drive to automatically unlock when you log on to the computer.

You can also turn off BitLocker at any time. You can suspending it temporarily, or more permanently by decrypting the drive.

Hardware and Software Requirements

Software:

Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 7 Enterprise, or Windows Server 2008 R2.

Hardware:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

How to Install Windows7 Bitlocker on your Flash Drive is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

There are many Network Applications available, but the three shown here do specific operations regarding domain names and IP addresses. They are handy and convenient.

WhoIs

If you ever wondered about getting information on domain names, owners, contacts, and status, this program will that kind of information.

Enter a web address ,a host name or any name: e.g. http://www.google.com, google.com or google to get the information you need. You can also enter IP addresses as they are also accepted; it works with ipV4 and ipV6 addresses , e.g. 200.181.196.95 (IPv4), [2002::4a7d:e650] (IPv6).

The program now accepts IPv6 addresses and  internationalized domain names. Finally it works with Windows XP, Vista, 7. But, it requires the Microsoft .NET Framework version 4.0.
There is also a “Replace” utility. This allows you to edit and replace the countries names.

This version updates the “Whois Servers” files (top-level domain, whois server names, geographic type names); it updates the countries names for Domains hack (like speed.cd, bit.ly).

Note this program is in the BestVistaDownloads page. [Download Link]

WinPing

This is a ping program, which you can use to test your network connection. You can also enter a web address or a valid host name, such as http://www.msn.com or msn.com, or a valid IP address IPv4 or IPv6 address, such as 98.137.149.56 (IPv4) ,[2a00:1450:8006::93] (IPv6) to get the connection results. The IP addresses are converted into host names and conversely. An empty input gives local IP address.

What else? The “Options…” button opens several WinPing options. These are:

1. Infinite Loop (runs pings in a infinite loop and shows the average in real time),
2. Time options (Timeout, Temporization between every ping in milliseconds),
3. Multi-ping (for several pings one after the other),
4. Retries, Average of the response times, Hostname List, ip-to-country File.

Other features:

1. There are Sort and Replace utilities that let you edit and save the host name list, countries list, or any text file.
2. The “Auto-Save” option will allow you to save thousands of lines of pinging information (in Infinite Loop Mode).
3. A Ping Graph (with axis scale and Y-offset adjustment) allows you easily to view, in real time, Average and Pings points for every loop.
4. You can easily save and load the Ping Curves using the Graph Options.

This version updates ping error messages, and updates IP address pinging. It will let you ping an IPv6 address.

It works with all versions of Windows. However, if your system is Windows XP or older, it requires the Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 or higher.

[Download Link]

IPConfig

Here is another nifty little tool that you should have at your disposal, IPConfig. The purpose of IPConfig is to provide a simple but effective way of seeing your IP addresses, both internal and external (i.e., private and public). This tool is designed and programmed in Visual Basic.NET and is displayed in a nice user interface.

[Download Link]

3 Network Applications To Look At is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

For years if you have wanted to clean a PC that’s heavily infected with malware there were precious few, if any, tools you could actually boot your computer from to perform the cleanup.  Now Microsoft are jumping in with a new beta product called Standalone System Sweeper.

The tool, which is based on Microsoft Security Essentials, claims to be able to remove rootkits, malware and viruses effectively, though the company stress it’s not a replacement for a full anti-virus package.

The software, which is available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions to match your copy of Windows creates a CD, DVD or Flash Drive you can start your PC from to run malware scans.  It says you need a live Internet connection and at least 250Mb free on the device you create the installer on.

This is a useful program to keep around, though bear in mind that it’s still a beta and therefore may have flaws.  You would need to create a new bootable CD, DVD or pen drive for each infection as, just as with similar software such as MacAfee Stinger, it will only use the virus and malware definitions that are available at the time.

With this in mind I wouldn’t create a disc and leave it laying around for when you need it, as the virus and malware definitions will be out of date when it’s required.  Rather you would create a disc on a different PC to the one that’s infected.

The other thing to bear in mind is that this product is based on Microsoft’s free anti-virus program, Security Essentials.  While this product uses the same malware database as its award-winning cousin, Forefront Client Security, security Essentials hasn’t scored brilliantly in recent group tests.  It’s still a good product though and I still recommend it.

You can download the beta of Standalone System Sweeper here.

Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper for Windows is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

I’ll start by saying this.  I love Windows Live Mail.  In fact the whole Windows Live Essentials Suite is, well, essential to all modern PCs in my opinion.  There are so many great products in the suite, all free and all of top notch quality, that you’re really missing out if you don’t at least take a look at them.

However, I’ve finally had to give up on Windows Live Mail and it’s been a very sad day.  So let’s start with a bit of history.

I started using Microsoft Outlook back in the last century.  It was powerful, did exactly what I needed it to do for work and was flexible too.  There were always a few problems with it though that niggled me but, at the time, there was simply nothing else to match it as an email client.  Over the years though Outlook became more and more top-heavy, slow and clunky and because I was self-employed and not using it in an enterprise environment, I wasn’t getting the best out of the product.

Then Windows Live Mail appeared at the end of 2007 and pretty much as soon as this happened, I jumped ship.  I was still paying for Outlook through my Microsoft software subscription but all of a sudden the lightweight email client I’d been after was here.  I liked most of all the clean, crisp interface and the fact that everything was easy to use.  Compared to Outlook this software, which does most of the same things Outlook does, was a vast improvement.  The clincher for me though was the calendar integration that had been missing from Outlook Express and Windows Mail.

Over the years that followed even Outlook plugins such as the social connectors for Facebook and LinkedIn, both of which I use a lot, couldn’t tempt me back.  Windows Live Mail was wonderful, lovely and the software I’d been searching for, for many years.

Let’s face it, email is a critical part of our everyday lives now, especially for the self-employed.  It’s a lifeline and something that just has to be got right with the client software.

Then however I got a Windows Phone and everything suddenly went wrong.

Windows Phone is fantastic as it integrates your social life, namely Facebook but in a few months Twitter and LinkedIn too, into your main contacts hub.  Everyone you want to contact you can.  Initially, in pre-release versions of the phone, your main contacts and Facebook friends all appeared in one big list, and this is still the default setting on Windows Phone today.  For the final version of the operating system though Microsoft added a feature to just integrate Facebook contact details into the friends and colleagues you already had in your contacts list.

Now this is something that works extremely well and I love my Windows Phone.  One of the best things about Windows Phone is that is automatically synchronises your contacts, calendar and email with your Hotmail (or other) account in the cloud.  Sadly though this means that your Facebook friends also get synchronised, and thus the problems begin.

I soon after found myself faced with a impenetrably long list of contacts in Windows Live Mail, none of whom I could delete as they were Facebook friends.  This made finding the correct details for people I conversed with regularly via phone or email really difficult.  There’s no linking of contacts, no way to hide your Facebook contacts, the whole thing was just one big mess.

This wasn’t the only flaw that caused me to jump ship though, even though it’s a big enough flaw in and of itself to justify the leap away from Windows Live Mail.  There were two more reasons for leaving.  One is Live Mail’s insistence on adding absolutely everybody you send an email to, even a reply, to your contacts list.  Outlook doesn’t do this and in fact Hotmail in the cloud doesn’t do this either, instead asking you if it’s something that you would like to do.

I then found my contacts list ballooning even further out of control.  I wanted to just believe that another update was around the corner and this problem would be fixed.  This brings me to the clincher though that means I cannot, at least for a while, use Windows Live Mail on any of my PCs.

Microsoft simply don’t release periodic updates for the Live Essentials Suite to fix problems.  With the sole exception of security fixes for the likes of Windows Live Messenger, it’s just one big release every year or so.  Alas my contacts list needed sorting rather more urgently.  I simply couldn’t wait until sometime in 2012 as with contacts just appearing in one long list, people had long since become almost impossible to find.

So yesterday I finally jumped ship and went back to, you guessed it, Outlook 2010.  I still don’t like Outlook either.  Unless you work in an enterprise environment the interface is heavy, busy and full of things you’re never going to need.  It doesn’t have any of the flaws that have caused me to abandon Live Mail however and that’s just got to be one big boon.

It’s a pity that with the Live Essentials Suite that the products contained within it aren’t updated more frequently.  This was, after all, the whole reason Microsoft cited for removing Mail from Windows in the first instance, so there could be more frequent releases.  For now I’m going to keep using Outlook, hating it and watching for news of a new version of Live Mail in which these problems are fixed.  I’m not going to be holding my breath for it though.

Why I’ve had to abandon Windows Live Mail is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

If you have the right working tools for network operations, you can get a lot of information that can help you control or monitor the network.  Here are three tools, WinTracer, PacketViewer, and NetTraffic that are easy to use and provide you with a steady stream of network information.

NetTraffic

NetTraffic allows you to view and to be informed of download speed and upload speed in real time. Select a Network Interface Card, and it displays the network traffic (graphic bars and animated icon if you choose this option).  The “Options” button opens NetTraffic options: run at Windows startup; bars/icon scale; max values; refresh time; you can display the speeds in window title. With the “System Tray” option, balloon tips appear in the taskbar tray; you can choose the condition to display the message (eg. if download speed >= 1000 KB/s). Settings are automatically saved to a text file. Finally, this version adds a “Run at Windows startup” option and adds a autosave settings file. It works with all version of Windows except Windows 98 and Windows Me. If your system is Windows XP or older, it requires the Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 or higher.

[Download Link]

PacketViewer

[Download Link]

Wintrace

[Download Link]

Top Freeware Network Tools for Windows 7 is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

The team behind Remote Potato have pushed out a major update this month.  For those of you unfamiliar with Remote Potato, the original version allowed Windows 7 Media Center users to stream recorded tv over the internet.

Now, Remote Potato v1.0 has added a number of features, including the ability to stream music, photos and videos over the internet.

New features in Remote Potato V1.0 include:

• Fully seekable video streaming in new, ultra-high quality H264.
• Stream your pictures / videos / music – all major formats supported.
• Remote Control, Slideshow, Music, Series Record Options – and more.
• Server now runs on Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7 : stream your stuff from any PC!*
• Mobile Apps available for iPhone / Android / Windows Phone 7

Below is a video of Remote Potato in action in a web browser:

I’ve just tried out the new version and I was particularly impressed with the music and video streaming on my iPhone.  I particularly liked that the music track that was currently playing continued to play whilst I browsed the rest of my library, and added more tracks to the playlist.  The photo browsing is ultrafast; faster than any other photo server service I’ve tried on my iPhone.

One feature that is missing is the ability to add custom media folders to the Remote Potato library; the app automatically adds only folders that are within the Windows 7 Media Center database.  So, if you have any other folders with content you’d like to stream then these won’t work.

To read more about Remote Potato V1.0, click here.

Remote Potato V1.0 Launched: Stream Pictures, Videos and Music From Your Home PC is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

Here are three launch tools that will help you get access to your files or programs faster.

Typhoeus Hotkeys

Typhoeus Hotkeys is a free program for your Windows computer that allows you to launch programs, files and websites with just a single key press. If you spend too much time looking for your content, you can stop now, and spend your time using it.

Typhoeus Hotkeys let’s you create links to your content which can be accessed in seconds so that you dont need to keep searching for it. You don’t need to worry about losing your hot keys because the software comes with a built in backup utility, and it runs in the taskbar as soon as your computer switches on.

[Download]

SE-TrayMenu

Here is another program what lets you get quick access to applications and system commands through a customizable popup menu. You can drag’n'drop elements or add frequently used applications and installed programs. With it you can add various elements to your Windows system tray – programs, documents, folders or files, Internet links and then set up shortcut keys to access these elements.  You can select one of pre-defined layout and color scheme or customize the  interface to your taste.

[Download]

Prompt Start

Finally, PromptStart is a small, fast utility that helps to access programs and documents quickly in Windows start menu.  It is simple, fast, needing only 5MB system memory when running. It runs only in foreground, so it does not waste system resources (memory, CPU)  when not in use.  It also supports two search methods: from word beginnings and full text search and you can search in Programs and the recent documents folder for items, and when the item is found, it saves the search window position and size.

[Download]

Summary

Theses three programs can be very helpful because they allow you to have quick access to the files or program so that you don’t waste time getting them.

3 Top Launch Tools to Look At is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.

Even though hard drives have gone into the stratosphere with size. Terabyte size is typical now a days, some may wonder why anyone would need file compression. Good question.  Well file transfers still occur and it is faster to transfer a smaller file, than a larger one. Also email attachments are typically limited in size, so file compression may be necessary. Also in the case of privacy, file compression can add that, especially if you are trying to protect the content from outsiders.  (True it is not the same as encryption but you can use it like that anyway.)

PeaZip

Let’s start with an open source program, PeaZip.  It is an archive manager: cross platform, and it is available as portable and installable software for a variety of Windows programs, both 32 and 64 bit.  (9x, 2k, XP, Vista, 7) and it is also available for Linux (PeaZip is a desktop neutral application).  What type of file types can you create with it? There is  7Z, ARC, BZ2, GZ, *PAQ, PEA, QUAD/BALZ, TAR, UPX, and ZIP. Plus you can extract 129 archive types: including ACE, ARJ, CAB, DMG, ISO, LHA, RAR, UDF and others.  Some other features are that it does strong encryption,  file copy, split/join files (file span), secure data deletion, compare, checksum and hash files, system benchmark, generate random passwords and keyfiles.

[Download Link]

Free UPX (Ultimate Packer for eXecutables)

Ok, now lets look at Free UPX. This program presents an advanced graphical interface for the UPX.  It allows you to compress (and decompress) files produced according to Microsoft Portable Executable and COFF Specification (EXE, DLL, OCX, BPL, CPL and other).   Then it offers access to all documented and undocumented UPX parameters without the need for command line usage. The interface is simple and user-friendly.  How does it work?  To compress executable files, just drag & drop them into main window, select proper profile from list, and click the COMPRESS button.

[Download Link]

Zipeg

Zipeg is a free file opener for .zip and .rar files. And with a click you can open a file and see what is inside. This way you can find exactly what you are looking for and extract it. So what are some of its features and benefits? It can zip and unzip the following extensions:  .zip, .rar, .7z, .tar, .gz, .tgz, .bzip2, .iso, .cbr, .cbz formats; even some rare types like  .arj, .lha .lzh, .cpio, .rpm, .chm, .z, .war, .ear. It will  decrypt password protected .zip and .rar files (even with strong AES encryption). It can also  combines and opens multipart .zip and .rar files and shows content of archive and allow you to select what to extract.

[Download Link]

Summary

These three files show that file compression has come a long way from the early days of Win-zip, the original file compression utility. Now you can compress and extract execuables, do encryption, and use a graphical interface to make the operations easier to do.

3 Freeware File Compression Tools to Look At is a post from Windows 7 News & Tips - Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides. Visit Windows 7 News & Tips for the Latest Microsoft Windows 7 News, Tips, Themes, Wallpapers & Guides.