Wraith Theme on WindowBlinds

The first application worth looking at is Windows Blinds. Though it's commercial, it's not all that expensive and there is a large number of themes available for it through the Win-Customize website (www.wincustomize.com). Windows Blinds is available from the stardock website (www.stardock.com). It also has the advantage of not requiring lots of dll patching, or anything else that could go wrong like some of the other solutions out there.

Using a theme is as easy as downloading themes then adding them to Window Blinds by double clicking them, then selecting them from a list. The preview it gives is really effective; a large window inside the configurations screen that shows what the desktop would look like skinned (against the wallpaper you have selected).

There are also several options to change the look of the theme including everything from changing the colour, hue, brightness, saturation, and transparency. It is also possible to set up different skins for different programs and this is exceedingly useful as some programs manage to break certain themes. WindowBlinds also has a wallpaper selector and an option to choose from a random wallpaper at certain intervals (such as whenever the user logs on).

The second application worth looking at would be something to sort out the vista style side bar, useful for all those who are sticking to their guns (and XP) until windows 7. There are a number of different options here, from the Thoosje Sidebar to Yahoo widgets, and a vista side bar ported to windows XP.

The third, if you're still using XP is a handy application that acts as an Alt-Tab replacement, giving the 3D switcher of Vista. This is available from Otaku Software (www.otakusoftware.com) and is called TopDesk. Unfortunately it doesn't work well with some Window's Blind's skins, and it's also commercial. There are free options out there as well. Microsoft have an Alt-Tab replacement as part of their powertoys for Windows XP as well as others that can be tracked down with a little work. The best of the free alternatives is a little Japanese application called 'Madotate'. This window manipulation tool started life in 1999, and works in a similar manner to the defunct Microsoft Task Gallery.

Also from Otaku Software is the best of all, a 3D cube that opens up multiple desktops to the user, and does the best job of improving productivity. To get anything better you would have to switch to Linux. Though the version from Otaku Software looks awesome and performs brilliantly, it is nevertheless commercial, and some users might not have the money to fork out for flashy effects. Luckily there is also a free alternative called Yod'm 3D, though it can be quite tough tracking down a link.

Also it's a shame to go to all the trouble of making the desktop look awesome only to let the whole thing down with garish yellow windows XP icons. Fortunately Star-Dock also offer a program called Icon Packager that allows the user to download and replace whole sets of icons at a time.

Finally, it's worth noting that the desktop we're using these days might look nice and shiny, but it's the same old thing that's always been around. Let's face it, it's time for a revolution! Bump Top is a new kind of desktop that takes inspiration from real life desks and allows new levels of interaction with the desktop that goes beyond point and click icons and drop down menus. From throwing around icons to stacking them, spreading them, tiling, pinning them to the sides of the desktop, and even crumpling them up, Bump Top adds something new to desktop interfaces and about time too. As such it's well worth checking out. It's in closed beta at time of writing but should hopefully be out soon. (http://bumptop.com/)

So as we have seen there's no need to be using an ugly desktop in this day and age, and improving one's workspace can only help improve productivity.

Advanced Windows Care is an excellent software and free for personal use. It can Scan and Remove Spywares, Prevent Spyware from installing on your PC, Search and Fix Registry entries and values, Optimize your system, Control and Optimize Startup items, Erase your Surfing traces and Clean up Junk files from hard disk. Additional Tools like memory optimizer, startup manager and disk manager are also provided.

Avast Antivirus

Antivirus = Bloatware. This is the equation which most of us have in mind. After all, these softwares are biggest memory consumers. But have you ever heared of light antivirus. If not, this is the one and that too free. It is pretty fast and consumes very less memory. It provides all round protection from viruses. It is perhaps the only antivirus with support for skins. Yes, you read it right, you can easily skin it. And by skins, I do not mean the just changing colors like some other softwares, the skins change whole the interface. Just see the screenshots above, they show the skinability of Avast! First one is Avast's Default interface and second is a Skin Downloaded from avast.com.

CCleaner

Advanced Windows Care will automatically fix registry issues for you but what if you are left with a nasty installer? Many times, uninstalling a program does not remove all the data from registry and you are left with the program still showing up in the Add/Remove Programs. CCleaner can help you at such times. It can Run Uninstallers, Rename Entry and Remove junk Entries. Additionally, it can clear you history, optimize registry and manage Startup Items.

IOBit Smart Defrag

PC slowness is mostly caused due to fragmentation. You have to manually defrag the drives using Windows Defrag and this takes too much time. It would be nice if you had a software that could automatically defrag your hard disk! So, here is IOBit Smart Defrag. It is free or personal use and automatically defrags your hard disk when the computer is idle. Manual defrag is also available and you can schedule a defrag. It is an install and forget solution to end your problems.

Multitasking - Projecting the impression that it (the CPU) is performing many tasks simultaneously is known as “multitasking”. Modern CPUs contain multiple processing pipelines and the newer CPUs of today actually have multiple processing cores each with its own full complement of multiple processing pipelines.

This latter development (multiple complete processing cores) has indeed given the CPU the capability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously and not merely just seem to be doing so. The way in which processing tasks are managed and distributed among the multiple processing pipelines of the multiple cores is however; still achieved in pretty much the same way that it has always been done.

Multitasking Operating System - When using multitasking operating systems (like Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux etc.) users tend to have multiple programs, utilities and applications running concurrently/simultaneously. For example you may be: editing a word document, downloading from the Internet and listening to music.

In order to be able to do this the CPU will share its processing time among the tasks requiring its attention including user initiated tasks, the operating system, programs, utilities, memory management and quite a few “background” services and routines. It only appears that the processor is doing many things at once because of the incredible speeds that modern CPUs are able to switch between tasks.

Communicating with the CPU - The majority of the subsystems in a PC need to send information to and receive information from the CPU and system memory (RAM). Most also expect to be able to get the CPU's attention when they do so.

In order to improve a computer's overall efficiency the CPU also needs to balance the data transfers between itself and the various other subsystems of the machine. In addition; some of a computer's subsystems such as input/output (I/O) devices and human interface devices, all tend to require “special” attention.

Different Requirements - Another influential factor here is that different devices require different amounts of CPU time at various different irregular intervals.

The mouse; for example, needs far less attention than a hard disk involved in the transference of a large multi-gigabyte file. Thus; in the interest of a more efficient use of a computer's finite resources, it is most beneficial if the amount of CPU time assigned to each device reflects the type of device and the nature of the operation and processing tasks involved.

In the above example of the resource needs of the mouse versus those of the hard drive; more resources can be allocated (even dedicated) to the hard drive for the duration of its current operation(s) while the mouse gets a smaller amount of CPU time.

When the hard drive is finished its current task(s) it may not be required to perform any transactions for various irregular periods of time. The system will then reassign those resources that were being used by the hard drive to other devices and processes as and when required.

Managing Processes - The computer (via the CPU) must also ensure that all active (running) processes and tasks are managed in the most efficient organized manner possible. There are basically 2 ways in which this can be done: CPU polling and device initiated interrupting.

Polling - Polling is the process whereby the CPU systematically locates and asks each device in turn if it requires any help or CPU processing time. This strategy (polling) is a very inefficient process because it is a waste of finite resources.

With polling the CPU is required to continually perform the same tasks (asking each device if it needs the CPU's attention) over and over again. More often than not the device will not require the CPU's attention. Statistically; the most likely answer or result of a hardware polling query is that which it received last time (offer declined).

With polling the CPU will continue to ask each device in sequence the same question ad infinitum. To overcome polling's inefficiency a different strategy; known as “Interrupting”; also referred to as Interrupt Request (IRQ), was developed.

Interrupting - The other way that the CPU (processor) can employ to handle CPU required processes and data transfers is to have the devices requiring the CPU's attention to issue a request for attention as and when they require it. This is the basic concept of interrupt requests.

Thus when a device has data to transfer, it generates an interrupt that says "Mr. CPU I need your attention now, please". The processor then stops what it is doing and deals with the device that requested its attention. Modern CPUs can handle many such requests at a time. In the event of multiple simultaneous interrupt requests the CPU uses a priority system that gives a priority status to interrupt requests based upon the priority associated with the device issuing the request. This is known as Interrupt Request Management.

Supply and Demand - One way of looking at interrupt requests is from a supply and demand perspective. While; having the CPU interrupted all the time may at first glance appear to be an inefficient way to run a computer, when examined closer reality proves otherwise. A large part of the reason is that the modern CPU is literally light years ahead; in terms of speed, when compared to the vast majority of devices conducting transactions with it. To put it into perspective let us consider the following scenario:

Let us suppose that a typist is typing at a rate of 120 words per minute and that on average there are five letters per word. This equates to the typist producing 600 characters of keyboard input per minute. This means that an old 200 MHz Pentium class CPU will process 20,000,000 instructions between each keystroke.

This is why having the processor spend a lot of time asking the keyboard if it needs any help would be wasteful, especially since the typist may at any time you might stop for a minute or two to review the copy, or do something else like make a cup of coffee. In fact; even while handling a full-bandwidth transfer from a 28,800 Kb/sec modem, which of course moves data much faster than the typist's fingers, the processor has over 60,000 instruction cycles between the bytes it needs to process.

Hardware Interrupts - Hardware interrupts such as those mentioned above (typing/keyboard input and modem transfers) are distinguishable from software interrupts by the fact that they generally originate from a device outside the CPU. Table 1 below shows the default IRQs in order of descending priority.

Software Interrupts - There is another type of interrupt that occurs in modern PCs; known as software interrupts. These are generated by the operating system, programs and various other software applications and are used by various software programs in response to different events that occur as the operating system and applications run.

In essence a software interrupt represents the CPU interrupting itself (as the interrupt originates from within the CPU) and is part of the reason of how the CPU is able to do many things at once.

Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) - A computer's BIOS provides various software routines (subprograms) that can be called by higher-level software such as DOS, Windows, or their applications, to perform different tasks. This includes actions like reading and writing from the hard disk, processing information received from devices, etc.

BIOS Access - Another performance enhancing functionality that software interrupts make possible is facilitating system software (DOS or the operating system), applications and other software to directly access one another via BIOS routines without having to know where the target application resides in memory.

Interrupt Vector Table - Normally, to call a software routine you need to know its address (location) in memory. However; with interrupt requests a table called an interrupt vector table is created and this is used to bypass the need to explicitly know the correct address in memory. Now every time the system is booted, the BIOS puts addresses representing where its routines are located for each interrupt that it is configured to respond to.

So whenever DOS, the operating system or other applications want to use a BIOS routine, it generates a software interrupt. The system processes the interrupt, looks up the value in the interrupt vector table and then automatically jumps directly to the appropriate BIOS routine. Modern operating systems and applications as well as DOS can also directly use this interrupt vector table.

BIOS Bypass - More recently newer operating systems bypass the BIOS totally as this does help improve system performance.

BIOS Assigned Logical Names - The BIOS assigns logical names to devices based on their IRQ number and memory address. For example:

IRQ 3 and I/O address 2F8-2FFh becomes Com2.

Legacy Devices Default Settings - For older systems; such as those based around the ISA bus, it is often the case that the default IRQ assignments must be preserved. This necessity is most common with older software and games that require the ISA SoundBlaster sound card to be accessible using the following configurations:

IRQ 5, I/O Address 220h and DMA 1

Failure to comply will result in; at best no in game sound and at worst no game at all.

Interrupt Summary - In short; interrupt requests are a mechanism that allows the various devices and software that make up a computer to jump the processing queue in order to have tasks of a predetermined “higher” priority to be executed “out of turn”. BIOS services are accessed using software interrupts, which are similar to the hardware interrupts except that they are generated inside the CPU by programs instead of being generated outside the CPU by hardware devices.

How to Draw a Circle

As a mathematical description, circle is a combination of points with the same length from a fixed point. To draw a circle, two things we need. They are the coordinate of center of the circle and radius or diameter of it. Let's now draw our first circle by Solidworks. Let's draw a circle with a center of origin and a radius of 20 mm.

1. Click the sketch button to define a plane on which you will draw. Since our drawing is 2D, any plane can be chosen. I choose top plane as a reference plane.
2. Click the circle button on the toolbar and choose origin as the center point of the circle. Afterthat, drag the circle to the out of the page.
3. By clicking "smart dimension" button , dimension the radius of circle. Since the radius is 20 mm, specify diameter as 40 mm.

How to Draw Filleted Arcs

To draw filleted arcs, we first need a corner of two intersecting lines. As an example, we will filet one corner of 40x40 mm square. Lets first draw the square by using rectangular button on the toolbar.

1. Click the fillet button on the toolbar.
2. Enter the radius of fillet as 5 mm into the fillet parameters space.
3. Choose the corner point which you want to fillet. Be careful here, you should select the point not the sides you want to fillet. After that, Solidworks automatically dimension the filleted arc. Here is the result.

Above all, we will use sketch command to define a planes. Simply pressing sketch button in Solidwork menu, you can define a plane on which you want to start drawing. Basically, one has three alternatives, front, top, and right respectively. For 2D drawings, one can select any of them. In our tutorial set, I will select top plane as a reference plane. This means, I'll draw on the top surface of imaginary rectangular prism. Think like this for simplicity.

 

How to draw a line

To draw line, simply click the line figure on the toolbar. Solidworks will present you four alternatives to draw line. They are "as sketched", "horizontal", "vertical" and "angle". Lets we draw a vertical line with a height of 60. Click the "vertical" radio button and  and somewhere on the screen and drag the tip of cursor vertically. This will draw a vertical line. To dimension it, click "smart dimension" button and starting point of line. Then drag the tip of cursor to the end point of vertical line. Solidworks will ask you the numerical length of the line. Write 60 into the space. Now, you have a vertical line with a length of 60 mm.

How to draw a rectangle

To draw rectangle, click the rectangle figure on the toolbar. Then draw a rectangle with any lengths. Then dimension it by using "smart dimension" button. Dimension each side of rectangle. Let's draw a rectangle with a side length of 120 mm and a height of 80 mm.

Step 1: Partitioning Purposes

Most of the desktops or laptops are available in preinstalled partitions as in Windows, Linux, and other operating systems. However, the partition is almost always fixed as one huge Drive C, or two partitions of Drive C and D which will take up most of the hard disk spaces.

Before beginning to partition your PC into several portions that you desire, make sure that you know how many partitions you need, how much space to allocate for each of them and what you want to use for the partitions.

You may want to separate the operating system files from other files such as MP3 folders, data files, Internet Downloads, image folders, audio files, or game folders. Or you may want to have multiple copies of the same operating system, or you just want to create a multi-boot system with different operating systems.

For your information, you can create up to four primary partitions in each hard disk. If you use an extended partition combined with logical partitions, you can create as many as 16 partitions. Nevertheless, in most cases, two or three partitions are just more than enough for most computer Geeks.

Step 2: Preparing for the Partition

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Prior to partitioning, let's do a bit “stock clearing” to make things easier. Firstly, you should use the Scandisk tool to scan the partition (say Drive C or Drive D or both drives) in your PC for errors. To do this, click Start, Run and then press the Enter button. In the Open box, type sfc/scannow and click OK.

Secondly, you should ensure that there is enough free space in your PC. To achieve this goal, you can start by eliminating or archiving all unnecessary or unwanted files by uninstalling them.

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Next, run the Disk Cleanup tool to free up more spaces. To do this, click Start, Run and press the Enter button. Now, type cleanmgr in the Open box and click OK. To clear up all junk files, you should delete items in Download Program Files, Recycle Bin, and any other items which are labeled as “temporary.”

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After the third step, now proceed to run Disk Defragmenter so that you can consolidate the partition's free space. Click Start, Run and press Enter. In the Open box, type dfrg.msc and click OK.

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Take note that if you're in Windows, you should alert with the size and volume label of the partition that you will plan to shrink. Click Start and My Computer to obtain this info.

Step 3: Backup your Existing Partition

At this step, you should know that the idea of using partition software such as Parted Magic is to avoid you from the hassle of deleting your existing partitions or formatting the hard disk. However, you should take notice that either shrinking partitions or partitioning a disk will involve a degree of a risk. Therefore, you are recommended to backup your important data or files prior to the partition. To know more about how to do step-by-step backup procedures for both Window XP and Vista, you can surf to this website here.

Step 4: Downloading and Creating Disc

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For you partition purpose, download Parted Magic software, which is the live CD ISO File, which is a bootable Linux-based image. You can download this software here. Look for its filename which is pmagic-2.2 iso and its file size is roughly 45MB. After you have downloaded the file, remember to locate this file in a separate folder, say, “c:\pmagic”.

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After downloading the iso file for Parted Magic, you must convert your newly acquired iso file to a bootable CD. You can create the bootable CD either using your existing CD burning software, or a freeware such as ImgBurn. Next, click Write image file to disk as shown above. Once this is completed, the CD should be removed to the bootable optical drive on your PC. You can download ImgBurn here.

Step 5: Disconnecting your Unnecessary Drives

Before carrying out this step, make sure you shut down your computer and disconnect all unnecessary devices and storage drives. These may include USB flash drives, external hard disks, card readers and extra hard disks. This step is essential to be taken in order to accelerate Parted Magic's boot time and its device detection process. Removing unnecessary drives are vital to prevent you from accidentally changing partitions on the wrong hard disks or drives.

Step 6: Booting Parted Magic CD

Photo credit: Kenny

Now, you should insert the Parted Magic bootable CD that you created in step 4 into your optical drive, and configure your system to boot from this drive. Just before the Windows starts, remember to hit the key sequence or the special key to access BIOS settings (you'll always be prompted on screen). Under Boot option, you should select optical drive or CD drive, and then exit BIOS.

Next, you'll see the Parted Magic Boot Options Menu at the beginning of the boot procedure. You should now select the Default setting (Runs from RAM/ Ejects CD) unless you've a system with less than 256MB of RAM. After you made your selection, the OS will copy itself into your system memory and boot into the front end interface. After some point, the CD tray will eject (that means you can put it away because it is no longer needed for the rest of the process) and is now fully operating from RAM.

Step 7: Launching GParted (Parted Magic)

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After completing the boot process, you should see the Parted Magic as shown above. Next, you should launch GParted by clicking on its icon, the one which looks like a hard disk (the first icon from its list of detected device). Then, you've to wait for a while as there'll be a little delay. This is because GParted scans for available devices before it is ready to use.

Step 8: Selecting your Task

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From the main window of GParted, select the targeted drive. Automatically, GParted will select the first storage device it detects. From the toolbar, use the drop-down list to choose the correct drive, if the drive is other than the default selection. After selecting the drive, a graphical view of its partition scheme will be displayed in the main window. Now, you can choose the partition that you want to shrink. This is the largest NTFS partition which is usually called /dev/hda1. Make sure its label and size matches the partition info from step 2.

Step 9: Resizing the Partition

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From GParted's toolbar, click the Resize/Move button, and the “Resize/Move/dev/” dialog box will open. The color-coded indicator guides you to shrink the partition. The yellow block marks the amount of data used on the partition. You're advisable to leave enough space to the right of this mark while choosing to resize the partition. In this example, we'll resize the NTFS partition from 38.1GMB to 20.5GB.

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Click the Resize/Move button at the bottom right, and you'll return to GParted main window. Notice that the graphical view of the disk has changed, and previously-grayed-out options on the toolbar are now enabled.

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The status bar in the window's lower-left corner will also report a “Operation Pending” message. To complete the operation, that is to resize the NTFS partition, choose the Apply button in GParted's toolbar. Before any actual operations take place, a window will pop up asking you to back up your data. You can click Cancel, or click Apply to continue.

Step 10: Creating New Partition

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The unallocated drive space is now available for partitioning after shrinking the main partition. Click on the unallocated remaining on the drive, and click on the New button to bring up the “Create New Partition” dialog box.

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In the new dialog box, choose Primary partition instead of extended partition in the Create as: section. You can also key in a volume label in the Label: section. The new partition will take up all remaining space on the hard disk by default, so you should resize it if you plan to add another partition. Click Add to complete this step and to return to GParted's main window.

Step 11: Exit Parted Magic

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Your new window is now updated with the new partition. At this point, you can exit Parted Magic and reboot into windows by clicking on the exit button at the bottom right corner.

Step 12: Rebooting into Windows

When you're in the boot process, Windows will warn about disk problems and run Chkdsk. Do not be panicked; instead, you just allow it to complete the tests and verify the partition. When completing the loading, Windows will detect the new partition and report “new hardware found.” Next, it will prompt you to reboot the system. After the reboot process, the new partition will appear in the list of storage devices in My Computer, in which it'll be assigned a new drive letter, typically E: or D:. Now, you've successfully partitioned your hard disk. And you can now use it just like any other hard disk.

Turning down the visual effects. Your computer is to work, not to entertain you so why do you still use all those visual effects? By the way, all those graphics are just a way for Microsoft to sell more Vista copies, they have no professional use whatsoever. Choose Windows Basic as your Theme and reduce the color depth to 16 bits. Also replace your desktop wallpaper with a solid color instead. Just remember your computer is to work and not to entertain you.

Turn off the indexing tool. Vista has still a long way to go before making a good and fast enough indexing tool. It takes ages and it's very inaccurate the integrated desktop search tool and not only it uses a lot of hard disk space, sometimes up to 10 GB just with temporary files on a 80GB hard disk, but also makes your computer more prone to crashes because of the complexity of the system. If you want some good searches on your computer I suggest Copernic Desktop search instead, but even so... if you can, stay away from desktop search tools.

Clean your hard drive. Uninstall all the software you don't use anymore and delete all the files that are not related to your work right here and right now. Backup them if you think you might need them later. A huge number of files on the hard disk makes it super slow because of the way Windows writes the files in the hard disk. Also a huge number of files makes the disk prone to get fragmented and if you know a thing or two about fragmentation you know it's the number one reason for hard disk failure because of the extra effort to retrieve any piece of information from it.

Defragment the entire hard disk. Windows has a reasonably good defragmentation tool. Use it! If you can afford I suggest you to buy the Diskeeper 2008 because it defragments your disk on the fly.

Use the scheduled tasks to make Windows do all the dirty work for you when you are not using the computer, for example in the evening. This way you have your machine running great all the time. Clean it every week and defragment it every two weeks.

6- Increase your RAM Memory. I use 2.5 GB of it in my laptop and that's good enough.

Increase the number of virtual RAM and Pagination File size. Vista thinks he is good enough to manage this for you but I ensure you it's not. Force the Windows to use the number you give to it. I use 10GB of virtual RAM in my 80GB hard drive. It's not dangerous. Windows used to us 0GB of virtual RAM and that used to make a lot of "Not Enough Memory" messages. This way you can open almost an unlimited number of programs, software and applications with no problem.

Now restart your machine and check the differences. If your computer is not 5 times faster yet, you really need to buy a new one.

Wrong.

I have been using Windows since I started getting into computers as a kid, I cut my teeth on DOS, but moved to Windows 3.1 shortly after. I was with Microsoft through Windows 95, I was there in 98 SE, I remember the Blaster worm, I've been an MS user through and through for over 10 years, and not once had I even considered that there was another operating system out there. Sure, I knew that there were other options, but that doesn't mean I cared about them. I had the almighy, brilliantly supported, GUI driven Windows, why did I need anything else?

And then one day, in the midst of all kinds of success, having a dominating majority of the world's PC users under their thumb, and being the industry standard, along came a little black sheep named Vista. I don't know what anyone in Redmond was thinking, but it obviously wasn't anything to do with using computers, my guess is that they all just sat around drinking cough syrup until the got an idea of what to make this new operating system look like. Vista is an overly bloated, bogged down, under-preforming piece of garbage, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise either hasn't used Vista for any period of time, or is trying to sell you a copy of Vista. The first thing I noticed was that I had no installation media, no recovery discs, nothing. I checked the box, I looked in the flyer to make sure I didn't misread anything, but no, I was right. No discs. Hmmm, not a great start here.... Next I booted it up, and after waiting far longer then what I believe is reasonable on 2 gigabytes of memory, I was treated to the shiny new boot procedure, with shiny new boot splash, and shiny new logon screen, and shiny new desktop, sure everything looks shiny, but is that why I just had to wait over 3 minutes to get Vista to fully load from a cold start?

After getting my user account all set up (thankfully, the process wasn't much different then XP. Much being the key word here.) and getting a couple of basic programs installed (I haven't used Internet Explorer in years, Firefox all the way for me! The only time I let that infernal browser load is when there is no getting around it.) I took a look at what was on my desktop, first thing that caught my eye was where my missing cds were, and I was not impressed at all to see that they were sitting patiently on my hard disk waiting for me to burn them. What the hell is that!?!? You couldn't spring the extra couple nickels to give me discs, so I need to buy and burn them myself? Alright fine, I suppose I it could make some small amount of sense, but most definately not from a consumer point of view. The next problem I hit was the size of the Recovery Disc I was about to burn, it was just enough over a single DVD that I needed to use two. But I can't just use a cd for the extra info, I need to use an entire DVD on less then 500 mb of data, so after a bit of complaing, thats what I did. Next problem came around when I realized what I had just burned... Recovery Discs? I thought I needed an Installation DVD? So a quick round of Googling turns out that I have burned myself a more of less worthless hunk of crap, since any problems I have that require the DVD, Windows simply checks the partition where the recovery media is sitting and uses it instead. Whatever, at least I can recover it should I botch it?

Next step was to load some games and software up, and the first order of business there was the almighty Starcraft. Which didn't work. Neither did Broodwar, Diablo, Diablo 2, or Warcraft (any of them). Turns out, Microsoft decided to change things around in just such a way that Blizzard games don't exactly work anymore. So what about something else? I'll load up Farcry, that is a Microsoft friendly game for sure! Nope, no dice there either. Fine. I'll just load up Photoshop while I look through my games library and decide what to install. What do you mean Photoshop doesn't work either?!?

Alright, I gave it enough chance, time to wipe this thing and replace it with a real OS, XP Pro.

In goes the disc, let it reboot and start from the cd, and it starts copying files over to do the install. But lo and behold, when it rebooted into the GUI portion of the install, it couldn't find any hard drives! Surely Vista couldn't still be making me miserable without even being booted, right? Wrong again. I spent a couple of months dealing with the awful compatiblilty of Vista, while enjoying some of the errors it churned out like how I should contact all these other software companies that made incompatible software, so upon investigating say, Blizzard's web site about Vista compatiblity (the link was given to me by Vista itself) only to discover that Blizzard cannot fix this problem, and it will be something that I might find appearing in other programs too. Somewhere in the development of Vista, Microsoft decided to totally and radically change the makeup of the OS, rendering it obsolete before it was even finished. I followed the leads that I gained from Blizzard explaining that MS changed how things run, and many programs must be rewritten to work properly with Vista, and came across another interesting thing, that hard drive problem I had while trying to install XP could be part of this. Turns out, I was right. If you go buy a newer computer, it'll have a sticker on it somewhere that probably says Designed for Vista, or some crap like that. If you see that logo, find a different machine, MS has remade drivers, and in order for hardware to have maximum compatibiliy with Vista, it needs to have it's drivers totally rebuilt. Which means to make your life easier, Vista machines only ship with shiny new hardware in them. Sounds cool right? Unless that shiny new hardware isn't properly supported by XP....

You make me angry Vista, you make me so angry, I'm.... I'm.... I'm gonna find a new OS!!!!

And along came a wonderful thing, the miracle of being pushed that little bit too far and striking back in your own way. I started learning what else was out there, and in doing so, I was exposed to Ubuntu, one of, if not THE best operating system I have ever had the pleasure of using. It has an incredibly easy way to customize it, and you don't need to worry about messing around with any UX Theme patcher crap, since almost everything in the land of Linux is open source, anyone can modify or add new themes, with little to no technical abiltiy. So I totally converted the entire OS to look completely different. In a matter of minutes too. Ubuntu has a brilliant package management system which frees you from scouring the net in search of the programs, since it has tens of thousands of programs that are maintained and freely available right from your main menu! And the speed! The file systems that Linux uses are just faster the NTFS, hands down. And security wasn't added as an afterthought either, your install is secure from ground up. Hmm, maybe I should start writing a review of Ubuntu.....

I've ranted enough, I think you probably get the point here: Do not get Vista, not for any reason. Even if someone offers you a copy for free, remember: there is a reason its free, do you really want that ugly monster living on your hard drive?

Vista offers the following controls, in addition to Internet Explorer's built-in Parental Controls:

• Windows Vista Web Filter

This controls what websites, downloads and other miscellaneous web usage is allowed.

• Time limits

This controls time curfews on computer usage, in case you are not around to enforce it.

• Games

This setting allows you to limit what type of games can be played on this particular user account.

• Allow and Block Specific Programs

This setting allows you to prevent any other activity in case it doesn't fall in Vista's guidelines, and for other manual fine-tuning.

Vista also has a feature called Activity Viewer, which will show you the top-ten websites visited, blocked, as well as file downloads and attempted (blocked) downloads, any games played (though web-based games have to be managed through the Vista Web Filter), e-mail and instant-messaging events as well. This feature can be engaged independantly of all other parental controls.

To begin using Parental Controls in Vista, simply:

1. Click the Start Orb and left-click on Control Panel. This will bring up a new window.
2. Within this window, double-left click on User Accounts. The window will change into the User Controls window.
3. On the left hand pane, single left-click Parental Controls. (this is usually found under See Also: Parental Controls at the bottom-left corner of your screen) This may take a minute to load, so be patient. A "User Access Control" window may come up as well, if it does, click Continue.
4. From the Parental Controls window, click on the account you wish to apply new controls to. If one does not exist, here is your opportunity to create a new one via the control at the bottom labeled Create a new user account. Otherwise, click on the account you wish to work on.
5. The controls for that specific account will come up. Most of them will be grayed out, to start. To enable the other controls, simply click On, enforce current settings under Parental Controls.
6. Once On, enforce current settings is enabled, the rest of the window lights up. To go into the details of each feature, simply click on the words that are lit up for that option, and to enable, disable, and customize the strength of each setting to your liking. Also, note that you can come back here any time to customize filtering if it is too strict, not strict enough or if your teenager has just been grounded!

A quick summary of available features:

Vista Web Filter

Beneath this setting you will find the ability to block all, or only some specific, web content. If you choose to block only some, you can then edit a block list to add and remove blocked content. If you choose not to block specific content, you can utilize a built-in web restriction level which will attempt to sort out content for you. If you choose "Custom", you will get a front end that allows you to choose what content the user of this account should and should not be seeing. Note that this is not foolproof as new websites come out every day, but it should block a very high degree of them. Lastly, you can choose to block or allow downloads on this account.

Time Limit

This option will give you a week-style calendar in which you can click to block a specific time period (in increments of one hour). Click that square again to unblock it. This account will not be able to log on during the blocked periods!

Games

This option allows you to choose which installed software may be launched from this user account. You can block all games, or a varying setting based on user age. This works with Vista-capable software to judge what that game's setting is. If you are concerned about a piece of software in particular, you can also block it using this section of parental controls.

Allow and Block Specific Programs

This section defines whether the user can use all programs (with the exception of those listed above), or ones that are specifically allowed, also known as a whitelist.

View Activity Reports

If you've enabled this feature for this user account, you may come back to this section under your profile to view activity reports. This will give you a summary of that user's latest activity, such as web sites visited, attempted downloads, logon times, and programs that have been run.

I sincerely hope that this introduction to Vista's Parental Controls has been helpful to you. If you believe it has, please consider forwarding this website to your friends, so that they too might get the most out of their computer!