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While an upgrade install disc for any version of Windows costs less than a full install disc, you should still still get the full install version. If you want to upgrade your install of Windows, do not choose the “upgrade” option from the installation disc. A clean install will be much better.

You might think that upgrading your installation will save time since you won’t have to reinstall programs and back up all your files. This is false, as it will only save time in the short run – but in the long run it will make your operating system slower and buggier.

Not all upgrades go wrong, but most do. If it doesn’t look like anything is wrong, there might still be some problems. An upgrade install can slow down your system a lot, but you might not notice it since you don’t have a clean install to compare to. Windows features and some programs might get buggier or just stop working like they’re supposed to. Individual features of programs might stop working.

The best thing to do when upgrading to a new version of Windows is to do a clean install and reformat. This means you need to back up all your files, and reinstall all your programs onto the new install. You need to completely wipe your hard drive, doing a hard reformat, not a “quick reformat”.

A clean install of any version of Windows will have a significantly higher chance of having no bugs or system slow downs. If you want to save money on a Windows OS upgrade, go with an OEM disc instead of an upgrade disc.

If you have a messy and disorganized (Windows) desktop, you are probably taking longer than you should to do basic tasks. Follow these simple tips to make it easier to find shortcuts, launch frequently used applications faster, and make your Windows desktop a more productive environment.

click to enlarge

If you have at least 20 different shortcuts on your desktop, you will find that separating them into groups will make it easier to find a particular shortcut. For example, you can put your internet browser and IM apps in the top left, your games on the bottom, and productivity apps on the top. This not only gives your desktop a neater look and lets you see the wallpaper better, but it also makes it easier to find applications.

2. Delete Shortcuts You Never Use

It’s very likely that your computer came with a lot of crapware preinstalled. You should delete shortcuts such as “Sign up with X Company” and “Register with …”. Also remove shortcuts to things you never use, like antivirus. Your antivirus runs in the background and most come with automatically scheduled scans. You will most likely never need to open the main screen of your antivirus program, so why keep the icon on the desktop?

3. Customize Your Quick Launch Toolbar

When you install a lot of apps, some come with the “Add shortcut to quick launch” pre-checked. If you don’t uncheck it, you will have a lot of shortcuts in your quick launch toolbar that are useless. Remove the shortcuts you don’t need, and add ones that you do need. Add programs that you tend to open a lot while another window is open. I recommend having no more than 10 shortcuts, depending on your screen resolution.

4. Get a Clean Wallpaper

If you have a graphic-heavy wallpaper, you might find it hard to find some shortcuts. A multi-color wallpaper might look cool, but your icons will blend in and you will take longer than you should to find them. This doesn’t mean you should use a single color as your wallpaper, but make it something smooth with a specific color scheme, so you can read shortcut names easier.

5. Rename Your Desktop Shortcuts

Your shortcuts shouldn’t be so long that they get cut off with “…” at the end. For example, you can rename “Mozilla Firefox 3.0 RC1″ to “Firefox”, “Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended” to “Photoshop”, etc. One line names are even better since they take up less space, which makes your desktop look neater overall.

6. Customize Individual Folders

Make your music folder sort by “title”, and make your pictures folder sort by “date modified”. This is just an example, but I find this useful because if I’m adding new pics from my digital camera, they are titled with random letters and numbers, so sorting by title here wouldn’t work. Date modified will make newer photos show up on top or on bottom. You can customize any folder with different icon sizes, sort orders, and other options.

7. Firefox – Customize the Bookmarks Toolbar

If you use Firefox, you should customize the bookmarks toolbar. I have never seen anyone with a customized toolbar, so I guess many people don’t know you can customize it. You can right click on individual shortcuts and click “Properties”, and change the name of the shortcut. If you have a lot of shortcuts this will make them all appear on one line of the toolbar. For example, you can rename “Gmail – Inbox” to “Gmail”, “YouTube – Broadcast Yourself” to “YouTube”, etc. This will save a huge amount of space on the toolbar. You can also drag the bookmarks toolbar anywhere to save space.

8. Set a Quick Loading Home Page

If you want to get to a certain URL right after opening your browser, you need a quick-loading home page. I recommend iGoogle. If you’ve never heard of iGoogle, go to Google and log in (or create an account), and on the top right click the “iGoogle” link. You can customize iGoogle with different themes and gadgets. The reason I recommend iGoogle is because it loads incredibly fast, even with lots of gadgets. And the gadgets are very useful.

Be sure to comment with your own tips for a better desktop below.

I decided to take a screenshot of my school computer account: (click to enlarge and drag)

Many people complain that Vista is overpriced and costs $300. Sure some are exaggerating, but most aren’t because they’ve been fed this information either through friends or the internet. The truth is you don’t need Vista Ultimate and you will be much better off with Vista Home Premium.

You can get an OEM version of Vista Home Premium for less than $80 online. This is a relatively low price when compared to Vista Ultimate. Vista Ultimate doesn’t have enough extra features to justify the extra cost for the average user. The only extra feature you get in Vista Ultimate that the average user might be interested in is Ultimate Extras. Microsoft promised to be rolling out Ultimate Extras as soon as Vista came out, but they didn’t. There’s almost nothing being developed for Ultimate Extras, so that is one feature down the drain that some people might have been looking forward to.

I highly recommend purchasing Windows Vista Home Premium 64 Bit for the best Windows Vista experience, if your computer is compatible with it of course.

The photo says it all:

In response to this screenshot of a Mac running 150 applications, here is a screenshot and video of my PC running 155 apps. Also, if you count the apps on the Mac, you will see there are only about 100 open, not 150 as the author claims. If you count mine, there are 155 open. And I have powerful apps open like Adobe Photoshop CS3, Flash CS3, Dreamweaver CS3, Premiere CS3, Vegas 8 Pro, every app from the Roxio 10 suite, and more.

Click to enlarge and drag:

Countless people have complained and still are complaining that Windows Vista takes up a quarter or a half of their memory. And here is the solution: do nothing.

Yes, don’t do anything about Vista’s memory consumption. It’s actually a good thing. Vista has a feature called SuperFetch. What it does is it preloads your frequently used applications in the background so they will start up faster. This is what’s taking most of that extra RAM. It’s not a bad thing as some people think. This is why Vista is actually faster than XP if your computer has 2GB of RAM or above.

SuperFetch releases that extra RAM if you need it. If you’re running a memory-intensive application or playing a game, Vista will instantly clear what it has preloaded and let your active application or game use the RAM. It’s a very smart and efficient way of memory management.

When I upgraded from 2GB to 4GB of RAM, I noticed a huge increase in system responsiveness and application and game start-up time. Photoshop CS3 takes 2-3 seconds to start. Vista took about 35% RAM on idle with 2GB, and now it takes about 30% on idle with 4GB. I wish it took more of my RAM to preload stuff.

Give SuperFetch a chance and don’t complain about it. It’s there to make your computer faster. It will give you back your RAM if you need it, you have nothing to be worried about.

Bill Gates announced today that Windows 7, the next version of Windows, could come within the next year.

Windows 7 is the name of the next major version of Microsoft Windows. Windows 7 will be the successor to Windows Vista. Microsoft announced earlier that they are scoping development to a three-year time frame. Due to today’s presentation, it is likely that Microsoft will be pushing for a 2009 release. Judging by their previous releases, I personally would estimate a release sometime in mid 2010, and that’s if they are serious about shooting for an ’09 release.

There isn’t any more information about the release date as today’s conference wasn’t concentrated on Windows itself but rather marketing.

Source: News.com

Many of us have private and personal files that we wouldn’t want others to see. They may contain passwords, personal information, or private photos. If other people use your computer, you might be at risk of them discovering your personal files. Here are some easy ways to hide them (on a Windows OS at least).

Mild Protection:

• Move your files to your C:/Windows or C:/Windows/System32 folder. Be careful, if you delete or rename any files in this folder you might crash your computer. You can also use the C:/Program Files/ folder.
• Rename your files to something random. For example, you can rename “passwords.txt” to “546dsfg645fds.txt”. Just hit some random keys on your keyboard. That way if someone does a search for “passwords” they won’t find anything.
• If you have multiple user accounts, turn off file sharing and make your files private.
• Set a password for Windows.

Moderate Protection:

• Make a ZIP or RAR archive of your files, and make it password-protected. A good program you can use for this is WinRAR or 7zip. 7zip is free.
• Use a drive or folder encryption program.

There are many more ways to protect your files, but these are the easiest to do for most people, and are mostly free. These should stop your average family members from accessing your private files. If you have more ways, post them below.

Many people don’t like Vista. They have given it a bad reputation online, which has spread into the real world to the point where people I know say Vista sucks “because it does”. There has been a lot of misinformation about Vista online. I believe these are the top reasons why.

Rumors

People have been telling their friends and family that Vista sucks because they’ve read about it somewhere. Yet these people have never tried it for themselves, or have had one or some of the experiences below. Then they go and say bad things about Vista, based on no facts.

Tried it at first, didn’t like it

The key word here is “at first”. When Vista first came out, it did actually suck. It was buggy, lots of software and hardware didn’t work. Then a few months went by, and updates were rolling out periodically. After about 6 months on the market is when I’d say Vista became stable, quick, and the way it should be. But these people that only tried it near release refused to try it again after these 6 months or even a year have went by. Then they go and spread the rumors that it still sucks. (more…)