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Windows 7, the operating system from Microsoft that people actually seem to like. Although Vista was actually a great operating system, many people trashed it for no apparent reason, other than just wanting to jump on the Vista-Hate bandwagon.

And even though Vista was and still is a great operating system, Windows 7 is a lot better. I would never even think about installing Vista on my Acer Aspire One netbook, with its tiny 1.3GHz Atom processor and 1GB of memory. But I did think about installing Windows 7. Sorry, XP lovers, but XP sucks. It is a very buggy operating system. It wasn’t designed to handle today’s hardware. The amount of small errors XP has annoys the crap out of me. It happened on my old Pentium 4 system, and is happening on my netbook.

I like tinkering with computers anyways, so I decided to install Windows 7 on my Acer. I had no data on the laptop, just a few things installed. I decided to do a dual boot for now. I downloaded Easeus Partition Master and formatted a second primary (NOT logical) partition. Then I plugged in my USB DVD drive, popped in the Windows 7 disc, and restarted the computer.

After booting from the disc, I chose customized setup and selected the new partition I made for Windows 7. After about 30 minutes, the installation was finished. I then downloaded the Windows 7 specific drivers from the Acer website, and the install was ready.

This was the simplest, easiest operating system install I ever did. Everything on the laptop works perfectly after installing the drivers. I can run full Aero with transparency if I wanted to, but doing that makes the computer lag, very noticeably. So I switched it back to the Windows 7 Basic theme (which was the default – I only switched to Aero to see how it would run). I then installed Office 2007, Firefox, Pidgin, and some other programs, and tweaked some settings to my liking.

Surprisingly, when I ran msconfig and checked out the startup items through CCleaner, there was nothing extra running that I didn’t need. The only thing I disabled was drive indexing; I turned the service off completely through Control Panel. I never use Windows Search, so I don’t need it running all the time and wasting resources. The only program running in the background is AVG Antivirus.

With the software all set up and configured, I did some initial tests. It seems to run at the same speed as XP. Firefox takes a bit less time to open. For now I will say it’s the same in terms of speed, making this a successful upgrade. No loss of speed while gaining more features equals success. Battery life estimates seem less than XP. When XP estimated 10 hours remaining, Windows 7 estimates 8 hours. Maybe it’s just better at estimating, but I haven’t tested it completely yet.

Windows 7 is a million times better to use than Windows XP. Everything is easier to do, looks nicer, and it just feels better. It’s a better overall experience. It makes the laptop feel more modern, with its tiny hardware specs. And the best thing is, it should get even faster in the next week or so, thanks to SuperFetch. That is why I am holding off on doing tests between the two. Once Windows 7 has time to optimize itself, I’m sure it will be quicker than Windows XP. I might do a side-by-side video of the two doing certain tasks when that happens.

If you’re thinking about installing Windows 7 on your Acer Aspire One netbook, you should go right ahead. I have found no negatives in the two days I’ve been using it so far. It is a great operating system, and works great with this netbook. It’s much better than Vista at handling resources. My install of Windows 7 Ultimate x86 (32-bit) is here to stay, and I will get rid of the XP partition after I do the comparisons. You should upgrade too.

Phoenix Instant Boot looks like an impressive new technology that lets computers start up in just a few seconds. But let’s take a closer look at what is really happening.

The video is demonstrating a new BIOS that starts in about one second. The BIOS is supposed to make Windows load instantly as well. But this cannot happen with current hardware and a normal install of Windows. This is the key point – the Windows install. A normal install will have background applications running, more icons on the desktop, a higher resolution, and more things which will make it take longer to start. The video demo shows Windows Aero disabled, a resolution that appears way too low than it’s supposed to be, and it’s obviously a brand new install, maybe with the exception of a program or two installed (but not starting up).

The Windows install shown in the video is customized in a way that a normal user would never have it. That is why it boots so fast. And the thing about it changing how people will use the device – most likely no. It won’t change how people use laptops. It will just let people turn them on quicker. But then, who ever turns off their laptop? Hibernation cuts Windows loading time to half or less, and that’s what laptops do when you close the lid.

Don’t get me wrong – faster is always better when it comes to boot times. But people should also be realistic in terms of how much to expect – you just can’t boot a normal operating system in a few seconds on today’s hardware.

With more and more laptops coming with an SSD option, is there a point in getting a 5400 RPM hard drive for a laptop? The simple answer is no.

SSD – solid state drives – are soon going to become mainstream in notebooks. Right now, most mid to high end laptops either have an option for an SSD drive or come with it standard. This means the 7200 rpm hard drive will soon be outdated. Yet some laptops still come with 5400 rpm hard drives. If you are looking to buy a laptop that comes with a 5400 rpm hard drive as standard, it is most likely a low end computer. So since 5400 rpm hard drives are getting outdated, should you still buy the laptop with this option? Yes, if you’re getting a good deal on the notebook, you can overlook the hard drive for two reasons – it’s very easy to upgrade in most laptops, and it’s not that big of a speed difference for the average person.

If you want to buy a new hard drive separately for your laptop, then do not get a 5400 rpm hard drive. You can get a 7200 rpm drive for the same price or even cheaper if you look around. In addition, most new 5400 rpm drives are for IDE connections, while 7200 rpm drives are for SATA connections. This means most newer laptops will accept the 7200 rpm drive, and if the price difference is no more than $10, it’s better to get a 7200 rpm drive.

In conclusion, if you find a deal on a laptop but it has a 5400 rpm hard drive, you should still get the laptop. If you’re buying a new hard drive for your laptop as an upgrade, get a 7200 rpm drive over a 5400 rpm drive if the price difference is $10 or less. The difference in speed between the two is not noticeable unless you are doing something like video editing all the time. And contrary to popular belief, a faster hard drive will not make your internet any faster whatsoever – a 5400 rpm hard drive can transfer data many times faster than your internet connection can.

Videogames like Need for Speed and Gran Turismo, and movies like The Fast and the Furious and Tokyo Drift are introducing many people to the world of car customizing. One of the most drooled-over upgrades is a simple air-intake upgrade that consists of a new intake tube that is streamlined and replaces your old hose, and a cylindrical filter. An air-intake is designed to provide a less restrictive airflow, colder air, which contains more oxygen than warm air, thus increasing horsepower, improved fuel mileage, and a low-pitched noise. Is it really worth $100 to $350 for one of these?

Simple answer: the more upgrades on you car, the more power it adds. Say you have a completely stock (no factory installed parts have been changed) Honda Civic. You decide to put an air-intake on the engine. Some manufacturers say that an air intake on a Honda Civic can add up to 20 horsepower. A stock engine without any other upgrades like a turbo-charger or high-rise throttle-body does not need as much air as an engine with all those upgrades, so you will be lucky if you get an increase of 10 horsepower—and that’s 10 horsepower to the engine, which translates to about 5 extra horsepower at your wheels. It’s not easy for anyone besides a race-car driver to tell the difference 5 horsepower makes. On the other hand, if you’re running a V8 IROC Camaro with a supercharger, nitrous system, high-flow injectors, and a stock air-filter set-up, you’re pretty much making your car get air through a straw, thus losing horsepower. And fuel mileage: how does an intake improve it? Well, if your car has more horsepower, you don’t need to step on the gas pedal as much, thus saving gas. If you can’t even feel your horsepower gain, you won’t notice a difference at the fuel pump.

Say it’s the sound you’re after, but you’re unwilling to spend any money on a custom exhaust system. Take off your air filter silencer(s). Many cars that have to be smog checked have an air filter silencer, or silencers installed. Basically, just remove any boxes and/or tubes that come before the opening hole on your stock air-filter box, and you’ll get a low-pitched sound just like an air-intake would provide, and an extra horsepower.

Basically, if you’re building a racecar and you’re after every 1/10 of a horsepower, it’s worth getting a custom air-intake. However, unless money’s burning a hole in your pocket, a custom air-intake will not provide a noticeable power difference on everyday cars.

image from rygraves9 on flickr

No, this isn’t a program you download that pretends to make your internet faster (and installs some malware as a bonus). I’m talking about using a button on your mouse to make your browsing many times faster.

All (I hope) computer mice these days come with a scroll wheel. Of course that scroll wheel is also a button. If you installed mouse drivers, this middle button can be configured to do anything you want, almost. So if you do have drivers installed, set the middle click to the “middle click” or “standard” (it will be different for different mice) option. If you don’t have drivers installed, you don’t need to change this.

So what is this all about? If you’re doing heavy web browsing, you can set your middle mouse button to open links in a background tab. How does this help with speed? The new pages you open load in the background, so when you’re done reading a page, you can just switch to the next tab and continue reading whatever you clicked on, without having to wait for it to load. Genius? I think so.

To do this in Firefox, simply click Tools > Options, click on the Tabs tab, and uncheck When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately.

This will make new links open in background tabs, which also means they’re loading in the background. As for your middle mouse button, the default action for Firefox to take when you click a link with the middle mouse button is to open it in a new tab.

So now when you click a link with your middle mouse button, it will load in the background. This comes in really handy when browsing sites like Digg or just browsing forums. New pages or threads will load in the background as you are uninterruptedly browsing the home page, looking for more stuff to open.

Be sure to comment with any other quick and easy browsing tips.

There was recently an article on TG Daily saying AGP is almost dead. This is true, so why do people still want to revive this old format?

On major overclocking forums, people are complaining that AGP is being phased out of the market. I don’t understand why. AGP is a very old format, and it has been replaced by PCI Express long ago. PCIe is a superior format, mostly because it’s multiple times faster than AGP.

All the new graphics cards that have been released over the past few years have been targeted for PCIe. Some companies made AGP versions of these cards, but recent graphics cards are far too powerful to be put in the AGP format. AGP simply cannot transfer data at the speed that these performance cards need to transfer it.

This is the same as people complaining that their five year old 300 watt power supply cannot power a 9800GX2. It’s obvious it can’t because it’s lacking the performance ability to do so, and the same is happening for AGP. It can’t handle newer cards.

People who still use AGP should just upgrade their motherboards when they want a new video card. Stop complaining about an old format and upgrade. You can’t put a V12 Ferrari engine in a ’90s Honda Civic. This is the same as the transition from DDR to DDR2, and soon it will be DDR2 to DDR3. Face the facts that AGP is too old and upgrade to PCIe if you want a new graphics card.

When Adobe Photoshop CS4 comes out this October, it will feature GPU and Physics acceleration, as well as 64 bit processing.

This means Photoshop CS4 will not only be the first version of Photoshop to come in a 64 bit version, but also the first version to feature graphics and physics processor acceleration. This will make Photoshop CS4 faster than any previous versions, and it will let you manipulate 3D graphics. The physics acceleration might be able to generate particle and lighting effects dynamically and in 3D.

The GPU acceleration alone will increase the speed of Photoshop CS4 in certain tasks up to 100 times. At a recent Nvidia demo, “the presenter playing with a 2 GB, 442 megapixel image like it was a 5 megapixel image on an 8-core Skulltrail system. Changes made through image zoom and through a new rotate canvas tool were applied almost instantly.”

There is no word yet on whether CS4 will only take advantage of workstation GPU’s such as the Nvidia Quadro series. I am hoping that it will be able to use any GPU for an extra speed and power boost.

More information should be available as the October 1st release date approaches.

Why do so many people buy gaming laptops? It doesn’t make any sense because laptops aren’t meant for gaming. Laptops are supposed to be lightweight and for doing things on the go. Gaming laptops are useless, and here’s why.

Gaming laptops are very heavy. They usually weigh around 10 pounds, while normal laptops weigh around three pounds. They’re also big and bulky. I wouldn’t want to carry around a gaming laptop in my backpack. It’s just inconvenient to have a heavy laptop.

A terrible battery life makes a laptop pointless. If you’re going to be gaming on it without it being plugged in, it won’t last more than an hour if you have a new laptop, especially with dual graphics cards. Laptops are for portability, and they become useless if the battery life is so low.

Gaming laptops produce a lot of heat. While normal laptops get very hot, I can still usually put one on my lap for an hour. After all, it is called a laptop. However, gaming laptops get so hot you will need a surface with fans blowing at the laptop if you don’t want it to overheat while gaming. Again, if it has dual video cards, it will produce a lot more heat, will weigh more, and will drain the battery more. SLI just doesn’t belong in a laptop.

Another factor is price. A gaming laptop will run you about $1500 or higher. A normal laptop will cost you $700 or higher. And here’s the thing – you can buy a desktop for $700 that will have better parts and will be faster and better at gaming than the $1500 laptop. So there is absolutely no point.

Laptops are for word processing, bringing on trips to stay connected on chat or email, and things like that. They were never meant for gaming. If you’re looking to buy a gaming laptop, do yourself a favor and get a desktop instead, and use the money you saved for buying a normal laptop.

If you are getting a new computer or thinking of upgrading yours, you might have thought about what kind of hard drive to get. If you are looking for performance and speed, people often recommend the Western Digital Raptor. But should you pay $170 for a 150GB hard drive, only to have it load Windows 5 seconds faster?

The Raptor is a great hard drive, but you can get much more value for the money. A solution to both performance and space is RAID 0. RAID works by using two or more hard drives as one. RAID 0 distributes data across several discs in a way which gives improved speed and full capacity, but all data on all disks is lost if any one disk fails. Most of the time a two hard drive RAID 0 setup increases your performance by 1.5 times.

With the new Seagate Barracuda hard drives, you can set up a RAID 0 configuration that will destroy a Raptor in speed, space, and cost. You can buy two 320GB Barracuda hard drives for less than $150. When put in a RAID 0 setup they will be faster than the Raptor and hold roughly four times as much, for less money.

Your computer must also support RAID; otherwise you will need to purchase a separate RAID card for about $50. But overall I recommend RAID 0 as an alternative to a 10,000 RPM hard drive. For more information on setting up RAID, take a look at this tutorial. Find latest, Best selling External Hard Drives from Segate, Western Digital, Buffalo, Iomega at ExternalHardDrives.org.uk.

Maxishine has done it again, this time breaking the 80 FPS mark in Crysis, and this time using a dual core. Looks like my 8800’s not kicking it anymore.