5 years down the line your desktop PC which was once extremely fast and slim for every tasks, now has become sluggish. The reasons being- lots of upgrades, installation of various tools and features, and so on.

So what will you do? Thinking of buying a new model replacing the old one? Well, you have one more option. Try loading some light weight application tools in your old PC to make it alive and running smooth.

Photo by kchbrown

So here are few lightweight tools which you can try as per your needs and make your sluggish machine to work absolutely fine.

Word Processing – AbiWord 2.6

AbiWord 2.6 is having more or less same functionality as of Microsoft Word 2003. Most of all, it is free and very light weight. It requires only 16MB of RAM, and it runs absolutely fine on Windows 2000 and upwards. In case, your machine have older version like Windows 98, you can choose earlier versions of AbiWord.

Photo by DI.Abraham

The features such as paragraph alignment, basic character formatting, interactive rulers and tabs, spell checker, styles, undo and redo, cut and paste, replace and find, image support, and interfaces are all similar. Interesting thing is that it can import the Microsoft Word 97 and Rich Text Format (RTF) documents. Along with that it also supports the headers and footers, widow and orphan control, superscript and subscript, and the newspaper-style columns. There are many plug-ins available for it, however, the support for the tables are limited at present.

This open-source word processor is a very good alternative for Microsoft word for your older system.

• Graphics – IrFanView 4.23

You can replace your Photoshop tools for IrfanView. It is an open source photo editor that you can choose for your underpowered platforms. It can save hundreds of image formats, along with the batch editing, cropping and resizing and various other built-in photo manipulation tools.

Photo by Starzshine

It is fast and a very simple freeware image viewer as well as editor. It supports many major graphic formats, such as BMP, JPEG, DIB, GIF, animated GIF, PCX, PNG, multipage TIFF, TGA, and many more. It also features drag-and-drop support, TWAIN support, directory viewing, batch conversion, slide shows, and various adjustments such as cropping, blurring, sharpening, color depth, etc.

• For Coding – NoteTab Light

Are you looking for some light weight coding tool? NoteTab Light is the answer. This is a text editor which is just perfect for working with a HTML and CSS. It also has features such as code snippets, auto-correction, and HTML tidying. It runs perfectly fine on Windows 98 and upwards. Explore the beautiful power of NoteTab Light in your old desktop. 

• Email client- Popcorn 1.87

Popcorn is a very lightweight portable e-mail client for windows. It directly connects to the POP email account so that you can read your mail directly from the server. You can also use this e-mail client with your ISP service providers or other online mail providers that also uses POP3.

• Web Browser – K-Meleon 1.5.2

K-Meleon has been built on the same browser as that of Firefox. It is one of the fastest browsers, quite customizable; above all it is very light web browser.  It is compatible with that of a Mozilla Bookmarks, and can run on a 486 PC with a 32MB of RAM.

• Video – VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is very portable and one of the most popular one. It is absolutely perfect for your older system for playing MP3s and DVDs on any Pentium class computers.

• System Maintenance – Ccleaner

Many tools that are available in the market for computer maintenance suffer from serious accumulation and which continuously demanding you to update and upgrading various components. However, CCleaner have no such problem. Run it, it then finds files you can delete, your job is done, once you delete those.

• Sumatra PDF- A PDF Reader

Acrobat Reader is a free tool from Adobe for opening a PDF document. It is one of the most popular applications in the industry for a printed documentation. But this application hogs your PC resource like anything. But with Sumatra PDF, you need not have to worry. It is very fast loading and better alternative to Adobe’s PDF reader.

• Instant Messaging – Pidgin

Pidgin, previously known as Gaim is an instant messaging client for Windows and BSD. Most interestingly, it is compatible with ICQ, MSN messenger, AIM, Yahoo, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, and Zephyr networks. It is so user friendly that a Pidgin user can sign in to multiple accounts on various IM networks together. This means that you can chat with your friends on AOL Instant Messenger and simultaneously talking to another friend on Yahoo Messenger. Apart from all these, there are many popular features such as Buddy Pounces, it basically offers you with the ability to send a message, signs online, and plugins, and many more. And most importantly it saves your precious resources.

Well, you might be thinking that most of the PCs of the modern time have more than enough memory. Even the budgeted PCs, which are mostly used for the personal purposes are normally come up with at least 2GB of memory. Moreover, you can also add 2GB more to this. Now you may be thinking that if there is 4GB of RAM, it is more than enough. But it is not correct.

If we take Windows Vista, for example, for proper running of the Vista, it requires at least 2GB of memory space. Vista’s large applications swallow up huge amount of gigabytes very easily. And very soon you will able to find out that your 2GB system will abrasively comes to a halt. So we see that adding another 2GB does not make much difference. As a matter fact, there are very rare 32-bit systems that can able to access the complete 4GB memory. There are some that can use even lesser than a 3GB memory. While if you try for upgrading it to 64-bit Windows, it will not always help you.

Now, we will discuss few ways that will give us the desired results. First of all we need to learn about the memory usage of the Windows and various applications that you may have installed in your PC. Also we need to know the tricks to reduce the RAM wastage. This will make the use of the system resources in the most efficient manner and thereby delivering fantastic improvement to the performance of your system.

Basics of Memory

Most of the 32-bit Windows systems able to address up to 4GB RAM. Well, this is not the fault of a CPU, but the modern day processors which have a 36-bit address mode allows it to access up to 64GB of RAM.

In this case, software must have the knowledge of these 36-bit addresses; otherwise they will shorten them to 32-bit. Also, they will not read and write data in the correct place. This is one of the main reasons that Microsoft has also restricted all their 32-bit client versions of Windows in to a maximum of 4GB RAM.

What happens is that, the 4GB address space splits into two. Then the Windows and drivers get 2GB for themselves, and Windows basically make each application to think that it has the complete access to another 2GB. Therefore, you may have five of your programs running at the same time and each of them using 1 and 2GB of memory, hence the 4GB of memory space will not be the limit.

Memory allocations are done in the units called pages, that is generally consists of a size of 4KB. It can be tracked in the PFN (Page Frame Number) database. Just in case, you have a 2GB of RAM but the programs that you are using requires 3GB space, then Windows will start finding pages in the physical memory that have not been accessed  very recently. It then writes them in a paging file on to your hard drive.  After that, the physical RAM freed up and use by the recent program that you are running. The whole mechanism will let you bypass your 4GB of the address space limit and you may able to run few more applications too.

Working Sets

Task Manager is a helpful tool to know how the PC is using the RAM. For quick access of task manager press on [CTRL]+[Shift]+[ESC], then click on the Processes tab to find out what programs are running. Click on ‘View | Select Columns’, and check ‘Memory – Working Set’ and ‘Memory – Private Working Set’, and then click on ‘OK’.

Well, you will not find these options in Windows XP. You have to download the Process Explorer here. Then, click on ‘View | Select Columns | Process Memory’. After that, check the ‘Working Set Size’ and ‘WS Private Bytes’ to see the information.

Now you will able to see the data on the working set. This is the actual amount of the physical memory held by each program which is running.

We also have to refer the Task Manager for the display of the private working set. Entire processes will use the physical memory and which can not be shared with any other processes. Hence measuring it often will provide you with a good idea of their impact on the PC.

Now click on the Private Working Set column header 2 times. This will figured out the processes by the amount of the physical RAM they may have been using. After that, check the list to make sure that there are only those processes running, which are only needed. However, if you find any unwanted programs that are unnecessarily loaded at the startup, you must watch their preferences in a way to stop it. You may use the msconfig.exe as your last option.

Memory management

The processes’ working set is having a dynamic figure. Try to run more numbers of programs than your memory could hold. The Windows working set manager will then start to cut back the working sets of the processes which are least active. Few memory pages might not be in use; hence in that case it can be discarded. And rest would be written in to the paging file so as to help in freeing up the RAM you require.

There are many online memory managers for freeing up the RAM, however beware to use those. The reason is that these programs itself allocates huge block of memories and thus forcing the Windows to send more memory pages to paging file. After that it frees up the block instantly. Windows also cuts the working sets of the applications automatically. So you will gain only a little by doing this in advance.

You have to flush out the Windows file caches, and the applications that have the memory paged out would be slower when you try to switch back. And in case your memory manager is running in the background then it must be consuming RAM itself. Hence it is not always recommended to use these RAM optimizers.

• Windows optimization

There are various other helpful methods by which you can cut the amount of memory usage of your PC. You can also try disabling any unimportant Windows features. For example, you do not require the Aero interface at this moment? Turn it off, and you will be saving at least 40MB space or more.

It is very simple to do, just right-click on the desktop, and select ‘Personalise | Theme’ and then choose ‘Windows Classic’. In case, you already have installed any antivirus tool, turn off the Windows Defender. It will save you another 20MB. You can do this by navigating to the ‘Tools | Options’, and clearing the ‘Use Windows Defender’ and clicking on ‘Save’.

Some also believe that running the Explorer windows in separate processes will also contribute in the improvement of the stability. You can also try it yourself, to do this, launch the Explorer, then click on ‘Tools | Folder Options | View’ and check the ‘Launch folder windows in a separate process’. Well, this will also consume near about 10MB extra for each Explorer window that you may have to open. So it is advisable to troubleshoot the stability issues like reinstalling the Windows, and then disabling the separate process selection.

Various add-ons that may be running on the system are hungrier for the resource and disabling it, will provide huge memory savings. For gaining the system resources, you have to watch out the extensions that may have been installed in the Firefox, IE, Office and various other apps, and try to get rid, if any of them are no longer in use.

For getting information on what basically using your RAM, you can launch the Process Explorer, and click on ‘View | Lower Pane View | Show DLLs’, and then find and click on ‘Explorer.exe’ which is there in the main window. You will see that it has been loaded by many kinds of DLLs for various applications. This means that they are consuming more RAM even if those apps are not running.

• Windows services

It is always being said that we will get more RAM if we turn off those Windows services which are not necessary. But what does this actually mean? We will see it in this simple example. Let suppose any Portable Device Enumerator service have been enabled on Windows Vista. But we don’t need this, and therefore we will turn it off and this will make a saving of 200KB.

Now we take the Distributed Link Tracking Client which gives the way to track NTFS files in a network. This is a good application, only if you use, since most people don’t use it, we can turn it off, now what, we saved 8 KB. Yes, only 8KB.

Like wise we turn off the offline services and gained 68KB and also the Wireless LAN configuration service, added the memory savings of 208KB. At last, if we kill the Tablet PC Input Service, it will return 32KB space only.

Hence, we see here, even if we disable 6 services, it guarantees an extra saving of only 516KB RAM.

Therefore, it has been concluded that tinkering the services will not offer enough RAM benefits so as to counter any possible dangers. So it is not a wise idea to pursue on this way.

• Memory mapping

The video memory of 512 video card must have to map with a 4GB address space, so that the software would able to access it. However, it will make this 512MB memory of the system unavailable automatically. RAM will be reserved by the BIOS for another memory mapped devices. In case you have lot of it, you may find that having a less than 3 of 4GB is actually available.

You may also recover some of the memory space if you remove devices which are not in use. You can use the BIOS set-up program; this will help you to disable the integrated devices that are not in use anymore.

• Paging performance

To make more RAM available for your applications is good, even though the Windows will still be sending data occasionally to your paging file.

It is always recommended that you place your paging file on the fastest hard drive, for speeding up the processes.

You can change the location of the paging file by a very simple method. For doing this, go to the Start button, then right-click on ‘Computer’ and navigate to the ‘Properties | Advanced System Settings | Advanced | Performance Settings | Advanced | Change’ in Windows Vista. Otherwise, you can also go by right-clicking on ‘My Computer’ and select ‘Properties | Advanced | Performance Settings | Advanced | Change’ in Windows XP.

Once you reach there, choose the current drive, and select ‘No Paging File’ and then click on ‘Set’. After that click on the specific drive you would prefer to use. After choosing the drive, choose ‘System Managed Size’ and then click on ‘Set’ again. Reboot the system to complete the job.

• 64-bit Windows

Well, after trying all those tweaks, you must be thinking to upgrade your 32-bit 4 GB windows to 64-bit 8 GB Windows Vista. But do not think that it will deliver all the benefits that you may be expecting from it.

After upgrading it to 64-bits, 8GB, the Windows kernel no longer restricted to 2GB, which means that they are able to use as much memory as it requires. However, the individual applications may not able to access more than 2GB of RAM if not specifically mentioned or written.

You may not get access to entire memory even if you get 4GB installed in your 64-bit Windows Vista. For this to happen, the motherboard chipset should support at least 8GB of address space and the BIOS also should support memory remapping. This is because the video and other memory allocated by the hardware should also be moved above 4GB of address point. Also make sure that the memory remapping features are enabled in the BIOS set-up program.

Do remember, even the 64-bit Windows Vista still have the hardware allocated RAM issues accompanied by many software and driver problems caused by the compatibility because of this upgrading process from 32-bit to 64 bit.

Credit: pcsupport.about

1. Check the original startup time of your computer; start measuring the time from the moment you press the power button and keep on noticing the time until all the startup programs and applications are loaded, and computer is ready to use. Now, you need to check the start up folder. Go to Start > All Programs > Startup. The more programs are listed in the start up folder, the slower will startup process become.

You can add shortcuts of any program in this folder which you want your computer to load as it starts up. Deleting not-needed and extra programs’ shortcuts will help Vista boot faster. By the way, not every program that loads when Widows boot will show up in the Startup folder. Also, the notification area of the Taskbar will show you few icons, check their preferences and select which ones you want to be there when Vista starts up, and which ones you don’t. Another nice tip is to access your Control Panel and look for such programs that you do not need in your computer anymore. Uninstall them to get enhanced speed.

2. There are few programs that are stubborn enough to provide you an opportunity to remove them from startup. They have to be removed via some other means. Before using this tip, you must create a Restore point to be on the safe side. Now, type msconfig after clicking Start.

Click the startup tab and a list shows up containing programs, the name of the manufacturer of each program, and the program’s path. Disable unwanted programs vie checkboxes but keep in mind that there are certain programs that are essential for Windows to run properly, like drivers or programs related to your graphics card and other hardware. Do not touch those. After that, exit Msconfig and reboot PC. Now, if you want certain services to stop running at startup, then you should make a search at the internet to know whether it is okay to do so.

3. Now, if you have two operating systems installed on your computer, then the computer waits for your answer as to which OS you want to boot with, in the startup in case you don’t select one of those, the computer automatically selects the default OS after a given time. Go to Msconfig again, and select the Boot tab. Select a lower setting in Timeout so that the extra amount of time is not wasted.

4. The ancient enemy: malicious code. Beware of the potential threats by regularly scanning your system with a nice anti virus. Also, you need to run anti spyware tools, too, in order to keep your system free of unwanted harmful applications.

I am quite sure that after following these instructions, you will notice a significant difference in the startup time. These are not difficult acts to perform, therefore go on!

Source: techradar

It is possible that your computer may become an easy victim of these wrong doers when you are visit your favorite website or forget to shut down your computer before going to sleep.

With every passing day the problem is becoming quite grave and according to some reports the number of computer infections got tripled during the past one year. A large number of PC security professionals are working out there to keep your PCs safe, sound and protected from these hackers’ evil designs that most of the time are aimed to deprive you of your valuable hard-earned cash.

Conficker is considered the most dangerous threat for your computer at present and it has been spreading over the Internet with an awesome pace. According to an estimate Conficker has infected 10m computers worldwide since its first emergence.

A considerable number of developers and engineers have been looking for ways to track Conficker for quite some time, as it comes forward as a hurdle in its way all around the world.

According to Symantec vice president Steve Trilling, “Conficker wasn’t targeted for a certain area and its all known infections can be seen equally around the world and not to a specific region and it has come forward as one of the most serious threats for PCs across the world.”

Windows 7 are known as just the cosmetic upgraded version of Vista. But we will now look into various new and more improved features that deliver high performance and output for much better troubleshooting and powerful security and lot more.

Here are few tips and tweaks for Windows 7 that will make a remarkable difference to your PC:

Problem Steps Recorder

This is indeed of great help if someone from your family or friends have asked your help in troubleshooting their PC problem. If you are not physical present, then it would be tough for you to understand as what’s going on in the other side. It may be frustrating for both of you. So Microsoft comes up with the cool troubleshooting solution that is – Problem Steps Recorder.

If there is any application that is creating problem in Windows 7, asks your friend to click on Start, and type PSR and then press [Enter], then click on Start Record. Now tell your friend to start that application again, and the Problem Steps Recorder will then start recording each and every clicks and keypresses your friend will do. They can take the screen shots and make a single zipped file in MHTML when finished. It is now ready, and your friend can e-mail you the same. It is very easy and yet very effective method, saving several hours of your time for troubleshooting.

Burn images

New Windows 7 has introduced a feature that most of the other operating systems already had for many years and that is the ability to burn the ISO images to DVDs and CDs. This is indeed very easier to use, you just have to double-click on the ISO image, then choose the drive with a blank disc, and click on Burn. Your disc will create in few moments.

Create and mount VHD files

The virtual PC of Microsoft creates the hard drives of virtual machine in a VHD files. Now Windows 7 can set those files directly making it accessible in the host system itself. Just click on Start, and type diskmgmt.msc, and the press [Enter], then click on Action > Attach VHD. Now choose the file that you would like to mount and it will be visible as the virtual drive in the Explorer. Now it can be accessed, copied, and also written in the same way like any other drive.

Click on Action > Create VHD and then you can create your own virtual drive. Right click it and select the Initialize Disk. After the set up is complete just right-click the unallocated space and choose the New Simple Volume to set it up. Once more you will have a new virtual drive same as the other one, and again you can drag and drop the files, install the programs, and test the partitioning software and lot more. This is actually same as the VHD file on the real hard drive; however you can take a back up or share it with others too. You can also remove the VHD file by right-click on the disk and by selecting the ‘Detach VHD’ to remove it.

Troubleshoot problems

If some section is behaving in a strange fashion of a Windows 7 and you are not able to find out why, then click on the Control Panel > Find and fix problems. This is a way to access the new troubleshooting package. These are very simple to use wizards which are very helpful in resolving common problems like performing checks of the settings, system cleaning and all.

Take control

Are you tired from your kids installing suspicious software or runs an application if they are left alone? AppLocker is a solution. New Windows 7 features AppLocker which basically assures that users can only run the specified programs. It is very easy to set it up and even you can create rules which allow everything to be signed by a specific publisher. So launch the GPEDIT.MSC and go to Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Application Control Policies > AppLocker and see how does it works for you.

Calculate more

At first sight, Windows 7 calculator looks similar to Vista’s version; however by exploring the Mode menu, you will find new and more powerful Statistics and Programmer views. And if you are not familiar to the bitwise manipulation, then you can also try the Options menu as well. It offers various unit conversions (weight, length, volume and more), date calculations (like days between two dates), and spreadsheet like templates which is helpful in calculating the mileage, or the mortgage rates and lot more.

Switch to a projector

New Windows 7 provides a very standard way for switching the display from one monitor to other, and even to a projector. You just have to press Win+P or run DisplaySwitch.exe and then you can choose your favorite display.

Automatic PC clean up

If some novice PC users access your system, you might land up in some problems. Leaving them alone with PC can cause change in a settings, or installation of any dubious programs, or they might delete very important files of yours and many other havocs to your PC. In Microsoft’s Windows 7 there is a solution to this problem, which is PC Safeguard. This will let your inexperienced users to log on, use the browser, play games, or chat on an instant messenger. When they log off, any change to the settings or any files they have saved can be undone and deleted. So it is very difficult for anyone to messing up your PC.

To give it a try, go to Control Panel > User Accounts and Family Safety > User Accounts > Manage another account > Create a new account. Now enter an account name, click on Create, and then click the account, now select the Set Up PC Safeguard > Turn on PC Safeguard > Apply. To confirm whether the PC Safeguard is working or not, log on as that user, and try to download and install any program. Now restart and re-log on and see whether the software has already gone or not.

Understanding System Restore

In the previous versions of Microsoft’s Windows the System Restore was something like a gamble. There were no ways to tell which drivers or applications might get affected. You have to try it to see. But now with Windows 7 the case is completely different.

You right click on Computer, select the Properties > System Protection > System Restore > Next, and then choose the restore point which you would like to use. Next you click on the new button to ‘Scan for affected programs’ and then your Windows will tell you which programs (if there is any) and drivers will be recovered or deleted once the restore point is selected.

Set the time zone

Tzutil.exe utility command in system administrators will let you set the time zone of your PC from the scripts. For example, if you want to set a Greenwich Mean Time in your PC you can use this command:

tzutil /s “gmt standard time”

The command “tzutil /g” shows the present time zone, “tzutil /l” lists down every possible time zones, and “tzutil /?” will show you the details about working of these commands.

Calibrating the screen

The screen colours of your PC differ depending on the settings of your graphics cards, monitor, lighting and others. However, most people are using the default Windows colour profile. This also means that digital photo which is looking just perfect for you might not be same for somebody else. Windows 7 is offering a Display Colour Calibration Wizard and this helps you to set up the proper brightness, colour settings, contrast and a ClearType tuner for more crisper and sharper texts. Want to try this, just click on Start, and type DCCW and then press [Enter].

Right-click everything

Windows 7 has striking similarities to Vista, but in most cases you can easily see the differences by just right clicking on things.

Well, if you right click on an empty section of the desktop, for example, you will find a menu entry to set the resolution of your PC screen so there is no need to go for browsing through display settings as of now.

For faster access to your folders like Pictures, Documents, Windows folder, and others just right-click on the Explorer icon on your taskbar.

But if you are not planning to use the Internet Explorer then most probably you do not want this icon to be permanently displayed on your taskbar. Instead, you can right click on the icon, and select ‘Unpin this program from the taskbar’, and then go ahead and install the Firefox.

Desktop slideshow

Windows 7 has very attractive new wallpapers, that sometimes it becomes really difficult to decide which one is the best. In that case, you can choose few types of wallpaper and let your Windows display all of them as a slideshow. To apply, just right click on an empty part of the desktop, and select Personalise > Desktop Background, then hold the Ctrl button as you keep on clicking other images that you like. You can also choose the timings of the display image.

Recover screen space

The tasks bar of new Windows 7 will be like a huge quick launch toolbar that will hold most of the program shortcuts that you like to have. You need to right-click one and then select Pin To Taskbar.

Restoring Quick Launch Toolbar

Due to any reasons, if you do not like the new taskbar, then you can always go back to your old Quick Launch Toolbar anytime.

Custom power switch

Windows 7 shows a plain text of ‘Shut down’ button at Start menu, however you may change it if you don’t need it. This feature is essential for those who reboot their computer several times in a day.

Auto arranging the desktop

If the icons in your Windows 7 desktop has scattered here and there, you might need to rearrange it. In case of Vista, the rearranging was made by just right clicking and by selecting the View > Auto arrange. Here in Windows 7 you just have to press and hold down [F5], and icons will be rearranged automatically in your Windows.

Disable smart window arrangement

One of the interesting feature in Windows 7 is cleverly re-arranging of windows, so that when you drag your window to the top of your screen, it gets maximize. It is really good, but in case somebody don’t like it and find it to be more distracting, then they can easily disable it. You just have to run REGEDIT, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, and set the WindowArrangementActive to 0, then reboot. Now your window is set as you like it to be.

Remove ‘Send Feedback’

Windows 7 has been released by Microsoft to get the public’s feedback, so it is good to take its advantage. So if you believe that something is not good and you have a better idea, then click on Send Feedback and let them know what you want to say. You could make a difference. Once you have sent the feedback and don’t want to keep that Send Feedback links on the windows, it is easy to do that too. Launch REGEDIT, and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, then set the FeedbackToolEnabled value to zero and reboot your PC. In case you want this link to be enabled just put 3 instead of 0.

Display your drives

When you click on Computer in Windows 7, you might see there is a lack of drives, but do not get frightened, the drives are there but in case the memory card reader is empty, it will not be displayed. However, if you don’t like it, it is easy to get your empty drives back. Just launch the Explorer and click Tools > Folder Options > View and clear ‘Hide empty drives in the computer folder’, and its all done.

See more detail

The new enhanced Windows 7 magnifier provides easy way to zoom in on the area of the screen. If you launch it, you will find a scale factor as well as the docking position.  Once it is activated it can able to track your keyboard and focus on the screen. Just press [Tab] when you move over a dialog box and it will zoom in on the current active control automatically.

Customize UAC

The User Account Control in Windows Vista was good idea, but unfortunately due to so many alerts it was not liked much by the users. New Windows 7 show less warning signs by default; it will let you to fine-tune the UAC to suit your requirement of balancing the security as well as a pop-up free life. Go to Start > Control Panel > Change User Account Control Settings.

Usage of Sticky Notes

The Sticky Notes app is very simple and useful tool in Windows 7. Just launch the StikyNot.exe and you will be able to type the notes at the keyboard. You can change its colour just by the right-clicking that note. Click on the + sign on the note title bar for adding another note. For closing the note window, click the note and press [Alt]+[4]. The notes will be saved automatically.

Open folder in new process

Windows 7 opens up the folders in the same process by default. This is good because it saves your system’s resources. However, if one folder crashes it will bring down all shell. In case your system is not very stable, or if you are doing something in the Explorer that cause crashes, you open up the Computer, and hold down the shift, and right-click on your drive and select the Open in New Process. Now your folder will launch in a different process, so there will be a rare chances of crash.

Restore your gadgets

With Windows 7 you cannot run gadgets if the UAC is turned off. The security features has been tightened in Windows 7. This security features will not allow any damages to your system by any malicious and unsigned gadgets. You can always go back to normal anytime. The only things you need to do is to Run REGEDIT, and Go to KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar\Settings, then create a new DWORD value which is called AllowElevatedProcess and set that number to 1. All of your gadgets should begin working in the same way.

New WordPad formats

WordPad will save your documents in Rich Text Format by default, same as it was before. But you also have more options, just browse the Save As Format list, you will find that you can also save, or open files in OpenDocument .odt or Office 2007 .docx formats.

Protect your data

USB flash drives are very suitable, portable, and convenient to use drives, but there are very high chances to loose it as well. You may land up in a big problem if there is any sensitive data in it. There is a solution for it in new Windows 7- just encrypts all your sensitive documents with a Microsoft’s BitLocker technology extension. Now it can be open up only by those who are having the password. To turn this on, right click your USB flash drive, and select Turn on BitLocker and then follow the instructions sets to protect your private and most sensitive files.

Configure your favourite music

Listen to your favorite music in Windows 7 Media Centre. By default, it will keep changing the music from the list of songs based on the ratings that you have given, and how often you play that song, and also when they were added to your list.

Search privacy

Windows 7 will able to remember your entire PC search queries by default settings and this will show you the most recent examples when you search in a Windows Explorer. In case you want little privacy and do not want anybody to see your search results, you can launch GPEDIT.MSC, and go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer, then double-click the “Turn off display of recent search entries…” and click on Enabled > OK.

Tweak PC volume

Windows 7 will now reduce the PC sounds volume automatically in case it detects that you are receiving or making any phone calls through PC.

Keyboard shortcuts

Windows 7 provides supports to various useful new shortcuts for the keyboard.

Alt+P
Display or hide the Explorer preview pane

Windows Logo+G
Show gadgets in front of the other windows

Windows Logo++ (plus key)
Zoom in, where it finds appropriate

Windows Logo+- (minus key)
Zoom out, where it finds appropriate

Windows Logo+Up
Maximize the present window

Windows Logo+Down
Minimize the present window

Windows Logo+Left
Snapping to left hand side of the Windows screen

Windows Logo+Right
Snapping to right hand side of the Windows screen

Windows Logo+Home
Minimize or restore entire thing but not the current window

Speedy video access

Do you want to access your Videos folder faster? Now new Windows 7 will let you adding the same in the Start menu. So just right-click on the Start orb, click on Properties > Start Menu > Customize, and then set the Videos option to “Display as a link”. For example, if you have a TV tuner which works with Windows 7, then there is a new option which will show you the Recorded TV folder on the Start menu, as well.

Run web searches

The search tool of Windows 7 can also able to search the online resources. For adding the Flickr support, for example, just visit I Started Something, click on Download the Connector, and choose the Open option. It will only take few moments to download. Now “Flickr Search” option is added in your Searches folder, so you will able to search images right from your desktop.

How secure is your PC? It seems that PC is absolutely secure, but it might not be always safe and secure. Windows XP was widely known for various security issues. Now, Windows Vista till date remains the most secure version of Windows, not even Windows 7. However, there are few security patches of Windows Vista, but they are at very low levels.

It is very important that you look after the security of your PC from various internet threats like hacking, phishing websites, and so on. Here are few tips to stay away from being infected.

Turn On the phishing filter

Phishing is the fastest growing danger on the Internet which results in to the identity theft. By using deceptive Web sites with the real brands logo and design, it tries to steal the important personal information such as user ids, passwords, SSN numbers, credit card numbers, and all. We need to secure our PCs from this Phishing threats and Phishing filter does it.

However, by default the Phishing Filter is turned off, so we have to enable it. For turning on the Phishing Filter, go to Tools > Phishing Filter > Turn On the Automatic Website Checking.

Delete your history

It is not only for them who wishes to hide their surf sites after browsing to the adult websites or chatting sites.  There are many people who browse or provide various valuable information on the shared PCs. For them to keep the information private, it is indeed necessary to delete all browsing history. Windows actually records the activities of the user in a log files and these histories and logs can be deleted if the users want to. You can delete the history each time after you browse in a shared PCs or others by going to Tools > Internet Options, then click on Delete the Browser History portion to remove the history, cookies, stored passwords, and form data prohibiting the theft of the log-in and other related details.

Change your password often

Most of us prefer to keep the same passwords for everything, so that they do not forget.  But this is not recommended. Do not ever use the same password; especially keep long passwords for the bank accounts log-ins. Also keep passwords using the combinations of numbers and letters that is hard for anyone to guess it.

Check site for phishing scams

In case your Phishing filter is off, just hit Alt and O, then followed by H and C and then quickly check a website using the Internet Explorer 7′s phishing filter.

Do not reply to spam

You are responsible for confirming that your email address is real for the scammers. So do not ever click on the links which is contained in the emails letting you to put your personal information. It will deceive you by letting you believe that it is from your credit card provider or some online stores. This is mostly a Phishing body.

Secure your wireless network

You might have a real threat if you have a wireless network at your home because it may extends over to the near by street and to your next door as well. Hence, it is very important to keep the undesired computers away. You can do so by encrypting your own wireless network connection with some password through your router. It is better to choose the WPA-level security and also change the password which you use to access your own router. WEP security is also good, in case you do not have WPA.

Parental controls to protect your children

One of the good things about Windows Vista is that it has a built-in Parental Controls. Go to Start > Control Panel > User Accounts and Family Safety > Parental Controls. Turning on the parental control help you to limit the access and make the internet browsing safer for your children. You can also utilize the standard settings to block the visiting of few websites or some programs. Otherwise, you can also make lists of websites or programs that your kids can choose from.

New account creation for your child

For safe browsing, you can create a new account for your kids. To do this, launch Control Panel, click on the User Accounts and then on Family Safety, then click on User Accounts. It is best that you create separate accounts for every member in the family. Just click on Create a New Account and then enter the user’s name. Now, provide that person with a standard user account if you do not want that user to have the authority to uninstall software and change the settings of your Windows Vista.

Add a password to a User Account

Create a password to your user account name by clicking on “Create a Password”. Now, the account will be accessed only by the person that you have assigned.

Monitoring

Any accounts which have active parental controls have its Reporting on. Whenever this user logged in, it will record all programs they have used or whatever games they have played. It will also record if they have tried to do things which have been blocked.

Set time limits for the computer use for your kids

Setting the time limits for your children to be online is a very good habit. If you click on the Time Limits, there will be an empty grid and by coloring them with mouse you can block times. In case that user attempts to log on to that PC during that blocked period, the Windows will not allow them to.

Check your firewall

By default, the Windows Firewall is turned on. You can also check the status in the Windows Security Centre. It is accessible through the Control Panel or else you can just type ‘Windows Firewall’ after opening Start menu.

Microsoft’s new Windows 7 is very much in news now days. Many reports are showing that this new operating system which is now in a beta phase has come up with huge changes and improvements with regards to energy efficiency and the overall performance.

In this article, we will discuss about few improvements of the new Windows 7 and provided you with some useful tips such as Registry settings, few small tweaks, attractive features, and about many new programs which are added and so on.

Following are the tips for the new Windows 7 power users:

• Automatic cleanup of PC
  

“Automatic PC cleanup” term sounds interesting isn’t. And yes it is indeed interesting and we will show you how. Let’s say in case your PC has been accessed by some person who is not at all very an experienced PC user. In case you are allowing them to use your PC for longer period of time, the consequences would be they must have changed some settings knowing or unknowingly. It is also possible that they may have deleted few important files or may have installed few new. This will cause a real destruction.

But in new Windows 7 operating system, there is a solution to this problem. This solution will give you a peace of mind. This solution is a PC Safeguard. So when the non- technical users use your PC for longer time for playing games, or chatting on any instant messenger normally. At last when they log off PC, in case there have been any changes in the settings will be undone which means if they have saved any files, it will be deleted when they log off. Isn’t this a cool feature or you say improvements.

Well this is not at all a very new technology. Microsoft has already made this freely available for the users for many years by its Shared Computer Toolkit or Windows Steady State. And this feature in Windows 7 also does the same thing but only difference is that this is the first time when it is been integrated fully with the Windows, making it easier for the users.

How to apply PC safeguard?

Just go to Control Panel > User Accounts and Family Safety > User Accounts > Manage another account > Create a new account. Here enter your account name, click on Create, and then click the account, select the Set Up PC Safeguard > Turn on PC Safeguard > and click on Apply. Now first log on as that user, and try to download and install any program, restart and log on again. Confirm whether that software has gone or still there.

• Can Search everything

Windows 7 can now able to search the contents of any file type. For trying it, launch the Explorer, click on Tools > Folder Options > View and check “now try searching by the content of unknown file types”.

• Finding bottlenecks

Well in the beta version, Windows 7 seems to perform better than Vista but in case your PC is slow then it will be much easier to uncover the hindrances. To check this, click on Start, and type RESMON and press [Enter]. It will then launch the Resource Monitor. Click on CPU, Memory, Disk or Network tabs. And the Windows 7 will show the processes which are hogging most of the system resources within no time.

The view of the CPU is very useful; it provides more powerful Task Manager Version. For example, if any program has been locked up, then right-click on its name from the list and select on the Analyze Process. Windows 7 will then show you the reason why it is hanging. It may show that the particular program might be waiting for some other processes, may be and it will then provide you with the information that you have to fix this problem or something.

• RSS-powered slideshows

There are many new options for styling for the desktop themes which can be easily created, mix, and also can be easily share with various extraordinary themes. Many of the theme packs are already there, inspired by the OSX and others. Well, here one of the new things is the ability for running your theme packs as the slideshow just like the wallpapers.

• Restoring the Quick Launch Toolbar

The taskbar of the new Windows 7 taskbar works just like a huge Quick Launch taskbar. It can hold all shortcuts you require. But in case your requirement is different and you want to keep your previous Quick Launch Toolbar, it is only the matter of few moments to restore it.

Here is a way to launch it-

Right click on the taskbar > choose Toolbars > New Toolbar, and type “%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch” into the Folder box and then click the Select Folder.

After that right click on the taskbar > clear “Lock the taskbar”, and you will see that the Quick Launch toolbar, most probably it is in the right side. Right click on its divider and clear Show Text and then Show Title to minimize the space which it takes up.

Finish the job by right clicking on the bar and select on the View > Small Icons for the true retro look. It’s all done now.

• Calibrate your screen

The screen colors that you are looking can completely vary according to the monitor you are using, your graphics cards settings, lighting and many others. However, most of the people are using the same default Windows color profile.

Luckily, the new Windows 7 are providing a Display Color Calibration Wizard. This will help you to set up the brightness, color settings, or contrast, and a ClearType tuner in a right manner which basically ensures that the text must be sharp and crisp. Click on Start, then type DCCW and press [Enter]. Just give it a try and you may love it.

• Multi-threaded Robocopies

For the people who ever use the wonderful command-line robocopy tool will surely welcome the new switches which are being introduced in Windows 7. The /MT, is used to improve the speed by conducting the multi-threaded copies if you specify the number of threads. Just enter robocopy /? on the command line for the knowing the full details.

• Custom power switches

Windows 7 displaying a plain text “Shut down” on the Start menu by default. However, it will take only few moments for the change of this action for something else. When you reboot your PC for couple of times daily, it is a good action for them. You just have to right-click on the Start orb, and select the Properties and then set click the “Power boot action” to “Restart”. The action will apply then.

• Removing “Send Feedback”

Microsoft has given the option in its Windows 7 to get the feedback of the product from the public. It is good to take the advantage of this facility. In case you do not like anything, it is a good idea to send them the feedback and see if you could really make any difference.

When you are done sending your feedback, you may want to remove this link from your Windows, you can do that too. For removing the link, launch REGEDIT, and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, then set the FeedbackToolEnabled value to zero and then restart your PC. Again if you like to send any feedback set this value to 3 instead of zero, the Send Feedback links will be back again.

• Use of Sticky Notes

The new Sticky Notes application in Windows 7 is very simple and useful. For applying this feature, launch the StickyNot.exe, and you can also type notes at the keyboard then right-click that note to change the color. On the note title bar click on the + sign for adding another note. After it is done click on the note and then press [Alt]+[4] for closing the note windows. Now your notes will be automatically saved.

However, if you are a Linux user you must have already discovered some of the lighter options to few of the platform’s bloat fests. You may do these by using Gnumeric and AbiWord instead of OpenOffice.org.

We need to look at the options for the Desktop and to start with we have to see how is the GUI of the Linux are fitted together. So let’s have a look on it.

This is the setup when users run one of the big three desktops i.e. Gnome, KDE, and Xfce. But if you are choosing the options of a standalone window manager or WM, the first and the third layers can be cut from this stack. A window manager more inclined to integrate all of the desktop functionalities into one single executable which do not have any additional programs like file managers.

Well, most of the standalone window managers also do not only depend on a widget toolkit. So instead of depending on the widget toolkit it usually renders their own graphics and then interface straightaway with the X Window System libraries. It helps a lot to keep the consumption of RAM to a very minimum level.

If we use the Ubuntu 8.10, the commands you will need to install three Window Managers via the internet is elaborated here. Click on the Applications, followed by Accessories and then click on Terminal (in Gnome) for entering various commands. After the installation is done do log out and click on the Options and then Select Session to choose the WM which is going to run at the time of log in. Here is how it will be look like:

Fluxbox

• Raw speed and low dependencies, free up screen space

• www.fluxbox.org

• Install on Ubuntu sudo apt-get install fluxbox fluxconf

Starting Fluxbox for the first time, you may probably scratch your head and wondering is this the one.  Fluxbox provides the screen real estate back to you. This will look little horrifying but it is interesting after you get to know it.

Now, you may observe that there are no program menu options to ‘click on’ like Applications in Gnome or the K button in KDE. Even though, you can develop an equivalent menu options by just right click on anywhere on the desktop. This menu would also be containing the submenus for many other program categories. You could also be able to drag those menu options all around the desktop simply by clicking bar on the top. If you do not want these menus at all, that can also be done. For this, you have to right click on the top bar of the menu option.

Now look at the Toolbar which is located at the bottom of your screen. The toolbar only takes two-thirds of the screen’s total width. When you look on to your left, you will find the word ‘one’, which means it is displaying the virtual desktop. You can switch to different desktop by just clicking on the arrows placed on the right side of the word ‘one’.

Now you will see the implementation of the task menu bar. It is almost the same as in the case of Gnome, KDE and Xfce. The programs will be displayed accompanied with their icons. For making it visible on all of the virtual desktops, you have to right-click on the program’s entry to ‘sticky’ the window and then you can perform all other operations.

When you will see to the right side of the task bar area, you can see different pair of arrows, which will allow you to cycle the current running programs. At last there is a clock. You can also build the nature of the toolbar by a simple right click on a non-task bar area. This will bring up a menu which will set the position of the toolbar. Left click for shrinking the width and right click to grow and also you have the option for auto-hide.

How to configure the Fluxbox?

Right-click on the desktop and then go to the Configuration tab. Here you will find the following options:

Focus Model: This will change in both cases, whether you are selecting the windows by clicking on it or you drift over them by mouse.

Tabs Options: In case, you unchecked the Tabs on the Title bar option, it will be easier to group all windows together because every window is having a small tab above the title bar.

Opaque Window Moving: If you move windows, it will automatically draw only the outline of a window. It is by default setting. Ticking to this option will display the contents while moving, however it causes small loss in the performance.

Fine-tuning

Go to the ‘Applications’ tab and then click on ‘Tools’ you will find Fluxconf and Fluxkeys. These are two additional tools for configuration. The Fluxconf consist of many overlaps along with the Configuration submenu. However, if someone is looking for changing something in the desktop, he has to look in to this. And the Fluxkeys are really handy in case somebody likes to determine the key bindings for the closing windows or switching desktops and many more.

Once you are ready with the Fluxbox, well it will take only few hours to get you comfortable with it. Hence, it is recommended to spend some couple of days for letting this simplicity and speed both to soak in.

Ratpoison

• Eliminate the mouse and save screen space

• www.nongnu.org/ratpoison

• Install on Ubuntu sudo apt-get install ratpoison

Mouse is very awkward input device as it becomes most common source of RSI problems.

When you are doing a graphics editing tasks or web browsing, your mouse may not become an obstacle if you keep one hand on the mouse and another one to the keyboard. But situations differ when you start editing some programming or documents. For example, if you want to hit on a menu entry and in case you do not know the shortcut of the keyboard, you have to use this unwanted and irritating piece called mouse.

Ratpoison is being designed to eliminate the job of the mouse in window management. You will not find any title bars for dragging the windows or resizing the handles or any other bits in case you expect it in a traditional window manager.

The main aim behind this is that the operation of any window management performing under a normal setting can be achieved only by using the keyboard. Hence, if you are working on the documents or programming or both, your both hands will never need to leave the keyboard.

Tiling is another option in Ratpoison. As we see that with the regular window managers, we spent more time to juggle with windows to maximize the use of entire screen. Also we try them to align with a minimal overlap such that we can be able to see two programs at the same time. However, lots of time is needed to do so. Hence tiling is the option which is developed in Ratpoison. Tiling actually places and resizes the windows automatically on the screen along with no overlaps.

When you start the Ratpoisons, you will find a terminal window or a blank screen. But if there is no title bars, menus, panels or anything else for the clicking fingers, it looks like it is absolutely not possible for using.

In case you get a blank screen, just hit the Ctrl+T and then C, it will open up a new terminal window. It will occupy the whole screen. Now run any text editor like Gedit or Mousepad and then this program will occupy whole of the real estate of the screen.

By tiling, we can split the screen either vertically or horizontally based on the selected windows during the last time. Now by using Ctrl+T along with the number keys, first you select one window followed by another. After that, hit the Ctrl+T and then S so that it splits the screen horizontally, or else hit Ctrl+T and then Shift+S for splitting it vertically.

You can also switch between the windows in the split using the Ctrl+T and a number as mentioned above, and then select 2 windows for another splitting.

Ratpoison is not worth if you are the person who spend most of the time for graphics programming, but for a coder or a writer, it is absolutely worth for trying it out.

Here are few quick key combos:

Ctrl+T followed by C – Start a new terminal
Ctrl+T followed by W – Showing list of windows
Ctrl+T followed by number – Switch windows
Ctrl+T followed by S/Shift+S – Split last two selected windows vertically or horizontally
Ctrl+T followed by Shift+Q – Show full-screen of current window
Ctrl+T followed by N/P – Switch to next or previous window
Ctrl+T followed by Ctrl+T – Toggle windows (like Alt+Tab on other Window managers or desktops)
Ctrl+T followed by K – Close the current window

Enlightenment

• Eye candy and power-user functionality

• www.enlightenment.org

• Install on Ubuntu sudo apt-get install e16 e16keyedit e16menuedit2 eterm

If you go to the login screen and after you have chosen the ‘Select Session’, you may find 3 options for starting E: with KDE, another one with Gnome, and last one with ‘E16′. E is very flexible to replace the Metacity in case of Gnome or KWin in KDE, but you choose the ‘E16′ option as of now.

Well in the Fluxbox, you use to start the programs by clicking the desktop. However, you need to middle-click so as to bringing up the main menu. In case of Ubuntu this also includes a submenu which is called Debian Menus. It contains all of yours installed applications. And if you do a right click, you will find the Enlightenment Settings menu.

Now launch program by middle clicking and go into the App menu. In window, now you see the pair of boxes when you look in to the bottom left of the desktop. Those are actually the virtual desktop pagers. You have two desktops by default; each one is containing the two workspaces. The best thing here is that these window icons are actually a thumbnail expression of the full window.

When you minimize your window, you will find that it goes into the bottom-right box on the desktop that is the ‘icon box’. It will provide you a thumbnail form of the programs. If you right click on it and choose the ‘Settings’ to enlarge the icons or else you can also set up the vertical list, it is absolutely according to your preferences. It is good that E is very much customizable.

We are going to discuss these problems here.

During the start ups Mac loads hell lot of codes even before it reaches to the Finder view which are used for seeing. There are also more chances that you will find lots of legacy things of the Mac if you are using Mac from a longer time which also resulted in the slowing down the start ups.

The entirely new systems start really quickly on many modern Mac. In case, when the programs are installed for very long years, the computer has to carry out lots of major disk activities. It analyzes through more startup parts both used and unused ones before it completes booting.

Well, one of the solutions to this kind of problem is to use an uninstaller programs such as AppDelete or AppZapper. These are used to delete unused apps if there is any on your system. This will also delete any library files which are associated with those applications.  You can also put application to trash but this does not mean that the resources can also get away from other places too when it was first installed.

User-installed items are located when you go to Macintosh HD, click on Library and then you will find Startup Items.  These user-installed programs that loads when your Mac boots. Usually, these items are the services which either the applications or the peripherals require to run scanners, printers or any dongle security enablers properly.

It is also possible to delete some items from the folder but you need to be very careful in putting any items to trash which is needed. In case, you are very sure about any resource file that is no longer in use, delete it because it will help you to improve the start up problem.

One can also keep the boot drive clean by transferring large media files or any other large iTunes libraries in to the secondary drives. It will improve the performance of a computer a lot.

Also the slow logins problems are solved in the similar pattern. But only difference is that here those items are situated in the Login Items section under the System Preferences and Accounts.

The installed peripherals such as printers and scanners or any other applications which are allowed to open at the time of log in also appear on the list. These all are loaded by the system at the time of logins which makes the system very slow.

If anyone is running OS X 10.5 and it routinely back up using the Time Machine, it is also possible that it rolls back the system to its pre-updated state by booting from a system disc. This is being done by connecting the backup drive and then choosing the Restore System from the Time Machine. It will be replacing the corrupted system with the working one; however it is one of the last options.

The open firmware, EFI of Intel Mac is not an easy task. On the other side, if it is an OS X systems you can also able to boot right into the UNIX heart of any system. One of the ways to solve the start problems is to bypass the normal startup procedure.
Few handy tips for managing the logins and startup problems:

• Simply go to your boot drive, go to Macintosh HD, and then start navigation to the Library and click on Startup Items. Here you will find the items which your Mac loads when there is an initial start ups which is also associated to some third party applications. Here you can delete those interface drivers to speed up the booting if you don’t really need them.

• For Login, go to the System Preferences, click on Accounts and then go to Login Items. You will able to see what is being set to load when you first log in. Usually these are the peripherals such as scanners and printers or gaming devices which are being installed. However you can just remove the log in items if you don’t really need it.

• For choosing different start up drives, just go to the System Preferences, click the Start up Disk and then choose from the local volumes such as bootable CDs, DVDs or a Boot Camp partition if you can do it.

Netbooks are mostly seen running on Linux or Windows XP (Home Edition) operating system. OS X, Vista or XP Professional can not run on Netbook. Professional editions of XP are being restricted by the Microsoft and same is the case with Apple. They also restrict the OS X to be run on Netbooks.

Too much of horsepower is required for running Vista. HP is the only company who can provide Vista on a Netbook. However, it will become a debatable question whether it should be called Netbook because the price would be so high if they use Vista.

Netbook is very light in weight and it is basically designed for the use of getting wireless connection and access to the internet plus few simple computing programs like word processing, etc. It comes with a screen size of 7 inches to 10 inches max. It is expected that more than Fifty million of Netbooks will be circulated in the market by 2011.

Well, originally the Netbook was introduced by Psion in the year 1999. At that time “Netbook” was the general term given to a small form of computer looking like a portable form of laptop. The Netbook which was introduced by Psion was running on the customized version of Psions Epoc which was later termed as WinCE. Unfortunately, the Psion version of Netbook does not gain much popularity and the market share. Ultimately the production of the Psion’s Netbook was discontinued.

Microsoft’s Windows 7, the new operating system is basically designed to work on the Netbooks. This will provide users really good experience on this low powered device which was not possible with Vista.

IDC, a research firm has found that at the end of 2008, nearly ten million Netbooks were shipped as compared to near zero in late 2007. It is really an extraordinary growth in such a short span of time.

Intel has launched its Netbook with an Atom processor which is designed to use less computing power at damn cheap price. Intel has designed the Netbook by keeping in mind of the developing nations as their major buyer and market base. However, Asus has already launched its own category Netbook called Eee PC during the later part of 2007. The Eee Pc was supplied by a small 7-inch screen, a solid state memory, and running on a Linux platform instead of Windows.

In late summer last year, Dell, one of the largest PC makers of U.S. and the second largest in the world, also launched its new version of Netbook in the market. Dell Inspirion Mini 9 was a simple Netbook, while Mini 12 was little puzzling. However, grouping it along with the Mini line it is being sold as a Netbook. The 12-inch screen size of Mini 12 is very much close to small traditional notebooks.

Various PC vendors now days are trying to cast these Netbook in a way that it would fit with their own line of products. HP is trying to derive the difference between the Netbooks by software. HP’s Mini 1000 MIE has a customized interface design so as to hide the fact that it has been a Linux device. Sony is also putting idea to customize its own range of Netbooks.

Well, now every company in the Netbook business is tweaking some features from here and there in order to attract large mass of customers.