Upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium. Windows 7 Home Premium makes it easy to create a home network and share all of your favorite photos, videos, and music. You can even watch, pause, rewind, and record TV (a broadcast TV tuner may be required). Get the best entertainment experience with Windows 7 Home Premium. Do you use your PC for work, run Windows XP programs, or require enhanced security? Consider Windows 7 Professional. Windows 7 is designed to make your PC simp (more…)

If you do not know what new features will be included in Windows 7, take a look at the Windows 7 RC

The operating system itself is Linux based. Bout 256Mb big I believe. And is stored on an on-board chip, unless of course you happen to have Express Gate SSD which comes on a 512mb – 768mb flash add in. The OS lets you boot up into the Internet, Skype, Instant Messenger, Photo Viewer and depending on which motherboard you have you get music playback to.

The main reason I’m reviewing V1.4.4 (Asus P5QL-E version) is because it was gob-smackingly wonderful. The 300mb file (which Asus let me have a 20Kbp/s, cheers for that) intrigued me as usually the new update were pushing 70 – 100Mb. So I downloaded it and expected to see no visual improvement so I didn’t rush to restart my PC to have a gander. But after I finally did I was gob-smacked, the new layout is not far off vista’s cleanness, and is much better layed out than the previous versions. I’ve also noticed a slight improvement in load times, Firefox (splashtop browser as its called) loaded a lot faster than it used to as did the photo viewer but I was a bit disappointed to see the messenger side of things a bit worse off, Skype taking slightly longer to sign in as the messenger program (which does like to throw up contacts missing errors every now and then).

But overall I have to say the new major update has made me think of not bothering to boot into vista as I don’t really need to now unless I want to play a game. The only thing stopping me from doing this is the lack of music and video playback (oh and maybe a torrent app) but because I payed £63 for this motherboard I’m not expecting the best, I suppose you get what you pay for. Most of Asus new motherboards which display the Ai lifestyle sticker or which have the P43 chipsets (and upwards) include it now, apart from the gaming series motherboards, which is a shame as it’s a fantastic feature.

All in all Asus have shown real initiative in making the time to put this in. This is mostly aimed at people who are in a rush and don’t wish to wait a long time for XP/Vista to boot just so they can read their emails or make last minute plans over Skype/MSN. One thing that I am a little disappointed about is that at the moment there is no version for PC’s running the Windows 7 Beta/RC even though its in its very early stages most companies have seemed to make at least some effort in porting drivers over to it and Asus should to as it seems to be the “Leader in hardware”

For those interested I’ve taken some pictures of Express Gate.

Hope you enjoyed my review and stay tuned for the next one.

A little note, if you want to install this onto windows 7 then put the installer into compatibility mode for Vista SP2.

Also you may like to know that MSI have made something similar called WINKI, stupid name I know but if it’s like Express Gate then you’d put up with it.

Have you spotted any additional features that are missing? Please post any feedback below.

Follow these nine top tips which will your browsing experience silky smooth!

-Requirements -
***FireFox (Windows)***
***FireFox (MAC)***

1. Open firefox and type the following in the address bar: about:config

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2. Right click> New> integer

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3. a window will come up name it: layout’s.initialpaint.delay

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(After this, click the ok button)

4. Another box will come up change that to: 0

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Now, in the filter box which is located just below the addressbar and tabs, is something called the filter bar. It’s role is to sort out the text and it narrows down what you type in the box

5. Type the following in the filter bar: network.http.proxy.pipelining
once located double click so it is then set to true and not false

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6. Do the same to: network.http.pipelining

7. Now, you will see both are set to true

8.  Try to find network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Double click on that and a window will come up, then change that to around “1000″ though you can go higher (some people say 30) i just havent tried it yet but sometimes if you do go higher it doesnt go as fast but “1000″ loads really abruptly.

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9 ok now that that is what step 5-8 should look like

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^^EXTRAS^^^^
**NOTE::**
–If your pc is already abnormally quick and you have a fast internet service provider (ISP), then you probably will not notice much difference in browsing speed. However, with these tips who know’s how fast your browsing speed can become!

– In addition, if you would like to increase the speed of your virtual ram, use these instructions below:

1) Go into your Control Panel

2) Go to Performance and Maintenance

3) Click on the Advanced tab

4) Under the Performance panel, click Settings

5) On the window that pops up, you should be on the “Visual Effects” tab…navigate to Advanced

6) On the bottom panel where it says “Virtual Memory,” click change

7) Change the initial size to about 3000 and change the max to 4096

Did you find this article useful? Are there any other tips you’d like to add? Please feel free to comment below!

Windows as of late seem to be focusing on safety but the tools they have implemented to do this cripple the OS, for example UAC (User Access Control) it’s there to keep you safe but just become an annoyance, so the first thing we are going to disable is UAC, now if you have decent internet security on your machine (not Norton or McAfee) then chances are it’s safe to turn it off.

Second thing we are going to turn off is the Search Indexer, it is there to speed up file finding but if you keep everything tidy in the first place then it’s not needed and can be disabled to free up some memory.

Third Thing you can do if you have a small amount of total memory is use vista’s and windows 7′s “Ready Boost”. This allows you to use any old pen drive you have lying around as RAM. Any size will do 128mb all the way up to 8Gb.

Forth thing to do is turn off Aero if it’s crippling you system. Aero is the flashy yet resource heavy theme that comes with Vista and Windows 7, if you have small memory and/or an old graphics card then it may improve system performance to turn it off and use the Basic theme.

Fifth thing to do is tell Vista or Windows 7 to use more than one core and more memory on start-up this can be done by typing msconfig in the search bar and going into the boot section then advanced options, there you will have the option to use 1 to #cores you have and the amount of memory it can have. The best option to use it all the cores you have and half the memory (don’t worry it wont use half all the time, just at boot-up)

Sixth thing to do is get rid of unwanted start-up programs anything like messenger or MS office. Stopping these speeds up the login and desktop loading times.

Lastly if you have Norton or McAfee as your internet security I strongly urge you to uninstall it and get something like Kaspersky (if you want to pay for it) or AVG/Avast Free edition. The main reason is Norton and McAfee use up an un-needed amount of memory and CPU resources.

Now we dive into special programs that do all the hard stuff for you, the program we are going to use is TweakNow WinSecret. This program is free and very easy to use but I will still be using some visual tools to smooth the process.

The first thing you will need to do on Windows 7 is put it into compatibility mode for Vista SP2 because for some reason even though Windows 7 is supported it can’t read the memory and bottle’s out.

First thing you’ll want go into is the Windows Core area which is shown below:

Then you’ll have a new window with the following options:

Windows Prefetch – you’ll want to leave that alone and just empty the prefetch using the button at the bottom.

Windows Time Out – You can set the number to whatever you feel but the best option is clicking the “Recommended” button at the bottom.

Cache – This gives you the option to keep data in the RAM rather than the Page File, this is supposed to speed things up but I found it hogs a lot of memory on long uses, nearly filling my 6Gb, so we leave this option alone.

Miscellaneous – This gives you three options Automatic Restart, NTFS File System and Library files. We leave the first two alone and just check the “Force Windows to unload DLL’s after program close”

Security – This gives you the option to unload the page file on shut down, this doesn’t do much other than make your PC shut down take 3 times as long so we leave that unchecked.

You then save and close the sub window.

We now go onto the Network and Internet Button back on the main screen.

We are now met with 3 sub-tabs.

On the “General” Tab just check the “SACK” option.

We leave the “MTU” tab alone

We then go to the “Others” Tab and check the MTU Auto Discovery box as well as putting the number of connections of HTTP 1 and 1.1 to 10. Save and then close the sub window.

Well that’s it for this article, if there is any other tips you have and want me to add just drop a comment and I’ll put it in.

Vista was given a bad reputation for having bad compatibility with many portable devices- has Windows 7 followed in Vista’s footsteps or have they taken another path?

Microsoft has been pouring their heart and soul into creating Windows 7, which could be their best operating system yet, according to analysts.  There has been much controversy over the release of Windows 7 in the last month or so, as you may have observed. Initially, Windows 7 RC was to be announced publicly on May 5th, but earlier for TechNet and MSDN subscribers. However, a couple of days later, it turned out that it had been leaked on P2P file-sharing sites , just what everyone needed after the Pirate Bay trial. Well, now that it has been released, TechCombo would like to review Windows 7 RC for our readers, let’s see what all this hype is really about!

Installing Windows 7 RC

Before you decide to install Windows 7, you must take a quick look at the system requirements that Microsoft suggest:

- 1GHz or faster CPU.

- 1 GB of RAM for 32-bit systems OR 64-bit systems 2GB of RAM.

- 16 GB of available disk space for 32-bit OR 20 GB for 64-bit.

- DirectX 9 graphics device with Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) 1.0 or higher driver.

These requirements are rather low and so the majority will have no problems in passing them. The installation itself is one of the quickest yet, on average taking sixteen minutes. Vista comes close, taking nineteen minutes and XP requires forty five minutes (faster computers will take around thirty minutes.) In addition to the system requirements, Microsoft strongly advise you not to install Windows 7 over Beta as this can cause some difficulties and will, most probably, take up more of your precious time. The “16 minute” installation process is not too demanding at all, needing you to register the product key, edit elementary data like username, and other minor settings.

New and Notable Features

- New Taskbar with “pinned” shortcuts instead of the conventional “buttons” to run a program.

- Capability of hovering over a program in use, and preview a thumbnail. In the case of multiple windows of the same program, the first icon will shrink and the two or three icons will be next to each other accordingly, so that you are able to choose whichever one you want to go on.

- Right clicking has a completely new function. If you were to have a typical program e.g.Firefox on your taskbar,right clicking it in Vista would have brought up ‘properties’ or c’reate shortcut’. However, in Windows 7, a list containing the most frequently used sites as well as programs you have previously pinned, will be brought up.

- Another feature they have edited is the notification region. The ‘show hidden icons’ button arrow face has changed direction; before it was facing westwards but now faces north. What I have noticed is that it seems to hide one more item than Vista.

- Improved “Show desktop” button. It has moved positioned and now has stationed itself on the right of the time icon, in the bottom right hand corner. In addition to the change in placement, whenever you hover over the “Show desktop” icon, all the windows that are open automatically become see-through revealing whatever is on your desktop.

- New “Jump Lists” Jump lists are positioned in the Start menu, which are normally for specific programs like Web browsers or Multimedia applications. You can identify jump listed programs because there is a small black arrow pointing to the right; and in there contains various shortcuts. For example, again I’ll use Firefox, it will show frequently used sites as well as tasks.

New jump lists in start menu

- Windows 7 “Libraries.” Libraries are effectively a virtual network connected to any computer in your home network. It enables you to find and sort all your Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos into one “server.” It also means you can now sort videos by length and photos by when you took them originally. Though, in this library, images are just linked to there, so they are there to view only.

- New “Network” in Homegroups. Pretty clear from the name itself. Homegroups effectively allows you to share files with the nearest Windows 7 computer or laptop on your home network. This is a useful tool because you can print anything from your computer to the same printer that the other Windows 7 users utilizes, though when first set-up there is a exclusive password that cannot be changed, which enables to share files, one tip: do not lose or forget that password otherwise you cannot use this interesting feature.

- Windows Media Centre benefits two countries at least. For the US, TV listings on the Internet have been integrated into the main TV guide which gives various shows. For the UK public, the football fanatics will be bouncing about because you can now watch channels like Liverpool and Arsenal in Extras.

Media Centre makes, USA happy as it has Internet TV listings in their main TV guide, and UK public happy as they can watch favourite football teams online without leaving their computers!

- Added Windows Media Player appearances such as support for .mov files i.e. Quicktime files.

- Newest Internet Explorer 8 embedded into Windows 7, no critics can whine about this problem this time!

- Improved Devices menu in which you can control all your hardware from one location.

- Updated Applications including Paint, WordPad and Windows Update ( now new applications updates, as well as normal updates.)

- User Account Control (UAC) You control the settings now, this means no more MASSIVELY annoying UAC, as was in Vista.

You can now effectively control UAC

Here’s an in-depth video going through what is new in 7:

Our opinion

Pros

- Installation time is 2x faster.

- Much better performance than Vista. Microsoft made performance top priority in the development of Windows 7, and they seem to have done their job well.

- New XP Mode feature

- Fresh User Interface, which is definetely an improvement over Vista.

- Interacts with Windows XP’s assurance and Vista’s homely feeling to produce Microsoft’s best operating system as of yet.

-Backward compatability. There is no need to purchase software or hardware, if you are going to upgrade to 7.

-Some ‘trippy’ desktop wallpapers.

One of the many crazy desktop wallpapers provided. Not all of them are like this though, there are some normal, 'boring' ones as well!

Cons

- 5 “unnecessary” editions rather than one original edition. The 5 that have been released are:

1. Windows 7 Starter.
2. Windows 7 Home Basic.
3. Windows 7 Home Premium.
4. Windows 7 Professional
5. Windows 7 Ultimate.

Most notably, Windows 7 Starter is really just a squashed up version of Windows 7 Home Premium. Perhaps, because we are in the recession, Microsoft need to differentiate consumers in order to squeeze every penny from our pockets to get through the bad economic climate.

-No Quick Launch bar (thankfully it can be created manually)

- Startup control has been removed from Windows Defender

Conclusion

I think that Windows 7 is the best operating system Microsoft have ever produced, it is surprisingly solid and stable. This Windows 7 RC offers exactly what Microsoft initially said, with improved features and a stable operating system set up perfectly for the final released of Windows 7. For anyone using any other Windows platform such as Vista or XP, this is now the time you should consider upgrading because, you never know, you could be in for a pleasant surprise! As a consumer, when the final Windows 7 edition, when all the bugs are completely mended, it will almost definitely be a huge success, especially as Microsoft are giving users the chance to use it for 1 year for free.

If you have used the new Windows 7 RC, let TechCombo know your views! Just fill out the comment box below along with any feedback you have.

Windows 7 RC is almost upon us, well sooner for torrent trackers

Features include improved Internet Radio playback

Just to hype more news surrounding the highly speculated Windows RC, I feel the need to outline some new and improved features, which some of you may of heard before, but nevertheless for those who are a stranger to what is heading our way, this will be eye-opening preview.

First of all, I shall reveal some of the cool, new features that Windows 7 RC will contain,

- Flip your Windows with Aero Peek ( Shortcut: Alt + Tab)

- Improved Internet Radio playback as well as playback support for video content arriving from periphials like Cameras and Camcorders.

- As soon as a specified program has completed installation, automatically, it moves down to the bottom of Start Menu, part of the easy to use interface.

- Customization of jump list length with a limit of ten items defaulted and better flexibility with the list also.

- Indivisual options for gadget view and desktop icon view.

Above are just five new and improved features, a further fourty, if you are interested, have been listed here with great detail.

Next I will try to outline a couple of the outstanding attributes to Windows 7100 build:

Ability to stream your library whilst on the internet using Windows Media Player.

When I first read about this characterisitic, I was stunned and excited from the prospect of being able to listen to your own songs from anywhere in the world by Windows Media Player’s Remote Media Sharing. All you need is a Windows Live ID and, of course, an account on Windows 7. However, a major flaw is that the set up is long and windows media player on the opposing computer must be open, meaning if you go abroad you will have to keep the laptop for over two weeks! Not gonna happen, neither will integration with googlemail accounts.

Perfect attribute for the travelling personal!

Windows 7 will include XP mode

Having an XP feature, will only increase the likability of Windows 7 attracting more or less all enterprise users, however it does require yet another download. On the brightside, it will be available soon as a downloadable plug-in which you can read more about here.

Antidote for the credit crunch temporarily as no cost for XP on Windows 7 Pro, Enterprise and Ultimate.

Desktop Background Picture beats Vista hands down

Not the most significant feature, but when you login to your laptop/computer it will definately have an impact on your mood! There are a huge variety to choose from, and if you would like to see more , other than the one below, visit here.

Beautiful background is always something nice to have in front of you

I hope this article has showed you a few characteristics of Windows 7 RC which were alien to you beforehand. If there are any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment below,

Windows RC coming very soon to MSDN and Technet subscribers

This time Microsoft have a set date for the release of Windows 7 RC, so it will not be belated!

Microsoft Partners has been renovated and now states that Windows 7 Release Candidate will announced to the community on May 5th 2009, which is only 10 days away! However, the benefit for you MSDN and Technet subscribers is that you can download it right now!

In addition to the release date, I think it could still be another dream for it to be unveiled in May, backed up by the evidence from last months Microsoft news or alternatively this date could be just a hint that the operating system will be here in the near future.

Still not in full flow

As you can see above, Microsoft makes the point clear of Windows RC not being a finished product and that it is really a preview of what kind of features Windows 7 will include. Effectively, you are the gunieu pigs as everytime there is a problem, your computer/laptop will automatically send the issue to Microsoft workers, for them to resolve.

Everyone is expecting astounding features and reports suggest that Windows 7 RC  may include a significant change to the Windows 7 UI Just one of the features that shall make this package exhilarating.

If you haven’t already tried Beta, I recommend you to just wait until this releases especially as torrent sites such as isohunt, will have it seeded very soon indeed!

"The time is right for 3D content to move onto the Web," says Associate Product Manager, Henry Bridge

Google, who recently announced their impressive turnover, on Tuesday unveiled an interesting piece of software, O3D to bring accelerated 3D graphics to browsers, though it seems not to be the first time a company has tried to make one of these 3D web applications utulizing the advantages of the PC games played nowadays. The last one was in the 1990s, whow were called Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML), but it did not work out.

What is O3D?

O3D is a plug-in for web browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari that is enabled to work with Windows, Mac and astonishingly, Linux. However, analysts say that in the future Google ideally, would like to be in the position where the application is built in to the web browser giving a program that allows developers to use Web-based JavaScript programs on a graphics card, perfect solution for extreme gamers!

This is such a good step forward that even rival web browser giants, Mozilla want to get in on the act in their effort to build a 3D Web interface, though the two companies are offering different strategies to the revolutionary idea.

Engineering Director Matt Papakipos, also made his comments,

“OpenGL tends to be a lot of code to write, even for something simple, but OpenGL gives you a lot of control.Ours is at a higher level. It takes fewer function calls, so it’s easier to get stuff on the screen.”

“Ultimately, there’s going to be at least two.” Suggesting there will be two pieces of technology right now, SVG and Canvas.

For the gaming world, Papakipos also added:

“If you look at how we use 3D hardware, 20 years ago, it was CAD (computer-aided design). Today, it’s for playing games.We can push it to the wall. There’s not really any difference between native performance and our performance.”

This will be a good step forward for the web industry, as we are in the recession, everyone has been hit hard, but it is how far you can keep going forward with determination and drive which Google are demonstrating with this optimistic view of the 3D industry.

Many People always wanted Ubuntu. Ubuntu has many things like Open Office which can edit Microsoft office documents and Desktop effects like wobbling effects and a lot more! This Tutorial is going to teach you how to install linux on your computer. More specifically how to install Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, or Mythbuntu on your Windows based computer.

Requirements:

Memory 256 MB memory

Hard disk Space 5 GB

Operating System Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista

There is an easy way of installing Ubuntu rather than installing it by a process known as dual booting you can install Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, or even Mythbuntu on your Windows based computer which includes Windows 98, 2000, XP, and Vista. Before installing Ubuntu you’re gonna have to create a new Hard Disk drive partition. Follow these below steps to install Ubuntu or others like Xubuntu.
1. Download Wubi from http://www.wubi-installer.org

2. Make a new partition. For more info on how to make a new partition click here.

3. Open the wubi installer and select the New partition u made Under installation Drive

4. Select the desktop environment you want and the language you want and finally enter the password twice then click on Install.

After clicking on install wubi will download the Desktop Environment you’ve selected and it will ask you to restart after its done.

After you restart your computer you’ll have to select the operating system you want to login to. Also known as dual booting.