Tag: WINDOWSVISTA

If you used Windows XP for a long time (who didn't?), one of the biggest changes when moving to Windows 7 or Vista was the massively-altered Explorer. While the new Explorer introduces some useful new features, it also removed just as many -- which is where Classic Shell comes in! We've covered Classic Shell before, but here's the crib note: Classic Shell restores almost every Windows ...

Nir Sofer (of NirSoft) makes loads of useful little Windows utilities. One of our favorites, Volumouse, has a new beta available and it offers some nice improvements over its predecessor. To start, Volumouse beta 2 adds support for Windows Vista and Windows 7 per-application volume settings. There's also a new "send hotkeys" feature which lets you use the mouse wheel to fire off custom ...

Dubbed his "hackiest hack ever," the same Mozilla developer who brought us the the 20-line Firefox start-up speed hack has now released an add-on that works even better! Start Faster, which requires Firefox 4 and only works on Windows Vista and 7 at the moment, installs a service that speeds up the loading of Firefox's gorillaesque DLL libaries. The service runs with Administrator privileges, ...

If you've ever wanted to see, in 10 short minutes, the evolution of simple, glorious MS-DOS Shell and Windows 1, to the lofty, shiny, 3D peaks of Windows 7, with every version (except Windows Me) in between, now's your chance. With the title 'Chain of Fools,' the video (embedded after the break) chronicles one man's attempt to upgrade Windows from one version to the next, from Windows 1 to ...

MakeUseOf has just published yet another excellent guide, this time on the topic of keeping your Windows installation lean, mean and fighting fit. It's available as a free download (PDF), or online (Scribd). The guide is impressively comprehensive -- it covers everything from partitioning your hard drive to installing more RAM -- but some Download Squad readers will probably find it a bit too ...

Homegroups make sharing files and folders easy on Windows 7, but Windows XP and Vista users have to do things a little differently. Fortunately, there are dead-simple ways to share files on both XP and Vista, too. Microsoft offers a very detailed step-by-step guide for those of you looking for an exhaustive walkthrough, but here's the short version for Windows XP users: click Start > ...

This week we're running a series of posts that tackle common Windows networking issues, and some tips and tricks that might speed up or improve your network stability. You can find more tech tips in our Tips index. One small Windows XP feature I used to lean on frequently was "Connect To" -- it provided easy access to a computer's network connections right from the Start Menu. I also like ...

Ah, Windows Dancer, how fondly I remember thee. How you would bump, jive and gyrate across my screen! Mr Clippy was mere nothingness when compared to you. And Aquarium! A three-dimensional fish tank... on my screen! I still remember the first time I showed my mother. She actually reached out to touch the fish; I had to slap her hand to remind her that it was only an illusion. With Windows ...

At Pwn2Own 2010, hackers will spend three solid days trying to crack operating systems, browsers and mobile phones architectures. "Safari will be the first to go," says one of the main sponsors of the event, Aaron Portnoy -- though, saying that, only Google Chrome was found 'unhackable' at last year's Pwn2Own. This year they'll be looking at all major browsers on both Windows 7 and Vista, and ...

So, get this: while Windows 7 only accounts for 6% of the global operating system market, 23% of Steam gamers are using Windows 7! digg_url = 'http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/01/23/steam-shows-massive-adoption-of-windows-7-by-gamers/'; The breakdown shows a lot of statistics, including average processor speed (2.5GHz) and NVIDIA (65). You can even see the split between 32- and 64-bit ...

By now a lot of you will have experienced the 'All-in-One Omnipotent Start Menu' thing that was first introduced with Windows Vista and can now be found in Windows 7. It combines My Computer, My Documents and your installed programs into one big, gribbly menu. Some people love it. Some hate it. Personally, I like the all-in-one search/run input box... but that's about it. I much prefer the old ...

At long last -- and some would wonder why now, after the release of Windows 7 -- DirectX 11 is finally available for Windows Vista. This means, while still taking a performance hit for running Vista, you could in theory divert that $100 you would spend on Windows 7 into a new, DirectX 11-enabled graphics card! To obtain it, you need to download the 'Platform Update' which includes a lot of other ...

Windows 7 cannot come fast enough! The New York Times is reporting that Intel has decided against upgrading its 80,000 employees to Windows Vista. An Intel spokesperson told the Times that Vista is being tested and deployed in certain departments, but not company-wide. Although the enterprise push to upgrade to Vista has fallen short of expectations, this is a particularly brutal blow. Intel is ...

Parallels for Mac, the crazily popular utility for Mac users to run Windows on their Apple computers in...a window has said the product's user base has hit 1,000,000 users. That's a really nice pace for a piece of software not blessed by Mr. Jobs himself we'd say. Right now the company's running a special where you can get 2 copies for $129. Kind of cool if you have multiple Macs around the house ...

As expected, the Microsoft Windows Vista Team has released an early version of Vista Service Pack 1 to a selected group of testers. Brandon LeBlanc at the Windows Vista Blog has been running SP1 for a little while already and shares these thoughts: The update will show up through Windows Update, and will show a size range from 51MB to 680MB. Because the update includes a number of hotfixes ...