Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on December 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft has officially confirmed that a Release Candidate of Vista SP1 (build 6001.17052.071129-2315) will be made available to the public next week, but there was no word on exactly what day it’s going to drop. Presumably it will be on Tuesday, December 11th which coincides with Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday. Yesterday Microsoft Connect members had the pleasure of downloading the Release Candidate, and today MSDN and TechNet subscribers will be able download Vista SP1.

Since the Beta stage the Vista SP1 installer has seen a 30% reduction in size, and the amount of space that it occupies on the hard drive has also been significantly reduced. Inevitably Vista SP1 will be deployable over a network, but Microsoft will provide a “blocker patch” to prevent computers from updating to the Service Pack until administrators have had time to review it.

I do have a word of wisdom for all of you who are contemplating whether you are going to install this. If you download and install the Vista SP1 Release Candidate you’ll also have to uninstall it before installing a newer version that is released later on. For some of you it may not be worth the hassle, so make sure you take that into consideration.

Here’s a recap from one of our previous posts on the improvements Vista SP1 brings to the table:

Reliability improvements:

• Improved reliability and compatibility of Windows Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
• Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
• Improved Windows Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
• Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from Windows XP to Windows Vista.
• Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
• Increased reliability and performance of Windows Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.

Performance improvements:

• Improves the speed of copying and extracting files.
• Improves the time to become active from Hibernate and Resume modes.
• Improves the performance of domain-joined PCs when operating off the domain; in the current release version of Windows Vista, users would experience long delays when opening the File dialog box.
• Improves performance of Windows Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista, reducing CPU utilization and speeding JavaScript parsing.
• Improves battery life by reducing CPU utilization by not redrawing the screen as frequently, on certain computers.
• Improves the logon experience by removing the occasional 10-second delay between pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL and the password prompt displaying.
• Addresses an issue in the current version of Windows Vista that makes browsing network file shares consume significant bandwidth and not perform as fast as expected.

Thanks to Storytellerofsci-fi for the tip!

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on December 15, 2009 by CyberNet.

Our internet connections have become faster over the years, but with that our need for speed increased too. And sadly, having a fast internet connection does not mean the server you’re downloading from gives you the speed you pay for. That’s where download managers come in. One of their more interesting features involves speeding up your downloads. So how exactly do they do it?

Getting the software
Before showing you the tricks, let’s have a look at some good download managers. If you’re a Windows user, I’d recommend Free Download Manager (freeware) or GetRight (shareware that never expires). Another big name in the download manager business is Download Accelerator Plus, but I advise you to stay away from that one because it is ad-supported and tends to slow down your system.

Trick 1: chop the download in pieces
How long does it take to transport 20 people from point A to point B with one taxi? A lot longer than when you have multiple cabs at your disposal. It’s just like that with the internet: in most cases one connection is doing all the work, even though your pipe can handle more than one. When you let a download manager chop your download in segments, simultaneous connections with the server are established that enable you to download different parts of your file at the same time. Often referred to as segmented downloading, this technique can greatly increase your download speed.

I put this to the test by downloading Internet Explorer 8 (16.1MB) using Firefox and Free Download Manager. It took my browser around 47 seconds at an estimated average of 343 KB/s to download the entire file. FDM did it in a whopping 21 seconds, which accounts roughly for an average speed of 767 KB/s. These calculations are not fully accurate, but the difference is clear. Keep in mind however that your mileage may vary depending on your connection and the server you’re downloading from.

Trick 2: using download mirrors
A second trick to speed up your downloads is using mirrors. The idea behind this is that you download a file from multiple sources at once, combining the speed from these servers to get faster downloads. Both FDM and GetRight have a feature for automatic mirror search, but from my experience they don’t find any as soon as you download something that’s not on the list of the top 15 best-known programs.

You can however choose to enter mirrors manually. Whenever your download is bigger than 500MB and the site you’re downloading from offers alternate download links, it doesn’t hurt to enter them. A good example of when you’d want to use this is when you’re downloading Ubuntu‘s install CD.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

Bill Gates regrets it, Windows users generally hate it, and its become computing shorthand for hitting reset on a bad idea, but Ctrl+Alt+Del wasn’t always a bad idea. The much-maligned key combo came in for some criticism by the former Microsoft CEO at an interview this week, with Gates questioning “Who’s idea was that?” and […]

The keyboard combo that is Control-Alt-Delete may have become iconic—but according to Bill Gates it was all just a big mistake.

Read more…

Dell has quietly axed its XPS 10 tablet, the Windows RT-based 10-inch slate that offered a keyboard dock and ARM processor architecture for longer battery life, though it’s not certain whether it’s a final shift for the company away from the ailing Windows 8 variant. Announced in August last year – in fact we first […]