Nov 27

System Information, Benchmarks, and More

Posted in: Freeware, performance, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on June 02, 2010 by CyberNet.

pc wizard 2010.png

arrow Windows Windows only arrow
Getting both the hardware and software details of your system typically requires using multiple apps. You’d have to peruse through the device manager, jump on over to the Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel, and then if you want to run some diagnostics or benchmarks you’d have to go hunt down some apps to do that as well.

PC Wizard 2010 is the all-in-one Swiss Army knife when it comes to that kind of stuff. It can provide a detailed breakdown of both the hardware and software on your computer, and can even be used to run some benchmarks. The included benchmark tools will let you test out the performance of your CPU, cache, RAM, hard drives, DVD drives, video, and more.

To top it all off most of the data can be saved off to a text file so that it can be referenced again later on. If you look at all the information PC Wizard provides (which I’ve put at the end of this article) you’ll likely see the value in being able to export some of the data to a simple archivable format. And did I mention that it’s not only free but also portable? Yeah, it’s an all-around worthwhile app to have in your collection.

PC Wizard 2010 Homepage (Windows only; 32/64-bit; Freeware/Portable)

Hardware Information

  • Mainboard / Bios (Connectors, ID String, MP Support …)
  • Chipset (FSB Frequency, Norhtbridge, Hub, Direct Media Interface, XMB, NSI, …)
  • Main Memory (FPM, EDO, SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, DDR-2 SDRAM, DDR-3 SDRAM, RDRAM, FB_DIMM, Timings …)
  • Memory Profiles : EPP (SLi Ready), Intel XMP.
  • Cache Memory (L1, L2, L3, Size, Frequency …)
  • Processors (Type, Speed, Multiplier coeff., Features, Model Number, Vanderpool Technology …)
  • Coprocessor
  • APM & ACPI
  • Busses : ISA, PCI, AGP (2x, 4x,8x), SMBus/ i2c, CardBus, Firewire, Hyper-Transport … )
  • DMI / SMBIOS
  • Mainboard Sensors, Processor, Hard Disk & Battery (Voltage, Temperature, Fans)
  • Video (Monitor, Card, Bios, Capabilities, Memory, Integrated Memory, Frequencies …)
  • OpenGL & 3Dfx
  • DirectX (DirectDraw, Direct3D, DirectSound (3D), DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectInput, DirectX Media)
  • Keyboard, Mouse & Joystick
  • Drives (Hard Disk, Removable, CD-ROM, CDRW, DVD …)
  • SCSI (Card, Controller, Adapter, Devices …)
  • ATA/ATAPI & S-ATA (Devices, Type, Capabilities, S.M.A.R.T. Features, RAID)
  • Ports (Serial, Parallel, USB, IEEE-1394)
  • IDE & SCSI Devices
  • Twain & WIA Devices
  • PCMCIA (PC Card) Devices
  • Bluetooth Devices
  • Biometric Sensor Devices
  • Sound Card (wave, midi, aux, mix, AC’97 codec, High Definition Audio)
  • Printers (Local & Network)
  • Modem (Features, Speed …)
  • Network (Server, Connexion, Firewall …)
  • Security (Scan Ports …)
  • PocketPC & SmartPhone Devices
  • Virtual Machines

System Information

  • MCI Devices (mpeg, avi, seq, vcr, video-disc, wave) & ACM
  • SAPI
  • Passwords (Outlook, Internet Explorer, MSN Messenger, Dialup …)
  • DOS Memory (base, HMA, UMB, XMS, EMS, DPMI, VCPI)
  • Windows Memory
  • Windows (Version, Product Key, Environment, Desktop, XP Themes …)
  • Windows UpTime (Boot, Shutdown, BlueScreen, System Restore Points …)
  • TrueType & OpenType Fonts
  • WinSock (Internet), Telephony et Remote Access
  • OLE (Objects, Servers …)
  • Microsoft® Applications
  • Activity (Process, Tasks, Threads)
  • Modules (DLL, DRV, 32 & 16-bits) & NT Services
  • Internet Navigator (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, FireFox)
  • .NET Global Assembly Cache (GAC)
  • ODBC
  • CMOS/RTC
  • Resources (IRQ, DMA, E/S, Memory)
  • System files (.ini, .log, .bat, .nt, .dos …)

System Benchmarks

  • Processor (Dhrystone (MIPS), Whetstone (MFLOPS), Mandelbrot fractal …)
  • L1, L2, L3 Cache, RAM (Bandwidth, Latency …)
  • Main Memory (Bandwidth, Latency …)
  • Hard Drives
  • CD/DVD Rom
  • DirectX
  • Video
  • Removable/Flash Support
  • MP3 Compression
  • VISTA Experience Index

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Nov 27

CyberNotes: Getting the most out of Firefox Sidebars

Posted in: Apple, CyberNotes, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Microsoft, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on March 28, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

Firefox is an extremely customizable browser, and combining that with the growing popularity of widescreen monitors results in more sidebars. I used to never use sidebars before I got a widescreen computer because it just took up extra screen space that was otherwise pretty useful. Now you’ll hardly ever find me with a sidebar not open on my computer!

There are so many things that you can do and so many Firefox extensions available to utilize your sidebar space. Most commonly it is used for bookmarks, but there are a lot of other things that you can do with it as well. For example, Digital Inspiration recently noticed that you can place Google Talk in your sidebar:

Firefox Sidebar

It may sound like you need an extension to do something like this, but surprisingly, you don’t. Firefox is designed so that you can have any website open in a sidebar and since Google made the Google Talk client available on the Web, it is possible to chat with your friends in the Firefox sidebar. We’ll use the Google Talk as an example of embedding a website into a sidebar:

  1. Right-click on this URL: http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/client and bookmark it.
    Firefox Bookmark

  2. After you have saved the bookmark, go back to the Bookmarks menu and right-click on the bookmark. Choose the Properties option.
    Firefox Bookmark
  3. Now check the box that says Load this bookmark in the sidebar:
    Firefox Sidebar
  4. Now the next time you click on that bookmark to open it will popup in the sidebar!

You can use that trick with any website, but it is really only useful if the website is designed for smaller screens so that it fits the width of the sidebar well. I would also say that it doesn’t work too bad with Meebo, but if you have a lot of chat windows open it can quickly become cluttered.

If you wanted to put your Google Personalized Homepage in the sidebar it wouldn’t look quite right since there is a huge header area that you probably don’t need, and all of the modules are spread out over three columns. There is an actual extension called iGoogle that will bypass this problem by putting all of your modules into a single column, and you’ll still have access to your tabs:

Firefox Sidebar

But how do you manage all of your sidebars in a quick and easy way? For that you’ll probably want to use All-in-One Sidebar which makes it easy to switch between all of your different sidebars. Not only that but it also lets you configure which side of the screen, left or right, the sidebar actually appears.

Now if you are fortunate enough to have a lot of extra screen space, you might want to use multiple sidebars. There is an extension for that as well called MultiSidebar that lets you pick the position of the sidebar in the browser as well as open multiple sidebars:

Firefox Sidebar

There is so much that you can do with the sidebars that it may seem a little overwhelming at first. Once you start getting used to them, you begin to wonder how much more productive they let you become. Let us know in the comments below how you use your sidebar to help you be more productive or useful.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Nov 27

Stretch Dual Monitor Wallpapers

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on September 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

Desktop Wallpaper Multiple monitor setups are becoming increasingly abundant these days, and I for one couldn’t imagine not having two monitors. I have a 24" Dell (1920×1200 resolution) and a 15" laptop screen (1680×1050 resolution) that I place side-by-side as seen here. The thing is that getting the wallpapers to effortlessly flow across from one monitor to another could be better in Windows, or maybe you would like to set a different background for each screen?

Give a warm welcome to a free app called DisplayFusion. It has a host of features not only for managing the backgrounds on multiple monitors, but also for moving windows from one screen to another using hotkeys:

  • Use a different wallpaper on each monitor (either a picture or solid color)
  • Stretch a wallpaper across all monitors (either a picture or color)
  • Integrated Flickr image search & download
  • Drag maximized windows by their title bars to other screens
  • Easily manage application windows with customizable hotkeys:
    • Move windows to the next monitor
    • Move windows to the next monitor and maximize them
    • Move windows to center of the screen
    • Move windows to center of the screen and size it to 75% of the work area
    • Tile windows along the top, bottom, left or right side
    • Maximize windows so that they span all monitors

For being less than a month old I would have to say that this free app already feels pretty mature. The download is pretty small (just 326KB), but it does require a quick setup.

Tip: DualMonitorBackgrounds.com is a good source for the wide wallpapers.

DisplayFusion (for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista)
Source: How To Geek

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Nov 26

Opera 9.23 Released – Mum’s the Word on Opera 9.5

Posted in: Freeware, Mozilla, Newly Released, Opera, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 15, 2007 by CyberNet.

Computer Repair DoctorOpera 9.23 has been released and is ready for consumption by the general public. A majority of the things fixed in this release are credited to Mozilla’s jsfunfuzz tool that was released at Black Hat about two-weeks ago. The tool found four bugs in Opera that caused crashes, and one "highly severe" security vulnerability:

  • Fixed four crash bugs found using Mozilla’s jsfunfuzz tool.
  • Fixed a stability issue with Speed Dial.
  • Fixed a critical JavaScript security issue discovered with Mozilla’s jsfunfuzz tool: "A virtual function call on an invalid pointer that may reference data crafted by the attacker can be used to execute arbitrary code."
  • Windows Vista Only: Scrolling problem with some Microsoft mice fixed.

I’m happy that Mozilla was kind enough to release the tool for everyone to use, and I’m extremely happy that people are actually using it! As I stated last time, jsfunfuzz has caught an astonishing 280 bugs in Firefox’s JavaScript engine, and more than two-thirds of those have already been fixed. Thanks to jsfunfuzz, and the creator Jesse Ruderman, the Web has just gotten a little safer.

Now I’m hoping to see test builds of Opera 9.5 soon, and from the looks of it the Opera Desktop Team isn’t taking kindly to comments regarding future versions of the browser. Almost all comments that mention Opera 9.5 are said to be off-topic, and are consequently being removed. I’m sure it is getting annoying for them when every other comment is along the lines of "can’t wait for 9.5," but that is just their community getting excited for the release. Now commenters are referring to it as "The-Build-Which-Should-Not-Be-Named," or TBWSNBN for short. ;) I understand why it is being done, but I was pretty disappointed when I saw my comment get removed as well.

So now I can’t wait to get my hands on TBWSNBN!

Download Opera 9.23
Download Opera 9.23 using BitTorrent
Source: Opera Watch & Opera Desktop Team

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Nov 26

CyberNotes: Time Savings Windows Clipboard Software

Posted in: CyberNotes, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on October 24, 2006 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

Computers would not be nearly as productive as they are if they didn’t have the copy and paste commands available to use. Think about how often you copy and paste text, files, images, and more throughout the course of your day. I do it so often that it seems like my fingers naturally rest on the Control+C keys on my keyboard.

Today I want to focus on tools that extend the functionality of the Windows Clipboard to make it easier to use and allow you to get tasks done much more quickly. Here is the software that I managed to find:

–Clippy (Homepage)–

Clippy Clippy is one of the coolest clipboard utilities that I have to present to you. It lets you perform common operations to any text that is currently located on the clipboard.

There are a ton of different things that you can have Clippy do and you will really see it shine in certain situations. This is one of those situations that we would have all liked to have this:

How often have you needed to extract text from your emails, only to find the simple, menial task to take more time than it should. You’ll have many ‘>’ characters appearing at the beginning of lines because your email has been replied to, back and forth, countless number of times. Often, you’ll also need to painstakingly reformat the text to make it appear readable.

Now with Clippy, you’ll be able to remove ‘>’ characters and reformat your text with a single click of a button.

You can add individual “tasks” for Clippy to complete or you can create your own “Clippers.” The Clippers are a group of tasks that you put together so that the program can perform multiple operations on the text with just one click. I like to think of these more like macros.

 

–Ditto (Homepage)–

Ditto Clipboard Ditto is a free open source program that extends the Windows Clipboard to have even more features. The number of configuration options that it has is absolutely insane but don’t let those distract you from its primary purpose: copying and pasting!

Here are a few of the great features that Ditto has:

  • Search and paste previous copy entries
  • Keep multiple computer’s clipboards in sync
  • Data is encrypted when sent over the network
  • Accessed from tray icon or global hot key
  • Select entry by double click, enter key or drag drop
  • Paste into any window that excepts standard copy/paste entries
  • Display thumbnail of copied images in list

 

–Auto Copy (Homepage)–

When you highlight text in a web browser it is often to copy it so that you can use it somewhere else. There is an extension for Firefox that will actually copy the text to the clipboard anytime that you highlight some text. There really isn’t much more to it than that but you may be surprised at how useful the extension is.

 

–Overview–

Those are the clipboard utilities that I currently use or have used in the past. They all have some unique features that can save a bunch of time and hassle if you frequently copy and paste things like I do. If you know of any other great clipboard utilities please let me know because I am always looking for things to improve the standard clipboard’s usefulness.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Nov 25

Mozilla Employees Get Interviewed

Posted in: Freeware, Mozilla, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on May 26, 2008 by CyberNet.

mozilla firefox-1.pngI always find it interesting to read and watch interviews with leaders of various companies, particularly when they give their take on their own products. Just last week a “Support Firefox Day” session was held over the IRC chat service, and in it they had four of the best known Mozilla employees answer questions that you may find interesting. If you missed the chance to participate you can still catch the full interviews over at Mozilla Links (links are below for each respective person).

I read through the dozens of questions and answers given by each person, and pulled out my favorite responses. Here they are in no particular order:

Mike Connor, Firefox’s development leader, was asked:

What didn’t you have time to implement in Firefox 3 that you’d like to implement in a future Firefox 4?

Some things include a powerful query builder for history and bookmarks, better handling of tabs.

Mike Beltzner, Firefox’s UI leader, was asked:

What frustrates you most about the Firefox 3 UI?

Heh, great question. There are a couple of things that are frustrating to me, both at the UI and underlying infrastructure level.

At the UI level, I’m frustrated that we’re not animating more, and not trying to offer more “emergent” interfaces that help users complete tasks based on what we can infer from the task the user is trying to complete.

So, specifically, I want the location bar to be even smarter, and things like saving pages and downloading files to be even smarter. And I want them to animate fluidly so that users can understand how one part of the UI associates with the next, or how one operation flows into the next.

At the underlying level, I’m excited about new platform enhancements like Compositor as it will let us float chrome over parts of the page more naturally, and of course better threading models will help us give users progress indication.

John Lilly, Mozilla’s CEO, was asked:

With so many people moving toward mobile devices in place of their PC, do you foresee the mobile project taking over as the primary vehicle for Firefox?

That’s a super-interesting question. Myself, I find that I use the mobile internet more and more with my iPhone & the Safari browser. Wwhen I travel, especially in Asia – Japan and China -, it feels like sometimes the predominant way of interacting with the web. Having said that, I think that PCs are very unlikely to go away or even decline. So I think of it as an addition of a major form factor, not a replacement. But there’s no question that it’s extremely important for us.

Asa Dotzler, an evangelist at Mozilla, was asked:

What do you think is the best way to spread Firefox amongst people that always used Internet Explorer and don’t know how Firefox could be better?

I think there are a lot of ways and that no one way is best for everyone. I like to ask people what’s painful about going online and then figure out how Firefox can help that pain point. Most people find the Web really uncomfortable. They’re not like a lot of us who love it and can deal with its problems. The web is a series of flaming hoops they have to jump through to get something done. So I try to show them how Firefox removes those flaming hoops so they can just go online, get done what they want to get done, and get back to the rest of their lives.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Nov 24

InvisibleHand Does Behind-the-Scenes Price Comparisons for Firefox/Chrome Users

Posted in: Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 05, 2010 by CyberNet.

invisiblehand-1.png

I heard about the InvisibleHand Firefox/Chrome extension on the Windows Weekly podcast, and it sounded like something that would be useful for all the online shopping that I do. Its purpose is to notify you when something you’re looking at or searching for can be found even cheaper at another site on the web. As you can see above when I was searching for a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium on Amazon it notified me that it was $6.50 cheaper on Buy.com. It’s very unobtrusive, which is a must for an add-on like this.

It supports 52 different retailers in the United States, 46 in the U.K., and 15 in Germany. What’s nice is that the “View all offers” button doesn’t take you to ad-ridden site, and instead presents you with a simple drop-down list of the other retailers, sorted by price, who match your product.

The add-on obviously makes money through affiliate programs thereby giving the developers a percentage of the purchases that you make. That doesn’t bother me because I think that it’s a no-brainer way to help support the add-on development cycle. From my point of view the downside is the data they collect:

  • The URL of the site that you originally search for your chosen product on.
  • The characteristics of the product that you search for.
  • The URL of any site that you visit that is notified to you by the Add-on.
  • Other anonymous technical and routing information relating to your product search and any visit that you may make to a third party site that you were alerted to by the Add-on. This information may include your IP address, but you will not personally identifiable from this information.

This add-on is awesome and all, but I’m not a huge fan of products that are keeping tabs on my surfing habits. Unfortunately the only option you really get with InvisibleHand is whether you want it to automatically do price lookups for the things you’re Googling for, too. You can’t actually turn it on or off as needed, which for me is a necessity. Personally I’m going to leave the extension installed, but I’ve disabled it in the add-ons management screen so that I can switch it on only when I need it.

Get InvisibleHand for Firefox or Chrome

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Nov 23

Thunderbird Organization Established — MailCo

Posted in: Email, Freeware, Mozilla, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on September 18, 2007 by CyberNet.

It’s been nearly two months since Mozilla originally announced that they were going to help Thunderbird "spread its wings," and it looks like we finally have a result of the talks. Mozilla has decided to branch Thunderbird off into its own subsidiary, and it will be started with $3 million in seed money that has been provided by the Mozilla Foundation.

Mitchell Baker, Mozilla’s CEO, says that this move will help them improve the email client:

The result is that Mozilla is launching a new effort to improve email and internet communications. We will increase our investment and focus on our current email client — Thunderbird — and on innovations in the email and communications areas. We are doing so by creating a new organization with this as its sole focus and committing resources to this organization. The new organization doesn’t have a name yet, so I’ll call it MailCo here. MailCo will be part of the Mozilla Foundation and will serve the public benefit mission of the Mozilla Foundation.

What will the new organization do exactly? Here’s a few things it hopes to accomplish:

  • Take care of Thunderbird users
  • Move Thunderbird forward to provide better, deeper email solutions
  • Create a better user experience for a range of Internet communications — how does / should email work with IM, RSS, VoIP, SMS, site-specific email, etc?
  • Spark the types of community involvement and innovation that we’ve seen around web "browsing" and Firefox.

The interesting thing in Mitchell’s article is that she was extremely careful this time around to shed some light on the positive things, and seemed to stray away from the things that could cause some concern. One of the things that came to my mind is what’s going to happen after the initial $3 million in seed money is gone? Where are they going to get their funding from then? Firefox is a goldmine when it comes to the integrated search box, but Thunderbird doesn’t really have the same revenue sources as a browser.

Don’t expect to see anything out of the ordinary for a little while since the three current developers will continue to work on Thunderbird 2 patches as well as the future Thunderbird 3. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this move truly is to make Thunderbird better, and here’s hoping that MailCo can sustain itself!

Sources: Mozilla Press Release, GigaOM & Mozilla Links

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Nov 23

How to Remove the Ad in Foxit Reader

Posted in: Apple, Freeware, Microsoft, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on February 12, 2007 by CyberNet.

Foxit Reader

Foxit Advertisement Menu Many of you have probably become quite familiar with Foxit Reader by this point because of the speed and simplicity that it offers over the classic Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you haven’t tried it then you’re really missing out on a speedy little PDF reader that doesn’t even require installation, which means you can easily take it with you for use on any computer.

I’ve been using Foxit for quite some time now and switching to Adobe would feel like taking a step backwards. One thing that I always thought would make Foxit a little better was removing that advertisement in the upper-right corner of the window. It is nothing too obtrusive but I have seen “cracks” available to remove that ad. The thing that always struck me as interesting was the option in the View menu to remove the advertisement. Periodically I would remove the advertisement from Foxit using the option, but it would always reappear right after I restart the program.

Just a few days ago in the forum Richard pointed out (and blogged about) how to remove the Foxit Reader advertisement permanently without needing a crack. All you have to do is start Foxit, uncheck the Advertisement option from the View menu, close Foxit, and after you do that a total of 5 times the ad won’t show up anymore.

I was quite surprised to see that the trick really worked! After 5 times the ad stopped showing up even though I could always go into the View menu to re-enable it incase I start going through ad withdrawals. I was never so bothered by the ad that I needed to find a way to remove it, but it is nice knowing how to get rid of it now.

Thanks for telling us about this Richard!

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Nov 22

Get Vista’s Flip-3D on XP for Free

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on September 25, 2007 by CyberNet.

Shock Aero One of Vista’s most notable features is the Flip-3D for switching between open applications. A free program, called Shock Aero, has stepped up to offer similar functionality for Windows XP users!

Shock Aero will assign itself to the Windows+Tab hotkey (which is not customizable), and when that key combination is pressed the Vista-like Flip-3D will be initiated for your full viewing pleasure. You can then use the hotkey to flip through the windows just like with Alt+Tab, or you can use the scroll wheel on your mouse. There’s also a System Tray icon which will activate the Flip-3D when you left-click on it.

This isn’t really a configurable application, which you might see as a big downside. Really the only option that it has is switching between a Flip-3D window layout or a more Mac-like grid layout (often referred to as Exposé).

The best thing is that a portable version is offered that contains just the executable and a configuration file. You can therefor test this out without installing anything…gotta love that!

Shock Aero (for Windows 2000/2003/XP)
Source: Freeware Genius & Appaholic

Note: If Shock Aero sounds familiar that might be because we recently wrote about another free program created by the same company called Shock Desktop.

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