Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on April 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

One of the biggest advances in Windows Vista has got to be the visual appearance. We have seen several attempts at trying to mimic the Vista user interface on XP, and some have been pretty successful. One of the most popular applications for doing this has got to be the Vista Transformation Pack. This bundle changes almost everything on your XP computer to make it look as close to Vista as possible.

Now another step is being taken by the creator of the Vista Transformation Pack in preparation for version 7 that is to be released later on. This new step involves a new and improved Start Menu that has many similarities to that of Vista:

Click to Enlarge

As you can see there is no pop-out menu like Windows XP normally has, and instead it is all contained within the one window. Not only that, but it also has the same icons at the top-right corner that you normally see when hovering over the items on the right-side of the Start Menu. Heck, I even liked it because I could use it with any normal XP theme which you can see in the picture!

Just like in Vista, the power button expands when you click on the arrow in the bottom-right corner to reveal all of your shutdown/restart/standby choices. The only thing that still remains not functional is the search bar, but the developer says that he does have plans to make that work. Hopefully he decides to integrate that with a search indexing service like Google Desktop or Windows Desktop Search.

So what do you have to do to try this out? It is in public beta right now and is available as a stand-alone program. The developer will probably be including this in the Vista Transformation Pack 7 (VTP 7) which will hopefully be available soon.

The great thing is that you can play with this Vista-like Start Menu by simply downloading the files, extracting them, and running the program! There is no installation required, so you don’t have to worry about messing anything up. One thing that you should note is that after running the program you won’t be indicated in any way that the program is running. I actually tried running it three or four times before clicking on the Start Menu and noticing that it was already running.

Visit the VistaStart Public Beta site (Download the file immediately from our Mirror)

Here is an important note from the developer:
Known issues that can’t be fixed: You need to turn off “show shadows under menus” visual effects because that will cause flashing shadow when you open start menu.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

ViStart gets an Awesome UpgradePaul Thurrott Covers Vista CompatibilitiesWindows Vista Beta 2 Download Available To The PublicWindows Sidebar Gallery Released, Public Vista Soon?Windows 7 Start Menu Mockup

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

Windows only
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

Related Posts:

Rockdirect Xtreme 64 4800+ Laptop Computer Review From HexusNASA and Google Come Down To EarthDigital Universe, The Anti-Wikipedia?Analytics for YouTube Videos LaunchesFree 32MB USB Drive From Audi

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

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

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

Get Your Widescreen Wallpapers For Your ComputerShow Your Love: Firefox 2 WallpapersMulti-Monitor And High Resolution WallpaperVista RTM Wallpaper GalleryMore Wallpapers that should have been Included with Vista

This article was written on March 06, 2008 by CyberNet.

(Click to Enlarge)

We’ve been receiving quite a few requests from our readers wanting to know what we think about Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, and whether it is worth the upgrade. I downloaded and installed it shortly after it was released yesterday, and the total installation time on my Vista machine took around 4 or 5 minutes. There were absolutely no problems for me upgrading to IE 8 from IE 7.

–Performance–

Everything in Internet Explorer 8 seems a lot more responsive than in Internet Explorer 7: tabs open faster, pages render more quickly, and the “Quick Tabs” works almost instantaneously. Really, I’m not exaggerating the difference at all. Ashley and I have the exact same laptops, and we wanted to do a side-by-side comparison of how long it took to load our site. The difference was like night and day… Internet Explorer 8 loaded our site at least twice as fast.

I’ve gotten a handful of emails already that have been wanting me to run the SunSpider JavaScript test on Internet Explorer 8. Previously it failed miserably coming in a very distant last place. Here’s how it stacked up against the latest Firefox 3 nightly build (the lower amount of time is better):

1. Firefox 3 Nightly (03/05/2008 build): 6624.2ms
2. Internet Explorer 8 (Beta 1): 14302.0ms

That’s more than five times better than Internet Explorer 7 in our previous tests! So it looks as though there has been substantial changes under-the-hood in Internet Explorer 8 to make it perform better. The best thing is that the speediness doesn’t show just in the numbers. I can almost guarantee that as soon as you start using Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 you’ll see a noticeable difference.

–Features–

I’m not going to just list out the features here because I did that yesterday. Instead there are two things that I really wanted to comment on. The first is the new Activities that was introduced into Internet Explorer 8. I didn’t think that these were really anything special, but I’ve actually come to love them after just a few minutes of using the browser.

When you highlight some text a little green arrow will appear above your selection. If you click on that arrow you’ll see a list of all your installed Activities that you can choose from. This is a quick way for you to translate text, map an address, define a word, and much more:

Microsoft has a site setup where users can add more Activities, but given that the browser is so new there are only a handful of them available.

The one other thing that I really like is something Firefox 3 was (or maybe still is) supposed to have when it is released. It’s a domain highlighting feature that makes users more aware of the domain that they are viewing by graying out portions of the URL. Here’s what it looks like for one of our articles:

This will help users avoid phishing scams that are located at obscure domains disguised to look like a legitimate one, such as paypal.com.example.com.

–The Price of Standards–

Many of us applauded Microsoft for making the browser more standards compliant out-of-the-box, but I’m already starting to see the effects of the change. At first glance I have found that nearly every site I visit has some sort of rendering glitch in Internet Explorer 8. Our site, for example, had problems properly positioning the footer. We had to insert this code into the head section of the HTML on our site:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" />

This forces Internet Explorer 8 to render the site the same way that Internet Explorer 7 does, and is a great temporary fix until you get the time to make the necessary changes. Our site is far from the only one that has problems. Here are some of the others that we’ve noticed:

• CNN.com has some video thumbnails that float off to the right side.
• Yahoo.com has a toolbar underneath the search box that is not aligned properly.
• News.com has a few issues in the upper part of their site around their search box.
• Yahoo Mail just pops up with error messages and is non responsive when you try to do just about anything.

You can quickly correct these issues by forcing IE 8 to emulate IE 7 using the “Emulate IE7″ button on the toolbar. You’ll need to restart the browser for the changes to become active, but it should solve most of the problems.

–Overview–

Overall I would have to say that this is a great update for Internet Explorer, but I don’t think Microsoft has done enough to pull users away from Firefox and Opera. There’s nothing that really leaves me in awe, but I do have to say that the performance improvements definitely deserve to be applauded.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

Is Firefox Going To Pick Up After Microsoft’s Mistake?Internet Explorer Shows Users What’s On Your ClipboardInternet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Now Works With eBay TurboListerMicrosoft: Firefox/Chrome are Insecure, Difficult to Use, and UnreliableDownload Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3

This article was written on November 20, 2007 by CyberNet.

A BIG Thanks goes out to everybody who entered the Tweak Vista giveaway! With two licenses to giveaway, we used a random number generator to pick our two winners. The Tweak Vista Winners are:

• Entry #2 – “apex 2000″
• Entry #18 – “Nimicitor”

To the winners: You should have received an email message already informing you that you have won. As mentioned in the giveaway, you’ll need to create an account over at Stardock and then provide us with the email address that you used to create the account so that we can pass it on to Stardock. They’ll then add Tweak Vista to your account.

Congratulations!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

How You Can Easily Tweak Windows VistaWindows Vista Tweaking Software ReleasedThe CyberNet Windows Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 Giveaway Winners are…CyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryTweak Vista & XP with XdN Tweaker