Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on February 07, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Now that Windows Vista has been released it is time for software developers to start making their applications look a little cleaner with the Aero Glass interface. Right now most applications look alright, but many of them don’t take advantages of Vista’s new graphical capabilities…specifically browsers. Well, maybe not all browsers because Internet Explorer 7 sure looks sweet with its excess transparency (even the search bar has a little transparency):

Unfortunately the other browsers aren’t quite to the point where they can take advantage of those features because the operating system is still so new, but I’m sure it will come in due time. Seeing that I’m a Firefox/Opera user myself I began searching Google for some alternative skins for both of the browsers and managed to scrounge up some that will definitely look better for Vista users.

If you’ve seen Opera in Vista it really doesn’t look that bad so I don’t mind sticking with the default theme, but Firefox’s toolbars have a purplish glow that I just can’t cope with:

When comparing the appearance of that Firefox to Internet Explorer 7 in Vista, I would undoubtedly say that IE 7 wins. When I was searching Google for "Firefox Vista" I came across this skin made by a DeviantArt user. It still doesn’t offer the slick transparency that IE 7 has but I definitely like the look:

Using that skin makes Firefox blend in a lot more with the rest of the operating system. I’m hoping that at some point a skin will be made to utilize the "pixel shading" in Vista, which is what ads a blurry transparent effect so that text is still easy to read.

Now onto Opera! I think Opera’s default skin feels just right in Windows Vista without needing any change, but there is also a skin that makes the browser look a little more like what IE 7 offers. Of course, you’ll only be able to switch skins if you can pull yourself away from the PlayBoy skin, which is one of Opera’s most popular (safe for work screenshot, and borderline safe for work screenshot). Here’s what the LikeIE Opera skin looks like:

So those are the skins that I managed to find on my journey to making my browsers fit in a little better with Windows Vista. I’ve been contemplating how long it will be before developers actually jump on the Vista bandwagon and really go all out to make the applications look nice on the operating system, but I’m guessing it won’t be for more than a year. A lot of people are still using XP and I think that developers will hold off on spending more money on visual appearance until Vista starts to pick up more of the market share.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on November 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft Monday

By now you’re probably aware of some of the features that are new and specific only to Windows Vista like Aero or Sidebar Gadgets, but you may not be aware of changes that Microsoft has made when it comes to games.  New with Windows Vista is a special Games Explorer (included with all versions of Vista), and three games which we’ll be talking about today.

What is Vista’s Game Explorer?

Vista’s Games Explorer is a special folder just for all of your games. It displays the games that a person has installed on their computer, and not just the ones that come with Windows by default. Anytime a user installs a compatible game, a shortcut will automatically be added to the Games Explorer. This can be seen in the image below. I just installed Peggle Deluxe and a shortcut automatically got added to the Games Explorer which also included the games that came with Vista by default.

To access the games explorer, just click the start menu and search for “Games Explorer.”

Information Provided by Games Explorer

Not only is a shortcut added to the Games Explorer, but Vista also goes and downloads the game’s box-art and the content rating information. For the game Peggle Deluxe, no rating was provided so you won’t see it pictured. Additionally, Vista now rates each computer, and that information is used to determine how a game will perform on your computer.  My system’s rating is 3.6, and it tells me that the required rating is 1.0. The recommended rating is 2.0 for the game, but either way, I know that I’ll have no problem as far as performance goes.

If a game doesn’t appear automatically…

If by chance a game doesn’t appear automatically in the Games Explorer, you can manually add it by dragging a shortcut for the game to the explorer. The only thing you won’t have then is the box-art and the information for the rating.

Sorting and Grouping Games…

We’ve written about groups, stacks, and sorting in Vista before so you should be familiar with this. The Games Explorer has the same options and allows you to sort the games based upon different things like the game last played, publisher, developer, rating, or name. You can also group the games as well, and it works exactly the same as we have already explained. The image below shows what the Games Explorer looks like when I have the games grouped by name:

Also note that you can access parental controls from this screen.

Games New to Vista

While we’re on the subject of games, I thought now was the perfect time to introduce you to three games new to Vista. Chess Titans, Mahjohng Titans, and Purble Place have never been included with a version of Windows before. Screenshots for each will be included below.

Purble Place is an educational game geared for young children.  It helps them to recognize patterns, shapes, and colors. Mahjong Titans is a form of solitaire that uses tiles instead of cards. The object of the game is to remove all of the tiles from the board by finding matches for each one. Once you clear the tiles, the game is over. Chess Titans is a game of chess that is designed for Windows Aero with a glass-like view. It takes complete advantage of the graphical user interface that Vista offers.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

I think the image above that I put together sums things up quite well. Virus Bulletin did another “in the wild” test to see how many of the best antivirus solutions available would be able to catch every known virus they threw at it. Normally out of the 30+ apps that are tested 5 or 6 of them fail, but this time around over 50% of them came up short.

I know I know, there are a lot of no name antivirus programs out there that are seemingly doomed to failure, but some of the most widely used programs couldn’t even get things right. The complete list of failed programs is below, but among them are Avast!, AntiVir, Kaspersky, Norman, Sophos, and Trend Micro. All big names that couldn’t even identify viruses the entire world knows about. *sigh* It’s not like they created their own viruses just for the test.

Here are the results of the test, which were all done on a Windows 2000 machine:

Antivirus Applications that Failed VB100:

1. AEC Trustport Antivirus – 7 misses
2. Avast! – 2 false positives
3. Avira AntiVir – 4 false positives
4. CA Antivirus – 40 misses
5. Doctor Web – 22 misses and 4 false positives
6. Fortinet Forticlient – 4 misses
7. Frisk F-PROT
8. Ikarus Virus Utilities – 18 misses and 26 false positives
9. Iolo Antivirus – 66 misses
10. Kaspersky Anti-Virus – 1 miss
    
    
11. Kingsoft AntiVirus – 120 misses
12. Norman Virus Control – 14 misses and 6 false positives
13. PCTools Spyware Doctor – 2 false positives
14. Redstone Redprotect – 2 misses
15. Rising Antivirus – 3 misses and 3 false positives
16. Sophos Anti-Virus – 8 misses
17. Trend Micro – 4 misses

Antivirus Applications that Passed VB100:

1. Agnitum Outpost
2. BitDefender AntiVirus
3. Bullguard
4. CA eTrust
5. ESET NOD32
   
   
6. F-Secure Anti-Virus 2008
7. GDATA Anti-virus
8. Grisoft AVG
9. McAfee VirusScan
10. Microsoft Forefront
11. MWTI eScan
12. PCTools Anti-Virus
13. Quick Heal
14. Symantec
15. VirusBuster

Looking back through the history of the VB100 awards ESET NOD32 has one of the best track records with 47 successful tests and only 3 failures (not counting the ones that have only been tested a handful of times). Here are some of the stats for the antivirus applications that have been tested over 40 times:

• Avast! – 24 successes and 20 failures (55% success)
• CA eTrust – 32 successes and 13 failures (71% success)
• Doctor Web – 25 successes and 22 failures (53% success)
• ESET NOD32 – 47 successes and 3 failures (94% success)
• F-Secure – 27 successes and 13 failures (68% success)
• Grisoft – 19 successes and 22 failures (46% success)
• Kaspersky – 40 successes and 15 failures (73% success)
• McAfee – 34 successes and 19 failures (64% success)
• Norman – 38 successes and 14 failures (73% success)
• Sophos – 39 successes and 14 failures (74% success)
• Symantec – 41 successes and 6 failures (87% success)

So it looks like from the VB100 tests that ESET NOD32 and Symantec are the best performers when it comes to catching viruses that are already in the wild!

[via PC World]
Thanks for the tip CoryC!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on April 01, 2011 by CyberNet.

Windows only
There is something nice about finding an application that focuses on doing one thing, and doing that thing very well. That’s how I feel about the Default Programs Editor app. It accomplishes a task I feel should be better managed in Windows itself, but with this no-install/portable program I start to forget about this shortcoming in Windows.

This app is a single executable that can be used to manage just about anything related to opening files. With it you can choose which context menu entries appear when you right-click on a particular filetype, you can add/remove the programs associated to a filetype in the “Open with” menu, and much more:

• Add, edit, and remove context menu items
• Edit file type icon and description
• Change the ‘Open with…’ programs list
• Change context menu item icons
• Change an extension’s associated file type
• Add, edit, and remove autoplay handler programs
• Change the default autoplay handler
• Change autoplay options for any media type
• Optional install to the Control Panel
• Export changes to .reg files
• Remove unchangable default associations
• Disable “Search web for unknown extension” dialog

You may not have noticed the export option in that list of features, but that can be extremely useful if you want to set up multiple machines with the same settings. That way you can just execute the “.reg” file to have those same settings applied without even needing to download this program again. Pure genius!

Here are a few more screenshots of the Default Programs Editor in action:

Change the applications in the “Open with” menu for TXT files

Change the context menu options that are displayed when you right-click on a TXT file

Default Programs Editor Homepage (Windows only; Freeware; Portable)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Tutorial Thursday

How many times have you seen someone take a post-it note, write their password on it, and slap it to their monitor? Unfortunately this type of thing is more of a common occurrence than it should be, but the problem is that people can never remember their darn passwords!

Windows has a built-in feature that is made for situations just like this. It lets a user create a password reset "disk" that can be used to change the password in the event that they forget it. The "disk" can be a floppy, USB drive, iPod, or any external drive. It takes less than a minute to create, and believe me…this can save you a ton of time!

Of course by the time you come across this article it will probably be too late, and you’ll want to reset the Windows password without a disk. If that’s the case then I’ve put together a small section at the end of this article dedicated to "cracking" the Windows password.

–Creating a Password Reset Disk–

Instructions on creating a password reset disk in Windows XP can be found here. Here’s what you have to do if you’re running Vista:

1. Open the start menu and start to type "User Accounts" in the search box.
   
2. In the window that pops up choose the "Create a password reset disk" under the Tasks heading in the left pane.
   
3. A wizard will now walk you through creating a password reset disk. After you get by the first screen you’ll be presented with a drop-down menu that lists the available devices that can successfully be used. It has to be some sort of removable media, such as a floppy disk, USB drive, or even your iPod.
   
4. Next just enter in your current Windows password, and then you’ll be done. If you check the device that you used for the reset disk there should be a hidden file called userkey.psw.
   

–Using a Password Reset Disk–

Like most things in life, the advanced preparations you made by creating a password reset disk can really pay off. To use the disk just insert it into your computer, and then try to login as if you knew the password. Windows will tell you that the password is incorrect, and when you return to the login screen there will be a "Reset password" option located under the password field. That will initiate a wizard that will guide you through the steps needed to create a new password.

Note: Your current password reset disk is still valid even after changing your password.

Click to Enlarge

–Don’t Have a Password Reset Disk?–

Unfortunately by the time you realize that you can create a password reset disk it’s normally too late. There are some solutions, which I’ll outline here, but for obvious reasons none of them are going to be very easy.

• Using a Windows XP loophole – You can launch the user account management while performing a repair on the operating system since you can access the command prompt. This is definitely the route I would go if I was running XP, but make sure you follow the instructions closely.
• Cracking a Vista or XP password using Ophcrack – This is an application that you burn to CD, and it will boot up with your computer. You’ll need to give your computer some "alone time" depending on the strength of your password.
• Login Recovery for NT, 2000, XP, 2003, and Vista – This is actually a service, and it requires that you download an application to put on a floppy that will retrieve your password file. You then send your password file to them, and they will decode it. There’s a 98.5% chance that it can be done in less than 10-minutes, but you’ll have to pay some money if you want it that soon. Otherwise they have a free service available, and with that you’ll get the password within 48-hours.

–Overview–

I highly recommend that you create a password reset disk if you haven’t done so already. I did it for all of my computers since I can just use a USB drive as the storage medium. You’re probably pretty confident that you won’t forget your password, but who knows, it could happen.

This might also be useful to backup passwords for friends and family who may often forget these types of things. I might start doing that because then they don’t have to worry about putting a darn post-it note on the desk with their password! Maybe they would also create a password that is more secure, too.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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