One of the biggest casualties with Windows versions after XP, was the loss of all those settings you could control in the “Display” applet in XP’s Control Panel. They allowed you to turn off a bunch of things that would improve performance for slower computers – and in some cases – take an unusable machine and make it useful again. Are you looking for those settings that will let you “Turn off Window Contents while Dragging” or how to turn off the “Aero” interface? look no further, all the details are here.
New with Windows Vista (and included in later versions) was the Windows Mobility Center. This great little tool typically allows mobile users to see and control many of the most obvious and useful settings on a Windows machine. The settings are arranged as tiles on a single window with each tile containing a specific setting. Also possible by OEMs, is extending the interface to include other tiles for controlling a system. I thought, this is cool and useful but really, really ugly. I thought, there must be other stuff I can do with this.
I think it deserves to be mentioned that a huge race is on now to find the cleanest and easiest way to bypass the tiled Metro interface (or whatever Microsoft will call it) and boot to what we know as the Windows 8 Desktop. With the Release to Manufacturing Version (RTM) out now, we have a sense […]
On August 1, Microsoft announced that Windows 8 had been released to manufacturers (or RTM). While this is certainly not the biggest news to come along – it’s a good time to prepare for this new version of Windows. Windows 8 is going to be a rather big shift for computing in general, so this milestone also serves as a warning for all users. In many respects, you might find yourself having no choice but to use it, so this is a good time to get ready.
In Windows 8, this service will essentially be renamed File History, but share many of the same underpinnings. The difficulty I speak of, however, is that of the files this service creates, and the ability to make gainful use of them (especially if you don’t have the system to work with).
Clearly, a MAC OSX only tool is not being represented here. Well, for those fans of Total Commander (you know how I feel about that), I have a great OSX tool to show you today. This tool is a Open Source file manager created in the same light as Total Commander. As always, these tools are the kinds of utilities you’ll want to have access to every day if you’re a consultant or a power user.
Drive Space. On a computer’s boot drive this is often in short supply. Even moire so these days with small Solid State (SSD) options and RAID partitioning of a large data set. Leaving too little room for the boot drive is a common mistake. So, while you’re looking at that boot drive, you notice that […]
“Today’s Windows is almost absurdly configurable” – with that phrase, the recent Microsoft Windows Engineering blog gave me the answer I was looking for. This was the reason for the new “Metro” style interface, the active square tiles and the removal of the “Start” button in Windows 8.
You could use Bitlocker on Windows, or you could use an incredibly useful and versatile open source tool called TrueCrypt. Over the course of this article, I’ll show you why you’ll be telling others that TrueCrypt is a CWL best utility.
I’m always looking for interesting challenges, and this one is no different. I came across this question in Microsoft’s Answers forum and I was intrigued. Windows Easy Transfer is actually pretty good for migrating user accounts and pulling out settings, but what if you wanted to use this tool to attempt a full user profile backup (to disk) at regular intervals? Is it even possible in any reliable way to do this?