In continuation of my previous post on improving your computer performance try the below tips also.

Adding memory:
The most effective way to make your PC perform better is to add some extra RAM. Ram chips have become pretty cheap and if you double the RAM the improvement can be seen immediately. What you need to know before upgrading your RAM is to know the type of RAM that your computer needs to avoid compatibility issues. Do remember that for older computers increasing RAM may not help in a big way, the reason being that older systems have many types of software, CPU and other issues, so Ram may not be the answer.

Do a clean start:
When you load Windows it automatically starts many programs at start-up. The more programs you include in start-up the slower you PC can become. Also some of these programs might run in the background slowing you PC. So take control of this and select programs that you would like to start automatically. Depending on the version of windows that you are using the process of selecting the programs differs. Type the words “Start Up” in the search menu in Windows Help to get directions for the specific setup.

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The Firefox 3 browser comes with a useful built-in spelling checker. If you posted a message in an online forum or used Google Docs you can see it work. A red line will appear under a misspelled word. You can right click the word for spelling suggestions. It’s a nice feature but its short coming is that it does not work in Web Forms. However it’s easy to make the spelling check feature work in web forms.

Do the following:
Open Firefox, type about:config in the address bar, press enter. In the Filter field type spellcheck. Right-click layout.spellcheckDefault, and click Modify. Raise the value from 1 to 2. Restart Firefox. The spelling checker will now work in most online web forms.

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I came across this useful stuff and thought I must share it with you all. This is a brief account on how to watch and download full length films simultaneously from various film hosting websites on the net.

STEP 1 - DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL FIREFOX AND VLC MEDIA PLAYER
Mozilla Firefox browser can be downloaded by clicking on this image
VLC media player can be downloaded by visiting their website.

STEP 2 - ADD DOWNLOADHELPER TO FIREFOX
Start Mozilla Firefox click “tools” then “add ons” then select the “get add ons” option and type “downloadhelper” into the search box and click on the “add to Firefox” button on the right hand side of the downloadhelper information screen.
Firefox will tell you it needs to restart to complete installation.
Once Firefox has restarted you will notice an icon on the left hand side of the address bar that looks like 3 interlocking grey balls.
This is the downloadhelper icon - whenever you visit a website that has media files built into it the downloadhelper icon will change colour and begin moving - this is downloadhelper telling you that it can download media files from the webpage you are on.

STEP 3 - FIND AN ONLINE FILM THAT YOU WANT TO WATCH / DOWNLOAD
The easiest way to do this is to type “watch movies online” into Google.
Google will offer to take you to various websites – One very good resource for movies is at watch-movie-links.net

STEP 4 - BEGIN TO DOWNLOAD THE FILM
Once you have found an online film that you want to watch the Downloadhelper icon will change colour and begin rotating - this is downloadhelper telling you that it can download media from the webpage you are on.
Click on the tiny triangle next to the downloadhelper icon and it will show you what files are available to download.
Check that the file you are about to download is not an .flv file.
Any other file type will do (.avi / .mp4 / .wmv etc.)
Use downloadhelper to download the file to anywhere on your computer.

STEP 5 - BEGIN TO WATCH THE MOVIE
Wait until at least 7mb of the video file has downloaded then open the video file using VLC player.
VLC media player will play incomplete media files and will buffer a downloading media file. VLC media player is the best media player out there. It plays almost any type of file.

Source: Jhonny

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You are paying to your service provider every month for your internet connection. Do you know whether you are getting the download and upload speeds that you are meant to get? Why not cross check whether your ISP is providing what you are paying it for? Do a free test of your broadband connection speed at a speed test site. Speedtest is a service of web-diagnostics from Ookla. Ookla is a company that builds and operates easy to use web applications that provide network diagnostics for things like connection speed and latency testing. All you need to do is to go to their site and click on the test button and within less than two minutes a diagnostic report is given by speedtest. The report will include your connections average download speed, upload speed, ping and how much time it would take to download a 3 minute MP3 file, a 35 MB video clip and a movie of 800 MB. Screenshots of the results that I got are as under.

Speed test results

download-test-results

The results compare correctly to my broadband speed of 256 Kb/s from my service provider ETISALAT (Emirates Telecommunication Company). I do take about 8 hours to download an 800mb movie. However in terms of comparison speeds I was surprised to find out that my average download speed of 0.25 Mb/s is way below the Asia average download speed of 4.08 Mb/s and way below the global average of 5.33 Mb/s (screenshot not enclosed). The UAE average download speed is also at 1.55 Mb/s. So what does it mean…? Is it about time I upgrade my connection speed? Is 256 Kb/s is very slow…?

To test your connection speed click here

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These days your life is on your computer. Surviving a computer disaster is important. You might think that your USB-connected hard drives are a safe back up for all the important files that you have on your computer. Or you could be under the impression taking backup on a CD is 100% safe. The fact is that CDs, USB hard disks and your computer hard disk will fail some day. But there could be files on your computer that you need forever. For example your family photos, financials documents, PDF files, important email communication etc. So for the most critical information it is better to do a CD back up and a USB portable disk back up. But even this is not absolutely safe. According to research one in 14 drives older than two years failed during any given year. Every year, 43% of the computer users lose emails, documents, photos and other files. Remember that external hard drives are mechanical devices and you should not expect them to last decades. CD’s fail all the time with risk of scratches, strong heat, light and misuse destroying their storage capabilities. In perfect conditions a CD RW is supposed to last around 25 years but that is also no guarantee. So no backup system is 100% perfect. To overcome this if you are really serious and worried about your data getting lost then consider online backup of your critical documents. An online company called Carbonite provides this online backup service. The service is completely automatic. Carbonite installs a small application on your computer and works by itself in the background taking remote back up of new and changed files that need to be backed up. The software is integrated into your systems operating system, so there’s nothing for you to do. You just set it up once and it works on its own. You can get back your files whenever you want with a few clicks. Carbonite charges for this service, it is not free. But if you think the data on your PC is important and is of a frequently changing nature then you might well think of a service like this. Checkout Carbonite

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Your computer has slowed down and you are getting irritated with it. You wish it were a little faster. You are not in mood to call the technician. Here are a couple of tricks that you might want to try out to speed up your PC.

Check the computer hard disk
Go to My Computer and right click on the hard disk icon. Then select Properties and then Tools. You will find an option to defragment your hard disk and another to check for errors. Try to do both. Quite often defragmenting of the disk will speed up your computer, especially so if you have not done it before. You could find a difference immediately by doing it. Defragmenting helps rearrange files in a more organized way. In other words the contents of the disk are stored closer together and in a contiguous manner. Defragmentation reduces fragmentation in file systems. A large number of files contribute to fragmentation leading to performance loss. Defragmentation attempts to reduce these problems. Note that the use of disk defragmentation is not recommended on solid-state drives (SSD), as it may reduce the lifespan of the drive (A solid-state drive (SSD) is a data storage device that uses solid-state-memory to store data)

The other thing is to check for errors on the disk. Checking for errors can warn you of trouble and possible problems. With Windows Vista you will also see an option to run an automatic back up which is good thing to do.

Disk Cleanup
Click the Start Button then select Accessories, then System Tools. You will see the option for Disk Cleanup. It is time to remove a bit of clutter. You will see various boxes to delete files. You can remove temporary files, very old files, old files not required now after an upgrade and files created by the previous error checking. Doing this involves very little risk, so go ahead and let the program clear out unnecessary mess that is lying in the disk.

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You are using a cell phone but you are not too happy with your service provider or you want to change the provider for some other reason. There could be a cancellation fee and you are not happy to shell it out. Basically you are stuck in a contract and want to exit without a loss.

CellSwapper could help you pass on your cell phone contract to some one who might want it. There could be four months left on your contract and cellswapper will try to find a buyer who will take over your contract for the remaining period. You got what you wanted without a loss and the person who took over the contract got service without any activation fees. Somebody took over your wireless contract and you became 100% contract free. Both parties got a good deal. So swap out of your contract with cellswapper. Cellswapper is a free service, so you might well give it a try if required. The service is available for major wireless providers in USA, Canada and UK.

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You will throw away your computer one day – it will not be with you forever. And when you do that your hard disk will also go away with it. What you’ll do before you dispose off your PC is to delete all the files and even empty your recycle bin.

But is this good enough? Have you done a perfect clean of your personal files on your computer? The answer is ‘no’. Deleting files does not assure you of a cleanup of your PC. The possibility of theft of data and personal information after you have disposed your PC is a threat which you are unaware of. The point is that you will need to overwrite the data on the disks as well. This is where Darik’s Boot & Nuke comes in handy. Darik’s Boot and Nuke (”DBAN”) securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, making it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction. Once DBAN has done its work you can be sure the data is completely wiped out. Download DBAN for Free at DBAN

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We all get search results as a list of links to web pages. The results that a search engine gives may or may not get you the information you are looking for. Google Squared is a free Google Labs service that provides you information in a different way. With Google Squared; when you search for a topic or information it will be presented in a tabular way - in rows and columns. This information is taken from all over the web by Google Squared. For example if you search for Banks that offer good Mortgage Rates in town then the first column could have the names of Banks offering mortgages, the second column could
provide information on the percentage of property cost a bank finances, the third column the rate of interest etc. You could also add more rows and columns depending on your query to get Google Squared work for you better. Seems interesting. The service should be available very soon at googlelabs.com

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We all like to share what we see. It started with photos, slide shows on the computers and elsewhere, video cameras and so on. The internet opened up innumerable possibilities of sharing pictures and videos. You can share your travel experiences by sharing your personal videos online. There was one big problem earlier and that was bandwidt’ or ‘space’ to use a more simple word. Due to large file sizes and costly disc space and bandwidth it took a while for online videos to gain popularity. The coming of Youtube and a whole lot of similar sites addressed the question of bandwidth and space. You don’t have to spend now on buying space online for storing your photos and videos. You need a digital camera (who does not have one these days) to make short video clips. When you find something interesting you shoot and store it on the card memory. Of course these clips will be short but you can stitch the short video clips together with a video editing program. On the PC, programs such as Adobe Premiere, Roxio’s Easy Media Creator and Cyberlink’s Power Director are easy to learn and cost under Dollar 100. Macs come with iMovie, which simplifies video editing for non-tech buffs. So now you want to upload. Youtube is the best one out there but it also gets hell lot of traffic so it can be slow quite often. YouTube gets over 10,000 clips and streams over 100 million clips every single day. There are dozens of other sites out there. A site called Travelistic.com focuses on travel content. The site is quite fast and focuses on travel videos. Travelvoyeur.com and Trip Films also gather the best travel video clips from the web. Motionbox.com, was built for sharing and searching. It lets you cut frames from your video into pictures. All these are free, they’re simple and they allow you to cut and paste a small piece of code so that you can share your video. And they bear the cost of storage of these videos. The important thing is to keep your videos no longer than 5 to 6 minutes. When shooting; keep your clips small so it does not take up too much of the memory on your digital camera. There is no need to invest in high-end video-editing software to create a fun movie. Once you shoot; optimize the videos for the web with a software program. Don’t worry about making very high quality video. Just aim and shoot what catches your attention and try adding some music if possible to make it interesting. So the next time you are on a holiday and see something interesting shoot first and share with the world what you enjoyed. You never know it could become popular to the point of giving you some monetary returns if it really catches the fancy of world wide web.

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