Windows Vista | Kevins Crate.com/Blog

Try Windows Vista Without having to Install it with Vista Test Drive

Website Crate, Windows Vista, XP No Responses »

Sep 132008

If you are thinking about upgrading to Windows Vista� here’s a way I found to give it a test drive out without having to install it on your computer, it will run in your browser only.

The test drive requires Internet Explorer 6 or later, a browser plug-in, and a broadband Internet connection.

A minimum 1024 x 768 screen resolution is recommended. There is no product support for the test drive but you are welcome to participate in the Microsoft Windows Vista newsgroup to share your trial experiences with others and ask for advice.

The Windows Vista version hosted in the test drive contains most of the functionality of the regular versions, but browsing the internet is not enabled.

You may notice a slight delay or pause as you experience the product. This is due to the fact that this is a hosted trial and is dependent upon your bandwidth, local machine resources, etc. This does not necessarily represent the actual experience you will have with Windows Vista if it were installed on your PC.

Open Internet Explorer and go to Windows Vista Test Drive you will be asked to install an ActiveX control later on to use the Test Drive.

Lower your Carbon Footprint with Edison

Program Crate, Windows Vista, XP No Responses »

Aug 312008

Get in the green zone and lower your carbon footprint and save some oil. Here’s a program I found that will help you save a few bucks on your power bill by letting you turn off your monitor spin down your hard drives then put your computer in suspend mode. From the folks at Verdiem

Use the PC Decrapifier to Clean out your new Computer

Program Crate, Windows Vista, XP No Responses »

Aug 232008

How many times have you bought a new computer and turned it on only to find the screen full of trial software. I run into this problem every time I setup a new computer for someone, and I?m sure you have too. Here?s a great program I use to clean out the crap. The PC Decrapifier. They offer a free and a paid version.

Get a Free Online Virus Scan from ESET

Website Crate, Windows Vista, XP 1 Response »

Apr 132008

Here’s a chance to check your computer for virus’s for free, from the one of the world’s best anti-virus companies. ESET online scan. Even if you already have an anti-virus program installed, you can run this online test to see if yours is up to snuff.

Vista SP1 Released to Manufacturing Today

Microsoft, News, Windows Vista 1 Response »

Feb 042008

Vista SP1 was released to manufacturing today 2-4-08 Expect to see a customer release in early March.

From Microsoft:
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) was released to manufacturing today and will start being available to customers in March, starting with Microsoft Volume Licensing customers. Windows Vista SP1 includes quality improvements that help enhance reliability, security and performance. SP1 also includes changes focused on improving the performance of Windows Vista in areas that impact the customer experience the most.� For instance, with SP1, copying or moving files around your PC, your home network or your corporate network should now be much faster — up to 50% faster in some scenarios (according to our internal tests).� In addition, on many kinds of hardware, resuming a Windows Vista-based PC from sleep is faster on Service Pack 1.

Electronic Piano 2.5 Software For The Budding Musician

Program Crate, Windows Vista, XP No Responses »

Jan 052008

Here’s a free Download that will let you play the Piano + 128 other instruments from your Keyboard. Get it here.

Electronic Piano 2.5 is a Freeware program that allows the user to play Musical Notes, Chords and Drums using the computer keyboard.

Although this is not a software for professional purposes, Electronic Piano 2.5 doesn’t require knowledge of the MIDI technology, it takes up little disk space and it is very simple to install and use.

Sync Toy From Microsoft Updated To v2.0

Microsoft, Program Crate, Windows Vista, XP No Responses »

Dec 102007

The easy to use, customizable application that helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers, has been updated to version 2.0.

Pick it up for free here

There are files from all kinds of sources that we want to store and manage. Files are created by our digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops. Increasingly, computer users are using different folders, drives, and even different computers (such as a laptop and a desktop) to store, manage, retrieve and view files. Yet managing hundreds or thousands of files is still largely a manual operation. In some cases it is necessary to regularly get copies of files from another location to add to primary location; in other cases there is a need to keep two storage locations exactly in sync. Some users manage files manually, dragging and dropping from one place to another and keeping track of whether the locations are synchronized in their heads. Other users may use two or more applications to provide this functionality.

Now there is an easier way. SyncToy, a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows, is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without additional complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another case. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.(from Microsoft)

The following features were added to this release of SyncToy:

Dynamic Drive Letter Assignment: Drive letter reassignment will now be detected and updated in the folder pair definition.

True Folder Sync: Folder creates, renames and deletes are now synchronized for all SyncToy actions.

Exclusion Filtering Based on Name: File exclusion based on name with exact or fuzzy matching.

Filtering Based on File Attributes: The ability to exclude files based on one or more file attributes (Read-Only, System, Hidden).

Unattended Folder Pair Execution: Addressed issues related to running scheduled folder pairs while logged off.

Folder Pairs With Shared Endpoints: Ability for folder pairs associated with the same or different instances of SyncToy to share end-points.

Command line enhancements: Added the ability to manage folder pairs via the command line interface.

The SyncToy engine has been rearchitected to provide scalability and the ability to add significant enhancements in future releases.

Sync engine is also more robust insomuch that many single, file level errors are skipped without affecting the entire sync operation.

Sync Encrypted Files: Sync of Encrypted files works when local folder and files are encrypted, which addresses the common scenario involving sync between local, encrypted laptop PC folder and remote, unencrypted desktop PC folder.

64-Bit compatibility

Folder pair rename

Sub-folder Exclusion Enhancements: Descendents creates under excluded sub-folders are automatically excluded.

Folder Pair Metadata Moved: Folder pair metadata removed from MyDocuments to resolve any issues with server-based folder pair re-direction setup.

Removed combine and subscribe actions.

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows Vista; Windows XP

Microsoft .NET Framework v2.0
1GHz Intel P3 processor or equivalent
256MB RAM, 512MB RAM recommended
20MB free disk space

(from Microsoft)

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Donate Your Spare CPU Cycles To Folding@Home

Program Crate, Windows Vista, XP 3 Responses »

Nov 082007

Folding@Home (also known as FAH or F@H) is a distributed computing project designed to perform computationally intensive simulations of protein folding and other molecular dynamics. It was launched on October 1, 2000, and is currently managed by the Pande Group, within Stanford University’s chemistry department, under the supervision of Professor Vijay Pande. Folding@home is the most powerful distributed computing cluster in the world, according to Guinness, and one of the world’s largest distributed computing projects.The goal of the project is “to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases.” Check it out. Start donating today

How it works.

Folding@Home does not rely on powerful supercomputers for its data processing; instead, the primary contributors to the Folding@home project are many hundreds of thousands of personal computer users who have installed a small client program. The client will, at the user’s choice, run in the background, utilizing otherwise unused CPU power, or run as a screensaver only while the user is away. In most modern personal computers, the CPU is rarely used to its full capacity at all times; the Folding@Home client takes advantage of this unused processing power.

The Folding@Home client periodically connects to a server to retrieve “work units,” which are packets of data upon which to perform calculations. Each completed work unit is then sent back to the server. As data integrity is a major concern for all distributed computing projects, all work units are validated through the use of a 2048 bit digital signature.

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Turn Off Auto Reboot In XP

Windows Tips Crate, Windows Vista 5 Responses »

Oct 122007

When Windows XP crashes with the Blue Screen, notice I said when it crashes. It will automatically reboot, sometimes too fast to read any error message it displays. So if you want to turn it off to see if you can figure out what happened, follow the directions below.

Right click My Computer.
Choose Properties.
Click the Advanced tab from the systems properties page.
In the Startup and Recovery portion choose Settings.
Under system failure remove the checkmark next to Automatically restart.
Click Ok twice.

To see Screen shots for the process, Click the Read the rest of this entry link.

Microsoft Photo Info 1.0

Power Toys, Program Crate, Windows Vista, XP No Responses »

Aug 122007

This free program is part of Microsoft’s PowerToys and provides digital photography Information at your fingertips Get it here

Microsoft Photo Info allows photographers to add, change and delete common “metadata” properties for digital photographs from inside Windows Explorer via the right click menu.

When installed, a new “Photo Info” item appears on the context menu for files selected in Windows Explorer. To use, simply select one or more image files, right-click and choose “Photo Info” to open the Photo Info properties editor. You can edit metadata for files individually, or all together as a batch. Photo Info reads and writes metadata in IPTC and XMP formats (depending on file type). It also provides enhanced “hover tips” and additional sort properties for digital photographs in Windows Explorer.

Microsoft Photo Info runs on 32-bit versions of Windows XP (with Service Pack 2 or later) and the Windows Vista operating systems.

The Programs Features Include:
View or edit photo metadata from inside Windows Explorer. Now, advanced image properties are at your fingertips from within Windows.

Edit images individually, or as a collection. Photo Info has two edit modes: individual and collection, making it easy to update many images at the same time.

Quick recall of recent entries. For some properties, Photo Info remembers the most recent entries you have typed. To recall a recent entry, click on the drop down arrow and select it from the list.

Generate copyright notice automatically. Photo Info can generate a standard copyright notice automatically from the Author and date Created information, if present.

Quick recall of location details. To help save time when entering location information, Photo Info can save location details under a name you provide. Recall these details by selecting the location name from the drop-down menu.

Correct EXIF capture date / time information. Photo Info can optionally update the EXIF date/time information as recorded in the image file by your camera. You can use this feature to correct the file capture date if your camera’s clock was set incorrectly (for example, to the wrong time zone).

View EXIF properties. Click on the Details tab to view common EXIF properties. Click on More properties for additional details.

Preview the image. To see a larger preview of the image, double-click on the thumbnail.

Enhanced hover tips. Hover tips have been enhanced for JPEG, TIFF and other supported file types in Windows Explorer.

Custom column properties. In Windows Explorer when viewing a folder in Details view, additional sort properties are available for supported image types.

For pictures of the program running click read the rest of the entry.