It seems there won't be any more Seinfeld ads from Microsoft, probably because it took them some time to realize that they didn't hit as popular as intended. This next ad initiates Phase 2 of Microsoft's extravagant investment to improve it's image amongst the crowd, especially in the aftermath of Apple's infamous "Get A Mac" series.
Contrary to Apple's [stupid?] portrayal that the Mac is for the hip crowd, and PC users are downright nerds, this one goes out of it's way to tell us that not all PC users are like poor John Hodgman, who appears as PC on the Mac ads.

This new ad does seem a lot better to me than the ill-fated Seinfeld ones, because most of them didn't make much of a point about Microsoft until the last 5 seconds of the ad. For one thing, instead of flaming Apple stuff like Apple does with Microsoft, Microsoft only set out to prove that they aren't what Jobs wants us to believe.

Let's see what the folks at Redmond bring up next... [e digicons]:d[/e]  

Google Chrome, which is the Big G's venture in the browser market, is finally here after their press conference. 

I read much about it over on Webware , who live-blogged from Google's conference at Googleplex

Google Chrome is a Windows-only beta download, with Mac and Linux betas in the makes.

Grab it here

[img]http://img382.imageshack.us/img382/5692/jkgujkgjhghjcg2.jpg[/img]

Ok...I know Zubaz had 135 Karma a few days ago...but 10137 Karma...where did that come from?

For people like me who regret what they type in the forums immediately after pressing the submit post button, there should be an edit button so that we're able to edit what we typed. Is it being considered in ANY future updates? Or was it just a dream I had?

I doubt many people will agree, but for one, I always seem to press the submit button too early...

Fans of Internet Explorer 7 and Opera, bow down to the Browser Goddess, Firefox 3!

Earlier this week, the first release candidate of the much improved Firefox 3 was released. I remember getting a notification about an available update after months of browsing on beta 5. At first I didn't quite read the RC 1 bit, so I assumed that the final version had been released. No, it's just a release candidate for the final version, which is setting its paw on global PCs next month.

One reason I love Firefox is the way how it can be customized, personalized, tweaked and enhanced to suit its user's preferences. With every kind of add-on available, many features can be added to the browser. This is why people never complain that so some X browser has the Y feature that FF doesn't have.

For example:

Opera has mouse gestures, which makes it easier to perform many operations. Just a flick of the mouse can load pages again , take you to the previous page, or change the text size. I remember cursing the fact that FF lacks that until a search later I found FireGestures, a wonderful FF add-on that allows you to set up mouse gestures in FF. You can customize the preset gesture for many different operations too.

A feature of Safari is that it shows the progress bar within the address bar, so there's no need for a status bar. Fission is an add-on built specifically to emulate this on FF. You can even change the color of the bar.

Although FF is loved worldwide because of its speed, stability and overall better experience providing features, IE7 and Opera aren't far behind. Opera' newest version [9.5] has been on beta for some time, so we can expect an Opera release with even more features, which might influence many FF stats. Also, IE7 boasts many features that are common talk on FF, tabbed browsing [took them years to figure out why we loved FF], RSS, Quick Tabs [something I like] and it has many of the add-ons FF has too [now they get add-ons] and now we can search through the browser toolbar, which isn't much compared to FF. There was some recent news about an IE add-on called IE7 Pro.

I'll quote what I got from IE7 Pro's site, because I'm too tired to type:

Quote starts:

IE7Pro is a must have add-on for Internet Explorer, which includes a lot of features and tweaks to make your IE friendlier, more useful, secure and customizable. IE7Pro includes Tabbed Browsing Management, Spell Check, Inline Search, Super Drag Drop, Crash Recovery, Proxy Switcher, Mouse Gesture, Tab History Browser, Web Accelerator, User Agent Switcher, Webpage Capturer, AD Blocker, Flash Block, Greasemonkey like User Scripts platform, User Plug-ins, MiniDM, Google sponsored search,IE Faster and many more power packed features. You can customize not just Internet Explorer, but even your favorite website according to your need and taste using IE7Pro.

Quote ends.

Sounds good, and it sure will be a big boost in IE7's  performance. That's why I'll say it again. Hear it from a FF fan: The previous age was of IE. Now, FF control the web. Tomorrow is looking hazy.

Anyway, back to topic. FF 3 was what it claimed to be: better. It loads pages much faster than FF 2, though I didn't see the difference immediately because I had been running the beta for so long now.

 

A recent find of mine led me to the Internet Browser Review 2008. It ranked Opera at first place, IE7 second, and FF third. See what I mean?

It's been a long day. I overslept, and woke up to find a lot of unread mail to be read, blog comments to be answered, and skins to be downloaded.

My bad. I usually keep working on the PC till like 4 in the morning, which is why I'm unavailable all day.

 

As I said, had a long tiring day sorting my mail and blogs, and going away for three hours over to my grandparent's place leaving important work undone didn't help matters. So I decided to make a list of 5 applications that have made life easier, at least for me. If you have some additions of your own, feel free to add them.

In no particular order [I had trouble deciding between Windows Live Writer and Launchy]

5. Launchy -

    This mini app is a killer application launcher. It searches for all the available applications in your PC. Launching your applications is easy, just press the hotkey combination and enter a letter/word/phrase in the mini bar that appears. Launchy will find matches and show the best matching app in the bar. If you click on it, it'll show the other available matches too. You can do the same for quickly accessing websites. Just configure Launchy's options to include your favorite websites or access preset URLS [such as Google or YouTube]. When you've found your website/app/folder/file just press enter. It hardly takes more than  seconds, compared to how long it takes to navigate your start menu, or folders, searching for files.

Launchy hides in the background, and you can access it by pressing ALT+Space. Plus, it has a few extra skins if you don't like the default one.

You can download it here at Download.com

 

4. Mozilla Thunderbird- 

   Oh, who am I kidding? Everyone has heard of Thunderbird. But a short intro for those who don't know, Thunderbird is an email client designed my Mozilla [Yes, the same company that brought Firefo x to you]. But it's not an ordinary email program; Thunderbird boasts excellent organization of emails in folders and files. You can organize, sort and label mail in your way. The search feature is pretty helpful if you're looking for a lost message through cluttered mail. Like Firefox, Thunderbird can be personalized with add-ons. It also fits in with many online email providers, such as Gmail and Yahoo.

Download at Mozilla's site here

3. ObjectDock-

   Brought to you and me by Stardock, ObjectDock adds a dock to your desktop. You can add your folder/file/URL/programs/etc shortcuts to it, which is easy as drag and drop. ObjectDock also displays tiny widgets, called docklets. Included docklets include weather, search, calendar, and some more; but you can get more on WinCustomize too.

I can't say enough for OD, let alone OD Plus. The Plus version adds a lot more features to your dock [tabbed docks, more than one dock, system tray support, taskbar support, and more] for a mere $20. The free version can be downloaded from Download.com or Stardock.

Disclaimer: You don't have to upgrade to the OD+ version if you don't want to. It won't nag you to do so, and for people who want to try it out, I suggest you get the free version, which is an excellent start in itself.

Download here at Stardock

 

2. SysMetrix

Oh yes, you might think that Sysmetrix is just a standalone eye candy widget, but it's actually a time saver for me. SysMetrix is a skinnable app that shows valuable PC and miscellaneous information on your desktop without using any resources. You can skin it to your preferences to show just the time, or everything in it's potential, which includes hard drive space, CPU and memory usage, time, date, email count, recycle bin contents, CPU temperature, wind speed, Internet traffic, and so much more that I've actually forgotten it. You can find a vast collection of skins at WC.

How it helps me? Well obviously, knowing the weather, CPU usage, and email count at a glance is always time saving. By the way , I'm biased towards it because it looks great on my desktop.

Download here on Xymantix Online

1. Windows Live Writer-

The application that I used to write this post, the application I used to publish my articles, the application I'd pay a hundred bucks for, the application that has no parallel.

Enough praise done, Windows Live Writer is a part of the Windows Live package of programs. It makes it easy for you to publish rich content to your blog, as the tool tip says when I hover my cursor over it. Briefly, its a word processor that allows you to set up a blog, (on Windows Live Spaces, or elsewhere), or use an existing blog, and publish posts to it right from your desktop, without using a browser. I guess I'll take a lot of space if I started describing it, so you should read more of it at Windows Live's site. In short, it's a killer program that allows you to publish articles, add pictures/videos/maps/tables/tags/hyperlinks/etc to them, save copies for backup or future editing, view your posts before posting them, and integrate your blog's theme in the WLW interface. For any blogger, it's a must have.

For downloading the whole Windows Live package, go here. It's included in the package, and I couldn't find a separate download link.

 

These were my favorite apps; any app you can't live without? Feel free to add them!

You heard and read the tales of many bloggers and daily life PC users of how they anxiously waited for Windows Vista's much awaited public release, and how it broke their heart to know that it isn't quite much of a... well...operating system.

And almost daily, many organizations hoping to direct the use of computing in the hopes of expanding their business, purchase Windows Vista and give it a test drive, which is almost always a test crash.

 

Why? Why is all this happening? Wasn't Vista supposed to be Microsoft's biggest success? And though I won't provoke arguments by saying that people should downgrade to XP, I'll say that most of the software present in Vista isn't as useful to us now than the software present in XP was useful to us then. I'll give some examples: Windows XP, when it was first released, shows the amount of progress Microsoft had made since Windows 2000 and Me. It boasted many new security features, a brand new GUI, and was the perfect OS for homes, industries, and laptop users alike.

 

And Microsoft was kind enough to keep their users happy with the latest security updates and newest versions of Windows software at their Windows Update site. And then last year, Microsoft released Windows Vista, which it promised would include all the features needed to make your computer do everything. That's not an official claim, but the amount of hard work and bloatware they put into Vista seems equal, so they were surely planning to make the OS a revolution in personal computing, right?

 

And speaking of bloatware, Vista is full of it. I won't anger those fans of Vista by saying that Vista should be replaced and a more updated version of XP should be released with all the good stuff of Vista in it, but let's face it, it's the right choice, isn't it? Windows Vista was never received with as much as enthusiasm as Microsoft was hoping for. The OS was found to be slow, memory consuming, and laptop batteries reported exhausting usage when one ran even the Basic version of Vista and the laptop had all the system requirements checked. So, now we come to versions. Believe me, I sat up all might reading reviews about Vista where I read the whole list of Vista versions several times, but there are so many that I can't remember them now. Hopefully, I'll just suffice by taking you through them one at a time. First there's the Home Premium. I've read its features and let me tell you this, DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON IT....HOME PREMIUM IS NOT WORTH IT! Then there's the Business versions, two of them I guess. They pack a whole lot more than the Home one, some more bloatware and combine together to form a good OS for those multinational biggies that can afford to use it on their PCs.

And finally, we come to the Windows Vista Ultimate one. No, I'm not listing more criticisms. Instead, I'll tell you my own personal experience in handling Vista. Till date I've bought Vista Ultimate twice. Both times, it installed perfectly well. Both times, it booted fine. Both times, the screen resolution never went higher than 640x480. Both times, I switched back to XP.

 

The main reason why I don't want to work with Vista again is the lack of compatibility with many graphic drivers.  Other reasons:

• User Account Control [UAC] - Microsoft stated that they built UAC for a specific purpose, to annoy you.
• Packed with less needed features- Vista relies more on eye candy than functionality. Though you can get a lot of things done with it, you can do the same [or more] with XP too.
• Microsoft's failure to realize that the classic Windows Explorer interface is losing popularity. Let's just hope Windows 7 doesn't have that ruddy taskbar.
• Bloatware, bloatware, bloatware- 1 GB programs with 1% usability.

 

I'd add some links for those who aren't convinced.

 Xp versus Vista at Tom's Hardware - Essential, you should check this one out.

Vista vs XP at InfoWorld - Haven't read much of this one but it has major sections of reviews, like usability, compatibility, etc.

Roundup: I'm not anti Vista. I love its new GUI as much as the next person. It also has Windows Defender, which is a great tool. The only problem is, its not worth it. Let's just wait and see whether Windows 7 makes up for what Vista messed up.

 

-Pixeleo

Who hasn't read Draginol's article [The existence of for-pay stuff doesn't hurt you] on WinCustomize? And having read it twice to grip the concept behind his thought, I must say that he's  reflected what is sadly a very common fault of a majority of the online crowd. How many of us don't download software, big or small, almost everyday, from the internet? And seeing that this means that more than three billion people downloading software daily, which has turned software companies to giant industrial grand daddies with a lot of wealth.

Draginol's article:  https://www.wincustomize.com/articles.aspx?aid=309309

So what is the problem with the online crowd? For one thing, and the most important of all, people prioritise products on thier look, feel, and then functionality. An easy example, one that Draginol gave too, is ObjectDock. This tiny Stardock application is worth a thousand bucks [and I'm talking about the free version here] because of the functionality and clarity it adds to your desktop. That too, I'm still commenting on the free version. And people love it. Download.com has featured it twice, and having millions of downloads there, it shows that it adds to Windows what the "dock" adds to a mac. Apart from the free version, Stardock has another version, called ObjectDock Plus. This version is the father of all docks, including its own little sister, the free version. 

OD+ includes system tray support, tabbed docks, and more. This makes it even more desirable than the free version, because it clears up valuable space on your screen, while depleting the use of icons. But people who don't have OD+ hate it. Why? Because it isn't free. Yes, this million dollar app is underpriced at $20. And people who have grown to love the free Object Dock version, the same people click on the "Learn about Plus"  link at the Stardock website, and after finding out that it costs a mere 20 bucks, they curse out loud. What the freakin' hell is causing people to behave like this? Why is Bill Gates one of the richest man on the globe? Why do people buy spend hundreds on buying Vista? Isn't it just a CD with a big piece of good software inside? Isn't online software that can be purchased exaclty the same? 

And I'm not talking about just Stardock. I'm talking about the general behaviour of people, they just hate paying for good software. The same people who have no problem payign for games and furniture and what not. I mean, software companies aren't supposed to just hand out their products for free. Imagine what will happen if Microsoft uploaded Windows Vista Ultimate on a download site with no cost on downloading it. Bill Gates would rot. Imagine Starbucks handing out free lattes, it would sink too. 

So you see, nothing is wrong with selling software. Software companies hire people and make software. Other companies do the same. No one itches when they buy a new curtain for their window, thn what's the itch in buying a new blind for your computer desktop? 

And a tip for those who didn't get my point: These companies selling plus versions online always ave a trial version too. You can download that [and for a limited time] test it out to see if you want it. Just the same when you test drive a new car before buying it. You can afford a $20 piece of software that you like. It's not your wallet. It's your way of thinking.

 

-Pixeleo