This isn’t officially verified but it appears that Microsoft has fixed a glitch that has persisted for quite a while in Windows Media Center. 

UPDATE: This glitch hasn’t been fixed at all.  My system glitching made it seem as if it was fixed.  However, pressing the Windows key yields the desired result of being able to use your mouse cursor on another screen until you click on the Media Center again, at which point the cursor becomes trapped on that screen again.  Sorry for the misunderstanding.  I wish someone would get Microsoft to fix this annoyance.

I say not verified because for all I know my system is glitching which is temporarily fixing the glitch.  But back to the topic.  For a while now if you used Windows Media Center with a multiple monitor setup, if you maximized the application on one monitor, your cursor was stuck to that screen unless you Alt+Tab to an app on another monitor, or use the Windows key.  This is basically an annoyance, though a workaround was to resize the window to almost 100% of the screen.

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Once again Apple has released a new product with good marketing, but the product is underwhelming.  The new iPhone 3G is coming out and looking at the specs, again this next edition iPhone looks like the G1 we already have from T-Mobile since the cupcake update.  But don’t let my words try to convince you, lets compare the groundbreaking features.

Voice Control….A G1 feature
Video….A G1 feature
3 Mega-pixel camera with auto focus….An original G1 feature. (G2 rumored to have a 5 mega-pixel camera)
Compass….Early G1 feature.
Cut, Copy & Paste….G1 feature.
Landscape keyboard….G1 feature, including physical keyboard that makes texting easier.
MMS coming soon…..MMS from the start on the G1
Tethering…Advantage iPhone, but with an AT&T data plan, would you really?  (G1 can be tethered if you know how)

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If you have a typical home network, you probably have a desktop PC and a laptop (maybe even a netbook).  The laptop probably connects wirelessly to your network and you may use it to access files on your desktop from time to time.  A scenario that you may run into is one where you either travel and have files you work on with the laptop that  you need to access from the desktop, or vice versa.  3rd party software, or a tool like Synctoy (from the MS powertoys), allow you to do so, but setup can be cumbersome, and then automating the process requires more work.  Windows XP contained a built in “Offline files utility” which was rough around the edges and required some setup.  Fortunately for Windows Vista/7 users, Offline file sync has been simplified.

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Take advantage of your wheel mouse when  using Windows.  If you come across a web page, or document in which the text is too small to read, you can use the menus or icons in the application to zoom in or resize, but that’s unnecesary work. 

A quicker way is to use the scroll to zoom feature built into Windows.  Click on the document or website to activate the window, then hold down the Control button on your keyboard and scroll the wheel forward to zoom in, or backwards to zoom out.

While web 2.0 does turn the internet into more of a community, turning every website into a social network, it isn’t without its negatives.  One of them, there is no common identity system yet, so everytime you goto a website, you have to sign up and validate an account everytime you goto a website.  This kinda leads to the second negative.  Those who take the time to sign up and comment on sites seem to only be the jerks and cynical. 

Logging onto any web2.0 site and reading the comments leads to frustration as there tends to be a balance of 25% positive or informed posters and %75 jerks.  I think if there were a unified login for all web2.0 sites, people would be more willing to take the time to post, rather than doing as I do, and avoiding most comment threads because there isn’t anything worth reading.  › Continue reading…

Are you tired of hearing your PC crunch like crazy when loading applications or playing a game?  If the answer is a resounding yes, consider yourself not alone.  Adding actual physical RAM (Random Access Memory) to your machine can be an unneeded expense to increase your PC’s performance for many.

If you currently have a second hard drive in your computer, it would be extremely wise to allow your page file to reside on the hard drive that does not contain your Windows OS, gaming, and resource-intensive application files.  When the Windows OS needs additional memory; it accesses the page file on your hard drive.  For a good example, consider you’re playing the popular Crysis video game published by EA (Electronic Arts) and currently have 2 gigabytes of physical memory.  Crysis and the Windows OS’s system files and any other background processes running will at times need more than the 2 gigabytes of installed memory.

To access the needed additional memory, Windows will store the bits of information in the swap file.  It is limited only by the size you set it as or the size of your hard drive if you let Windows manage it.  As a result of this usage of a file residing on your hard drive and the hard drive’s slow mechanical nature, your performance will suffer anytime the page file needs to be written to.  Having the page file on the same hard drive as your Windows OS and games, etc. will be really slow because it takes extra time for a hard drive to access two or more separate locations on a hard drive storage platter.  By setting the page file to a separate hard drive, less files are needed to be accessed on one hard drive at once, effectively making Crysis in the above example run at a faster pace.   This would apply not only to Crysis, but to other games and applications on your PC as well.

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It also pays to optimize your page file to be set within a small range, which will entirely depend on the amount of physical memory you have installed, the operating system you are running, and the amount of page file usage you need to utilize.  Start task manager by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del and go to the Performance tab.  When you have properly optimized your swap file, you will notice that almost all of your physical memory will be cached.  If it’s half and half between your RAM and the page swap, consider making your page swap smaller.  As a general rule of thumb, make the swap file size as small as possible for the minimum value and keep the range between the minimum and maximum no more than 256 megabytes.  This will keep fragmentation of the swap file to a minimum.

Modifying the swap file is easy:  select the settings selection of the advanced tab under system in control panel and from there go to the advanced tab.  Change the swap file to be located on the non-OS residing hard drive in your PC, type in the desired range, and then select Set.  After doing this, a restart will be required.

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For all of those out there who don’t have a second hard drive, Windows Vista can set your flash drive of adequate size (usually a gig or two will suffice) to store the page file.  This is convenient because you don’t have to worry about fragmentation on a flash drive and the same principal applies as with a second hard drive:  your main mechanical drive will have to be in one less place on the platter than it otherwise would.  To have Vista do this, simply insert your flash drive and select to use ready boost.  If the option isn’t there, either your flash drive is too small or an older flash drive with inadequate transfer speed capabilities to be an effective source for your swap file.

*Tip:  Visit AusLogics‘ website and download their Registry and Disk Defragmenter programs.  They are completely free and work very well at what they were programmed to do.  Disk Defragmenter is faster than Windows’ built in one and will keep your disk crunching to a minimum and defragment that speed vital page file.  The registry defragmenter will defragment your system registry and make it smaller.  Since the registry resides in physical memory, this effectively increases the amount of your physical memory.  Considering these two programs are free, you lose nothing by checking them out.