Archive by Author
Ultimate Guide to Free Computer Cleanup: Part 3 – Registry Optimization
Posted on 03. Nov, 2010 by UzEE.
I have already talked about disk cleanup and registry cleanup in parts one and two of my Ultimate Guide to Free Computer Cleanup. For those who don’t know about it, I’m doing a multipart series on how you can use free computer cleanup software to optimize your PC and get back performance as if your system was spankin’ new without actually having to reinstall the operating system itself. So, I would highly recommend reading the first two articles before you get your hands dirty with this one just so that you have a better perspective of what we are aiming to achieve.
I already explained why it is important to have a fast performing registry in the previous article, so I’m not going to divulge into the details about cleaning up your registry again. But, I would like to point out the difference between registry cleanup and optimization, because people often confuse these two processes to be one and the same.
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Ultimate Guide to Free Computer Cleanup: Part 2 – Registry Cleanup
Posted on 26. Oct, 2010 by UzEE.
I’m guessing you have already gone through the first piece in my Ultimate Guide to Free Computer Cleanup. You haven’t? Then, you better do that first before you proceed with part two here. I already talked about how an uncluttered computer can have vastly better performance compared to one bogged down with junk files, registry issues and even malware. The first article in the series talked about how you can easily use free cleanup software (like CCleaner) to get rid of all the junk in your computer. Part two of the guide is all about cleaning up and optimizing your system registry.
For those who don’t already know, Windows stores all its basic configuration and settings in a tree like database structure called Windows Registry. Any program that you install most likely interacts with the Windows Registry and if the programs aren’t well crafted (most of them aren’t) they might leave a lot of junk behind. While most junk in the registry doesn’t cause any serious problem to the computer, it does significantly affect the performance. For instance, Registry is scanned every time you boot up Windows. So if your Registry structure has a lot of invalid information, Windows would spend a lot of time going through it which would significantly increase your boot time.
Most people would argue that Registry is one of the major Achilles’ heel in the Microsoft Windows family. While that may or may not be true, it’s no point arguing on that because the Registry is here to stay. So instead, we would like to focus our energy on how we can optimize the registry to get the best performance possible. And for that, I present two of my most favorite tools that get the job done pretty well.
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Ultimate Guide to Free Computer Cleanup: Part 1 – CCleaner
Posted on 19. Oct, 2010 by UzEE.
One of the biggest reasons why a new PC runs faster and smoother than an old one is all the clutter the old one has gathered over time. You can easily notice the performance difference between a new and an old computer even if they have similar hardware specifications. That’s why often cleaning up, or reformatting and reinstalling the operating system can vastly improve speeds because the process cleans up your computer of all the unwanted data that might be bogging down your system.
But reformatting and reinstalling the operating system is a rather extreme step no matter how effective it may turn out to be. There are a number of other options you can try which give you the same performance gains without having to reinstall all of your applications and games after doing a reformat. That’s why I’ve come up with this ultimate guide to free computer cleanup which will focus on free cleanup software which can help speed up your PC.
For the first part of the series, I’ll be focusing on CCleaner – one of the easiest and most effective computer cleanup utilities around which also happens to be my personal favorite. CCleaner can cleanup left over data from all major web browsers and Windows components (including Recycle Bin, Temporary Files, old System Restore files, memory dumps and a lot more) as well as wipe unwanted information from popular 3rd party applications like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Google Earth, Microsoft Office, Media Player, Adobe Flash Player and Java etc.
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How To Create a Photo Slideshow of Your Facebook Photos
Posted on 27. Sep, 2010 by UzEE.
If you have been following us, then you would already know that I recently wrote about how you can use Microsoft’s Docs for Facebook to create social documents or generate a Resume based on the data from your Facebook profile. While these two tasks did have social aspects, they didn’t really give a strong impression of being able to harness the power of social experiences. That was primarily because those types of documents had a more serious and professional tone, despite the fact they were based on the data from your Facebook profile.
But professional documents aren’t the only thing you can do with Docs.com. In fact, the feature I liked most about the project by Microsoft FUSE Labs was that it could create fun looking slideshows based of your photo albums on Facebook, complete with effects and captions. You can also download the slideshow you create to your computer and edit it with PowerPoint if you want to make further enhancements. And as always, you can share it with your friends on Facebook or just about anywhere else with the help of handy permalink. You can also limit access to the slideshow by choosing which of your friends or networks can watch, comment or collaborate on it.
Let’s take a look at how to create your own slideshow of your Facebook photos.
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How To Create a Resume from Your Facebook Profile using Docs.com
Posted on 24. Sep, 2010 by UzEE.
I previously wrote about how you can use Docs for Facebook – a Microsoft FUSE Labs project to develop a version of Microsoft Office Web Apps for Facebook – to get some of your every day productivity tasks done without relying on a dedicated office suite. Another advantage of going with the web apps is that you can easily collaborate and share documents as well as manage access control lists.
But being able to create blank documents isn’t the only thing Microsoft wants to show off on Docs for Facebook. In fact, one of the most powerful features of Docs.com in my opinion is its ability to interact with the data on your Facebook profile. Generating documents and reports based on data from social networks is a very strong feature to have, and Microsoft is clearly heading in the right direction by investing in the technology. It just doesn’t stop with the ability to generate a resume or a photo album slideshow, if the technology is put to correct use, you can actually do a lot of other things. Consider the following example:
You are a brand manager and want to collect feedback from your clients about a recent change in the product logo. You post the question on your Facebook fan page, to which your clients post hundreds of responses. Now, you want to generate a report based on the comments. A service like Docs for Facebook would make the report generation process a piece of cake. You could just hit a button and all the comments on that post would automatically be generated into a report along with a profile of each respondent. Doing something like this manually would take days.
Let’s take a look at how you can create your own reports.
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Create and Share Office Documents with Docs.com
Posted on 21. Sep, 2010 by UzEE.
If you had any doubts about the fact that the next generation of computing would be done on remote servers, then Microsoft – the makers of the top selling productivity suite Microsoft Office might be able to put your fears to rest. Following up the recent push to make a lite version of Microsoft Office 2010 available online, Microsoft FUSE Labs have put together a neat web app that lets you create Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents using your Facebook account.
While Microsoft Office Online was already available to anyone who had a Windows Live account, getting to it was a fairly tedious affair. You’d have to go to your Windows Live SkyDrive account to be able to create and edit documents and sharing them was a pain as well. But thanks to Docs.com, you can now share your documents with your Facebook friends as well as view and collaborate on your friends documents if they’re allowing you to do so.
And that’s not all. Docs.con also has a couple of cool features like generating an automated resume for you based on the information on your Facebook profile, as well as generating charts and graphs about your friend statistics. You can also create photo slideshows from various photo albums you have on Facebook and share it with your friends.
Here’s a quick rundown of what you can do with the Docs.com version of Word, PowerPoint and Excel. I’ll be following up the article with posts on how to generate a customizable resume, make a photo slideshow or just get basic statistical charts about your friends.
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6 Apps to Take HDR Photos on iPhone without iOS 4.1
Posted on 10. Sep, 2010 by UzEE.
One of the most anticipated features from the upcoming iOS 4.1 is the built in capability to take HDR photos. Unfortunately, not everyone will be able to upgrade and take advantage of this new feature because of several reasons, which include Apple not supporting devices older than iPhone 4, and the fact that jailbreakers wont be able to upgrade to iOS 4.1 right away. If you also fall in this category, then you’ll be happy to know that you can at least get the HDR photography on your phone right now via a couple of free and paid apps in the App Store. Interested?
Good. Just jump into the article for a roundup of 6 apps that let you do HDR photography without upgrading to iOS 4.1.
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How To Uninstall Microsoft Office 2010
Posted on 20. May, 2010 by UzEE.
It’s really a pain when something doesn’t work as planned, be it a relationship or software, you are bound to run into trouble. Thankfully, the later is easier to fix, because in a worst case scenario, you would just have to do a reinstall. But what to do if the reinstall also doesn’t work because the previous installation is corrupt and doesn’t uninstall like its supposed to?
This is a situation I’ve faced a lot of times with the latest version of Microsoft’s productivity suite, Office 2010. After being forced to do a manual uninstall a couple of times, I decided to document my experience so anyone else who finds themselves in a similar situation can benefit from it.
