"Mengintip" Kilau Windows 7

Berangkat dari feedback pengguna setia Windows yang menginginkan sistem operasi yang mampu melakukan tugas lebih mudah, cepat, dan mampu membuat sesuatu yang baru, Microsoft akhirnya memperkenalkan sistem operasi terbarunya yang sebentar lagi akan sampai pada versi final, Windows Seven.
Selain itu, "Kehadiran Windows yang ditunggu banyak orang ini juga dilatarbelakangi oleh tren hardware dan mobile computing yang semakin berkembang", demikian dikatakan Lukman Susetio, Windows Client Product Manager PT Microsoft Indonesia, di sela acara Microsoft Media Gathering pada tanggal 28-29 Januari 2008 lalu di Bandung.

Menurut Lukman, berbeda dengan selang waktu antara Windows XP dan Windows Vista yang memakan waktu hingga tujuh tahun, kemunculan Windows Seven hanya memiliki selang waktu tiga tahun dari kemunculan Windows Vista."Windows Seven yang kini masih dalam versi Beta, menawarkan begitu banyak feature-feature baru dan feature lama yang tentu saja telah dibuat semakin lebih baik. Diantaranya, tidak ada lagi jeda setelah sleep. Penggunaan energi dengan sistem operasi ini juga akan lebih hemat dan efisien. Dengan feature "Dim the Display", PC akan otomatis mengurangi brightness saat komputer tidak digunakan," tuturnya.

Tampilan taskbar dan media library kini kian menarik.
Bagian yang mengundang decak kagum diantaranya adalah kemampan Windows 7 dalam hal personalisasi PC, yakni ketersediaan beberapa theme baru yang mampu menampilkan slideshow berupa foto-foto pribadi pada desktop. Tak hanya itu, tampilan desktop pengguna Windows seven juga dapat dilengkapi dengan beberapa aplikasi mini menarik bernama Gadget."Bagian yang tak kalah menarik, ketika pengguna melayangkan kursor pada taskbar saat Windows mengaktifkan banyak aplikasi/file, task bar akan menampilkan beberapa aplikasi tersebut menurut jenisnya dalam tampilan mini. Uniknya, pengguna juga dapat melihat isi file atau menutup aplikasi tersebut melalui tampilan ini," jelasnya lagi.

Tampilan taskbar Windows 7 kini lebih informatif dengan tampilan windows mini yang memperlihatkan aplikasi yang sedang aktif.

Melengkapi featurenya, tampilan media center Windows 7 kini berbeda dan lebih dramatis dari versi sebelumnya, yakni bisa menampilkan MP3 sambil menampilkan foto pribadi dalam window MP3. Pencarian file dalam Internet juga dapat langsung dilakukan melalui feature Search Connector tanpa harus membuka Internet Explorer.

Menurut Lukman, kalau biasanya diperlukan konfigurasi yang agak rumit untuk membuat sharing akses Internet pada berberapa PC, hanya diperlukan empat langkah mudah dalam Windows 7. Untuk kebutuhan akses Internet jaringan, Windows 7 juga telah dilengkapi dengan feature Branchcache dan Direct Access.Bagaimana dengan sistem keamanannya? Berbeda dengan sistem operasi sebelumnya, konfigurasi keamanan pada Windows Seven begitu mudah dilakukan. Pada bagian action center, semuanya konfigurasi yang berhubungan dengan keamanan, dapat ditemukan dalam bagian ini. Tanpa harus memiliki PC yang berspesifikasi tinggi. Cukup ditenagai Pentium M prosesor 2 Ghz, Intel Atom dengan kecepatan 1,6 Ghz dan memory 1 GB, semua feature menarik Windows Seven ini dapat dirasakan dengan mudah.

Tips Koneksi Internet Lebih Cepat di Win XP dan Vista

Apakah anda tahu kalau selama ini Windows memakai Bandwit kita 20%?...

Ya!.. memang benar, windows itu sebenarnya mencuri 20 persen dari jalur akses internet kita, kenapa?.

Karena windows merupakan OS yang selalu menginginkan Up To Date seperti SP3 dan Service Pack, makanya dari pada itu dia sengaja update otomatis di background tasking kita.

Jadi Untuk mengambil bandwidth kita kembali dan koneksi lebih cepat lakukan langkah berikut ini

:

1. Klik start, run trus ketik “gpedit.msc” (Tidak pakai tanda petik)
2. Pada computer configuration - administrative template - klik Network.
3. Klik Qos packet scheduler - Double Klik pada Limit Reservable Bandwith.
4. Klik ENABLED reservable bandwith dan ubah settingannya ke 0 (nol)% habis itu Klik Apply dan Klik OK. Restart Komputer anda.

Tapi semua itu juga tergantung dengan kecepatan koneksi anda sendiri. Tips ini bisa mempercepat koneksi anda jika memakai OS Windows XP dan Vista.

from : telkomspeedy.com

Why you must not use free software for you registry

A windows registry is like a catalog for our computer. Every bit of hardware and software that is present in the computer is referenced to the registry.

In order to understand the registry a bit better, and thus our reasons as to why you must not use free software for your registry, let us take the example of a proper windows registry.Let's say you are opening Ms-Word.

The moment you click on the Ms Word icon on your screen, the reference in the registry to Ms Word will get activated. The details of the Ms-Word programs, such as where it is located, whom it is registered to, the last time it was accessed etc. are all accessed along with the program through the registry.


The registry contains references to all such information. Every time a program is installed, a huge number of such entries are inserted into the software and as the number of such entries inside the registry keeps increasing, it adversely affects the speed of the computer. To offset this, we need to use registry cleaners that help clean the registry and boost the system.There are many different registry cleaners available in the market. It is thus confusing for the average computer user to decide which cleaner to use.

There are many reasons why you must not use free software for your registry. A registry as we now knows contains information that is vital to the system. A registry also contains references to a lot of OS tasks and controls panel options. If any part of the registry is damaged then it might cause irrevocable damage to the operating system. Many systems are known to crash and hang after its registry is damaged.

The software available for free on the internet is not trustworthy. All your highly important data might just get ruined if at all the software malfunctions. Since the software is free, there is no guarantee accompanying it too. This is just one of the reasons why you must not use free software for your registry.

The other reason why use of free software for our registry is not advisable is because apart from the lack of guarantee accompanying any free software, our registry is also very vulnerable to any problems. Any problems in the registry, in turn can easily cripple the entire system, so much so that the whole operating system might also have to be re installed.Hence the use of free software for registry is strongly discouraged.for a free scan and more information http://www.pctool-registrycleaner.com/Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Summer_Smith

How to Rebuild and Reinstall Windows

If you are planning to rebuild a ’slow’ computer by reinstalling Windows (XP or Vista) from scratch, here’s a pre-installation checklist + some time saving tips. You existing data on the Windows PC will not be affected even if you do a clean install instead of repair or upgrade.

Fix Problems by Reinstalling Windows

As An IT, part of my job involves reviewing software which is so interesting but frequent installation (followed by un-installation) of software programs also tend to slow down the computer.

To deal with this problem, I did a clean installation of Windows last weekend and re-installed all the important software programs from scratch. As expected, the boot-up time has reduced and the computer’s performance has improved significantly. Luckily, this task is not as complex as it may sound but here are a few things you should remember before taking the plunge:

Pre-Installation Checklist

1. Get Magical Jelly to retrieve a list of product keys that were used to install Windows and Microsoft Office on your computer. Print this information. (Also see: Determining Windows version)
2. Get Belarc Advisor to create a detailed report of all software programs, hotfixes and hardware devices available in your system. Print this report as well.
3. Uninstall all software programs that had to be activated at the time of installation (e.g. Adobe Creative Suite, Dragon Naturally Speaking or Microsoft Office). It’s important that you do a proper un-installation of these programs through Add/Remove Programs because simply deleting the folder from Program Files directory will not free up the license on the manufacturer’s activation server.
4. Install Driver Max to create a backup of all device drivers currently installed on your system. This will come handy after reinstallation incase you are not able to locate the driver installers on the vendor’s website.
5. Create a backup folder on c: (say c:\old_files) and add the following files to this folder (a). Your Outlook pst file that has all the mails, contacts, tasks and other Outlook items. (b). If you have purchased any custom fonts, copy the relevant ttf files from the c:\windows\fonts folder. c. All documents, Live Writer drafts, pictures, music and videos from your My Document folder. (c). Backup your custom dictionaries from Firefox, Microsoft Word, Live Writer, etc. (d). Export all browser bookmarks and copy them to the backup folder. (e). Open your Firefox add-ons window, take a screenshot and paste that image in the backup folder. This is a good way to remember your favorite Firefox extensions. (f). Export your podcast subscriptions in iTunes as as OPML (XML) file. (g). Product keys (serial numbers) of all licensed software.
6. 6If you have a partitioned hard drive (say C: and D:), just copy* the backup folder created in step 5 to the D: drive. If you don’t have a partitioned hard disk or if the size of partition is small, install Live Mesh, add c:\old_files folder to your Live Mesh account and wait until all the files are uploaded on to the web. Mesh offers 5 GB of space and it may therefore be a good idea to burn all the heavy files (like videos, music, etc) onto a DVD instead of transferring them online.
   *You can copy large folders across drives through Windows Explorer or the xcopy utility.

Re-Install Windows from Scratch

Now is the time to do a clean installation of Windows. This is probably the easiest part. You can either boot your computer from the original Windows installation CD** or, while you are running Windows, pop-in the installation CD and run the setup.exe program just like you would install any other Windows app. Always choose “Fresh Installation” instead of “Repair”.

**If you installation media doesn’t include the latest service packs, try creating one yourself. Windows XP with SP3 is available as a downloadable ISO while you can slipstream SP1 into Vista fairly easily.

Post-Installation Tips

It can take around 30 minutes (or more) for the whole installation to finish. Now jump to the Windows Update website and let your browser download all the hotfixes, security updates, driver updates, etc. If your computer is unable to connect to the Internet, chances are that your computer doesn’t have the proper network drivers. No problem as you can easily get the drivers from the dump that you created using DriverMax utility.

If your display is acting funny or there’s no audio, just install the right drivers from the vendor’s website (preferred approach) or use your backup media. Once all the patches are installed, Windows Vista users can free up few gigabytes of disk space by making SP1 permanent. Windows XP users may skip this step.

Now turn on the Firewall and install all the other software programs and associated updates in any order. The next important step is to clone your disk image via DriveImage XML (free software), Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost. Windows Vista Ultimate also comes with a “Backup & Restore Center” that you may use to create a complete backup image of your entire computer to another drive, external disk or a DVD.

These disk images will come very handy after few months when your Windows PC get slow again. You won’t have to repeat the rebuilding exercise as the PC can be easily restored to the original state through these disk images.

Don’t experiment on your main PC

If you are tech enthusiast who loves to try new software / browser add-ons, I would strongly recommend that you don’t install these software on your main system - instead get Virtual PC (it’s free), create a Windows XP / Windows Vista virtual machine and use that environment as your new playground.

Another recommendation - do get a cane of compressed air to remove all the dirt from components inside the computer case. Sometimes software may not be the reason behind your slow and slugging PC - the culprit could be the dust sticking on the CPU heat sink.