Themes are another part of Windows to see an improvement with 7. I’ve appreciated being able to select several groups of wallpapers for my Desktop, especially as Windows 7 can now change wallpapers automatically.

More themes can be found at the Personalization Gallery. There aren’t any previews of the themes, clicking on the picture starts the download.

The themes only work with Windows 7 but the wallpapers in the Desktop Backgrounds tab are simple jpg images so they will work with earlier versions.

In fact, it is possible to extract the wallpapers from the theme files if you have 7-zip installed. Download the theme pack. The filename will be something like Face.themepack. Right-click on this file, click on 7-zip and then Open archive. A 7-zip window will appear showing the files in the pack. Double-click on DesktopBackground and then extract the photos. I dragged and dropped them to a folder in my Wallpapers folder. Yes I have a folder for wallpapers, mainly due to getting a new set every month from Smashing Magazine.

There is also a video and a step by step guide to making your own theme, both modifying an existing theme on your computer and then saving

You can also find more Desktop gadgets here, along with a link to the gallery.live.com website for the full collection.

Posted by Tim Smith on November 11, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

It’s not always well publicised, but Microsoft provide a huge amount of documentation about Windows and their other software online and without requiring registration. The MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) is sometimes a little technical for ordinary users but there’s still good stuff to be found.

Case in point are the Icon Design Guidelines. If you’ve ever wondered about creating your own icons for custom folders or websites, they’re worth a read.

Some of the instructions are geared towards Photoshop but there is still plenty of useful advice, and a list of other software that can be used. If you want to convert images into icons, you may want to also look at Icon Craft or The GIMP if you don’t want to spend any money.

Posted by Tim Smith on October 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (3)

I wrote yesterday about the large amount of disk space I was able to save thanks to the Disk Cleanup wizard. If you use hibernate on your computer, then there is a small word of caution. Don’t select the option Hibernation File Cleaner.

Although  you will retrieve the space used for the hibernation file, hibernation will be disabled and you will have to go back into Power Properties in the Control Panel to turn it back on. The amount of space needed will be roughly equal to the amount of RAM in your computer.

There is a warning in the Disk Cleanup window but, like most people I imagine, I didn’t read it the first time I selected the option.

I couldn’t find this option in the Windows XP Disk Cleanup wizard. I don’t recommend trying to delete the file by hand.

Posted by Tim Smith on September 11, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (10)

I know that using an 80Gb hard disk for Vista was likely to lead to space problems, but what I hadn’t realised was how much space I could have saved by running the Disk Cleanup wizard.

I spent about an hour last night going through my folders trying to find the missing GB that I couldn’t account for. Not having had much luck, I gave the Disk Cleanup wizard a go.

What a discovery. 10.7Gb had been used for ‘System queued Windows Error Reporting’. I’m guessing that’s memory dumps, and with 2GB of RAM that probably doesn’t mean that many crashes. It’s still a huge amount of space and has a lot to do with the constant warning of low space in the Computer window.

I also had 6.29GB of temporary files and a thumbnails file of 1.78GB.

Leaving thumbnails aside, I’ve managed to free 19.5GB of space. A quarter of the disk.

The moral of the story: Run Disk Cleanup on a regular basis

Posted by Tim Smith on September 9, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (4)

The days of being able to show off a flashy image on your desktop and think that's enough to impress are sadly over.

If you want inspiration of just what is possible, you won’t go wrong by taking a look at Lifehacker.com. The most recent is a rather good picture of a Fender Stratocaster guitar with some clever custom menus.

The good thing about Lifehacker is there are explanations of how to work on the bits round the edges; it’s not just about the image any more.

One day I will get round to following the instructions for my Ubuntu laptop.

Posted by Tim Smith on March 23, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (10)

It’s finally here. Internet Explorer 8. I’ve got high hopes of better standards support and performance improvements. Both of which were promised by Microsoft when I saw them last week for a quick preview.

I see a vision of what my evening has in store. Well, it will keep me off Ubuntu if nothing else.

Don’t forget to check out our preview videos one and two for a taste of what is to come.

Posted by Tim Smith on March 19, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Yesterday we caught up with Asus, so today we went to see the latest products from one of its biggest rivals: MSI. MSI's Wind range of netbooks compete directly against the Asus Eee portables, but the focus at MSI's stand seems a little different: rather than the dozens of netbooks Asus is showing, MSI seems to be focusing on fewer models with more unusual features. Here, for example, is its forthcoming "hybrid" Wind U115:



It may look unremarkable, but there's some interesting technology inside. It uses both a solid state  disk (SSD) and a hard disk, but the hard disk can be disabled at the push of a button. This gives you loads of cheap storage space when you want it, but allows you to save battery power when on the move. MSI claims a battery life of nine hours, and we expect it to cost around £400.

More unusual still is the X-Slim series notebook, which looks a little like a white plastic Macbook Air. We got our hands on an engineering sample to take some photos:



And here it is from the side (note the two USB ports - one more than the Air):



This new "X-Slim" range will initially include two models. The X340 pictured here will use an Intel Core Solo ULV (Ultra Low Voltage) processor and include an HDMI output, and is expected to cost around £800. The X320, however, will use an Atom processor and should come in at between £500 to £600, making it a potentially interesting choice for those who want a really thin and light notebook on a budget. The notebooks will be on shelves in May.

Like Asus, MSI is also creating low cost desktop PCs. Here's the Wind Top AE1900, with a 19" touch screen display, DVD writer and an Atom processor:



It should cost around £600 and will be available by the end of March. Several other models are in the works, including one without the touch screen (the AP1900) as well as 20" and 22" models. A 24" version could appear later this year. Slightly more unusual is this model, the Wind Box DE200:



It has a Blu-Ray drive, HD video output and runs Windows Vista Home Premium - making it an interesting Media Center PC. Expect it in May, but prices are not yet confirmed.

And there are many other interesting products tucked away around the show. Icy Box, makers of hard disk enclosures, was showing a few new media player products that support H.264 video:



This model, the IB-MP309-HW, should appear in March, while one with a slot that accepts a 2.5" hard disk caddy will follow in May. Over in another hall, Zotac have what must be one of the smallest PCs at the whole show:

Posted by Tom Royal on March 4, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (4)

One of the oddities of computing is that even though your computer is never fast enough, the CPU spends most of it’s time hanging around waiting for something to happen.

That presents a problem because the CPU is then wasting power so there are all kinds of clever tricks for slowing them down or reducing the voltage to save electricity. You might think this is only of interest to notebook users, but remember that this could have a reasonable impact on your electricity bill.

Following a tip from a reader (thanks Ashley), I did a bit of digging into the power plans on Windows Vista. I have to admit that I’ve never really paid that much attention apart from making sure that Power Saving is selected when I’m running off batteries.

What I discovered was the difference between the Full and Balanced power schemes. I’d flitted between them but hadn’t noticed any difference.

It turns out that Balanced mode scales the CPU speed (or frequency) depending on how busy it is. If there is nothing going on it runs at half speed and gets progressively faster as the work load increases. It’s impressively dynamic, compared to the slow/fast that I’ve seen in Ubuntu with the CPU frequency utility.

There’s some interesting analysis over at The Metaverse showing how the CPU frequency is automatically throttled in Balanced mode. But I decided to do some of my own.

There’s a lot of boring figures but the upshot is that in the PC Mark tests we ran there was no performance drop when using Balanced over Full Performance.

Given that power consumption should be reduced with the CPU speed reduction, I’m struggling to think of when Full Performance would be a good idea.

At last, a way of being green with no drawbacks!

Posted by Tim Smith on March 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Windows Vista blog has announced that Vista SP2 has reached Release Candidate status. This is the last stage before final release and means it is available to people with Technet and MSDN accounts. Hopefully we’ll get our hands on it soon and will take a look.

A full list of what Service Pack 2 will include can be found here. In addition to all of the updates released since SP1, it will install Windows Search 4 and an improved Windows Media Center.

Posted by Tim Smith on February 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (6)

If there was ever an idea of mine that was considered ‘outside the box’ by my colleagues it was suggesting a feature on using the Dvorak keyboard layout.

It was offered with the best of intensions (take note please naysayers). I’ve not used it for a little while because I didn’t have time to learn it to level of Qwerty but I was definitely picking it up more quickly than I’d expected.

If you’ve never heard of Dvorak, I strongly recommend looking at this introduction. DVZine.org is also an excellent resource but the site seems to be down at the moment.

To summarise, the Dvorak layout was created with a lot more attention to how people type. This even included arranging the home keys (the ones your fingers start from) with the relative finger strength in mind, giving your little (pinkie) finger a break.

Anyway, the Colemak keyboard solves one of the biggest problems of the Dvorak keyboard by leaving the most commonly used shortcut keys – Z X C V B - in the same place as Qwerty.

Here’s a picture from Wikipedia, and there are lessons on the Colemak website.

Posted by Tim Smith on February 26, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)