Windows Vista can be demanding on the resources and take a toll on your limited hardware resources. Low end hardware configuration makes Vista sluggish, whereas on the same hardware Windows XP runs just fine. There are a few handy tips that you can try out to make Vista work faster on your limited resources. Although the best way to make it run faster is upgrading the hardware, but that isn’t an option for everybody.

Tip 1 : Disable Windows Sidebar

Windows Sidebar is a resource hog. Although it might seem pretty sitting on your desktop but it uses up huge amounts of RAM and hence slowing down your computer significantly. If you have less than 512MB of RAM then you should disable the sidebar.

Tip 2 : Get latest drivers

Drivers make a significant improvement in performance and over the time new versions keep getting released. Vista had driver compatibility issues when it was released but manufacturers have over the time made almost all their drivers Vista compatible. So you can get the latest drivers from either the manufacturer’s site or hit Windows Update and let it find the latest ones.

Continue reading ‘How To Speed Up Windows Vista’

If you would like to remove the big shortcut icon arrows in Windows Vista and get a more clean looking desktop, install the free Vista Shortcut Overlay Remover.

Download Vista Shortcut Overlay Remover

Note: To remove shortcut icon arrows in Windows XP, use Microsoft’s TweakUI.

Firefox 3.0.1 is now available and is more secure and stable. It fixes Firefox 3’s most common cause of crashes.

To download, click ‘help’ and then click ‘Check for Updates’. Download the update as soon as possible.

If you have used Vista before you would have noticed the way Vista shows the current drive space for each drive near the drive icons. This can be done in Windows XP too now with the help of a freeware called Vista Drive icon.

Once you install the freeware you will notice the new icons, similar to the ones in Vista, and the horizontal bar that shows the current drive space below your drive icons. Another good news is that this software does not use much memory.

Download Vista Drive Icon from here.

Yahoo has been working on an instant messenger specifically for Microsoft Windows Vista.

Features of Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista

• Instant message, voice, webcam video, and more
• integrated Yahoo! Messenger Sidebar gadget to keep up with the friends that matter most
• add Windows Live Messenger friends to your contact list to see when they’re online and IM them
• keep conversations organized by dragging and dropping them into one tabbed window
• brand new emoticons, program icons and alert sounds
• instantly change the look and feel of your Yahoo! Messenger interface
• automatic groups are created in your contact list based on your Yahoo! interests (i.e. Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football league)

Continue reading ‘Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista’

FLV Player is a freeware to play Flash FLV files and can be used to view downloaded YouTube videos. The installer comes with an optional FLV association, so double clicking an FLV file opens and plays the file in the player. It also adds a ‘loop’ button so that you can play FLV files continuously.

Continue reading ‘FLV Player’

I have wrote earlier on how to download YouTube Videos and save them on your computer inorder to view the videos offline. The video should be saved in a .flv extension so that it can be played with a FLV player.

To rip or extract audio or video from YouTube videos, you can use the free FLV Extract utility. The video is saved to .avi and the audio is saved to MP3.

FLV Extract is easy to use, just select what you want to extract and then drop a FLV file on the tool to extract audio or video from FLV files.

YouTube Downloader is an easy to use software that can help you download video clips from YouTube and convert them to various formats from your desktop.

To download a YouTube video with this tool, select ‘Download video from YouTube’, enter the video URL and click Ok. The video is then downloaded with file name ‘get_video’ and without extension.

Continue reading ‘Download YouTube Video’

Have you ever wanted to be online on Google Talk and at the same time appear idle to your friends? Google Talk does not provide built-in functionality to allow you to control your idle status but by installing a simple program like gAlwaysIdle you can be always idle as well as never idle to you Google Talk contacts.

Once you have installed the program, right click on Google Talk on the taskbar and you will be able to see three more options- ‘Normal Idle’, ‘Always Idle’ and ‘Never Idle’.

Continue reading ‘How To Make Google Talk Status Always Idle’

Have you ever wanted to quickly paste the path of a file or folder you are already looking at in Windows Explorer to an open dialog? It is possible in Windows Vista.

Just hold down the shift key and right-click the file or folder and choose the copy as path from the menu.

You will get something like this: “C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\img17.jpg”