Category: Windows 7

Why You Shouldn’t Install Third Party Codecs on Windows 7

Another quick update for this evening. What many people may not know but Windows 7 actually supports a wider range of codecs (i.e. COmpression / DECompression software) compared to Windows XP and Vista, specifically: H.264 (popular for Apple devices and web streaming), AAC (a popular audio format also preferred by Apple), DivX, Xvid. As a …

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Visually Track Hard Drive Space with WinDirStat

WinDirStat - Folder Summary Screen (Completed)

Here’s a quick tip for this evening. If there is one thing that Windows has lacked all of these years it is a way to quickly assess from a macro level which folders are taking up the most space without having to take a “divide and conquer” approach by right clicking each folder, going to …

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The 2TB Barrier – What Does it Mean for You?

Throughout last year I made a couple of mentions of the 2TB (two terabyte) barrier for physical storage in modern computers but didn’t take the opportunity to flesh out exactly what it means for the regular consumer out there. In this article I am going to explain why this is important and what you need …

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Change Your Windows 7 Logon Screen Wallpaper

Another short and sweet tip for today. While some of us tend to leave many of the presentation features in Windows at their defaults some of us like to customise things to suit our taste. One such element of customisation is the wallpaper at the logon screen. Unfortunately, this has always been something fiddly to configure all …

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Adjust and Mute Volume for Individual Windows Applications

Windows 7 Volume Mixer (Sound Device Selection)

Sometimes, you might have one or a few applications that will make noise on your computer for whatever reason on a regular basis or the cause of the sound is outside of your control (i.e. receiving instant messages, e-mail, etc). This can be particularly annoying if you are trying to concentrate on other things such …

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Upgrade to Microsoft Security Essentials Version 2.0

Microsoft Security Essentials - Manually Check for Software Updates

Quick tip for this evening. An update to Microsoft Security Essentials was released by Microsoft on 16 December, 2010 which saw the version number increment up to Version 2.0. This was after the second Tuesday of the month (AKA “Patch Tuesday”) where Microsoft releases patches and upgrades for its software through Windows Update. This meant …

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Improve Screen Readability – Increase Text Size

One complaint that I do come across after a user has had their screen set at its native resolution is that the size of the text on the screen has shrunk and, especially for smaller displays that run at high resolutions, can still be difficult to read. Luckily, you can increase the size of the …

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Improve Screen Readability – Enable & Tune ClearType

Leading on from yesterday’s article which looked at modern digital displays such as LCDs, LEDs and plasmas, the concept of the native resolution and how lower resolutions may not align with the physical rows and columns of pixels on a display. Today, I have another tip to further improve the readability of text on your screen. ClearType, …

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Improve Screen Readability – LCD Screen Native Resolution

It never fails to amaze me how many people do not take the time to optimise the readability of their screens particularly when they will be using it for many hours a day. I must have lost count of the number of times I have seen LCD screens running below their native resolution resulting in …

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Windows 7 Tip – The Case of the Missing Run Box

Windows 7 - Start Menu with Run command enabled

If you are an old hand with Windows like myself you may have become accustomed to using the old “Run box” found by click on “Start” and then “Run” since Windows 95. However, with Windows Vista and Windows 7 it disappeared from the Start Menu in favour of getting people to use the newly included …

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