Option | Windows 7

Cool Tools To Access Files Remotely

Feb 282011

Whether you’re a road warrior or simply own multiple PCs and want access to all your data from anywhere, here are a few easy ways to do it, and one not so easy option.

HP unveils reclining touch PC | Brier Dudley’s Blog

Windows News No Responses »

Feb 072011

If you’re in the market for an all-in-one Windows PC, there’s a new option from Hewlett-Packard coming out this week.

HP Launches Touchscreen Convertible Desktop, Needs a Market for it

Windows 7 No Responses »

Feb 072011

HP have announced their new Touchsmart 610 and Touchsmart 9300 desktop computers and have added a twist to the touch-screen desktop market. The new computers have a screen that pivolts from an upright position into a low angle for using as a multi-touch display.

The hardware itself is impressive with both Intel and AMD procvessors available, up to 16Gb of RAM, up to 1Tb of storage, a blu-ray drive and even the option to install an SSD.

The design is most unusual though I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t a product searching for a market.

The general update of all-in-one multi-touch PCs hasn’t been anywhere near as pronounced as with other types of computer and people aren’t buying them for the multi-touch capability.

With these new computers, HP is obviously trying to create a system where the multi-touch capabilities become easier for people to use, this simply isn’t the case with an upright PC.

So it’s an odd thing this new form-factor, not quite desktop and not quite tablet. This raises questions over who would want such a device and what uses they would put it to.

The most obvious choice here would be artists and graphic designers who would use it instead of a traditional graphics tablet. Clearly HP have thought of this by offering such generous specifications for the hardware.

It won’t be cheap though. The 610 is due to sell for $900 and there’s no price yet on it’s big brother.

Both machines will sport 23 inch screens when they ship and it will be very interesting to see how sales go.

Customize Windows Aero With AeroTuner

Windows 7 No Responses »

Oct 302010

One of my favourite things in Windows 7 is the cool Aero effects and features. Not only are the Aero effects nice to look at, but they also provide some functionality as well, see here for a walkthrough of them. You probably all love to customize Windows 7 as well, and Microsoft have done a good job at letting you do this with themes and more, but you’ve no way to edit the Aero effects. That is until now, with the AeroTuner program.

Now it doesn’t tweak your UI beyond belief, but what it does is add some cool customization options to the mix.

You can set two main colors for the Aero window to really groove things up a bit
It lets you take away transparency if you don’t like having it
And there’s an option to change “Aero Stripes”, what this is is the reflective look the you get with Aero Windows
Then you can also set the “Blur Balance” which gives you full control over the way your windows look

While you can edit some basic things from the Control Panel in Windows 7, this little program gives you those few extra things to tweak.

Try it out and have fun, make your Windows 7 desktop look even better!

Download it here

How To Clear Recent Jumplist Items

Windows 7 No Responses »

Dec 162009

Jumplists are one of the new additions to the Windows 7 taskbar. They appear when the user right-clicks an open program or folder in the taskbar and will display various information and quick access possibilities. Program developers can created custom jump list items suited for their applications but most jumplists contain a list of recently opened items with the program. This is comfortable as it makes it easier to open those files again but it can also be a privacy risk especially if the computer is shared with other users.

There is unfortunately no automated way to clear the jumplists or exclude items from being displayed there. There are two options for clearing the recent items in Windows 7 jumplists. The first is to right-click a recent item in the jumplist and select the Remove from this list entry. This will remove that entry from the list. The item can appear again at a later time if the file is executed again.

windows7 jumplists

The second option is tricky as it leads to a folder that is not normally visible in Windows. It is not even visible if the option to display hidden files and hidden operating system files is selected in the Folder Options. The only option to open that folder is to copy and paste its path into the Windows Explorer address bar (or use the command line).

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations

This leads to a directory that contains all recent items that are stored in Windows. Each program uses its own coded file name. One could go the extra mile and test which file in the recent folder links to which program’s jumplist entries to delete only selected jumplists entries. The items can be opened in a text editor and searched for recent item names. Other users might simply want to clear those items regularly to get rid of all of those recent items.

recent_items