The laptop is completely switched off and isn’t updating or anything like that, so I’m completely baffled why this is doing this. Why is it just randomly switching itself back on. Anyone got any ideas?

I’ll be honest with you. The main reason I want to do this is because of laziness. I have my main laptop connected up to my 32″ LCD television so I can stream clips/movies etc from it. I occasionally stick a film on and then lie in my bed browsing the web with my small netbook but it gets annoying to constantly get up and change things on my main laptop. Hence the need for remote control!

I found that there are alternatives available. The first one I came across was called RealVNC but I couldn’t get it to work right away so I kept looking. I then came across a script called Team Viewer.

Team Viewer is a fantastic script which easily lets you control another laptop or pc. Both parties need to download and install the script and then you just need to enter the id and password of the computer you want to control. That’s it. It has some extra features too like file transfers and the ability to switch between two monitors (which is handy as I extend my laptop to my television). Best thing about it is it’s free.

If you are looking to remote control a friends pc I would recommend trying msn messenger, it works very well. However, if you want to control another laptop/pc you own, I recommend using Team Viewer as it works well and is incredibly easy to use.

Link : Team Viewer

If you are using it, you will appreciate these tips on how to recover closed tabs. Enjoy

Service Pack 2, the latest service pack for both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, supports new types of hardware and emerging hardware standards, includes all of the updates that have been delivered since SP1, and simplifies deployment, for consumers, developers, and IT professionals.

You can download SP2 at the links below. If you have a new laptop and are unsure if your laptop is using a 32 bit of 64 bit version of Vista go to your Control Panel and then click on System. Under the System section you should see a field called System Type, which tells you type of operating system you are running.

• 32 Bit Vista Users : Download Here (348.3 MB)
• 64 Bit Vista Users: Download Here (577.4 MB)

Please note, in order to update Vista to SP2, you need to have installed SP1 already. If you have not already done this, you can download Vista SP1 at the links below :

• 32 Bit Vista Users : Download Here (434.5 MB)
• 64 Bit Vista Users: Download Here (726.5 MB)

The Release Candidate will work until June 1, 2010 but from March 1 2010 it will kind of be unusable unless you purchase a license as your pc will automatically switch off periodically. You will get close to a year using this beta version for free though, which isn’t too bad as from what I hear, it’s really good.

In order to run it you will need a pc with :

• 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 GB RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

For full instructions on how to install Windows 7 on your computer, please click on the link below

Link : Download Windows 7 Release Candidate

The current stable release is 9.64 although you can download a preview version of Opera 10, their fourthcoming browser which has ‘Opera Turbo’.

I admit I don’t know how the technology works but according to them :

That’s why we’ve been working on Opera Turbo, a server-side optimization and compression technology that provides significant improvements in browsing speeds over limited-bandwidth connections by compressing network traffic. This does not only make you surf faster, but also lowers the cost of browsing when you are on a pay per usage plan.

I installed it today and it does seem a little faster than FireFox and Chrome, although there is a chance that I only believe this because I installed it right after reading about how quick it was….the power of suggestion!!!

I recommend downloading and trying it out

Download Opera Turbo

1. When you start to type in a URL in the address bar FireFox it starts showing you previous sites you have visited. This is quite helpful but sometimes it can get crowded with sites you don’t plan on visiting again. You can remove sites from the address by pressing Shift+Delete.
2. When you are viewing a webpage you can change the size of the text font by holding down Ctrl and spinning your mouse wheel ie. Ctrl+(Spin-Wheel-Mouse)
3. You can do a quick find for text on a page by using /. All you do is type / then then keyword you want to search for.
4. When you right click on an image you can select ‘View Image’ to visit the exact URL of where the image is stored. If you hold down Ctrl when you select ‘View Image’ it will open up the image in a new tab.
5. If you enter a word into your address bar and then hit Ctrl+Enter, FireFox will then enter the www. before and .com afterwards. So for example, to visit Yahoo you would enter yahoo then hit Ctrl+Enter.

Some more basic quick keys :

• Ctrl+N – Open new browser window.
• Ctrl+T – Open new browser tab.
• Ctrl+Shift+W – Close browser window.
• Ctrl+W – Close browser tab.
• Ctrl+F – Find a word or phrase on the webpage.
• Ctrl+D – Bookmark page.
• Ctrl+K – Start a websearch (puts cursor to search box at the top right hand side).
• Ctrl+U – View page source.
• Ctrl+R – Reload page. You can also use F5 to do this.
• Alt+LeftArrow – Go back a page. You can also use the Backspace key to do this.
• Alt+RightArrow – Go back a page.
• Alt+Home – Go back to your Home Page

If you have any cool FireFox tips I’d love to hear them

I checked on the web and it seems that thousands of other people have the same problem. However, there seemed to be dozens of different solutions and the first few I tried didn’t work.

Eventually I found a codec pack which seems to have fixed it. All you need to do is download a codec pack called codecs6030_allin1.exe, install it and then restart firefox. My laptop uses Vista so if you have a different operating system it may not work but I’d give it a try anyways.

Good luck

Kevin

Boot & run Linux easily using a USB Flash Drive

I found a good little site the other day called PenDriveLinux. The site has loads of tutorials on how you can boot from a USB flash drive. You can run linux through your flash drive however I decided to create a new partition to install it in. Most linux sites have tutorials showing you how you can install without using a cd however I found this to be the most in depth. Since my new HP 2133 doesn’t have a CD drive, I found this site very useful.

Do you use Linux?

I’ve been reading a lot of tips and tutorials on Vista the last few days and I have learned a few tricks to improve performance. I’ll post these tips in a few days but today I want to talk about the rating system Vista has.

Vista is able to rate how powerful your system is. The rating is called the Windows Experience Index.

My main laptop has an index score of 4.7

My new portable laptop has a measly score of 2.0. According to Microsoft this means

A computer with a base score of 1.0 or 2.0 usually has sufficient performance to do most general computing tasks, such as run office productivity applications and search the Internet. However, a computer with this base score is generally not powerful enough to run Windows Aero, or the advanced multimedia experiences that are available with Windows Vista.

The range goes from 1 to 5.9 so my main laptops score of 4.7 isn’t too bad. According to them

A computer with a base score of 4.0 or 5.0 is able to run all new features of Windows Vista with full functionality, and it is able to support high-end, graphics-intensive experiences, such as multiplayer and 3 D gaming and recording and playback of HDTV content. Computers with a base score of 5.0 were the highest performing computers available when Windows Vista was released.

If you use Vista you should check this out. To see your index all you need to do is open up your control panel (not classic view), choose ‘System & Maintenence’ and then ‘Performance Information & Tools’.

So what’s your score?