Better Faster PC

With the imminent release of Windows 7 come a whole lot of new features and one of them is the ‘SuperBar’, a new kind of taskbar. Now it is possible for anyone using Windows XP to get a similiar feature with a tiny download (180KB).

Just head over to ViGlance at Lee-Soft here and download it. Then you have a very nice looking SuperBar on your XP desktop. I am using it myself on my XP machine at the moment and have not seen any performance issues or any other problems.

Though it may already be unofficially available on torrent trackers like Mininova (just click here) build 7100 (or the Release Candidate -  RC - release) will only officially be available for download by the general public on 5th May. You can read more about it at the Windows Team Blog here. If you want to check out some screenshots of Windows 7 RC (build 7100) then you can check out this page here giving 50 screenshots of the latest Windows 7 release. Some more good news regarding Windows 7 is that an XP compatibilty feature will be built in. According to Microsoft this feature should make Windows 7 completely (100%) backwards compatible with older Windows XP software. This is great news for users and businesses still using legacy software, forcing them to stick with Windows XP, whether they wanted to or not.

And finally, if you haven’t seen them, Windows 7 RC has included the most funky, cool wallpapers I have probably ever seen! Really worth checking out! The Flickr photo pool is here and you can download the entire wallpaper pack here.

Using Adobe AIR (which you can read more about at Wikipedia here) Polaris delivers Google Analytics Data to your desktop using the new Google Analytics API. Polaris is still in Beta but apparently works fine so if you are interested check out the Polaris website here. You can get Adobe AIR here.

The environment is a hot topic in this day and age and whilst many hardware manufacturers are (slowly) making changes to the devices they manufacture, those of us with existing, or older hardware often are branded as greedy consumers and destroyers of Mother Earth.

Not so anymore! Edison is a free program that automates the process of energy saving on your PC so that even the novice computer user is able to do their bit for the environmen. Check out the Edison website here.

Often when you do a project on the computer you will be faced with a task that requires specialized software, which in many cases can be quite expensive. The answer is either to shell out the money and purchase the software you need to get the job done, or to find an alternative on the internet. This can often be difficult, especially if you do not know much about the software you are downloading. That is where AlternativeTo comes in. It is a site dedicated to providing user suggestions of what they use instead of programs like Photoshop, example.

Check out the AlternativeTo website here.

If you use the Open Source and free alternative to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org then you will be happy to know that version 3.1 is on the way. RC1 (Release Candidate 1) is already available if you are an early adopter. Find out more about OpenOffice.org at Wikipedia here and if you want to download the RC1 release then the download page is here.

If you have been looking for something a bit different to use for your background wallpaper then you might want to check out these three links, there are some really great wallpapers:

•  The abstract gallery - Caedes.net
• 30 Impressive Colour Spectrum and Rainbow Wallpapers
• 26 Gorgeous Aurora and Colour Spectrum Wallpapers

If you are interested in running Ubuntu but are not sure how to partition your drive or are a bit worried about making a mistake and wiping all your important files or ruining Windows installation then Portable Ubuntu might just be exactly what you are looking for.
Portable Ubuntu is a great idea for anyone wanting to learn Linux without the difficulty a beginner might encounter, especially running a dual boot system.
Lifehacker has a great post telling you how to get into Portable Ubuntu, check it out HERE. Want to find out more about Ubuntu Linux then check out the Wikipedia entry HERE

The guys from Mozilla (the same people that give us software like Firefox, Songbird, Thunderbird and others) have been busy lately. Here is a short update of what is going on:

• Personas (Firefox ’skins’ that change the appearance of the browser) has reached the 1.0 release. Check it out HERE. Though I will be honest I prefer the themes (which you can get from Mozilla HERE) myself
• Firefox 3 is officially more popular than Internet Explorer 7 in Europe and this is the first time in years that Microsoft is not top dog! Read more about it at Reuters right HERE
• Mozilla Labs has released Version 0.3 of Weave which is in essence similar to XMarks (or Foxmarks as it was called) meaning it enable synchronization of Foxmarks settings across multiple computers. Though not yet at 1.0 Weave already has a few extra features which XMarks does not, like Browsing History and Open Tab synchronization. It also works with Fennec, the version of Firefox for portable devices (also still in development). Check out Weave right HERE
• Lifehacker has a great post detailing four new expermintal extensions which you would probably want to read. The extensions are CacheSearch, FindList, Firefox 3.5 New Tab Prototype, tweecious. Check out the post HERE

If you are a user of Outlook 2007 you will be interested to know that there is a new hotfix available from Microsoft that, “will improve hard disk usage, startup and shutdown times, and help those with smaller, cached mailbox storage”.

This cumulative update will apparently be included in Service Pack 2 but as this is not available at the moment and if you are a regular user of Outlook 2007 then you might want to install it.

The post at Lifehacker is HERE and the Microsoft download page is HERE.