Thursday, January 8, 2009

Boost Performance By Checking IDE Drive Transfer Mode

11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you’re struggling with decreased performance on a Windows based machine, it’s a simple fix to check to make sure your IDE drives aren’t operating in a slower, ineffective transfer mode. When fresh from the box—or your workbench— your computer should have had all its IDE drives set in Direct Memory Access mode. This is a far speedier method of disk access than Programmed Input/Output mode. The technical side of the two modes is dense but let it suffice: DMA is the fast and preferred method and PIO mode is the slower method Windows defaults to after having six redundancy checks fail. Things like power outages, doing a hard reset and other disk interruptions can cause these errors. Your Windows box may be operating in the slower transfer mode because it mistakenly thinks that your system is unstable or that there is something wrong with your disks. The fix for your computer downshifting into PIO mode is simple. Go to your Control Panel, click on the System icon, open up your Device Manager and pull up the properties for your Primary and Secondary IDE channels. Under the Advanced settings tab you’ll be able to set the Transfer Mode to “DMA if available”. Reboot and you should be in business. MakeUseOf has a full step by step guide with screenshots if you’d like a visual reference. Check Your Transfer Mode To Boost Computer Speed [MakeUseOf] More »

gOS 3.1 Hits The Decks

11:00PM Kevin Purdy | gOS, the Ubuntu-derived Linux desktop that’s focused squarely on Google products and other webapps, has updated with newer versions of its core products, including the Windows-app-running WINE, Firefox 3, and support for newer Google Gadgets.If gOS is new to you, check out Adam’s tour of its monstrous webapp powers. Along with some pretty refined theming and taskbar implementation of the standard Ubuntu look, gOS can run as a fully-fledged Linux system in itself. gOS 3.1 is a free download, requires an x86-based computer with 256MB of RAM to run or install. gOS Gadgets 3.1 [ThinkgOS.com] More »

Windows 7 Theme For A Vista Desktop

9:00PM Kevin Purdy | deviantART crafter giannisgx89 offers up an unofficial Vista (SP1) theme that puts Windows 7’s basic look and feel on your desktop in a lightweight, non-intrusive way. Take a closer look below. More »

Windows 7 Beta Available As Free Download This Weekend

4:42PM Adam Pash | Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced at CES that Windows 7—the highly anticipated followup to Windows Vista—will be available as a free, public download on Friday, January 9. Windows 7 Beta has been out in the wild (i.e., BitTorrent) since December, but if you’ve been waiting for things to get a little more legit before you tried it out, you won’t have to wait much longer. More »

Is Too Much Of Your Budget Being Spent On Tech?

3:30PM Angus Kidman | An increasing percentage of the average budget gets spent on technology-related purchases. Is that an inevitable function of the modern world we live in, or an area ripe for some savings? More »

Flexicord Remembers Not To Get Tangled

1:30PM Angus Kidman | Flexicord takes an unusual approach to managing cables: it ships in a coiled form, but “remembers” the shape you stretch it into (rather like the bendy toys of my childhood). End result? Once cables are positioned, they won’t move, but a protective layer ensures data isn’t corrupted and wires don’t snap. The one in the shots (shown off at the CES Unveiled event this week) is an HDMI cable, but what I’d really like is the USB model for my home office. It’s only a prototype for now (commercial release is scheduled for later this year), but a useful option to bear in mind for future cable management projects. More »

Qantas Cuts Points Needed For Free Frequent Flyer Flights

11:30AM Angus Kidman | Qantas has reduced the number of points needed for its Classic Award frequent flyer flights (the ones with a fixed points cost but potentially limited seat availability). More specifically, it’s cut the number of points you need to use if you want to avoid airport taxes and charges and get a totally free flight from 5000 points to 3,500 points per sector. So a Sydney-Brisbane flight, which used to be 13,500 points charge-free, is now 11,000 (and remains 8,000 if you pay the taxes yourself). The change only applies to domestic flights, but it’s still a nice improvement. Check out our guide to Qantas’ frequent flyer scheme for more on how to best use your points. More »

Web Browsing Options For Windows Mobile

9:30AM Angus Kidman | The Windows Mobile Team Blog offers a useful overview of alternative Windows Mobile browsers for owners who want to use something other than Internet Explorer, including previously-discussed Skyfire, Fennec and Opera Mobile. Despite the source, it’s a fairly even-handed discussion and a good overview for new Windows Mobile device owners — though author Jim Causey does talk up the benefits of Windows Mobile’s developer diversity (”Whenever you have a strong developer community, you find a range of alternatives to match the way you like to work and play”) without mentioning the platform’s well-deserved reputation for instability. Survey of Web Browsers for Windows Mobile [Windows Mobile Team Blog] More »

Cisco WebEx Brings Online Meetings, Collaboration To Your iPhone

8:00AM Adam Pash | iPhone/iPod touch only: Cisco’s popular meeting and collaboration tool WebEx has found a new home on the iPhone, and, frankly, it looks very impressive. The free application lets you attend any WebEx meeting over 3G or Wi-Fi, including simultaneous conference calls, chat, and document sharing (you’ll probably want to bust out your headset to use it all). We don’t actually use WebEx here at Lifehacker HQ, so I wasn’t able to put it through a full test, but if the video demonstration is any indication, it’s a pretty impressive offering for the mobile worker. WebEx is a free download, iPhone and iPod touch only (though clearly two-way voice isn’t really an option for the iPod touch). Cisco WebEx [iTunes App Store] More »

MLB Supercharges Mouseless Browsing In Firefox

7:00AM Adam Pash | Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension Mouseless Browsing (MLB) adds numbers next to clickable elements on any page, allowing you to quickly navigate to any portion of the page from the comfort of your home row. We’ve mentioned MLB once before, but the latest version adds support for dynamic webapps like Gmail, Google Reader, or Facebook. (Previously if a page was updated without reloading entirely, the new links were not identified by MLB. Now they are.) Aside from support for dynamic apps, MLB has seen several improvements since we first mentioned it. The core functionality remains the same, though: Just type the number of the element you want to jump to, hit enter, and MLB “clicks” on that element. Mouseless Browsing is a free download, works wherever Firefox does. Mouseles Browsing [via Download Squad] More »