Your wireless router broadcasts your Wi-Fi signal on channels ranging from 1 to 13.* As more routers broadcast on the same channel as yours, your router’s performance generally decreases. The solution: scan for the least crowded channels and use one of those. More »
Windows: If you’re looking for a way to shut down your Windows machine — or lock it, hibernate it and more — when certain triggers are activated such as CPU and memory usage, bandwidth saturation or at a specified time, Shutdown Timer can help. More »
Windows: Dual (or triple or quadruple) booters know how annoying it is to wait around for the boot manager when rebooting. Free system tray utility iReboot lets you pick your OS as you restart, so you can go make a sandwich instead. More »
Windows: StartupSelector is a simple application for saving your Windows startup configuration and swapping it with previous backups for customisable startup configurations on the fly. More »
Windows 7 (beta) only: Even the earliest leaked Windows 7 betas haven’t been around long enough for multi-purpose tweaking tools to come around. SetteMaxer, though, offers a few of the tweaks familiar to the customisation crowd. The screenshot above is exactly what SetteMaxer is—just a handful of check boxes and an “Apply” button. It’s definitely worth reading at the project page below what specifically each feature does when applied, though most are familiar fixes like User Account Control/Defender disablers, menu speed options, and program crash controls. Still, with any tweaking utility of this type, be absolutely sure you want to make a change before you do so—some options, like “disable task scheduler,” can have some serious, system-endangering punch to them. If you see anything worth enacting in the list above, grab the executable, run it, apply the change, and you can delete it if you want, as SetteMaxer is a stand-alone file. It’s a free download for Windows 7 beta systems only. SetteMaxer for Windows 7 [via Life Rocks 2.0]
Linux only: Any Linux user clutching a mouse with more than the standard two buttons and a scroll wheel doesn’t have it easy trying to match the same kind of configuration options given by the manufacturer’s setup software, which is almost always Windows or Mac-only. The Flow of Consciousness blog walks through installing btnx, a program that can assign nearly any mouse click to a huge variety of actions. Got a Logitech with left and right buttons? Feel free to set them to switch workspaces or even rotate a four-sided desktop cube. The tutorial requires a fair bit of command line work, as the package isn’t available in most respositories, but the Ubuntu-related instructions can be adapted to most any distribution. btnx is a free download for Linux systems only. HOWTO Install btnx for better mouse control in Ubuntu Hardy [The Flow of Consciousness via Ubuntu Unleased]
The Workers’ Edge blog at CNET posts a handful of shortcuts and tweaks for Firefox and Internet Explorer, some of which we’ve covered here before, but the author points out a Firefox configuration tip that can be a real help to browsers of JavaScript-powered web sites. Using Firefox’s about:config dialog (by entering that into the address bar), type in the following: dom.disable_window_open_feature
From there, you can choose exactly which features show up on file uploaders, options dialogs, and other script-launched windows. For a more graphical and explanatory route into Firefox’s guts, check out the Configuration Mania extension.
Boost your productivity in Firefox, IE [CNET Blogs]
