Laptop Info Today

Archive for the ‘Notebook Software’ Category

If you are a frequent visitor of my blog, you will notice the new theme design that I’ve applied in this blog.

And you might be wondering why I ditched the UDB Moneymaker theme which was doing quite well with this blog. Personally, I like the UDB theme till 2 days ago.

Well, to make it even super …. this theme is made by me; my first ever wordpress theme.

To honestly speaking although I’m a techie guy, I’m not well versed with PHP so how do I make this theme without having PHP Essential knowledge?

Simple, it is down with a software called Artisteer.

Artisteer is a software specialized to making themes in a snap. It can be you are designing a Joomla template, Wordpress template, Drupal, ASP pages or just the basic html, Artisteer has got the tools to make it done simpler with no coding at all.

I was quite sceptical but I decided to give it a go.

I downloaded the trial yesterday and by today morning ( a total of 3 hours designing) I completed my design.

To get things done using a new software which you did not have knowledge on that is fast.

Lets go thru the details ….

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In the digital downloading world of the internet, there are quite a number of files that we download and one of the most popular files types are in .rar formats.

Contarary to this, the .zip file formats is also popular but you can still able to extract this file from your laptop from your in-built Windows file extraction wizard (that is provided you are using Windows XP or above).  You need not install WinZip (a third party software) and mind you that WinZip is neither FREE either.

WinRAR on the the other hand is not FREE ($29 for one user license) but if you’ve download a .rar file format ….. what can you do?

I received a call yesterday for a friend who is having this problem while using his laptop. Immediately, I recommend him to install 7-Zip, an open-source compression tool that is able to extract a .RAR file format.

There are numerous file compression tool out there and you have to be certain which is the one that suits you.

The 3 most popular FREE file compression softwares to date are Zip Genius, IZArc and 7-Zip. Unfortunately Zip Genius does not support .RAR file formats. Unlike the free ones mentioned, none of them is able to create a .RAR file and the only that you can do it is via WinRAR .

As I was working on my Lenovo laptop yesterday (running on Windows Vista Home Basic) , I was prompted to install the new Internet Explorer 8 browser via the automatic Windows Updates. Well my question to install or not to install?

Well since its coming from Windows Update, I just install the updates.

Guess what …..

This is consider to be one of the fastest Windows installation update.

Well let me explain …..

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I was working on my laptop for the past month or so doing some C language for my final year project (which explains the lack of posts I’ve done recently) and I was testing out this new software called Notepad ++.

We already know that there is a tiny but powerful Windows utility in notepad, but there are still rooms on improvement on it. What about wordpad? 

Well, if you are a programmer (although to tell you frankly I hate programming in C) just like me , then Notepad  ++ is a great tool on top of the current notepad.

This is because Notepad ++ supports various file extension code from ASP to PHP to CSS any many more …….

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What if you can move your C and D drive together without the loss of data?

Sounds like a tough one to answer, right .

Well, I’ve been busy finding a solution on this problem and I can tell you that most windows based applications do not work too well on this.

Yes, there’s Symantec Partition Magic, Acronis Disk Director and many others but when dealing with C dive ( which is where the main program files are kept) …. changes are you will an fatal error during the process.

I’ve tried Symantec Partition Magic ….. and it hits an error when the process reach 55%. I repeated this process again and again (for about 8 times to be exact) and the same error pops out ; you can sense how frustrating it becoming. 

I did a google search and check forums for answers but to no avail.

It is till I came across GParted Live ……

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I was approached by one of my colleagues today for whom is having difficulty on how to edit and export his music (from .wav to .mp3) on his laptop.

He wanted to have this done using a freeware and of all the softwares he stumbled, it is all pay per use.

Well, I recommend a software called Audacity.

Audacity is a tiny music editor that works very well (even if it is running on a laptop) and the trick about getting your .wav file to export to .mp3 format is that you need to patch the software with a file (dll) called lame_enc.dll which is available for free at dll-files.com.

It is a cross-platform software which means it works on Microsoft Windows, Mac OsX and Linux operating systems.

There is a lot of features that Audacity has to offer like :-

• Record live audio.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
• Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
• And more!

But if you are into serious sound editing, softwares like Sony’s Soundforge for example is a great and value for money software.

I have quite a few problems recently with my laptop and unfortunately I have deleted a few important files.

I know some of you will say ….. “Restore it from your Recycle Bin.”

Unfortunately it ain’t that simple.

I had “CCleaned” to cleanup my junk files and that includes my “Recycle Bin” folder.

I was searching for answers and finally stumbled on this software called “Undelete Plus“. This tiny piece of software does the job perfectly and I am able to get my files back. Furthermore, it is available for “FREE” for a limited time period.

When I mean “Free”, it is free to download and free to use.

Download this powerful application today !

The alternative office suite for PCs (laptops included), OpenOffice.org, has now released version 3.0 of its office suite.

There are many new features in this new suite and for the first time ever ” a PDF importer”.

Which means you can import you pdf files …. edit them up and save as a document, spreadsheet, presentation or draw file (something Microsoft haven’t come out with ).

Though Microsoft has been working with third party ….. Able2Extract on this function to be in the future releases of Microsoft Office suites, Sun Microsystems has leapfrog a step further with this release.

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