Laptop Info Today

Posts Tagged ‘windows’

The title might sound a bit ridulous to most but I’m not surprised if the are a few of visitors of this years IT Show (which is held at Suntec City) will be doing just that.

To top that, LCD TVs has their prices nose-dived and if someone were to say that they are going to get a 42 LCD TV for thie  laptop display ; I’m not particularly surprised.

Just take a look at the Panasonic TH-42PV8H  below.

This baby is now going down below the retail price of SGD$1299 !

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I received a call from a friend today and he told me he is unable to defragment his laptop.

It came to huge surpise that his laptop is still running Windows 98SE operating system!

WHOA !!!!!

To backtrack to today, it is an operating system most considered extinct and definately want to forget. It’s been 10 years since its release and within that 10 years cycle we have seen Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista came into existence.

The answer to why people are still using Windows 98SE ……  is somewhat a mystery but anyway because it was a friend of mine so I decided to help out.

If you encounter your Windows 98SE laptop having problems with Disk Defragmentation and having an error that says “Defrag004” then you would have to perform a scan disk first before proceeding.

For those who are very familiar with MS-Dos command prompt, type scandisk /all/Autofix .

 Then proceed the defragmentation as per normal. The defragmentation process should run as it is.

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 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.

Recently (well its yesterday actually), I did a post on the new Open Office 3.0.

One of the functions that thrills me with the new Open Office 3.0 is definitely the PDF Importer.

Finally a freeware that allows you to edit your PDF file (well it’s a long wait really ).

Unfortunately this is NOT part of the installation files but it is an extension or add-on to the Open Office 3.0 suite. Do note this extension does not work with earlier versions of Open Office.

It is one of the hottest downloads of the moment; so HOT that it has already reach 254749 downloads at the moment and 58382 downloads from this week already.

What’s more users from various platforms are able to enjoy this breakthrough function. Windows, Mac OSX, Solaris and even Linux (x32 and x64) users can use this powerful tool on their already FREE Open Office 3.0.

To download the PDF importer for Open Office 3.0, click here.

To enjoy enhancing your Open Office with new extensions (if you are familiar with Firefox style of add-ons, this is very much similar) , Click here.

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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All we know that Skype is one of the most popular (or should I say “The Popular”) VOIP software currently used by people around the world these days.

Because it is so popular, sometimes we tend to receive poor signals in term of voice chat or video chat ( I had it sometimes on my laptop when I’m talking with my friends on some blogging issues).

Anyway there’s an up and coming software that might be common to some laptops out there, and I’m not talking Skype.

Introducing CQPhone, an easy to use PC-to-PC phone, that allows voice chat, as well as video chat and text chat. In addition, you can easily exchange pictures and web links by simply dragging them onto the interface.

One thing I like about this software is that there is no registration involved, you simply install the software and it automatically assigns you a CQ phone number (how simple can that be).

It works with most firewalls out there and here’s a catcher …. you can even hook your camcoder to the software (it will detect and you’re off video chatting - how cool can that be).

It works on any Microsoft Windows operating system and guess what “It’s FREE” !

Download the software here today.

Some of might have new laptops recently and might be surprised that you are not given any cds from your operating system.

This happens and is something quite normally …… so to speak.

It is something not out of the blue as certain manufacturers are cutting down their own cost by placing the operating as restoration backup at the D drive, something I find absolutely ridiculous.

One common brand is HP or Compaq ( which is now a sister company of HP) .

Hey, I’m not try to blast companies here but sometimes you may wonder what if the hard disk itself is faulty. How are you going to recover the operating system from there?

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