PCWizKids Tech Talk - Configure your Gaming Rig and Tweak Windows for Performance: March 2008

March 27, 2008

Free full game Download of Command & Conquer Gold

Electronic Arts released the classic Command & Conquer Tiberian Dawn real-time strategy hit as a free download for the game's 12 anniversary.

In order for C&C GOLD to run on Windows XP, you will need to burn the ISO image onto a CD with a CD Burner and any "CD Burning Software" such as Nero, Alcohol, etc. There are also a few extra steps in order to make C&C GOLD run on Windows XP after you burn it to CD

Download Locations

GamersHell.com

Command & Conquer Gold Free Full Game Part #1 (580.81MB)

Command & Conquer Gold Free Full Game Part #2 (565.06MB)

Command & Conquer Windows XP Patch (15.88KB)

FilePlanet.com
The Full Free Game can be downloaded from Fileplanet here(1Gig File)

The instructions doc is here

EA has provided the original Command & Conquer Gold as a free download to celebrate its 12th B-day. It is compatible for Windows XP. This is the same version included with the collectors pack Command & Conquer: The First Decade.

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March 26, 2008

Evolution Mail Setup for Gmail in Ubuntu

The built in Mail program for Ubuntu is Evolution Mail. It has a familiar interface to MS Outlook and OSX Mail.

In this tutorial I walkthrough setting up Evolution mail witha POP account, in this example I use my gmail account information. This can be applied in similar fashion for your own ISP mail server information accordingly.

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March 18, 2008

Windows Vista SP1 Officially Downloadable

Microsoft Corp. has released Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) to Windows Update today and the public as a separate download.

Interested Vista users can manually open Windows Update and download SP1. Users who have set Windows Update to automatically download updates will find the software automatically downloaded to their PCs in mid-April.

Users can download the stand-alone installation package directly instead of doing the update. The installer comes in at 434MB for the 32-bit version and 726MB for the 64-bit edition. Microsoft plans to roll out SP1 next month to users who have Windows Update set to automatically download and install fixes.

Late Monday, Microsoft inadvertently confirmed that SP1 would hit the update service on Tuesday; before that, however, others, including the Malaysian Web site TechARP.com, had correctly pegged March 18 as the delivery date.

Remember, there are prerequisits to installing SP1, so Windows Update will detect if a user has certain drivers that must first be updated before installing SP1. Until those users have the updated drivers in place, Windows Update won't offer SP1.

Is your Vista running slow, need more Memory?

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March 17, 2008

ooVoo - Free Next Gen Conferencing vs Skype

Skype, iChat and Tokbox and Sightspeed are among the many popular free services capable of delivering high-quality video online, so what makes ooVoo so special and a better choice?

How's FREE calls to a landline or mobile phone in the USA or Canada!

Not only can you have a real-time, face-to-face chat with upto 6 people at once or record and send a video messages, but a new offer gives you 500 minutes of free online to landline calls to anywhere in the U.S. or Canada.

Also there are video effects that you may have seen on WebCam software in ooVoo, which allow you to change or dress up your appearance while your chatting. These are little things that make it more attractive than using Skype which feels plain and pre-web 2.0.

Setting up your contacts is quick, and if you want you can import your contacts from your email programs such as Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail and AOL mail for example.

Video calls can be viewed in Standard View or Sidebar View, giving you viewing flexibility, depending on your desktop tasks.

Save your video calls as AVI, FLV or HTML embedded video

So is this the next Skype? Well, the infrastructure and service is new compared to Skype, and since ooVoo is in Beta currently, its the new kid on the block with much to offer but with no real track record yet. However having said that the video quality is excellent, sound is good though you might want to get one of those headsets with a built in Mic for best results.

Main control panel shows status of other users on your ‘friends list’ so that you can see who is available or not - also allows user to type in customized status or message to others.

ooVoo system requirements are:

Microsoft Windows 2000, XP or Vista, OS X 10.4+
Pentium 4 1Ghz + or Power MAC-G5 1GHz or Intel MAC
256Megs of Ram
20 gigs of space
WebCam

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March 15, 2008

Customize your Windows XP to look like OSX Leopard

In my previous article I showed how to customize your Windows XP to look like Vista, if your looking for a different feel, perhaps Mac's new OS X Leopard is for you (without having to buy a Mac). Here is how you can do it for free.

The first and easiest part of customization is getting icons and wallpaper themes. I have found a free standalone package here that works with Windows Blinds. Download package here.

If you dont have windows blinds, you can still take the wallpaper and images included in the package and separately download a leopard icon package from here.

So now that you have the wallpaper and the icons, next would be to get the leopard dock as your taskbar replacement.
(click to enlarge)
My choice for this is the RK Launcher. A free application that will allow you to have a visually pleasing Leopard bar at bottom of the screen. It has support for themes, PNG's and ICO's and is smooth.
Requirements are: OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista with at least 16 bits (65536 colors) of screen color depth or higher.

However , this 13meg installation tough small, does require some CPU processing. I do find that if you have a dual core PC your fine. CPU utilization increased to 50% on just one of the 2 Cores when I did a mouse over test on top of the shortcut icons on the doc. The mouse over is just like in OS X, you see the icons enlarge as you move over, and I was moving my mouse back and forth over them causing 1 CPU so increase to just over 50%. Once you stop moving the mouse over, CPU droped down to 5% or less which is fine. So if you only have 1 CPU there could be a performance hit here for you.

Task Manager resources used before and after the mouse over test on the dock (click the images to enlarge)

Download this Leopard Like Dock directly from here

Last but not least is Flyakite OSX 3.5 . The latest conversion pack to make your Windows based operating system look and feel like Apple Mac OSX. This software is freeware and is not affiliated or endorsed by Apple or its affiliates. It has no spyware or adware. The installer automates the transformation of your Windows XP+ system files , it does the registry tweaks and installs the 3rd party software required (sounds, skins, cursors etc).
Recommended System requirements are a 32bit Windows OS (XP+), a 1Ghz CPU and 512Megs of Ram. Download this package directly here

Please remember that installing these freeware packages are at your own risk, though I have had no issues with it, I cannot guarantee you wont. Good thing is you can use the uninstaller to undo the changes to its good that way.

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March 14, 2008

Microsoft Free Utility Migrates XP's Apps to Vista

Microsoft's Technet has a utility called "Windows Easy Transfer Companion" (WETC). It can copy key software programs from Windows XP to Windows Vista for those planning to migrate over and want to make sure that the apps still work.

Windows Vista contains a similar utility, however, this version runs both on the source Windows XP PC first by scanning you hard drive, gathering basic system information, and analyzing all installed software. You need to connect the Windows XP (Source PC) to the separate Windows Vista (Target PC) via network or a easy transfer USB cable.
The utility communicates with the Windows XP machine to display a list of all discovered applications which you select to be transferred (click picture below)
At the end, a status message tells you which programs were copied and whether errors occurred.
Here is a sample list of programs that have been transferred with all its settings successfully in the past using this utility:

Program	Vendor	Versions
Acrobat	Adobe	7
Acrobat Reader	Adobe	7, 7.0.5, 7.0.8
AOL Instant Messenger	AOL	5.9
AOL Toolbar	AOL	3
Avant Browser	Avant Force	11
Cam Frog Video Chat	Camshare	3.72
Trillian	Cerulean Studios	3.1
Google Earth	Google	3
Google Talk	Google
Google Toolbar	Google	2.0.114, 3.0.126.3, 4
Windows Live Mail Desktop	Microsoft
Firefox	Mozilla	1.0.7, 1.0.6, 2
Netscape	Netscape	7.2, 8.0.2, 8.0.4
Opera	Opera	8.5
Eudora	Qualcomm	6
Skype	Skype	2.0
Yahoo Messenger	Yahoo!	7, 8.1

Program	Vendor	Versions
Call of Duty	Activision	2
Battlefield 2	EA Games	1
Star Wars Battlefront	Lucas Arts	2

Download the Utility directly from Microsoft here

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March 12, 2008

2008 Top 10 Web Hosting Services

Here is a TOP 10 list of 2008's Web Hosting Starter Plans .
Keep in mind that the details below are starting prices for their least expensive hosting package. There are many more options for each one of these.

The list is sorted from most value you get for the money! As well as reliability and support. Each may have similar offerings, but the bottom line is their track record. All of the hosting services provide free setup. Support is similar aswell. However something to consider is server uptime. For example the 1&1 Hosting company has an excellent record of server uptime compared to StartLogic's , however you get less web space with their starter package. The score is then a little lower because of this. Each of these scores takes these scenarios into consideration. There is a give and take for each, and remember, service and hardware do get upgraded and change from time to time, so one can never be 100% sure they have the best environment with the latest installations. So past performance and track record is mainly what to go by most of the time.

	WEB HOST (click image)	PRICE USD	Web SPACE	BANDWIDTH	SETUP / Support	FREE DOMAIN	SCORE
1		$4.95	1500 GB	15000 GB	24/7 E-mail, Phone	Yes	94%
2		$4.99 + 3 months free	120 GB	1200 GB	24/7 E-mail, Phone	Yes	93%
3		$6.95	1500 GB	15000 GB	24/7 E-mail, Phone,live chat	Yes	91%
4		$4.95	350 GB	3000 GB	24/7 E-mail, Phone	Yes	90%
5		$88/ year	300 GB	3000 GB	E-mail,live chat	Yes	88%
6		$6.95	1500 GB	15000 GB	24/7 E-mail, Phone	Yes	87%
7		$4.29	10 GB	300 GB	24/7 E-mail, Phone	Yes	86%
8		$3.95	5 GB	250 GB	24/7 E-mail, Phone,live chat	Yes	85%
9		$4.95	10 GB	500 GB	24/7 E-mail, Phone	Yes	85%
10		$11.95	Unlimited	Unlimited	24/7 E-mail, Phone	Yes	83%

As you can see from the above chart, it isnt easy deciding which to chose from the top 5, so whats your need? Server space or Bandwidth? Do you expect lots of traffic or will you be hosting video and downloads? Stuff like that will drive up your costs.

Conclusions

When it comes to reliability StartLogic 99.9% uptime guarantee is backed by an L.A. data center that boasts redundant fiber optic connections to Qwest, ELI, Cox, and major tier-1 backbone providers such as Broadwing, Global Crossing, and UUNET. It’s a raised floor facility run with fully redundant power and UPS backup systems, power conditioning systems, and backup generators. For the amount of space and bandwidth your getting its a great deal.

When it comes to price and cost effectiveness, 1&1 hosting gives 3 months free on the Home plan, for a limited time. But whether you take advantage of that deal or not, web hosting services with 1&1 are a bargain, as low as $4.99 per month. Search marketing tools include an organic search submitter, and $125 in online advertising credits, as well as a direct email marketing tool. Keep content fresh with blogs and easy RSS feeds.

When it comes to administration and control of your site, HostMonster prides itself on providing you only the best in user interface technology, giving each customer the latest cPanel X control panel for the most efficient and effective website management you can find. CPanel X displays all the web stats you need to run your website smoothly.

When its user users and track record for growing, BlueHost is one you can depend on for being around for a while, it has over 350,000 users!

So go through each slowly, see which has the features you need, not the ones that are nice to have, the last thing you want is to pay for features you probably will never use.

March 7, 2008

Convert and Download Online Videos for Free

Don't settle for watching videos online on Youtube, watch what you want when you want and in the format you want. You can convert and download your favorite videos for free and watch them offline anytime. More and more people are using thier PC as primary means of entertainment instead of TV. Did you know you can get over 3000 STATIONS on your PC or Laptop for free!! Click here to learn how to turn your PC into a Super TV!

Still you may want to download the online video which in most cases is in FLV (Flash Video) format and dont know what to do with it! There are some free online multimedia sites that provide the ability to download and convert public and private videos to different video formats for your: mobile phone, iPod, iPhone, Windows, Mac or Linix PC.

Below is a list of the 10 Top free conversion sites that let you specify the URL of a video or upload your own , then you select the media type to convert it to any of these popular video codecs Divx,Mp4,Mpeg,AVI,MOV, etc... and download it to your PC.

1.Video CodeZone

Convert and download videos from popular websites without installing any software or downloading scripts to your PC. This is not just a service that allows for download of videos but you can save those videos in most formats. No Registration required.

2. MediaConverter

Multi-file type converter and splitter supporting video, sound, ringtones, images and documents:

Audio file conversion (any to any):

mp3
ogg
wav
wma (only decoding supported)

Video file conversion (any to any):

3g2
3gp
avi
flv
m4v
mkv
mov
mp4
mpg
mpeg
psp (only encoding supported)
rm
wmv

Office files conversion:

doc to odt or pdf, xls to ods or pdf,ppt to odp or pdf,odt to doc or pdf,ods to xls or pdf ,odp to ppt or pdf

3. Mux

Mux an automated web service bot living within the massive grid of the Video Computing Cloud (VC2).

VC2 is comprised of a grid network of servers and storage, powered by Amazon Web Services. Mux claims they can convert any video file your throw at them!

4. Vixy

Allows you convert a Flash Video / FLV file (YouTube's videos,etc) to MPEG4 (AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3/3GP) file online. It is using a compressed domain transcoder technology. It converts FLV to MPEG4 faster and less lossy than a typical transcoder.

When you submit a URL, it will download and convert to the video format, and then you can download the converted file.

5. All2Convert

Convert Internet videos and video from your computer in different video formats (3gp, mp4, mov, avi, wmv, swf, flv, mpeg etc.) for your cell phones, iPhone, iPod, PSP, PC. After video convert you can transfer this videos to your cell phones, iPhone, iPods, PSP via USB cabel, Bluetooth etc.

6. ConvertDirect

Online flv converter for Flash video files such as those used by Youtube. Supported output formats include avi, 3gp, mp3, mp4, wmv, mpeg, mov and psp. You can watch your vids on PC, iPod, Zune, PSP and various mobile phones.

7. MovAVI

Other than requiring no software to install (that's true about everyone on this list) the guys from MovAVI are also proud of the fact there are no ads on their site to interrupt you while you are enjoying their free service. Add up to 5 files limited to 10 min each and 100 Mb total size. Enter your email address and MovAVI will notify you when your files are ready. There is also a cool feature allowing you to merge your files videos into one large movie.

8. Flvix

Youtube Google Video dedicated online flv converter. Flvix comes from the folks who do Pingoblog, a cool ping service for bloggers. Very simple yet efficient interface. Converts Youtube and Google videos and serves them for download in avi, mov, mp4, 3gp and mp3 formats for PC, Mobile phones, iPod and PSP.

9. ConvertTube

Youtube dedicated online flv converter. Allows you to convert Flash video files as used by YouTube to popular PC, iPod, PSP, iPhone and mobile phone formats such as wmv, mov, mp4, mp3 and 3gp. Same as Vixy, this service also claims to be doing its job faster and less lossy than a typical video transcoder.

10. Zamzar

Zamzar is a free online file conversion dedicated to transforming songs, videos, images and documents into different formats. With this service the focus is on high-quality file conversion for as many file formats as possible. The basic free service lets you converting files up to 100MB each. In case you are an online video conversion freak and "want more Zamzar" you can signup for basic, pro or business account and get to convert larger files (up to 1Giga!), a personal inbox for online file storage and faster file conversions (pricing and signup here). Nice and clean interface design. Fun to use.

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March 4, 2008

Add a 3D Flare to your Windows Desktop for Free

If your looking for a change in your desktop appearance and behavior, you might want to try the freeware version of Real Desktop. It gives your ordinary desktop new life and turns it into
a next generation 3D Interactive Desktop.

The recommended system requirements are as follows:

Windows® XP / Vista
Windows® DirectX 9.0c
AMD ATHLON™ XP 2400+ or higher (alternatively Intel® Pentium® 4)
512 MB main memory
DirectX able graphic card: 128 MB NVIDIA® Geforce™ 6 or better,
ATI® Radeon™ 9700 or better
Screen resolution 1280 x 1024 at True Color (16 million colours)
Internet connection

My initial thoughts were the amount of resources it probably uses up, but I was surprised to see it didnt take that much memory compared to my Firefox browser.

Also I loved how you can configure it to look the way you want with wallpaper and backgrounds giving it your personal touch.

You can stack icons, drag them anywhere on the desktop and flip them around. The Recycle Bin becomes a three-dimensional trash can. This certainly looks like a feature that could be a part of the next release of Windows 7 perhaps.

Its a free license to use if you get the lite version.
Download it for free instantly from the developers website.

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March 1, 2008

Create Shortcuts of Hidden Commands in Windows XP

There are many commands in Windows that you can enter in the Run Command Prompt for example. But did you know which ones they are? If you do or dont it doesnt matter, My tip shows you how to make a shortcut to important commands that will execute control panel options for example, saving you a few clicks here and there instead of having to navigate to where you want to be.

This tip has a list of very useful commands to access areas of Windows XP that would normally take you a little longer to find or get to if you didnt have a shorcut for it. I also explain how to create the simple shortcut to the command so you can reuse it.

Windows XP Commands
Add/Remove Programs = appwiz.cpl
Administrative Tools = control admintools
Computer Management = compmgmt.msc
Device Manager = devmgmt.msc
Direct X Control Panel = directx.cpl
Disk Cleanup Utility = cleanmgr
Disk Defragment = dfrg.msc
Display Properties = control desktop/desk.cpl
Group Policy Editor = gpedit.msc
Internet Properties = inetcpl.cpl
Kill all applications that are "Not Responding" = taskkill /fi "status eq not responding"
Local Security Settings = secpol.msc
Network Connections = ncpa.cpl
Password Properties = password.cpl
Remote Desktop Services = mstsc
Services = services.msc
Shuts Down Windows = shutdown
Logs You Out Of Windows = logoff
System Configuration Editor = sysedit
System Configuration Utility = msconfig
System Properties = sysdm.cpl
User Account Management = nusrmgr.cpl
Windows Firewall = firewall.cpl

Now that you have a list of useful commands to create shorcuts to, follow these easy steps:

1. Right Click on your Desktop, then chose New > Shortcut

2. In the prompt for the location of the item, type the command from the list I provided you above.
For example if I want a shortcut to the Device Manager I'll type devmgmt.msc , then click Next.

3. Enter a description of your Shortcut then click Finish.

There you go, now you have not just any shortcut , but a special one to quickly activate the Device Manager for example.

You will also notice it creates the appropriate default icon for the command aswell.

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