XDA developer mnomaanw has successfully installed Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP and Linux on HTC EVO 3D in a fairly easy process. To summarize, all a user needs to do is download the required software, modify a file or two and run the apk.  And it boots into Windows.

This Windows port for Phones is one of the best ever. It does fair justice to the hardware buttons, touchscreen by giving you fairly easy controls.

How to Install Windows 95, 98, XP on Android Phone: HTC EVO 3D

Pre-requisites: Windows 95/98/XP Image: ISO or .IMG. (IMG preferred and tested).
Step 1. Download bochs.apk [mirror] and SDL.zip [mirror]. Put SDL.zip on root of sdcard/
Step 2. Put the Windows 95/98/XP disk image .img/.iso [(need to change setting in bochsrc.txt accordingly (iso not tested yet)] of any operating system in SDL folder and rename it to “c.img”.
Step 3. Run Bochs apk. Let it boot (takes a while) and enjoy.

Note: Use this bochsrc.txt to use a folder called “HDD” on your sdcard as a drive in windows. Replace the original bochsrc.txt withthe one stated before. Further updates on xda thread.

Instructions for input controls are as follows:

• To emulate touchpad on touchscreen and left/right mouse buttons on volume
• You can also click touch screen to generate mouse left button click.(this does not work everytime)
• Back = BackSpace, Menu = Enter, left-upper corner click generates TAB
• left-lower corner click popups keyboard

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We all admire and use reopen last closed tabs on our favorite modern browsers. It comes really handy when we accidentally close a running browser tab or realize immediately after closing it that you missed something.

What if it was possible to ReOpen closed explorer windows, Applications. Thanks to UndoClose, its possible on Windows.

Windows 7 application windows has totally different way of operating, even though it maintains a list of  recently opened programs and items in Start Menu, it doesn’t support bringing them up again using a hotkey.

UndoClose remembers all recently closed folders and applications, and lets you restore them in the same sequence in which they were closed using two hotkeys.

Using two hotkeys you can do pretty much all. Use Ctrl+Shift+F to open last closed folder (in Windows Explorer) and Ctrl+Shift+A, to open last closed application. You can use them multiple times to cycle through the history. You can even change the hotkeys from Settings of the application that sits silently in system tray.

Application is light weight and eats nominal RAM. No installation required, its portable across all version of Windows7.

Download UndoClose

via AddictiveTips

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So far, we’ve covered various Transformation packs for Windows, OSX, Ubuntu and the experience had been outstanding.

Lion UX Pack provides one of the easiest and yet most powerful Transformation pack for Windows 7. Post-installation you can easily select dock configurations, system font and various OS X UI elements. Configuring the start orb, caption button, expose feature and spaces is among the best features of Lion UX Pack. Its a single click transformation!

However, we would like to give a word of warning about rolling back changes. Most transformation packs are impossible to get rid of, once installed. For this one, we found creating a new user helps, but it may not be an optimal thing to do.

Download Lion UX Pack

Key Features:

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There was time  when Desktop PC was considered to be the major part of the Computers segment. Times have changed, thanks to new powerful Clouds and computing grids, servers now form a big part of the computers.

On Desktop PCs, Windows is still holds the majority, followed by OSX which forms around 10% of the desktop market. But 2011 and 2012 are the years of smartphones and tablets, a domain where Windows has failed to compete with Linux based OS: Android.

In this article, we will cover the Linux Growth rate, Trends, Infographics for recent years.

Best metrics for popularity of an OS are Virus and the Games. Both of them are on the rise for Linux. Lets look at how Linux is doing in each computing segment.

Linux in Desktop PCs

Windows wins here, Linux loses by a large margin. Linux Desktop market share is nearly 0.83%  where as Microsoft Windows 7 claims the major share of 42.65% while the other releases of Windows XP and Vista claim 36.44% and 10.88%. However, beyond these numbers, the trend is somewhat bright for Linux. In the beginning of 2011, Linux was only 0.74% which rose to 0.83% by the end of the year. Its slow, but its going up. Same goes for OSX, but windows share is gradually falling.

Linux in Servers

Windows servers lead in the market share over Linux Servers but the trend is shifting towards Linux flavors. First quarter of 2010 in terms of units sold, Windows had a 75.3% market share, (1,379,487 units) compared to 20.8% for Linux (380,429 units) and 3.6% (65,451 units) for Unix.

When it comes to revenue, as you would expect, Windows Server-based systems have an even bigger lead. In the fourth quarter, Windows servers accounted for 48.9% of the market ($5.1 billion), compared to 16.2% ($1.7 billion) for Linux, and 22.2% ($2.3 billion) for Unix.

The truth is, both Windows and Linux will continue to thrive in the server market, and Windows will continue to dominate. Linux fans may like to think they’ll dethrone Windows, but this latest report is one more piece of evidence that’s not likely to happen.

Linux in Mobile devices: Smartphones, Tablets

2011 & 2012 are years of Mobile. People use smartphones more than they use desktops, so it s the most important OS of all.

In nutshell, Smartphone market is divided into Android, iOS or Blackberry. Android is based on the Linux Kernel and is by far the most popular smartphone OS in the world, with Symbian on the steep fall. According to the Global Stat Counter, Android took off with a 13.6% market share in December 2010 and rose to market share of 21.83% by the end of 2011. The numbers speaks for itself, Google is activating 700,000 new devices everyday, this doesn’t include unofficial, non-market android devices.

For iOS its started with 23.57%  and went down to 22% of mobile OS share in 2011. Windows is no where to be seen.

Linux has already won over Windows, smartphones alone take Linux market share to be higher than no. of windows PCs. Android is growing with over millions of apps for the OS already available in the appMarket, with 400,000 apps already.

Mobile OS usage:

Though 2011 was another year for iPad, the tech world witnessed some very fine Android Honeycomb devices; namely Samsung Galaxy Tab, ASUS Transformer, ASUS Transformer Prime, Motorola Xoom and ASUS Slider. And in the horde of tablets (about 45 notable tablets) there were only 5 tablets to have Windows OS, and unfortunately all of them failed to find any place in market. Tablets in 2011 aided with Windows OS were HP Slate 500, ASUS Eee Slate, Fujitsu Stylistic, MSI WindPad 110W and Acer Iconia W500.

Here’s an Infographic for Growth of Linux in last 20 years, every milestone detailed:

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Adding Multiple monitors to your setup definitely increases productivity. But it can get all tricky without use of the right software. That’s why we had prepared a list of Best Dual, Multi-Monitor Software for your PC, Mac.

ScreenSlider allows you to utilize your Android display to extend the monitor and drag your cursor through the air rather magically from display to tablet/smartphone. All you need is a Windows PC (mac osx soon) and Android tablet /phone connected to same Wifi.

How to Install & configure ScreenSlider on Android

Step 1: Purchase ScreenSlider ($1) from the Android Market. Once installed, request a download link for the ScreenSlider desktop client by giving them your  e-mail address.

Step 2: Launch ScreenSlider on your Android Tablet, phone and enter a unique device name. And on the PC, Right-click the ScreenSlider icon in the System Tray and select Find devices. Double click your device in the list once it appears.

Step 3: Next, you’ll be prompted to pair your device. Enter the code displayed on your Android in order to pair device and PC.

The app is not perfect, there are glitches and its bit laggy.  However, it should improve over time.

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You can search based on song title, artist, album and playlists. The app is slick. To get started, all you need to do is select a search criteria, enter a search term, and click Search. You can select a song from the search result by clicking the (+) sign that triggers the download.

GrooveDown is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Download GrooveDown

Warning: We’re not responsible for any legal issues involved with Music. We recommend that you download free & unlicensed music.

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Metro UI is sure a fresh concept for modern intuitive User interaction. Luckily enough, you can get Windows 8 Metro UI on Windows 7, thanks to Metro7 app.

Metro 7 provides instant access to built-in widgets and a custom store from where you can install more applications. Obviously, these are not same as native Windows 8 apps, but they are pretty close.

The tiles provide time and date information, access to built-in metro store, weather application, and shortcuts to numerous websites like Facebook and Badoo. You can go ahead and customize it to your needs.

Overall, Metro7 is a good application for emulating the Windows 8 MetroUI style interface on your Windows 7 desktop, however, it still seems to be under construction as some of the widgets simply lead to a blank page and many of the  website shortcuts on the main interface seem to be there to fill the main interface. Metro 7 has been developed for Windows 7.

Download Metro7

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Not every app that was on windows will have an equivalent on the mac, thats why there’s a need to run windows app on OS X.

An app called WinOnX makes this a lot easier than installing Windows on a Virtualbox or VMware on your OSX. The app costs a mere $4.99, and makes things much easier.

How to Run windows application On OS X

Min Req: OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Step 1: Download WinOnX [Mac App Store].

Step 2: Open WinOnX and browse the .EXE file you want to run. This can be an installation file or a direct runnable .exe application.

That’s all, enjoy your windows apps on OS X.

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The alpha version allows most Android games & apps to be installed on a PC, but prohibits some games, such as Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja, that all would be available in paid version.

Not every app will work perfectly, but most of the apps should. Users can to push programs from their phone or tablet to the PC from a program that will be available from the Android market.

“Their first computing device is a phone,” Sharma said in a telephone interview. Indeed, BlueStacks had its idea for virtualization technology long before it had the idea to do Android on Windows. That specific implementation, Sharma said, came when one of his colleagues got back from a trip to Switzerland. On that trip, the colleague’s young daughter had played a lot of Android games. Back home, she wanted those same programs to run on the PC. With that, BlueStacks had its business model.

BlueStacks raised $7.6 million in Series A funding earlier this year from backers including Ignition Ventures, Radar Partners, Helion Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. The company has slightly more than two dozen workers at its headquarters in Campbell, Calif., and at offices in India, Taiwan and Japan.

Try it out, its cool.

With Windows 8, Microsoft would set certain guidelines to OEMs and PC manufacturers. All Windows 8 machines will need to be have the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) instead of the venerable BIOS firmware layer. BIOS has been pretty much the sole firmware interface for PCs for a long time.

The EFI system has slowly been making headway in recent years, and right now EFI firmware is compatible with Windows supporting the GUID Partition Table (GPT), OS X/Intel, and Linux 2.6 and beyond machines. EFI is seen as a better hardware/software interface than BIOS, since it is platform-agnostic, runs in 32- or 64-bit mode, and GPT machines can handle boot partitions of up to 9.4 zettabytes. (That’s 9.5 billion terabytes.)

Linux supports UEFI, thats is not a problem. The problem is Microsoft‘s other requirement for any Windows 8-certified client: the system must support secure booting. This hardened boot means that “all firmware and software in the boot process must be signed by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA)”.

By locking, Microsoft intends to prevent injection of malware onto Windows PCs, which looks like a justified claim. Linux bootloaders are EFI-ready but none of them are signed, hence they would just not work on PCs.

Bootloader Unlocking?

So what, we would Unlock the bootloader, like we did on Android phones and iPhone. No, it won’t be that easy. If all parts of the chain need to have a CA signature, then swapping out a machine’s signed EFI layer with, say, an unsigned BIOS or EFI would not work. Matthew Garrett from Redhat notes:

“Microsoft requires that machines conforming to the Windows 8 logo program and running a client version of Windows 8 ship with secure boot enabled. The two alternatives here are for Windows to be signed with a Microsoft key and for the public part of that key to be included with all systems, or alternatively for each OEM to include their own key and sign the pre-installed versions of Windows. The second approach would make it impossible to run boxed copies of Windows on Windows logo hardware, and also impossible to install new versions of Windows unless your OEM provided a new signed copy. The former seems more likely.”

So what about Signing Linux Bootloader Distros?

“Firstly, we’d need a non-GPL bootloader. Grub 2 is released under the GPLv3, which explicitly requires that we provide the signing keys. Grub is under GPLv2 which lacks the explicit requirement for keys, but it could be argued that the requirement for the scripts used to control compilation includes that. It’s a grey area, and exploiting it would be a pretty good show of bad faith. Secondly, in the near future the design of the kernel will mean that the kernel itself is part of the bootloader. This means that kernels will also have to be signed. Making it impossible for users or developers to build their own kernels is not practical. Finally, if we self-sign, it’s still necessary to get our keys included by ever OEM.”

What can be done?

We jsut have to rely on Manufacturers & OEMs so that they would include an option in their UEFI firmware to disable the secure booting feature.

Microsoft has finally found a way to tackle Linux, and someone out there has to make the extra effort to save it from the vicious Monopoly!

Update: Microsoft finally clarifies, it could be disabled via BIOS.

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Metro UI

The initial response to the tablet is sure positive but if don’t like Metro UI, you would hate this. Microsoft is calling Windows  8 a post-post-PC device, which in other words means a post-Tablet tablet.

Microsoft is  trying to unify the User interface across PCs, mobiles and Tablets and Windows 8 is their first step towards it. Like Apple, Microsoft has inspired its tablet and PC devices from the mobile interface, making it easier than ever. Windows 8 borrows largely from its mobile kin, Window Phone 7, bringing its signature live tiles to tablets and PCs, and from what we’ve seen it does so effortlessly.

Samsung’s prototype is claimed to have a all day battery life, but can run all PC applications like Photoshop, Excel and Outlook. You can connect upto two external monitors, without hiccups.
Update: You can download Windows 8 developer preview now.
The Samsung Tablet Hardware Specifications:

The Series 7 sports following specifications:

• a bright (400 nit), 11.6-inch capacitive panel (1366 x 768 resolution),
• CPU: Intel’s 1.6GHz Core i5-2467M CPU,
• GPU: Integrated Intel graphics,
• 64GB SSD
• 4GB of RAM.
• 2 megapixel camera and a light sensor on front, and 3 MP rear.
• Connectivity: 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, USB 2.0 port and a micro HDMI port.

The Windows 8 – The OS Feel
Hardware sure looks competitive with any Android Tablet out there in the market. But we can’t be certain that Win8 tablet will boast the same level of wow factor once these begin hitting the market at some point next year (Q2 2012?). What also concerns is whether a full fledged OS (windows 7++) will need a better horsepower.  Of course Windows 8 is a Full desktop OS unlike the iPad or Honeycomb Android tablet.

Windows 8 Handson Video

Not the whole experience is smooth at this point fo time and 1.6ghz trying to run Photoshop can sure be a painful thing. But what is worth applauding here that Microsoft has managed to trim the fat surrounding Win8 in order for it to run shockingly well on a tablet.

But the real question is: By the time NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 and hexacore CPUs hit the tablet market, Windows 8 would still run on dual cores.

OS Customization
You can do all the customizations you could do on a Metro UI Windows Phone 7. You can customize lock screen and choose between standard password, PIN, or picture password.

Live tiles are same from WP7 world, nothing fancier. Navigation in Windows 8 OS is a left-to-right affair, as oppose to up and down, and is indeed very smooth. Heavy apps really brings the tablet to ground level but the launcher is never slow.

Along that right edge reside a series of five “charms,” as they’ve been unfortunately named: Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings. If you’re in an app, you can use the share charm to Tweet your latest Facebook update, or Facebook your favorite recipe. It’s another point at which it becomes apparent that this is a desktop OS with a mobile mind.

Full-screen apps
All apps run in fullscreen mode. If you swipe from the left, you can navigate through other open apps, even snapping them in place for a split-screen view. The right side contains the hidden charms, while the bottom and top are reserved for app-specific controls.

Apps & Desktop
It all nails down to apps. It would run Windows apps, thats sure a big win. It would also run WP7 apps, unaltered but they face same problem as android mobile apps on honeycomb tablets.

The normal desktop view is actually a Tile, which one touched displays the conventional Windows 7 desktop, which will play host to your more serious applications like Excel and Photoshop, is treated just like your Twitter client and RSS feed. It’s an app like any other on the Start page, but in reality it’s an entirely different user interface.

Verdict

Apple created a Post-PC tablet and then brought the features back to the Mac. Microsoft is taking the idea further, giving tablets power of  desktop apps, without giving the hardware enough boost. The whole thing, in our opinion, would depend on how great the hardware is that ships with it. Everything else looks good.

Related: Windows 9 Features & improvements

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iPad Launcher of Windows 7 gives you the chance to try Launcher on Windows 7. It also allows you to lock the desktop icons without forcing users to log off. You can also customize the app icons, easily.

How to Get OSX Launchpad, iPad Launcher on Windows 7

Step 1. Download and unrar the file and run the exe.
Step 2. You now assign icons by clicking on desired icons. And later customize the icons.
Step 3. Configure locking (optional). This is of course a not very secure way since you can kill the app using task manager and retrieve your desktop.

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Unified Ecosystems

Microsoft would eventually create a “single ecosystem” for PCs, phones, tablets, and even the TV. “You can have full PC compute power available in whatever form factor you like,” said Lees. What was also talked about was the Windows on ARM demo motherboards that were smaller than mobile phones. “We won’t have an ecosystem for PCs, and one for phones, and one for tablets — they’ll all come together.” Microsoft intends to deliver “coherence and consistency” across different devices, “particularly with Xbox,” and that the goal isn’t just to share UI, but also core technologies like Internet Explorer.

In next 4 years, Microsoft will harmonize Windows for PCs, Windows Phone, Xbox — a timeframe that perfectly lines up with both the end of the Xbox 360′s 10-year lifecycle and the end of Windows 8′s expected three-year run. That would mean Microsoft’s next next OS (Windows 9) would run on PCs, tablets, phones,and the next-gen Xbox  around 2015 / 2016. Yes, it sounds crazy,

What gets even more interesting is that fact that Microsoft is even considering ditching the trademark “Windows”, more than obvious, that would be a big step.

Looks like a great strategy, but having a single OS and UI paradigm across multiple devices and screens is also more or less a return to the vision Microsoft threw out when it tossed Windows Mobile, if you think about it.  But later they realized “the phone is not a PC,” but now that hardware and SoC are more powerful, it makes sense to have it again.

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Zetro UI is very simple to install and configure. Extract the zip after downloading the theme from the link below. When done, follow the below two simple steps:

• Opening the Extras folder, running the Theme Patcher, and clicking on all three “patch” buttons contained within.
• Opening the Theme folder and copying both of the files inside it to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes.

When finished, Open the Control Panel and “Change the Theme” under Appearance and Personalization. The Zetro theme should be available in “Installed themes”.

The look and feel of the theme makes you windows 7 look simple with white all over the place, which might look a bit odd for the first few minutes. You can tweak it using the extra tweaks available in the readme file that comes along with the zip.

Extending the tweak further, feel free to blend it with something like the Metro-inspired Omnimo 4 theme for Rainmeter.

Source/Download: Zetro UI

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Microsoft claims that Windows 8 is a “reimagining of Windows, from the chip to the interface”. Windows 8 is designed to work with computers, mobile devices with any form factor from handheld to tablets.

Windows 8 is believed to be Fast, fluid and dynamic, the experience has been transformed while keeping the power, flexibility and connectivity of Windows intact.

Key features of Windows 8:

• Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.
• Live tiles with notifications, showing always up-to-date information from your apps.
• Fluid, natural switching between running apps.
• Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.
• Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.
• Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10.

Windows 8 would ship with some native full touchscreen support apps and there would be a marketplace to get more.

Microsoft believes that with Windows 8, there would be no compromises in UI no matter if you use mouse or touch input.

Windows 8 would also be  running on System on a Chip (SoC) processors (based on ARM), Tablets are just around the corner.

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iOS 4.3.3 can be Jailbroken untethered on Windows

iOS 4.3.3 brings the LocationGate privacy fixes to iOS devices, so this update is worth the effort.

This guide supports Untethered Jailbreak for following devices:

• iPhone 4, iPhone 3gs
• iPod Touch (all generations compatible with iOS 4.3.3)
• iPad 1. No iPad 2 yet.
• iPhone 4 CDMA (Verizon) on iOS 4.2.8

Note for Unlockers: Sn0wbreeze is safe for unlocking. Sn0wbreeze helps you to retain the old baseband for iPhone 4 and 3GS users so that you can later unlock with Ultrasn0w.

Downloads

• Download and install iTunes 10.2.2 for Windows.
• Download Sn0wbreeze 2.7 for Windows.
• Download iOS 4.3.3 for iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, iOS 4.2.8 for Verizon iPhone 4. (or google them)

Step 1. Open Sn0wbreeze and  click next button. and browse the required firmware .ipsw file for your iOS device.

Step 2: Let sn0wbreeze identify the IPSW, when done, click the next to proceed.

Step 3: On the next screen select the “Expert Mode”, followed by “Build IPSW” option. When done, follow onscreen instructions to enter the DFU mode.

How to enter DFU mode:

• Hold Power and Home buttons for 10 seconds
• Now release the Power button but continue holding the Home button for 10 more seconds
• You device should now be in DFU mode

If you do it correctly, sn0wbreeze will show you a message saying “Your devices is now in a PWNED DFU state (black screen)” bla bla.

Step 4: Go ahead and start iTunes, press and hold Left “Shift” button on the keyboard and then click on “Restore” and browse for custom ipsw you created previously.

Step 5: iTunes would now do its stuff and you can grab a cup of coffee in the meantime. After the installation is done, your iOS device i.e. iOS 4.2.8 (for Verizon iPhone 4), or 4.3.3 (for GSM iPhone, iPad & iPod touch) would be fully Jailbroken Untethered.

How To Unlock iOS 4.3.3 (iPhone 4 and 3GS only):
Go to cydia and install Ultrasn0w 1.2.3 (repo: repo666.ultrsn0w.com) and restart.

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Update: Run Android apps on Windows

BlueStacks is an application for windows that lets you Run android apps on Windows using a snappier Virtualization mechanism.

Install BlueStacks on your Windows machine and the software allows you to run an instance of Android app right inside windows.

This is no different from installing VMware or Virtualbox and running android inside it, but only being easier and slightly faster.

Right now the BlueStacks website appears to be misbehaving on multiple fronts, behold your patience, the fruit is going to be tasty.

More on this after a break.

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Many of us believe that “Windows upgrade” is buggy and doesn’t work well when you upgrade from older to newer version. We have often recommended a clean install but this video is here to prove every one wrong — A Man uses VMware to emulate old hardware and install DOS to Windows 1.0 and then upgrade it to all the subsequent versions, all the way upto Windows 7. And surprisingly, it worked.

The adventurous guy didn’t include the Windows ME, a big failure. The journey  is documented as a 10 minute video examining the upgrade process a Great recall for all Windows versions.

Twenty Years of Backward compatibility

Before starting systematic upgrades, The Secret of Monkey Island and Doom II were installed to test DOS functionality in each version of Windows.

The results of the experiment are pretty amazing–the games worked in every version of Windows but Vista, which had clumsy DOS support, and problematic everywhere. Twenty years of backwards compatibility? Whoa!

As far as installation times are concerned, they peaked  with Windows 98 and Vista–So we conclude, its possible to upgrade from Windows 1 to Windows 7 without much trouble.

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Windows 8 would get architectural changes, lots of new Features, improvements.

WinRumors claims that Microsoft’s Windows 8 Milestone 2 build has been finalized, and Milestone 3 is on the horizon. After Milestone 3 is done, its just matter of days that we would start seeing Windows 8 beta being seeded to BETA testers and floating on torrents, just like windows 7. The windows 8 beta could arrive as early as summer 2011.

Microsoft compiled 6.2.7947.0.winmain_win8m2_escrow.110218-1608 on Friday, 18th feb 2011. Things are progressing secretly, even inside the company. So far, the leaked information states some recent Windows 8 builds:

6.2.7925.0.winmain_win8m2.110207-1736
6.2.7926.0.winmain_win8m2.110209-1755
6.2.7927.0.winmain_win8m2.110210-1740
6.2.7928.0.winmain_win8m2.110214-1825
6.2.7929.0.winmain_win8m2.110215-1802
6.2.7930.0.winmain_win8m2.110217-1825

Microsoft is also working on an ARM-compatible version of Windows (for tablets), its is actually possible that we might get to see a Tablet version first followed by desktop version. Its evident that Microsoft is struggling to enter the Tablet market, and so far every attempt looks vague.

Windows 8 Milestones, Timelines

What’s interesting to me is how closely this roadmap snippet seems to be mirroring the timelines and build information from a few sites and sources claiming access to leaked Win 8 builds. On February 21, there were reports that Microsoft was just about done with Win 8 Milestone 2. On the roadmap above, final M2 build candidate is slated to arrive on February 23. And according to the roadmap above, the coding for Milestone 3 (M3) is due to start a week from today, on February 28.

There has been evidence that supports “Windows 8 on Tablets“, and we hope to see them floating in the market as early as early 2012. Again, they will be entering the Tablet market late (just like WP7 in smartphones), but we’ve to see how good it gets.

In any case, if Microsoft does follow history and deliver a Win 8 Beta 1, Beta 2 and Release Candidate before RTMing, Windows 8 is looking like a mid-2012 RTM.

Windows 8 has more love for the Cloud, better user interface, more virtualization & networking improvements, core performance improvements,

Full list of Windows 8 Features, Improvements.

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Glitches would never go away till it’s a software. And they can be annoying at times, but there are ways you can minimize the annoyances and prevent havocs. One such problem is with Windows Explorer who like to act weird with its “Windows Explorer has stopped responding” “Windows explorer has misbehaved and needs to be closed”, blah blah.

You can always force close it but The Explorer process runs a lot of important things in Windows, and when it crashes, it can really slow you down.

But there is a solution to minimize the damage by sandboxing its process, so that when next time one crashes, others don’t in the fission.

The Solution to windows Explorer crashes

Windows Folder options actually let you create a separate process for the taskbar and desktop from the other open Explorer windows in two different explorer.exe processes (that you see in task manager). This comes handy when one of them crashes.

HowTo: Go to any Windows Explorer (say my computer), Alt+T  > Tools > Folder Options > View > “Launch Folder Windows in a Separate Process”.

If you look more closely, its something that powers Google Chrome browser, new process for every Tab. Instead, there are just two processes. Of course it would be slightly more CPU intensive, but that’s definitely worth it.

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The trouble is over, with Gmail for mobile and Google Cloud Print, its now possible to print from any app on any device, OS or browser without the need to install any drivers for the specific printer.

How to Configure Google Cloud Printing

To get started, you would need one time configuration on your printer, making it capable of Cloud Printing.

You can use  a Windows PC (Linux and Mac soon) support are coming soon. To get started with configuration, install the Chrome with Cloud Print support.

This can be done by going into settings > Under the hood > Sign in to Google Cloud Print.

Once you’re set up, just go to gmail.com from your iPhone or Android browser and choose “Print” from the dropdown menu in the top right corner. You can also print eligible email attachments (such as .pdf or .doc) by clicking the “Print” link that appears next to them.

Now you can be anywhere in the world and print documents directly in your office, home.

If you have any trouble, you can checkout official guide.

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Most of the modern day web browsing speed is limited by the peeks of the IO of your hard disk drives. High seek times and relatively slow transmission rates when compared to RAM speeds can add up to actually gives out slow browsing experience. Even switching to a SSD harddrive won’t help you much as SSDs are more helpful when writing/reading large data files.

The Problem: Forcing apps to run on Virtual memory (swap partition) was necessary when our PCs were actually limited in the amounts of physical RAM available.

The Solution: Let he IO hungry apps run in RAM using RAM Disks.

With something of the order of 4G RAM on laptops and 8GB+ on desktop, its perfect time to shift the IO read/write hungry apps to RAM, and achieve splendid results. Since we’ve sufficient control over apps runtime, this Tweak is actually efficiently possible on most OSes like Linux desktops (Fedora, Ubuntu), Mac OS X, and on Windows.

Speedup Browsing on Linux: You can create large RAMdisks which is then used by your favorite browser:  Chrome or Firefox. You can follow instructions over here for Fedora, Ubuntu.

Speedup Browsing on Mac OS X (Leopard, Snow Leopard): Esperance DV allows you to create RAMDisks on a OSX machine and is available for configuration on “Preferences” pane.

Just select how much space you want to dedicate to the disk and create it. You can have Espérance DV recreate the RAM disk on start and even have it automatically restore from a disk image. There is a check box for moving Safari’s Web Cache to the RAM disk, which creates the necessary symlink. In addition, you can use this trick to speed up anything e.g. Xcode builds.

You can move Firefox’s cache directory to speed it up :

$ rm -r ~/Library/Caches/Firefox

$ ln -s /Volumes/RamDisk/Firefox ~/Library/Caches/Firefox

Speedup Browsing on Windows:

Here’s how to speedup Firefox without using RAMdrive on windows:

• Open firefox and goto about:config in your address bar and type “browser.cache” into the fileter bar.
• For browser.cache.disk.enable set the value to false
• Search for: browser.cache.memory.enable and set it to true.
• Right-click anywhere, in the menu select New > Integer.  Name: browser.cache.memory.capacity and press OK button.  In the next window, enter the size you want the cache in kilobytes (for example, typing 200000 would create a cache of 200 mb). A value of -1 forces Firefox to dynamically determine the cache size depending on the available system RAM.

Alternatively you can create a RAM disk on windows, and then move cache directories of Firefox, Chrome to it.,

How much is the speed improvement?

Enormous!!! On my Laptop running running Chrome in Ubuntu, the memory read speed jumped from 1.2 MB/s to 95MB/s (90x times approx) which is huge. (This hard disk gives 30MB/s for large file copies). And on my mac running Snow Leopard on SSD drive, it jumped by around 10x times.

So if you are on a broadband that has speeds around than 8mbps (or higher), you should start seeing improvements immediately after applying this tweak. However, the tweak still works for slower connections, especially if your HDD isn’t that new or badly fragmented.

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Predator, an application for windows, locks your system when you are not there, even if your Windows session is still opened. It uses  a regular USB flash drive as an access control device.

Simply Download and install Predator, and pair a USB drive with it. With the USB drive plugged in, you can continue to work, but as soon as it is removed, the screen fades and your PC locks, and keyboard/mouse input is disabled. Plug it back in, and normal usage is restored.

Features:

• Can be unlocked with a custom password in case USB is lost.
• Alarm is triggered if wrong password is entered.
• All events are logged, you will know if intruders have tried to use your PCs.
• The Security codes recorded on your USB drive are frequently changed. Even if someone clones your USB, you are still safe.

Install And Configure Predator:

• First download Predator from here, install it & launch it
• A window will open to set up password and request for USB flash drive insertion, click OK.

• Now you are on Preference window, configure all settings and create a Key.

• Click OK to save you settings.

Now restart  Predator to monitor your system. And you are now secure!

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Movicha promises to kill these two limitations by bringing one app that works on almost any smarpthone, PC platform. The list is comprehensive, it supports:

• iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch)
• Android 2.1 or later
• Symbian
• Windows Mobile 6.5
• Windows XP and Windows 7
• Mac OS X (10.x)
• Blackberry (soon)

Its greatest feature really is its ability to cross-platform video chat from smartphone-to-desktop.

From the official Movicha website:

Mobile Video Chat on WiFi and 3G network. Have a live video chat with your buddies on desktop and with any major smartphone with camera; voice call and Instant message with your buddies any time.

iMovicha supports multiple operating systems in mobile and laptop platforms. Video call can either be mobile-to-mobile or laptop-to-mobile or laptop-to-laptop.

iMovicha key features: Video Calling, Voice Calling, IM, Presence Group Management, Contact Management, Preference Management

Chat with your buddies who are using iMovicha in other mobile devices and laptops (MAC and windows).

Note: iPhone, iPod touch users need a jailbroken device. Then install Movicha from cydia using Big Boss Repository.

Watch it in action:

via appadvice

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