Talking about technology, and more
Apr 24
How-To Guides No Comments
microsoft, security, update, windows
[Windows Security Tip]
Microsoft update versus Windows update
Windows Update is the classic update service that only offers updates for Windows. Microsoft Update extends this service to cover other Microsoft programmes including, but not limited to, Office, Exchange and SQL.
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Apr 17
How-To Guides No Comments
accounts, admin, user, windows
[Windows tip]
When you’re administering a Windows computer which has several user accounts, you may have noticed that the standard user administration page is somewhat limited in what you can do.
Well there is a way to get much more detailed control over which users can do what with the following command.
If you click the start menu and select “Run”, then type in the following: control userpasswords2.
Warning: Don’t use this until you know what you’re doing with it!
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Apr 10
How-To Guides No Comments
categories, menu, organise, productivity, start, windows
[Windows tip]
“Better organise your start menu” – This probably applies to XP more than Vista because with Vista you have the search function built into the start menu.
If your program menu is a huge tower of application folders and short-cuts, you may find yourself having a hard time finding the application you need.
Try categorising all your applications in to a small number of groups, then create folders for each of them. Then you can drag and drop each application into the category it belongs to. You can do this directly in the start menu, or you can actually go the location on your hard drive where all the shortcuts are stored. They’re likely split across two places:
C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\Start Menu\Programs
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs
Unless there’s any short-cuts you need to keep to yourself, it will make things simpler if you move everything into the “All Users” folder (with the exception of the “Startup” sub-folder, you should keep that in your own area).
By going to those folder locations, you can create folders and drag and drop all the short cuts just as you do any other files in Explorer.
For example, I have the following top-level folders for all my application short cuts:
Tekzilla Daily have given a similar tip. So if you want to see a video of what I was talking about go to: http://revision3.com/tzdaily/2008-04-01start.
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Apr 3
How-To Guides No Comments
bbc, conversion, iplayer, multimedia
[Windows Freeware - MultiMedia Conversion]
Quick Media Convert is a straigth forward, dare I say idiot proof, multimedia transcoding tool.
It has a simple drag and drop interface for adding the files you want to convert, along with a row of readily identifiable icons to choose the format you want to convert your content to. If the simple interface doesn’t give you enough control, there is an advanced interface which allows you to handle every specific detail of the conversion.
It can even handle Flash video files. Which is perfect if you just have to have that skate boarding dog from Youtube on your mobile phone or PMP. From some preliminary* testing I’ve done, it even seems that it can miraculously handle BBC flash video files too!
*(Note: So far I’ve just tested an episode of EastEnders, although it was a painfully slow conversion, which I guess is due to the DRM method they use.)
It isn’t an open source application, but it is free of charge. It also has a webcam and DV cam capturing mode, as well as a screen capturing mode; (I haven’t tried these so I can’t say much about them).
I would be interested in feed back about this one from non-Windows users. Can you make it work under Parallels (for Mac) or WINE (for Linux) ?
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