The NR How To Thread...

[Chxta]

http://lifehacker.com/
http://www.arsgeek.com/
http://www.ofzenandcomputing.com/
http://www.codejacked.com/
http://www.windvis.com/
http://shellcity.net/
http://www.intelliadmin.com/blog/
http://www.dailycupoftech.com/
http://nerdica.com/
http://www.tuxmachines.org/
http://tweako.com/
http://www.fsdaily.com/

[FekNr]

Originally Posted by Chxta

Just lately it seems to be the fashion amongst writers on the internet to compare and criticise operating systems. While one user talks up the merits of Ubuntu Linux versus Windows Vista on her blog, another is quick to criticise Ubuntu’s lack of user friendly features and available software. In this article I am here to sing the praises of the old dog Windows XP. Once the all singing all dancing multimedia darling, XP is now the older brother of the much younger and trendier Windows Vista. While Vista can be the life and soul of the party, it is still very much a problem child for many users who are frustrated with incompatibilities, poor driver support and degraded performance in multimedia applications and games. If, like me, your Vista experience wasn't all you hoped it would be, read on as we take another look at Windows XP and find that you really can teach an old dog some new tricks.

Security

One of the biggest shocks long time Windows users had to face when upgrading to Vista was the new security measures, specifically User Account Controls. Microsoft's answer to the problem of rampant malware on Windows machines was a barrage of security checks which can quickly become daunting. While emulating this feature might seem like a bad idea, UAC is a partial solution to a very sticky problem and the alternative, allowing malware to continue to spread unhindered, is not really an option. Although you can't have Vista style user account control under XP, there are a number of alternatives. An aggressive firewall product such as Outpost firewall not only monitors internet traffic but also alerts you when programs misbehave or perform potentially dangerous operations. Outpost costs $39.95 per year and includes a regularly updated spyware scanner.

Sudown is similar to UAC and allows you to temporarily elevate the privileges on a limited account to that of an administrator account in order to run programs such as installers. Sudown is less intrusive than UAC but arguably less secure and less complete (you may find that you still have to log into the administrators account under some conditions). Sudown is a free utility and is available from sourceforge.

Windows Explorer

Windows explorer featured several significant upgrades in Vista. Handling of photographs and multimedia files was improved and search was fully integrated. “Breadcrumbs” were introduced, this is a somewhat bizarre name Microsoft gave to their new windows explorer extension that allows for convenient browsing between directories and subdirectories.

While you cannot reproduce the Windows Vista explorer completely, you can actually go one better. Directory Opus is the most powerful file manager/explorer on the planet and works extremely well with Windows XP. If a little intimidating at first, most users will quickly learn to appreciate the power and flexibility this utility offers. Surpassing Vista’s new Windows Explorer in almost every department and with powerful photo/multimedia features, Directory Opus really is worth the learning curve and there are many comprehensive tutorials available on the internet to help ease new users in. Directory Opus costs around $70 per licence. If you want to learn more about this superb utility then start here.

Search

Windows Vista’s integrated desktop search is one of my favourite new features in the operating system. Here, XP lags a little behind its younger sibling but it isn’t an entirely lost cause. Many users do not realise, but Microsoft Desktop Search is also available for free for Windows XP. While it lacks the slick integration with Windows Explorer, it is still a powerful tool. You can download Desktop Search for XP here.

Looking to really get organised? Desktop search is good, but many of us have piles of CD-R or DVD-R disks kicking around our workplaces. Wouldn't it be great if there was something that could neatly catalogue all those files too? Well, there is. The aptly named “WhereIsIt?” is able to neatly organise and catalogue not only files on your hard disk but files stashed away on removable disks too. WhereIsIt? Is shareware, with the full version costing $39.95 per licence. Enter “WhereIsIt” into Google to find out more.

Look and Feel

For those systems able to run it, the new Aero interface in Windows Vista is both fast and beautiful. By comparison, the blues and creams of Windows XP look distinctly last generation. Of course, beauty is only skin deep and what really matters is functionality. That said, a little more eye candy obviously appeals to a lot of people, since numerous web-sites and utilities have sprung up for Windows XP with the sole aim of making the operating system look better. The pinnacle of these utilities is the Object Desktop suite from Stardock. With a few clicks you can instantly transform your XP desktops look and feel into any of hundreds of visual styles available for download from Stardock’s website. Want Aero-like special effects on Windows XP? Object Desktop Window FX can do them and you can even customise exactly which visual effects to use. Want two start menus? No problem, with Objectbar you can do that too. Want Windows Dreamscene animated wallpapers? Well sorry, you are out of luck this time. The price for all this desktop pimping? $49.95. To find out more, or download a trial version, enter object desktop into Google. All this talk of desktop enhancements brings us nicely on to:-

Sidebar and Widgets

Windows Vista comes with it’s own sidebar with detachable widgets, but sidebars and widgets are old news in Windows (and indeed in most other modern operating systems too). My favourite XP sidebar is the somewhat unoriginally named “Desktop Sidebar”. This sidebar is highly configurable, uncluttered and includes the best RSS news reader/ticker out of all the sidebars and widgets I have ever tried. In fact I even run Desktop Sidebar in preference to Vistas own sidebar on my Windows Vista installation. Google search for “desktop sidebar” to find out more.

If widgets are you thing then there are currently several competing standards. The Open Widget Engine is gaining momentum slowly, with the aim of one day uniting the efforts of widget makers across the world. Until that day comes, you can choose between Google Desktop, Desktop X and Yahoo Widgets. Desktop X is a powerful widget engine that is included as part of the Object Desktop suite that I mentioned in the Look and Feel section. Yahoo and Google’s respective offerings are free and hence much more popular. Yahoo widgets probably includes the best selection of widgets out of all the widget engines available. Again, do a quick Google search on the program that interests you the most to find out more.

Media Centre

Windows XP media centre edition has been around for a while now, but an upgrade to Vista Ultimate or Home Premium will give you full media centre capabilities included in the price. If you are using vanilla XP home or Professional and you want media centre capabilities, they are available for free in the shape of Media Portal, an open source and highly configurable media centre application. Also free and worth a look (at least if you are American) is Yahoo Go For TV. Based on Meedio, which was one of the best commercial media centre products for Windows, Go For TV seems to have been left to stagnate since Yahoo took control. Nevertheless there are already a wide range of plug-ins and accessories available for it that were previously developed for Meedio. Bizarrely, Yahoo currently insists on locking out all users outside of the United States, so if you live elsewhere in the world, give this one a miss. Set Google hunting for “media portal” or “Yahoo Go for TV” to find out more.

Games and Direct X 10

As any PC gamer will tell you, XP is (at the time of writing) the best operating system for games. With Vista, Microsoft introduced DirectX10 and made it Vista only. A number of breathtaking DirectX 10 games are regularly plastered over the preview pages on major PC gaming websites and magazines. To date however, aside from a few update patches for older games, Microsoft’s cutting edge games for DirectX10/Vista basically consist of Shadowrun (an above average multiplayer FPS) and Halo 2 (A conversion of an old Xbox game). Re-hashing a previous generation console title to demonstrate your bleeding edge graphics technology must have made sense to someone in Microsoft but it makes little sense to gamers assessing if an upgrade to Vista is worth their money, especially in light of the performance handicap or crippled sound that some games exhibit under Vista. However, like every new gaming platform, fast forward to Christmas and XP gamers can expect to be enviously eyeing up the new Vista only games starting to appear. If you are hoping that I’m going to tell you now some way of getting DirectX 10 to work on Vista, you are going to be disappointed. A company called Falling Leaf systems claims to be working on some sort of project that would accomplish this feat, but they still have a lot to prove especially considering early versions struggled to run the most basic of DirectX 10 demo code. Unfortunately, it looks like DirectX 10 is one trick that XP isn’t going to be performing any time soon, if ever.

opax

[Bende]

f'real!

[Chxta]

Originally Posted by FekNr

opax

Ya papa!

[Chxta]

Take note of the side left in full colour, and the selected area. That is simply what you copy and paste onto the NR form field in order to embed a Youtube video here...

[Chxta]

To keep a PC running smoothly, regular maintenance is critical. Many users shy away from maintenance tasks, thinking it is a long, drawn out manual affair, but the Disk Cleanup Utility can easily determine which files on a hard drive may no longer be needed and delete those files. In addition to freeing up potentially significant amounts of hard drive space, using Disk Cleanup on a regular basis can significantly improve system performance.
Starting Disk Cleanup

Disk Cleanup is available on various versions of Windows. The utility can be accessed in any of the methods listed below.

* Click Start | Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Cleanup
* Click Start | Run and in the Open box type cleanmgr and click OK
* In Windows Explorer or My Computer, right-click the disk in which you want to free up space, click Properties, click the General tab, and then click Disk Cleanup.

Use the drop down menu arrow to select the drive you want to clean.



Click [OK] and Disk Cleanup will analyze the selected drive to determine the amount of space that can be freed.



Note: Be patient. Analyzing the drive can be a lengthy process depending on drive size and contents.

Once the drive analysis is complete a list of file categories will be presented for your selection.




Instead of automatically proceeding with cleanup once the drive analysis is complete, Disk Cleanup allows you to review the categories of files that can be deleted. Click on any of the categories to display more information relative to that category in the Description section of the window. If you're unsure if you want to delete the files in a category from the description, use the [View Files] button. A complete list of files scheduled for deletion will be displayed in Windows Explorer. Use drag and drop to move any files you want to save to a safe location and leave the category selected. If all the files are to be saved, close the window and then remove the check mark from the file category so it will not be included in the disk cleanup. After all the categories have been reviewed, click [OK] to begin the disk cleanup process.
File Categories in Disk Cleanup Utility

There are a number of different types of file categories that Disk Cleanup targets when it performs the initial disk analysis. Depending on the individual system, you may or may not have all the categories listed below. An excellent example of this would be Backup Files from a Previous Operating System. If a clean install of XP was performed then this category will not exist. It pays to click on each of the categories and note that the [View Files] button can change depending on the category selected.

*Downloaded Program Files

These are ActiveX controls and Java applets downloaded from Web sites that are temporarily stored in the Downloaded Program Files folder. It's not program files or zip files that you have downloaded from other locations.

*Temporary Internet Files

This refers to Internet Explorer's cache of Web pages that are stored on the hard drive for quicker viewing. None of your personal web settings are affected by selecting this category, nor does it delete any cookie files.

*Recycle Bin

The main thing to be aware of in this category is that it only refers to the Recycle Bin for the selected hard drive or partition. This is important since XP uses an individual Recycle Bin for each drive and partition, not just one as is the case in some Windows versions.

*Temporary Remote Desktop Files

These files are the result of using the Remote Desktop utility. If you repeatedly use Remote Desktop with the same computer or group of computers, leaving these files intact will maintain the speed of future connections. Deleting them will necessitate downloading the remote systems icons and wallpaper the next time a connection is established.

*Setup Log Files

These are really pretty useless unless you have a specific reason to go back and see what occurred during XP setup.

*Backup Files For Previous Operating System

I mentioned this category earlier as one you may not have, but if you did upgrade from a previous Windows version and selected the option to be able to uninstall XP, it may well exist. It takes some major hard drive space to copy all the files necessary to back up a previous system's core files, drivers, etc. This entry can range anywhere from a few hundred megabytes up to a gigabyte, so unless you are still considering dumping XP this is a good category to select.

*Offline Files

Users with slower dialup connections and those using laptops frequently make websites they use often available offline. Depending on how many levels deep you save the sites, they can eat up gigabytes of hard drive space very quickly. Worse than taking up space, the sites often contain outdated information. A good candidate for deletion.

*Compress Old Files

Unlike the other categories, Compress Old Files doesn't delete any files from the drive. It compresses files that Windows hasn't accessed for a specified period of time. The files are still available, but there will be a slight increase in access times because the files will be decompressed the next time they are accessed. Note that when Compress Old Files is highlighted an Options button appears. Clicking it will allow you to set the number of days to wait before an unaccessed file is compressed.

There may be other categories that appear in your Disk Cleanup window, but in all cases, highlighting the item will display an explanation of the category in the Description area.

More Options Tab

In addition to the categories that appear on the Disk Cleanup tab, the More Options tab offers additional opportunities for freeing up hard drive real estate. There is nothing on this tab that isn't available elsewhere within XP in stand alone fashion, but having them grouped here does serve as a convenient reminder.




In Windows XP there are three choices available on the More Options tab: Windows Components, Installed Programs, and System Restore.

*Windows Components

The Cleanup button in the Windows Components section launches the Windows Components Wizard. Select a general category of components and drill down using the Details button to locate the desired Windows component.

*Installed Programs

The Cleanup button in the Installed Programs section opens the Add/Remove Programs dialog box. Any installed program can be removed by selecting the individual program and clicking the Change/Remove button. You cannot batch programs together to be removed. Each removal operation must be treated as a separate entity.

*System Restore

Clicking the Cleanup button in the System Restore section opens a dialog box where it asks if you are sure you want to delete all but the most recent restore point. The difference between using this option and going directly to System Restore is that you have no option to selectively delete restore points with this method. It's "all but most recent" or nothing when accessed via Disk Cleanup. Click Yes or No depending on your choice.

Post Disk Cleanup Procedures

Using Disk Cleanup will almost certainly rid your system of a substantial amount of unneeded files. You could stop here and not suffer any ill consequences, but there are a lot of gaps and empty spaces on the hard drive where the files were removed. This would be an excellent time to run Disk Defragmenter to organize the hard drive into contiguous sections. The hard drive heads will spend less time seeking all the pieces of a file and you'll see another performance boost.

[Chxta]

My boss asked me to prevent some members of staff having access to the Internet. Normally that would mean creating an access list on the server and removing them from it. However what he meant was that they should be able to access the company's intranet, access their emails (official emails) and a few other things which have to be done online.

This means that one should limit the access on the individual system, for the browser only. The following is how it could be done in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. I think it would prove useful when my kids come of age...

1. Copy the text below and paste it into Notepad:

((PICS-version 1.0)
 (rating-system "http://www.microsoft.com") 
 (rating-service "http://www.microsoft.com") 
 (name "Noaccess") 
 (description "This file will block all sites.") 
 
 (category  
  (transmit-as "m") 
  (name "Yes") 
   (label 
   (name "Level 0:   No Setting") 
   (description "No Setting") 
   (value 0) ) 
  (label 
   (name "Level 1:   No Setting") 
   (description "No Setting") 
   (value 1) ) ))

Name this file 'noaccess.rat', and make sure that it is a normal ASCII text file. Save this file into the C:\Windows\system32 directory...



2. In Control Panel, double-click to open the Internet Options icon, and then click the Content tab.



3. Click Enable.

If the Enable button is not visible, and you only see the Disable button, then Content Advisor is already enabled and you should stop now or risk losing all your existing settings. If you wish to continue, then click the Settings button in place of the Enable button.
4. On the General tab, click the Rating Systems button, and then remove all the existing rating systems entries.



5. Click Add, and then click to select noaccess.rat.
6. Click OK to close the Rating Systems window.
7. Select the Approved Sites tab.
8. Add only the sites that you want users to be able to access, and then click the Always button.



All other settings should be left at their default settings. If you have used Content Advisor before and made any changes, there are two settings that must be put back to their default values.
9. Click the General tab, and make sure that under User options, the setting Users can see sites that have no rating is not checked.
10. Click the Advanced tab. Under Ratings bureau, set the Ratings bureau list box to [None].


If you use Firefox, just download the BlockSite plugin, and you are in business.



Edit: the boys aren't happy with this new state of affairs at all.

[Chxta]

Most people experience weird issues after upgrading their hardware in Window$. If you've just upgraded to the latest hardware device and aren't seeing the performance you'd like, you might want to remove the old drivers which are still installed for the old hardware, even though you can't normally see them in device manager.

What you have to do is set a less-known flag to allow you to see non-present devices, and then launch device manager. You'll then see the old devices in the list, and can uninstall the drivers for them.

In Windows Vista, the first thing you'll need to do is open a command prompt in administrator mode. Type cmd into the Start menu, and then use Ctrl+Shift+Enter to open in administrator mode. (You can also right-click on the command prompt and choose Run as Administrator)

Now paste in the following line:

SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1

Then type in devmgmt.msc to start up Device Manager from the administrator command prompt:



Once you are in Device Manager, go to the View menu and choose Show Hidden Devices, which will show all the device drivers including things that aren't currently installed in your computer.



Notice how I have 6 mice in the list, even though I only have two installed (and my drawing tablet). The other 3 mice are old mice that I've used until they died….



You can right-click on the driver and then choose Uninstall from the menu to remove the drivers for that old hardware.

This can resolve a lot of weird issues, and even increase performance on some machines where you've upgraded a ton of times. This isn't necessarily going to increase performance, but it's nice to have a tidy computer nonetheless.

This tip also works the same in Windows XP.

[Chxta]

Despite my Linux leanings, I still missed the ability to use Photoshop and Swish on Windows. Let's face it, the GIMP doesn't hold a light to Photoshop, and Open Office Presentation is a poor substitute for Swish, F4l is even worse, and strangely for a Linux program, the support simply doesn't exist. I kept thinking that Wine may be the answer but it proved only useful for 'smaller' software. I was never quite able to use it to run 'heavy' software such as Photoshop. My solution as a result was to install VMware. That took up quite some space on my hard drive which to be honest I wasn't really willing to give up, but had to.

As per the regular everyday tasks such as writing documents and the occasional spreadsheet, I had no qualms at all with Open Office's Writer and Calc. They are both excellent software, and that ability to export direct to PDF is something that Microsoft is probably still aeons from implementing. There was however one small problem that made me install Microsoft's Office Basic (Word and Excel) in my emulation: Open Office's native formats are not popular (compatibility issues with the rest of the world is still Linux's main problem), so I had to save my documents in the native Microsoft formats. However this brings an issue with formatting and file sizes as I soon discovered when I began applying for jobs. My CV, done in Microsoft Word and saved in the *.doc format comes in at 56kB. The same CV done in Oo Writer, and then saved to the *.doc format is 113kB. This wasn't good as far as recruitment agencies were concerned, most of them required a CV that came in at less than 100kB, and it had to be in the *.doc format, not Oo's *.odt format (which to be fair has same CV come in at 43kB). Another problem with Oo which I discovered when I began my programming module a few months ago is that it chokes when a document is full of macros. Luckily, along came CrossOver, and my prayers have been answered. Not only could I run the Photoshop and Swish, but Microsoft Office on Linux as well. It is the best of both worlds.


Fig: Running Photoshop and Swish under Linux


Testing CrossOver Linux 6

I have installed CrossOver Linux which can be downloaded here, and I have been able to install it and run it and then install quite a lot of Windows software as if I was on a Windows host. My computer is an Acer Aspire 1640z with a Centrino processor (1.7GHz), 2GB of RAM, running Ubuntu Linux. Those specifications are fair, so I can try out almost any software that is perambulating out there. I downloaded the full version of the CrossOver 6, the *.deb package (since Ubuntu uses the deb package manager). It installed with great ease. This being my first exposure to the product, I selected the general defaults. Everything went smooth and without a single problem.

Now it was time to install Adobe Photoshop 7. After selecting the CrossOver setup, the associations were checked and installation of Photoshop was selected. I inserted the Photoshop CD (you wish! CrossOver gives you a chance to point to the *.exe file on your hard drive) and immediately the installer asked me what 'bottle' I wanted to use. I chose Windows XP.

Word 2003 and Excel 2003 worked well, and I was able to open documents full of macros which Oo tends to fumble through. The apps even seem to work a little faster on Linux than on Windows, on the same hardware. This is probably because Windows tends to accumulate all sorts of junk, while the Crossover Office bottle has nothing but the essentials required to run Microsoft Office. Still, it was rather surprising to see Microsoft software working better under Linux!

Office 2003 installed and worked quite well, with the exception of Outlook 2003. Outlook support in CrossOver apparently lags a version or two behind the latest version of Microsoft Office. Outlook 2000 and XP work to some extent, if not perfectly. That is one thing I really don't give a toss about though as I only use Outlook on my office desktop which is running Windows anyway.

Dreamweaver MX and Flash MX worked perfectly, but the more recent versions did not even install. Adobe Photoshop 7 works flawlessly (I didn't try the CS parade as I think they are all glorified versions of 7, just use up more memory), so does SwishMax. Sadly though, the best music player in the world, Jet Audio refused to install. It asked me to install DirectX before it can install, and that is something I would have to look into later on, meanwhile I wonder why COWON has simply refused to put out a Linux version. I am yet to try out Microsoft's Reader though, and somehow playing Football Manager doesn't motivate me anymore, so I'll more than likely pass on that.

The separate bottles approach leads to some interesting situations. For instance, if you are using a version of Internet Explorer in one bottle, and have Microsoft Office loaded in another bottle, you can't copy and paste text between them. It seems like it should work, but it doesn't. It was a bewildering few minutes before I figured out what was going on. As long as you remember that different bottles are essentially independent Windows machines, everything is fine. I think that web developers will appreciate the ability to have different versions of Internet Explorer installed independently, for testing purposes. The system then went out and and automatically loaded the requisite software from Microsoft's website! Once the process was complete, true to form, the system requested to be rebooted (Jeez Window$!). In Linux though, only CrossOver was reset. This was so much easier than a full system reboot, and far less of a nuisance.

Conclusion

Prior to installing CrossOver, I was forced to labour with VMware. Now don't get me wrong, VMware is an excellent product, but it has one major drawback: VGA issues. For example playing Football Manager under VMware meant that I was restricted to just the text mode, and that made me loose some of my passion for the game. In any event, everything I have tried (except Jet Audio) has worked seamlessly, as promised. Access to the Photoshop files is easy, access to the Linux file system is easy. Everything a user will need is here. CodeWeavers' CrossOver has most certainly become one of the tools in my arsenal for every day use.

[Chxta]

In my quest to get rid of every useless tray icon wasting memory, I was very annoyed when Vista's automatic updates installed a new driver and the icon for the touchpad ended up in my system tray again. There's almost no benefit to this icon, so it needs to go.

The icon comes in two varieties that you've probably seen.



Just right-click the icon, and choose Pointing Device Properties from the menu.



On the Device Settings tab, you'll find a Tray Icon section. Choose the Remove tray icon from taskbar radio button, and it'll immediately be gone.



I realize this is very simple for most of you, but it's good to cover everything that can save some memory.

[Chxta]

Great, so Juve's next match of will not be shown on freeview TV. Actually it will not even be shown at all on Sky as far as I know. If you encounter situations like this one and always thought there would be no other solution than to follow 'boring' live commentaries on internet sites, then there's an answer for you.

I will describe two free programs that let you connect to channels that stream TV, but more importantly, live football. This includes all major European football leagues, Champions league, UEFA cup, etc...



All you need is a computer with any version of Windows Media Player after version 10, or Real Player (so Linux heads there is something for us too). A fast connection is desired for the best results. Sadly, the programs we are talking about are Chinese, so it is kinda hard to read the websites. Those websites offer channel lists among other information.

First, let us take a look at some options in WMP and Real Player:

Start WMP, right click and select Options from the menu. Click on Performance and Change the Buffer Size of Content to 30 seconds.

In Real player you select Tools -> Preferences and click on the General -> Playback Settings. The setting Buffer up to 30 seconds is at the bottom of this window.

Stream formats:

mms:// and *.asx open with Windows Media Player
rtsp:// and *.rm or *.ram open with Real Player

Starting Streams manually:

Most times you may need to start streams manually. Use the stream formats information to figure out the program to use.

On Windows Media Player choose File -> Open Url
On real player choose File -> Open

Let us look at the programs:

Sopcast (Windows$ and Linux)



Download from here, there are options for different operating systems, as well as installation instructions, then start. A channel list will be displayed. Double-click a channel and for those of you with Windows, Media Player should start and begin buffering and displaying.

Pplive (Window$ only)



Just download and double click the damned thing. Its all in English, so no need to worry. You may need the pplive channel list for it, since unlike Sopcast, it does not come with a loaded list.

Football Streams Schedule

[Thuggie Baby]

good job guys

[Chxta]

My feelings about Window$ Vista are well documented, but hey the world is moving towards an almost universal adoption of the software in homes and offices so we have to learn how to connect to another thing that is becoming almost ubiquitous: the wireless network. This little guide is an attempt to explain this brave new world, which is quite different from connecting in Windows XP...

1) Right click on the Network Icon at the bottom right hand corner of your screen and select Connect to a Network.
2) Then click on Set up a network as shown below if you are not entitled to connect to any of the networks that the scan brings up. Notice that in the figure, all the networks are security enabled, so we have to set up our own network...
Next up, we are given a dialogue with options:

* Connect to the Internet
* Set up a wireless router or access point
* Manually connect to a wireless network
* Set up a wireless ad hoc (computer-to-computer) network
* Set up a dial-up connection
* Connect to a workplace

For the purpose of this guide, we are setting up a manual connection. The assumption here is that you already know the parameters of the network you are connecting to, such as its SSID...

A page is then displayed to enter information for the wireless network you want to add. On that page, you can configure the following:

* Network name (Type the name of the wireless network)
* Security type (Select the method used to authenticate a connection to the wireless network).

The choices are as follows:

* No authentication (Open) Open system authentication with no encryption.
* WEP Open system authentication with Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP).
* WPA2-Personal Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) with a preshared key.
* WPA-Personal Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) with a preshared key (also known as a passphrase).
* WPA2-Enterprise WPA2 with IEEE 802.1X authentication.
* WPA-Enterprise WPA with IEEE 802.1X authentication.
* 802.1x IEEE 802.1X authentication with WEP (also known as dynamic WEP).

The choices are listed depending on the capability of your wireless card.

And after that, well, I think you're done.

If you have more questions, beep me. I'll try my best to answer them. Right now, na my bed get me...

Diagrams are here...

[Chxta]

If you frequently download files from suspicious sites, it's probably worth it to check for viruses Before you download, instead of waiting to see if your regular anti-virus software will catch it after you download.

The solution? You can use the Dr.Web plugin, which will add an item to the right-click menu to allow you to scan any web page or download link using their online virus checker.

Let's take it for a test drive… I decided to scan the Dr.Web Firefox plugin with Dr.Web, just to see what it would say.



Looks like it's clean! (shocker)



Keep in mind that no anti-virus software is absolutely perfect or will catch every virus, so this isn't a substitute for using a proper anti-virus software. You should also still be careful where you download files from.

This plugin will also not work for webmail attachments. I tested this on Gmail and it didn't work, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it means your attachments are private.

Firefox

Download Dr.Web Anti-Virus Link Checker from Mozilla Add-ons

Internet Explorer

Download Registry Hack for Dr. Web Anti-Virus Link Checker

Opera

Instructions for adding a context menu item to the Opera browser.

[Thuggie Baby]

cool... is it a free download? or u have to pay