If you’ve ever had a problem with your computer, perhaps it’s running slowly or a strange, new program has appeared which you don’t recall installing etc, and a search of computer help forums suggests you open Task Manager to see what programs, or processes in particular, are running, you might well be bemused at exactly what you are looking at. Continue Reading

I suppose it strikes most people, at one time or another, that, in the course of listening to music, they think they could do as well or even better, or would like to try at least, if only they could play all those instruments. So, how can you put your creative mind to composing music without having to learn how to play (and get your hands on) all the instruments first? By using a Music Sequencer. Continue Reading

If you’ve ever wanted to record what is displayed on your computer monitor, perhaps for demonstration purposes or to create a stand alone presentation, then what you’re looking for is a full screen recorder, such as FRAPS.

Obviously, there are other programs which can do this, but Fraps has been around for a while, and has gained a good reputation, particularly amongst gamers, and especially those who like to record their gaming exploits to share with their friends, or upload to a video hosting site such as YouTube. Basically, it does exactly what it says it does – when invoked it records, in a popular movie format (AVI), everything which happens on the monitor for playback later, and, importantly, it uses relatively little resources in doing so. Continue Reading

If you’re shrewd fox, a web developer or just a sweeping tech enthusiast that wants to run many Firefox versions – here’s how you do it [these directions were tested on Windows 7, but should work for other versions of Windows as well]:

1)      Go to our Firefox page and download your favorite version.

2)      Open the setup file and when the installation prompts you, select “Custom.” You are after all, an experienced user – right?

3)      Change the destination folder to reflect the version of Firefox you are installing. For example, if you’re installing 3.01 have it install to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 3.01 — the goal here is to install each version of Firefox in its own standalone directory.

4)      Check the box that asks you if you want to have a shortcut on your desktop and don’t run the program when it’s done installing.

5)      Next, we want to set up a separate user profile for this version of Firefox that you just installed. To do this, go into the Start-Run prompt (hit Windows key +R ) and type in the following jibber-jabber:

“C:\\Program Files\\PUTDIRECTORYOFTHEINSTALLATION HERE\\firefox” -profilemanager -no-remote

Make sure you actually put the directory of the installation in the above notice. For instance, if you installed Firefox 4.01 in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 4.01 the above notice will be:

"C:\\Program Files\\Mozilla Firefox 4.01\\firefox" -profilemanager -no-remote

So, modify it accordingly. You should see a box like this:

Except, yours probably only has the default profile at the moment. What we want to do now is create a profile for every version of Firefox you’re going to run. Let’s start with the version you just installed.

1)      Simply click “Create Profile” and follow the simple steps. I suggest calling the profile the same as the version you just installed.

2)      You’re almost finished. What we want to do now is modify the shortcut to let Windows know that you want to use that specific Firefox profile with that version, so right click on the shortcut on your desktop (or wherever it is) and in target, input the following:

“”C:\Program Files\Change2Dir\firefox.exe” -P ProfileName -no-remote”

3)      That’s it – repeat all these steps for all the different versions of Firefox you plan to install J!

Generally, for our lay-audience we recommend uninstalling the new version before installing the older version. In fact, for most of the more ‘evil’ companies (yes, I judge a company as evil based on the version-control it wants to have), it won’t even let you install the older versions over a newer one (Skype). Luckily for you, the reader – Mozilla isn’t an evil company and allows you to have multiple installations at once.

If you want to debate with me on what makes a company evil or have any general comments or feedback, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Resources:

Firefox Download

The first thing which probably springs to mind when one thinks of a word processor for Windows, is the ubiquitous Microsoft Office. It’s no secret after all that it has been the king of the hill for many years and the standard by which any would be competitor is judged. Few would disagree that it’s a very good suite of software, in fact, probably the only issue anyone has with it, is the fact that it’s vastly expensive. Continue Reading

There’s nothing more irritating than, when you’re watching some of your favorite videos on, say YouTube or similar, and it keeps stopping midway through a great song for buffering, or you have to wait for it to start downloading then hit pause quick and wait a while for it to download almost completely before you play it. It would help, therefore, if there was a way to download your oft-watched videos to your hard drive to eliminate the wait next time. Continue Reading

Generally speaking, I would guess that most people are happy to play their computer audio and video files on one of the popular media players such as Windows Media Player, Winamp, Realplayer; all of which have been around for ages and are pretty flexible, easy and straightforward to use.

However, the above media players, although they do their job well enough, don’t offer the kind of flexibility which someone, say a DJ for example, wants. Of course the last time I went to a disco (do they still call them discos?), there was a guy up there on the stage with a double record deck he could cue up each “record” (vinyl that is), using a slider to fade one record out and the other in seamlessly over each other. Though there are some media players, Jet Audio springs to mind, which will do this for you if you want, overlapping the next file at the end of the currently playing one, they offer little additional control. Continue Reading

I’ve been using Windows XP, relatively happily, for many years now and, despite two more operating systems being released since, support for XP being withdrawn, and the fact that I have a huge amount of software designed for it, I can’t imagine, for the moment anyway, not using it.

It appears that almost all software developers are fully aware that, should a software release not be compatible with Windows XP, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot by excluding a huge swathe of their potential customer base, which creates problems for MS of course, whose strategy to make it attractive to “upgrade” to the latest OS version necessitates that software authors also make their software compatible only with the latest version. Continue Reading

Portable Document Format, PDF, is pretty much the standard for document dissemination nowadays, and there are many reasons why. Firstly, the PDF is cross-platform, which means it doesn’t matter which type of system you use, you can easily open them; additionally, they allow you to incorporate various levels of security, add watermarks, include pictures etc, they’re also easy to create as many word processing programs such as Microsoft Office and Open Office allow you to create PDF files directly. Continue Reading

Like me, you’ve probably got plenty of media files on your computer, in umpteen different formats; MP3s, MP4s, AVIs, WMVs, FLVs, DATS, OGGs, SWFs, MOVs, RMs, VOBs MKVs, etc, etc, and don’t you just wish there was one player which would play all of them? Of course, Windows Media Player is pretty good, as are some others, but the closest I’ve come to finding the panacea of media players, has to be GOM Player. Continue Reading