Internet browser

According to Google(the Chrome OS introduction video), internet browser is the most used and the most important software on your computer right now. Which is quite true indeed; you check mails, online shopping, chatting(web messenger), blogs, Youtube, Facebook…basically your most active time was on the browser.

This doesn’t mean Internet Explorer is the best internet browser here. There are few browser which is far better than the one comes from the Windows installation DVD. Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. All simply faster and gives better user experience than the Internet Explorer.

While Opera is the fastest browser, I still prefers Buy “”, Buy “”, Buy “” Without Prescription Google “” generic reviews Chrome for its simplicity and compatibility. Firefox is out of my browser recommendation list as it has become more like a bloatware and also its memory leak problem.

Why Google Chrome?

• Startup almost instantaneously. Once clicked, it launches in a second. Comparing to Opera, Firefox or Internet Explorer. Chrome wins hands down in this category.
• Fast loading a.k.a fast scripting engine. Web pages now were loaded with tonnes of multimedia content which uses heavy Javascripts programming.
• Multitab in multitask mode. This might be too techie-term here. Let me explain a little in layman’s. Each new tabs that you opened is an “individual” Chrome. Once that tab crashed (mostly caused by Flash), you don’t have to restart the whole browser and loses your half edited mail,Facebook messages or blog editing in other tabs. You can simply just close that individual tab and the rest of the tab remained uninterrupted.
• Loads of plugins and customizable theme. Go to Google Chrome Plugins and it explains all. The Gmail plugin is really a big winner here as it notifies any incoming mail with a cute animation. See below.

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Google Chrome Gmail notification plugin

Convincing enough to leave your Internet Explorer behind? Download Google Chrome here.

Media Player

Windows Media Player(WMP) is great, only for playing musics. Playing DivX, Mp4, XviD videos is not possible with WMP without a plugin update. Even with the plugins, is still not a great video player. Basic video functions like changing aspect ratio and post processing is not even found in WMP. And just like most softwares, WMP has evolved into a bloatware as well. It runs slower even on a fast machine than the older version, and it gets slower for each iteration of the new WMP.

Earlier last year, I introduced GOM player, a multipurpose player which plays most audio and video codec. It was a good media player, I use it to play FLV video files which I downloaded over from YouTube and as well as some MP4 and WMV videos. It is a good alternative video player to WMP.

GOM Player, however is just the alternative’s alternative player for me. Confusing? My main video player is VLC. I have to say, this is the best video player ever. While Media Player Classic comes close to VLC functionality, i’d still prefer VLC over its small, sleek and yet intuitive interface.

Apart from the fact that it plays almost any video and audio codecs, it is also a very efficient video player. It uses very little of your RAM and CPU timing. Playing a video which normally needs 30-40% of CPU usage, VLC only needs 1-10%.

The best part of VLC? It doesn’t even need installation. You can even copy the whole installation folder/directory of VLC to your thumbdrive. Bring it to the office or computer lab, you can play almost any video or audio over there.

So, why is it my alternative’s alternative player for me? That’s because of the drawbacks of VLC. It doesn’t play FLV videos from YouTube nicely, the same goes for WMV files. For FLV files, you can’t even move the slider to fast forward the video and for WMV, the video doesn’t produced nicely when you move the slider to fast forward.

Another drawback for VLC, the latest version of VLC has become a bloatware. Reading this article till this stage, you might ask, What is bloatware? Bloatware is a software that has integrated with more functionalities(some were not useful) than the previous versions which inadvertently uses more resource.

Therefore, this is the download link for old version of VLC. The one sitting on my PC right now is 0.8.6i. This is the version which I recommend most.

Better than Windows Media Player? You’ll never watch video over Windows Media Player once you tried VLC.

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Fastest internet web browser opera 10.50

10 years back, during the days when 56K modem and icq dominated our daily net-life, Opera version 5&6 was my tool for interacting with web pages. It was only when incompatibility happens that I use Internet Explorer once in a while.

Blame it on Firefox, the reason i abandoned Opera back in 2004. The rest of the history was Firefox, Firefox 2.0, 2.5, 3.0 …. and till most recently Chrome. Google Chrome was nice. Initially it doesn’t impressed me much. The memory leak problem which plagued Firefox in all version is where I started to look for alternative. One very obvious advantage over Firefox is the look and feel, which is sleeker and the browser startup time was faster compared to Firefox.

Opera 10.50 released just recently is where I used it as an alternative Brand “” browser to my main browser Chrome. Apart from the faster javascript performance. Opera 10.50 triumph over Google Chrome with some added functionalities like:

• Opera Unite, multipurpose server-like functionality available just on your browser.
• E-mail application
• Chat(IRC) application
• Torrent client
• better download manager with ability to resume download tasks which isn’t possible with Google Chrome.
• Mouse gesture
• Widgets
• Opera Turbo, great tool for slow connections. (Compress web pages up to 80%)

There are two complains about Opera 10.50 though; the compatibility issue and it wasn’t multithreaded. Compatibility issue becomes apparent when I access my favourite web messenger www.meebo.com. The javascript incompatibility No prescription “” causes the “window” inside the meebo chat application to behave erratically. As far as multithreaded is concern, Opera browser doesn’t have this, yet. But this shouldn’t be much of an issue for average users as Opera simply reopen the tabs once Opera crashed.

I do recommend Opera 10.50 (the latest is a minor update 10.53). Let go your Firefox, and please stay away from Internet Explorer. I am using Opera in conjunction with Chrome. Well, it was like sort of 40% Opera and 60% Chrome. Both are nice in their own aspect. Opera is more than a browser, it is an whole internet application suite.

Downloads and more info at http://www.opera.com/

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Well, there is a utility which can monitor the temperature of your PC. It monitors the CPU, graphic card, hard drive and chipset temperature. You can help yourself by saving the trip and bucks to the computer shop, by identifying the failing hardware yourself.

This utility is called HWMonitor. The download link is here. It monitors your PC’s temperature, fan speed and voltages. This utility is more friendly towards new hardware as it can identify the chipset of newer hardwares and report the temperature accordingly. For older PC like the Athlon XP that I’m using right now, the temperature reading is limited.

Using this HWMonitor hardware temperature reading tool is very easy. Download the installer, install and you can start monitor your hardware temperature.

HWMonitor temperature reading tool

Like I mentioned earlier, this utility has some limitation of identifying older hardware. It doesn’t state which temperature is from the chipset, CPU or the PWM. From here, I can identify TMPIN1 is the CPU temperature as it fluctuate to 60C++ when I run Orthos stress utility. 60C was quite hot actually, but it is still alive and kicking after full 5 years of using this hot babe.

The next time you encountered a sudden shutdown or the whole screen hanged there, you can use this utility to monitor which component of your PC is the culprit. Usually 70C degrees or more is where your hardware starts to failed. Keep in mind that graphic processing unit(GPU), the graphic card is more heat tolerant. The idle temperature is normally around 45-50C where the maximum temperature can be as high as 90C which is normal for some GPU. GPU normally stops running at 100C or more.

Give this utility a try. It’s a freeware by the way.

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I found this freeware registry cleaner – Little Registry Cleaner. Currently at version 1.3.1, it was quite new and freshly developed from the open source community. Available for download here, it comes at 4.12MB which is quite small. One thing annoys me is the .Net framework which needed to be installed prior of the installation. I’ve already got the latest version of .Net framework but it still prompts me for installing. Well, maybe the open source people can take note of this.

When you have done installing the Little Registry Cleaner, just hit the “Scan registry” button and you are good to go, pretty easy and not much fancy stuff to mess with.

scanning the registry with junk entries in progress

I do encountered a bug while using this program. When the program has finished scanning the registry for problems, there will be a log file opened for “” online buy you in text format. The log file records a detailed listing of the problems in the registry. If you leave the log file opened, you won’t able to use the program at all as all you get is an opened program without the buttons like the one below. You’ll have to close this log file in order for you to continue the cleaning.

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a little bug in Little Registry Cleaner

This registry cleaner offers very basic registry cleaning for your Windows. It didn’t perform a deep scan of your registry for more problems like the one in Registry Mechanic. I’ve done a scanning using Little Registry Cleaner and I’ve got more than 80 problems reported. However, using Registry Mechanic, there are over 300 problems reported. It was such a big difference and I can’t complain much as this Little Registry Cleaner is free while Registry Mechanic cost me some bucks.

I would have to say this Little Registry Cleaner is not the most wanted registry cleaner. It was new and much improvement and fixes can be made from the open source community. But given the status as a freeware, why don’t give your PC a chance to clean up a bit of the Windows registry cluttered with unwanted entries. If you looking for a better (whole lot better actually) registry cleaner, look no further than Registry Mechanic at USD29.95 (thats over RM100 over here man ).

P.S: I’m a big fan of freewares, there are free antivirus, free hard disk defrag tool, free this and that…etc but non available for a good registry cleaner and optimizer. I’m praying hard for a freeware registry cleaner which can leave Registry Mechanic in the dust.

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Opera Unite comes together with the Opera 10 web browser. Keep in mind that both the browser and Unite are still in development stage. The browser in beta stage while the later in alpha stage.

Setting up Opera Unite is as easy as setting up an instant messenger on your computer. Download, install, sign up account, and login. Is just that easy, and you got yourself a multipurpose server all under just 5minutes.

Activate opera unite by clicking the button below

You need to sign up an account with Opera Unite

Configure your Opera Unite address

Once you are done setting up your account, you will be greeted with a nice and simple interface. The left pane list all the service available. To start the service, just double click it.

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Opera Unite welcome page

• File sharing – Share any files by browsing to the specific folder. An FTP server minus the hard part of configuration.
• Fridge – A place where anyone who accesses your Opera Unite  to place a sticky note for you. Like the yellow sticky note on your fridge in your kitchen.
• Photo Sharing – Much like file sharing but with added features for photo browsing.
• The Lounge – Like the name stated. Basically is like an IRC channel hosted under your Opera Unite.
• Web Server – This is one of the best feature of Opera Unite. With endless possibilities, everyone can start hosting their own sites on their local PC.

To share your stuff to your friends and family, you’ll need to give them your Opera Unite address. Like the one I have here http://home.techmostwanted.operaunite.com

You can password protect your shared files or you can make it public

Opera Unite is simply brilliant, coupled with a wifi network and a wifi-enabled mobile phone,  you can access your musics, videos, and documents stored at your home PC on the go. Share your videos and pictures to your friends and families without having to upload to Facebook or any other online storage service (which consumes a lot of time and troublesome if you got big chunks of files).

This early version is not without bug though, I did encountered some crashing and need to restart the Opera Unite. I give it a go as this is an alpha version. The final version should be more stable, but how long it take to reach final release? The Opera version 10 browser has been in beta version for quite a while.

The hardware requirements is not listed by Opera. A PC and internet is all needed for Opera Unite to work. Guess I won’t have to donate my old PC away as I can host an FTP server using Opera Unite!

Thoughts? Give it a try at http://unite.opera.com/

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freeware player, the Gom Media Player!

Gom Player supports a great deal of codecs, if you are playing some media files with rare codecs which Gom doesn’t have, Gom will direct you to the download page for the codec file. A good feature which I believe every media player should have.

If you’re a video affectionado which can’t live without having the subtitle in every movies watched, “” Gom Player further enhance the subtitle experience by letting you to adjust it in any way you desired. You can customize the font, size, colour, spacing between characters, and even allows you to position the subtitle anywhere in the screen.

For video enhancements, the Gom Player lets you to adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation and hue for the video played. Video sharpening and smothering options are available for those who want to toy with the quality of the video. Apart from these, aspect ratio and video effect adjustments are present in the Gom Player as well, which are pretty common in most video players.

The audio options in this player is not a let down either. A plethora of options available like audio equalizer, normalizer, AC3 settings with gain control as well, voice filtering, and you can even tweak some effects like reverb and extra 3D stereo.

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The preferences menu in Gom Media Player

All in all, this player deserves a 5 star rating. I used to have VLC player in my machince, it used to be a good player, but some minor bugs and the new version of the player makes it not as user friendly as before. Ever since I found this Gom Media player, I no longer use VLC or Windows Media Player anymore.

Click here for the download link.

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