Change Vista boot screen

go to the start search prompt type msconfig and click on the boot tab.
In the boot tab check no GUI boot and reboot computer.
Windows will now change your boot screen everytime you boot up.

Loopt

Want all of your friends to keep track of your where about. Here is a great software to help your friends keep in touch. It's a tracking software, where you can easily locate or have your friends located. You decide who has access to your whereabouts. Right now it's only available for Boost Mobile customers. But within time, it will be ready available for almost all cellular phone users.

Yapta

If you hate juggling websites to see what great prices you can get from time to time. Yapta is worth taking a look at. Call it RSS tag for airlines. You not only get current changes in prices, but from all of your airlines offering those prices.
Shopping around for airline tickets is getting easier has we speak.

Test Disk

This open source utility is excellent when it comes to restoring a hard drive that has recently failed.
Hopefully now you can recover all of your failed drives back to normal.

Blog Backup

Have an ongoing blog and are afraid that one day your loose everything from your hosting site. Blog backup is a great solution for backing up your blog. You never know what can happen and for a free blog backup to your site. Why not!

Make XP look like Vista

Like the way Vista looks but have XP.
Here are a few softwares to change your XP layout to look similar to Vista.
Links

Desktop Sidebar

Stockdock

Similate 3D

Media Center

Google Desktop

Cell Phone Widgets

Like the concepts of Widgets and want to go portable with it.
Try widsets and take your mobile experience beyond what you can imagine.

Widgets

Looking for widgets for your computer, cell phone, PDA, etc.
This site will give you just that. Just be prepared to take widgets where you've never gone before.

Vista Manager

Enjoy Windows but wish you had a utlitiy to clean up all the garbage you don't really need in Windows.
Vista Manager maybe the tweak your looking for. You would be glad to know that after tweaking your computer. You will not only have a fast running computer, but a computer free of garbage software that manufactures load when you first purchased a computer.
At least now you control the tweaks on everything from automatic updates, to error reporting and access drives.

Fring

Want to make a VOIP call via your cell phone at no cost.
Fring is the way to go and it easy interacts with Skype, Google talk, and MSN Instant messenger.
Fring uses a thin client technology to connect via the current cellular 3G system to connect with other providers.
Everyone can talk and instant message for free. Be ahead when it comes to VOIP.

Restart a Frozen iPod

If you current have a iPod and hate it when your iPod freezes, here is a great tip to get your iPod working again.
a- click on the iPod wheel and slide the hold button back and forth once.
b- then press and hold the menu and select buttons for a few seconds, until the apple
logo appears on the screen.
If nothing happens, repeat a and b until the apple logo screen appears.

Damaged Laptop Screen

Have a damaged laptop screen and want to see if it's worth to repair the laptop or just get a new one. If you paid less than $500- then your better off getting a new one. Otherwise if you paid a little more, it might just be worth to replace your laptop screen.
Laptop screens will cost you anywhere from $300- and up depending on the model. And if you do it yourself. You save on labor costs. So evaluate your options and if you decide to change your laptop screen,Screen Tek is the way to go.

Verizon All In One Bill

If you have a Verizon All in one bill you should read this article. It can save you money.
What happens is simple. You cancel a Verizon service and years later guess what? You can still be paying for that service. Read the bill carefully and make sure your paying for services you are using. If you don't know what it is just ask?
Otherwise you'll just throwing your money away.

Get More Out of your Router

If you have currently a Linksys or Buffalo router there is good news for you. You can easy tweak your router settings and get your current router to do more.
You first need to know if your router is supported.

For Linksys models it works with:
WRT54G, WRT54GS to ver 4, WRT54GL ver 1 to 1.1, WRT54GS
For Buffalo models it works with:
WHR-G54S, WHR-HP-G54

In Linksys you download the Tomato Firmware and do a firmware upgrade with the Tomato bin file.
In Buffalo it's tricky. You hold down the reset button and hand wire your computer to the router. Edit your TCP properties to 192.168.11.2 and mask 255.255.255.0 with the gateway to 192.168.11.1. Unplug the router power cable for a minute and the power up the router and run the wh4_intall.bat file in the Tomato archive.

Afordable Online Backup

If your looking for an online backup to store your files, photo's and personal documents. Mozy is a pleasant way to go. For $5- a month you get unlimited personal storage, you can't beat that. If your a business user prices vary but it's affordable.
Online storage is a convenient way to make sure you loose nothing and your files are secure.

referral code - ZK7QFI

Alternate way to download files from Youtube

Youtube is a great, but I just hate it that you can't even download those favorite videos. Here are some software tips to help you keep those Youtube favorites with you.

DVDVideoSoft

Vixy.net

iSquint

Add Folders to the Office Open Menu

Want to make it easy to have quick access to all your documents in office.
Just follow these simple tips and opening files will be a breeze.

1- Open up Office Word and then click file -> open
2- Once the open dialog box opens up. Find the folder that has your files that you want to open quickly and click on -> tools
3- In tools click on -> Add to My Places
4- If you do everything correctly you should see the new folder underneath My Network to the left of the open dialog box. Now everytime you need to retrieve those files quickly. All you have to do is to click on that folder.

Optimize Vista for Bitorrent & eMule

Microsoft did an update on Service Pak 2 to limit TCP connections. What this did was slowed down Bitorrent & eMule downloads.
With the new version of Vista it put greater restrictions so that the Vista Ultimate version has only 25 and the Vista Home edition with just 2.
If anyone wanted to speed up the download for Bitorrent & eMule they would have to seek online tutorials to undo the restrictions.

Here are the steps to optimize your downloads.

1. Download patched tcpip.sys: 64-bit tcpip.sys or 32-bit tcpip.sys.
2. Open command prompt, and run the following 2 commands:

takeown /f c:\windows\system32\drivers\tcpip.sys
cacls c:\windows\system32\drivers\tcpip.sys /G “username”:F

Replace username with the actual user name that is currently being used to log on.

3. Disable the TCP/IP Auto-Tuning feature by running the following command in command prompt:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable

4. For 64-bit Windows Vista (x64), the integrity checks need to be disabled as it needs all drivers to be signed. So run the following command in DOS prompt:

bcdedit.exe -set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS

5. Replace the tcpip.sys in C:\windows\system32\drivers folder with the patched tcpip.sys downloaded during step 1 (remember to use the correct x64 or x86 version. Normally this procedure can be done by simply logging into Windows Vista with an administrator account. However, if the process fails, reboot the computer and then press F8 to boot up in Safe Mode, and then copy and paste to overwrite the tcpip.sys.

6. Next, the maximum number of TCP half complete connection limit needs to be set in the registry. Open registry editor (regedit), and navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCALL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

7. Right click on the right pane, select “New”, then select “DWORD value”. Enter the new value name as “TcpNumConnections” (without quotes).

8. Double click on TcpNumConnections registry value, and modify the value data to the desired maximum TCP/IP connection limit that you want to allow, in decimal value. For example, enter 500 as the value data for TcpNumConnections. You can use any limit that you prefer. Alternatively, download this registry registration file that when executed, will set the TCP simultaneous connection limit to 16777214 (you can always modify the value in the file or in the registry after applied).

9. Restart computer.

Compliments of TorrentFreak

Get Ready for Firefox 3

While Microsoft is trying hard to convince everyone on buying Vista. Mozilla is getting ready for it's Firefox 3 deployment in beta.
I just hope that this time Mozilla keeps keeps pace with there software bugs and updates so that Firefox will always be ahead of the lame IE 7.

Vista Servic Pak 1

We still have no release date but here are the 100 known fixes already.