Computer Tricks & Tips » Windows

4 Principles for Windows OS Anti-virus

Bob — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:14:34 +0000

Regarding any Microsoft’s Windows OS, a good antivirus program is a key point when you are surfing the Internet. It seems everyone has his own favorite solution to virus with personal feature, but in terms of security experts, there are universal principles for Windows OS anti-virus:

1. Install Antivirus before Connecting the Internet

Do install anti-virus software in any PC of Microsoft’s Windows OS before connecting the Internet, since the speed of malware infecting the computer is faster than that of downloading anti-virus program. If you don’t realize this and take for granted that you needn’t worry about virus infecting your PC before you open the browser to visit any website, you are playing Russian Roulette on the PC security.

2. Choose the Antivirus Containing Real-time Scan Tool

To protect your PC from being infected with viruses or worms, you need a real-time auto-scan tool to ensure you can detect the presence of virus in daily work and prevent virus spreading. Real-time scanning may bring more pressure to the system performance so we often close it, but do make careful consideration. In fact, it’s inadvisable to close the real-time scanning to get extra performance improvement when you are browsing webpage and sending and receiving email.

3. Full Scan the System Regularly

Relying on only real-time scan is far from enough; you also need to ensure full scanning the system regularly. If possible, you should have your computer full scanned automatically everyday, since real-time scan can only effectively protect the system from being infected during connecting and even so, it’s probable that some viruses are not included in the characteristic codebase of your antivirus program and thus can not be detected.. Therefore, full scanning the system regularly is necessary.

4. Don’t Use Two Antivirus Programs at the Same Time

It will bring nothing but troubles using two antivirus programs at the same time, because two antivirus programs running together in the system will cause such problems as their real-time scan tools may conflict in control rights thus impairing the system performance and the virus signature file of the antivirus program may be handled as actual virus by the other one. In a word, to have two incompatible antivirus programs run in your PC may lead to many unexpected situations.

In addition, you can refer to another article of mine by clicking here to find some kind of antivirus recommended and some tips to make your PC run smoothly.

5 Great Events of 2009 Operating Systems

Bob — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:59:46 +0000

Great change in Wall Street, ruin of Dubai Myth…–an economic crisis in 2009 had a big impact on all industries and “boost consumption” became the words most talked about in coping with the economic downturn. The IT industry had to lay off employees to cope with the depressed market. Meanwhile, the operating system manufacturers were busy with their products to create new features in a new look to fight in the fatigued market. Thus we saw Windows 7 and Google Chrome OS come into the market with lofty tone and mobile system of 3G age reform and so on. All of these brought numerous aftertastes and questions to us at the end of 2009.

Windows 7 – A Life Saving-Straw of Microsoft

In October 2009, Windows 7 was officially sold all over the world which meant the reclusion of its predecessor Windows Vista which was undoubtedly a failure like the earlier Windows Me system. Microsoft obviously doesn’t want to be entangled with Vista that was doomed to be a hurried passer, so it spared no effort to promote Windows 7 in the hope of retrieving the declining tendency.

Compared with Windows Vista, Windows 7 was made with great improvements in system compatibility, lowering requirement for hardware configuration and so on to redeem the faults of Vista. What’s more, Microsoft has strengthened the marketing promotion so we could even see Win 7 in home appliances chain stores. In fact, after experiencing the failure of Vista, Microsoft found a good way. Windows 7 has drawn on the excellences of XP and other operating systems and deleted some verbose procedures in Vista.

However, facing the ceaseless new challenges from its competitors like Google Chrome OS, will Windows 7 be the life saving-straw of Microsoft in 2010? Now we can learn the satisfactory sale volume of Win 7 and the wide acceptance by users. Obviously, we can be optimistic with the performance of Windows 7 in home use, but whether it will be successful in enterprise use market remains in doubt.

“Butterfly Effect” Performed by Google Chrome OS

Google officially revealed long rumored Chrome OS and released the source code of Chrome OS in November 2009. For a long time, IT news was around Chrome OS, which indicated Google had a new arm to fight with Microsoft. From previous online office apps to current Chrome OS, Google shows its ambition everywhere.

Based on Linux and Being Open Source, Chrome OS has three developing points that are (performance) speed, (operation) simplicity and (system) security with all programs network-based. As a whole, Chrome OS is the concept of “cloud” operating system with just a browser to run. We can see Chrome OS be intended to avoid the traditional desktop PC field of Windows operating system and then win a share in the operating system of netbooks and smart phones in the future.

Will Google Chrome OS which is based on Linux be the next one of Linux to have tepid fate? Facing the yet wispy “cloud” application of desktop system, how much cordial feeling will users have with Chrome OS? Maybe we shouldn’t ask like this. It seems to be a generally acknowledged truth that Google is the one of most excellent network companies with best searching engine. Anything this company does centers around advertisement business. It spent great efforts to develop the same type products or innovated products, all of which was to ensure it wouldn’t be pushed out from any market so as to firm its core search and advertisement business. Therefore, it’s easy for us to find the products of Google such as Chrome OS and Google Docs are intended to convert users to network. Will Google Chrome OS play a good butterfly effect? We wait for the answer in 2010.

High Speed – Highlight of Mac OS X 10.6

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was launched in August 2009, earlier than Windows 7 and Google Chrome OS. Although this system has artistic and gorgeous appearance, it actually doesn’t have numerous new features to attract us to upgrade to it, while it indeed has a feature appreciated by all: high speed.

Without special new features, what Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard brought are many small improvements, including built-in support for Microsoft Exchange, turning to Intel CPU from PowerPC CPU and the greatest highlight: high speed. Someone calls Mac OS X 10.6 as the copy of Windows 7 since both systems spent much in interfaces and details. But the strategy of Mac OS X 10.6 was successful with well known artistic and gorgeous interface. What’s more, the home edition of Mac OS X 10.6 costs only $49 and it has many similar features to Windows 7, which turn a part of the users’ attention to low-cost Snow Leopard from Windows 7.

With equal elegant desktop design and many similar features to Windows 7, it was the best strategy for Mac OS X 10.6 to highlight the speed with its many new improvements drawn from Windows Vista. The running speed of system was improved based on meeting users’ habit, which made Mac OS X 10.6 get more public praise. Besides, for users who are used to Mac OS, Snow Leopard at least let them see Apple striving for better user experience. Of course, price is the important charm of Snow Leopard.

A Habitat for Linux in Netbook

Netbook, a word created by Intel in Spring IDF Exhibition of 2008, was fashionable in the PC market of 2009 after a short market demonstration. The IT industry compared the netbook to “retrogressive innovation”. It was this little world built up by an Aton CPU and a small screen that aroused users’ consideration of balance between “want” and “need” and finally they chose “need”. Thus, it initiated a market battle among operating systems in netbook systems.

Early this year before Windows 7 was officially released, it was shown by an investigation that more than 85% netbooks run Windows XP. While what we may really need is not an all-round operating system like Windows but an operating system that is more suitable for mobile terminal and brings more excellent surfing experience as the gradual upgrade of netbook application and in view of the “second notebook” location of netbook. Therefore the netbook provides a big market space for Linux.

In fact, the industry has pushed out innumerable operating systems for netbooks. From Ubuntu Linux to Intel Moblin, all of the systems can let us daily surf online and do word processing work. The application tendency of Non-Windows systems in netbooks is self-evident with legerity design to finish starting up or shutting down in a few seconds. By virtue of Live CD feature of Linux, we can even run this system through USB flash drive or SD card without installing it. Although Linux system is not popular in ordinary users and Windows 7 is infiltrating into netbooks, the features of ingenuity and open source of Linux was bound to find a habitat in netbooks in 2009.

Bustling Mobile Operating Systems in 3G Age

The development and change of smart phones are very fast. No one would know Apple’s iPhone could become so popular today; no one would think of being so convenient with 3G today. The colorful network application of 3G age needs such carriers as smart phones and netbooks to come true. In 2009, the 3G mobile operating system field was already swarmed with old brand systems such as Microsoft’s WindowsMobile, Apple’s Mac, Nokia’s Symbian, but there were still emerging Google’s Android and China Mobile’s OMS, which made the mobile operating system market out of recognition.

Apple’s iPhone was such a hot seller and so was Blackcherry in 2009. However, the relatively close condition for hardware and software of iPhone and Blackcherry caused their exclusive operating systems appealed to just a small crowd. What we saw mainly was the contest between Linux-based Google Android and Microsoft WindowsMobile, the common feature of which was to contend for markets through vast mobile manufacturers adopting their operating systems. Eventually, in mobile operating system field of 2009, we saw Windows prevail in the contest.

It’s easy to understand this result. The essential of mobile operating system application is to extend various internetwork applications to the smart phone. For example, the key point of Google Android certainly is mobile search, while Windows system is better in implanting the PC terminal applications such as MSN, search, email, and chat in the mobile. Currently, what do we do most with mobile network application? The answers are chat, search and collecting & sending email. Considering the current most frequent applications of mobile network, we can find the advantage of the series of Windows operating systems. By contrast, Google can only popularize its search service through Android and thus the application scope of Android is not broad.

What Will We Use in 2010?

It is an indisputable fact that demand induces development and the development of operating system is also the development of computers in a sense. As a standard suit of package software, the operating system must meet the demand of multiple users as far as possible, so the operating system constantly dilates, its features constantly increase, the application environment constantly extends and grow up a platform environment from developing tools to system tools to application software. This is well embodied in Linux system.

In 2010, on which operating systems will we see development and change? 3G network and cloud concept that are two catalysts will presumably be more apparently embodied in operating system in the future after they experienced healthy development in 2009. It is believed that the well-known operating systems such as Windows, Mac and Linux will roll out more branch versions of which Google Chrome OS is a good example.

Certainly, some curious imaginations might occur to us at the end of 2009. Will Windows 7 completely replace Windows XP in 2010? Will Linux engage more attention with the help of 3G wave? Will Mac OS X become the new land for hacker attack? We look forward to the answers in 2010…

9 Must-have Apps with Windows in My Life

Bob — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 07:12:02 +0000

I have recently changed to use Windows 7 from Windows XP and found some apps lose its value in Win 7. Then I sorted out some apps that I must use no matter in Win XP or Win 7 and thus they are regarded as the must-have apps in my daily life. Hope they will be also useful for you.

1、Firefox

Firefox is my favorite browser among the browsers I have ever used. Although the speed of Google Chrome is much quicker, I won’t switch to use it since it doesn’t have so many plugins and extensions as Firefox. Why to use Firefox? In a word here, you can browse webpage more efficient with it.

Relevant resources:

· Firefox extensions & add-ons recommended

· Top 10 Firefox greasemonkey script

· Download Firefox

2、Notepad++

Notepad++ is an application similar to Windows Notepad but it is much more powerful with support for tab, word count, closing tab by double click, line number mark, Macro and batch replacement.

It can identify most programming languages, distinguish different codes in different colors and fold the subfunctions for you to look over the program structure conveniently.

Download Notepad++

3、Fence

Fence can divide your desktop into different parts and you can allocate icons to different parts. The following is the screenshot of my present desktop:

The two black and semitransparent parts on the upper right are created by Fence.

One main reason for me to use Fence is I want to put the icons on the right (not by manually dragging) and Fence lets me realize it indirectly.

Download Fence

4、ClipX

I like ClipX very much, for Windows clipboard can only store the last copy which is inconvenient, while ClipX is the software allowing you to store the copies of recent many times in the clipboard and the copies won’t vanish after you turn off the computer. ClipX also supports operations with Unicode and shortcut keys. One feature of ClipX I like best is I can see the images in the clipboard list which is very convenient for me to choose the item to use.

Download ClipX

Detail tips for ClipX

5、Process Explorer

This is an enhanced edition of official Process Explorer of Microsoft. Besides providing rich data, it also provides process contents in tree form. The two features of it I like best are:

1) Users can look up the process of a certain window by dragging and dropping the icon of the Process Explorer to the window.

2) Different states of processes are distinguished in different colors.

Download Process Explorer

6、7zip

7zip is the best free substitute of commercial software WinRAR for compression or decompression. It not only supports the 7z format of itself but also supports almost all compressing formats including WinRAR’s exclusive format rar.

The icon of 7zip official version is a bit ugly and you can search for its beautifying version to install.

Download 7zip

More review on 7zip

7、Launchy

Launchy is the software for you to open a program quickly by a shortcut key. After installing Launchy, click Alt+Space (or you can customize it as other shortcut keys) to call out it, then input a segment of a program and you can find the program immediately through Launchy, which largely improves the operating efficiency.

Apart from quickly opening the program, Launchy also supports shortcut search. Input the keyword in Launchy and then click Enter and the system will open the browser to search this keyword.

Download Launchy

More Launchy usage

8、NetSetMan

NetSetMan is for rapidly switching the Network Parameters. You can preset the frequently used IP, Gateway and DNS into NetSetMan and when you need to change the parameter, you can choose the designated tab and enable it. If you need to often switch DNS, NetSetMan is good for you.

Download NetSetMan

9、Everything

Everything is a powerful app for file search with not only high indexing speed but also high searching speed. Also it provides support for regular expression. Meanwhile, its index database is very small. With it, you absolutely don’t need to use the self-containing search tool of Windows.

It’s a pity that Everthing only supports NTFS file system and can only search filename but this is enough for general search. If you want more powerful local search you can try Google Desktop. However, the database of Google Desktop for desktop search may surpass 1G at any time, while the maximum database of Everything is only more than 10MB.

Download Everything