It’s worth noticing it if you are using Opera. I had a difficult-to-solve issue recently.
While playing with the idea of starting to use IPv6 on my main PC, I tested the waters by validating this option in the network configuration of my Windows XP. Unfortunately, Opera is already fully ready for IPv6 but my router box is not. So, the first effect it had is that Opera decided to enforce the use of IPv6 for all web sites that mentioned IPv6 capacity in their DNS (not many of them, but Google and Free.fr my ISP are already in the list). The immediate effect was that Opera tried to connect to them in IPv6 but failed (because the rest of my home configuration is not 100% IPv6). For 99% of all web sites, there was no difference…
It took me several days (and some Googling – using Safari and Chrome) to understand that this is a known issue and to remove the (still) useless IPv6 Windows configuration.
The arrival of Windows 7 also annonces the arrival of a new updated DirectX to serve the PC gamers’ community. We already knew that Vista did not have the favour of the gamers (who often stayed with Windows XP) and that had (among other things) some significant impact on DirectX 10 that required Vista. Will gamers now run to Windows 7? It’s possible, but if you want to see the real progress brought to video games (here, to the very popular Crysis FPS) by the various version of DirectX, check the video below:
If you want to grab the maximum CPU power for your PC video game (or any other PC application, by the way), there is a free utility that will ensure that the PC CPU does not spend to much time on anything else: Game Booster. It may be bad for a correctly balanced performance, but some games may appreciate the help.
If you have Windows installed on your PC, you may have noticed one surprising thing: File copying is amazingly slower than what it was in previous editions of Windows or on other kinds of computers. The exact reason is a bit unclear (some say that it is linked to some Digital Rights Management features kicking in any time you copy a file, but this is still unproven to my knowledge) but this became a very annoying issue for people who have to copy either lots of files (backing up your daily work is a good example – by the way, did you make your daily backup yet?) or some very big files (moving video files around your computer is the archetypal example).
This situation led to the appearance of a few optimize file copy utilities (a software category that did not exist a few years ago, but a useful one). Let’s look at 4 of them which have the enormous advantage of being completely free:
SuperCopier: Its strong advantage is that -after installation- it replaces completely the default Windows copy for drag-and-drop (it works nearly without thinking about it)
FastCopy is fast but forgets mostly about being beautiful. However, it has a few interesting (and unique) options to configure the way the right-click menu appears.
RichCopy is the internal Microsoft solution to their own bug/issue. Amazingly configurable, you can setup profiles for different uses (probably too much for most users, though) but I couldn’t find how to insert it in the right-click menu.
CopyHandler: You can’t get more technical than this one! Options include things as obscure as buffer size depending on the type of file copy you do (disk-to-disk, directory-to-directory, disk-to-CD/DVD, etc.) The best little gems here include the possibility to pause/restart file copying, shutting down the computer at the end of a copy session, or scheduling a copy session for the next login.
All of them get rid of the usual flying folder kind of window and replace it with a more technical-looking window with progress bars and more optional lists of details.
Anyway, even if I can recommend all of them (a little preference for SuperCopier), remember that they are not even useful (in terms of copying speed) in Windows XP or Windows 2000. But, if you are using Windows Vista (mostly) or Windows 7, you should seriously consider them.
Simply the best video player for Windows, VLC, just quit its long beta phase. This is official now, VLC v1.0.0 is available with a list of small improvements brought to an already impressive product that I can only recommend if you are using video (to read DVD, BluRay, HD-DVD discs; to stream videos from your computer; to convert your videos; and I sure forget some).
you merely change the size of the Windows desktop and all your desktop icons are forcefully moved around against your will. After one or two of these, you’d be ready to cry, while backing up the position of the icons would be enough, before connecting a new screen, or attaching your laptop to a video-projector, etc.
Up to now, you could only cry and reposition the icons. But here comes DesktopOK. What can I say? It does exactly what you want and what you need: a mere backup, a simple restore and your icons come back where you wanted them.
Here comes a small freeware utility program that does only one thing, but does it right. Trayconizer is used to put any Windows program into the icon tray (not only the ones allowing it explicitly).
For example, you can put the NotePad program in the tray icon with a single shortcut containing something like:
After years of preparation and beta-phase, finally, Wine has been able to reach launch as Wine 1.0. Why is it significant? Because this is the software package designed to be able to run many Windows applications from a GNU/Linux distribution. If you want to switch to Linux, you may not be willing to abandon some of the applications that were developped for Windows.
Wine is there to solve the problem. It runs many games and it runs Photoshop CS2 and CS3 from the box (I did not test it myself, though). It was the plain objective of Google when they allocated money and developers to support this project. They reached their goal.
It is probably the right time to try OpenSuse 11.0 (one of the best new Linux distributions) with Wine.
Usually, I would not comment about upcoming software applications and tools, but today there is an rumour that may be very important. We all know that switching from Windows to Linux is a difficult move because we have been used to so many applications available on one Operating System but not on the other (in my case, how could I do without Photoshop?)
Here comes Wine, an open source tool supposed to allow you to run native Windows applications in your Linux PC. In beta during years, Wine was incomplete and unable to provide the ultimate dream of OS migration, but things seem to be changing. Google invested a lot of effort, and it is said that version 1.0 of Wine is upcoming.
One of the important things I noticed, of course, is that there are plenty of games now supported (Baldur’s Gate II – Throne of Baal, Call of Duty 2, World of Warcraft, etc.) and I see that both Photoshop CS2 and CS3 are also in the list.
We never can get enough of them, but our computers are sometimes overflowing. Software applications are everywhere, but how to choose the right one for the task at hand? I built a real collection of pages where you will be able to find nearly all you can dream for nearly all computers:
And, last but not least, for old dinosaurs, let’s remind you that you can still use VAX-VMS on your Linux PC. If you don’t know what I am saying, either you’re too young, or you never received a hacker education. Or both.
When you have a computer with multiple partitions on the same disk or several disks with different partitions, things start getting bad if one of them is a Linux Ext or Ext2 partition: Usually, you can’t access the Linux partition from your Windows computer, Microsoft totally ignore your disk/partition.
In order to correct this, you can/must use a special Windows driver able to recognize correctly those Linux Ext/Ext2 partitions. Ext2 IFS provides full read/write access. It’s is essentially a kernel ext2/ext3 filesystem driver for Windows. When installed in your Windows computer, it simply becomes able to natively access the Linux disk. After installing, you can mount your Linux partition under a drive letter, just like you would an NTFS partition. The drive will be available in Explorer and within any file browser dialog in your favorite Windows applications.
You install your PC some time ago, it may be necessary to clean it up a little in order to keep or improve its raw speed. As a matter of fact, even if we are no longer in the old times of Windows 98 that were nearly forcing you to a re-install once or twice a year, it is not unusual to see that installing many new software packages (voluntarily or indirectly) leads to tons of data and roadblacks for your PC.
Here are a few solutions to improve the situation:
Optimize Windows start with the help of Microsoft BootVis (source: LH).
After years of preparation and beta-phase, finally, 
