Windows 7 Search consumes too much CPU for my liking.
These free alternatives seem to be among the best, I am going to try them, here they are based on the type of search needed:
To disable or turn off search indexing, see this short post (basically set the service to disabled or manual)
Mobile service contract with Rogers.ca expired recently but want to continue use of my Samsung Corby Touch (SGH-T566). This phone is exclusive to Rogers and was locked to Rogers.ca network.
Got unlock code from cellunlocker.net and it worked. They provide excellent and speedy service, both in terms of providing code and answer to questions, and surprisingly they are the cheapest I could find ($8, compared to $10 and even $20 for other reliable mobile unlock service providers).
I confirmed via #&74# that there are no locks left. The phone still bears the Rogers brand and I will find out when I go to KoodoMobile whether a new and activated simcard will support phone’s full capabilities (minus anything specific to Rogers of course like “Rogers Email”).
Some sites that were instrumental in helping me figure out if it would be possible, and identify what kind of unlocking service I needed:
I’m always amazed at the poor quality of reviews of free software on the net. Turns out NovaBench only measures write speed. In the end, CrystalDiskMark wins hands down: nice, simple interface, 4 tests on HD (read, write, seek, random read), can control size of data, pattern used, etc. So I’m revising the list:
Benchmarking:
Cleanup:
Sometimes you are at wifi hotspot or office and site is blocked most often wrongly (if it is rightfully blocked then that’s a good reason to stay away from it). In such case, look at Databytez’s list of 10 ways to access the website contents (sometimes static, so will have anything javascript only partly functional). Couple of them I know of but many I didn’t, useful to add to bag of tricks!
Looking for a free HTML/CSS editor for casual use. Main use: edit some pages with a few divs, some styles, tables etc, nothing too fancy. I don’t do enough to warrant a full fledged commercial application like DreamWeaver. But because I don’t do enough, I also need any assistance I can get from an application.
Main things I am looking for:
First tried “free html IDE and editors”, on Windows XP. The N* is number of stars (larger # is better):
An inspiring post by Brandon Keepers, and a few good comments. Must keep in mind since I definitely fit the software “craftsman” type, love to refactor and make the design clearer, more robust, more maintainable, more self-documenting.
The following allow a Linux distro to be run from within MS Windows (no need to reboot). They are all free but each has pros & cons and will have different requirements of the host Windows:
I have a canon Multipass F80 which is at least 6 years old and it still works great,
way to go canon!! However, over the past couple months I noticed that color printouts were missing one color, magenta. Yet the ink cartridge for magenta was full. I did some swapping of cartridges and some deep cleaning using the Printer Properties dialog but nothing would help. I must have done a least a dozen deep cleanings with no improvement.
I opened up the printhead mechanism as it was clearly designed for that purpose. The printhead can then be pulled out for repair.
I tried rinsing the printhead, that didn’t help. I tried putting a large straw over the magenta intake (where the ink goes from cartridge into printhead) and blowing so as to force the water through but that didn’t work either. I noticed after that, when drying the printhead, some yellow and cyan ink was on the paper towel, but no magenta.
After a lot of reading on the web, I came to the conclusion that soaking the printhead in windex might work. And it did!! I put the printhead in a clean, empty yogourt container and added Windex until the ink parts were submerged, left it overnight, and next evening when I pulled it out it looked super clean (the liquid in the container was full of ink). I dried it and this time, there was magenta on the paper towel, so something had changed. Once I put the printhead back in the printer, one printout showed it worked better than new. Hurray, just saved us a few hundred dollars.
The Canon Multipass F80 is a great printer, I hope it works for a long time!
My employer just go several of us onto a new provider, Rogers, and therefore a new mobile phone. We got a Samsung Corby SGH-T566. Not a smart-phone, but actually quite a nice device, works really well. Unfortunately we don’t get a data plan from our employer so I can only use the phone and SMS features, though it has quite comprehensive support for many web-based applications.
One of the things it does very well is take good pictures and record audio. But how to get those to a PC? Took me quite a while to get this to work:
On my Windows XP SP3 laptop, I don’t have builtin bluetooth; I have a USB Bluetooth antenna which works well, but the only option I could find when right-clicking on the Bluetooth icon in the system tray, was “Receive a file…”. Once I turned on Bluetooth on my Corby, I was able to pair the phone and the PC, so I tried the “receive a file”. I worked: once clicked, the PC was in “wait” mode; as soon as I clicked on a photo on the phone and clicked on “send via bluetooth”, it would get sent to PC. Not bad: I could send one file at a time. But not great either: I already had 20 files to send, I needed mass transfer!!
I looked for a while for a program to connect to the Corby. I found PC Studio v3 on the Net but once installed, it could not detect my phone (which is crazy because the bare bluetooth radio had even been paired with it!). Tried changing various settings in phone, on PC related to bluetooth, nothing helped. I eventually found out that you’re supposed to use New PC Studio, available on the Samsung website. Now transfers work great!
I have not tried using the USB cable, as I get the impression that it is more difficult to use. Such as, your phone’s bluetooth must be off in order to connect to the PC’s USB.
Gosh I had a heck of a time transfering files from my old MP3 player, an iRiver iFP-790, to my PC running Windows XP SP3. First problem: I had a .zip download that I had saved on my machine from when I bought the device 5 years ago, it was for Music Manager 3.16. I ran the installer but some error messages appeared (several of them, clicked OK on each one); the Manager got installed nonetheless but when I plugged in my iFP-790, it wasn’t recognized.
So then I tried to locate a newer version of Music Manager. Most google hits pointed to sites that google warned against visiting due to infested with malware; other hits of repository sites had the link to the Manager removed due to target site being infected; the iRiver.com website did not provide any downloads for the ifp-790 (actually it did but not under that category — read on!).
Eventually I noticed via some links that the iFP-790 probably was same as N10 and T10 models. So I returned to the iRiver.com/support site and searched for the models=N10. One came up for the Music Manager, but on the corresponding page, there was nothing to download! I cleared the N10 entry and just entered the words “music manager” in right-most box, and left all other entries to default. This showed a few hits, one of them being for Music Manager 3..21, hurray!
Installation of v3.21 showed same error messages popping up. I started the manager to see if anything would work. It ran ok but when I connected the MP3 player, I got the “new hardware found” pop-ups in the system tray and the “new hardware found” wizard window show up. I agreed to let Windows find the drivers and lo and behold, after a few seconds, the Music Manager showed “connected” and the folders/files showed up, hurray! I thought the Wizard had nothing to do with it because it eventually showed that installation of the drivers failed. So I exited the wizard.
At some point the iFP got disconnected. When I reconnected it, the same “new hardware found” but this time, I just cancelled the Wizard directly. Now the Music Manager would not connect! So for some reason, the Wizard was able to install something, enough for the Manager to connect, but not enough for the Wizard to indicate full success.
Transfering the files over to PC, then conversion to MP3 format, was straightforward.
