The context menu (what pops up when you right-click) is one of the most popular items to clutter; a lot of programs will add their shortcuts or filetypes to the menu when they get installed. It's also a very under-used, convenient location that you could put your frequently used functions and shortcuts. This post should show you how to tame the context menu and make it work for … [Read more...]
Fences by Stardock
Fences is a desktop icon organization program brought to you by Stardock the same people that made ObjectDock, which I have been using on a daily basis recently (and also the publisher for Sins of a Solar Empire, which I'll get around to playing one of these days). Fences allows you to create groups on your desktop for icons and such. Sure, you can cluster your icons (trust me, … [Read more...]
Sandboxie – Sandbox applications to keep your system safe
Sandboxie is another application developed with the intent to keep your computer safe. Sandboxie works by creating a, you guessed it, sandbox for applications to run in. Specifically, it addresses the problem of: "I downloaded this file and I'm not sure I trust it. I need to run it though. How do I find out if it's malicious or what changes it will make to my computer?" Besides … [Read more...]
Hardcopy Advanced Configuration (Part 2)
Continuing my series on making Hardcopy do just about everything you want, I present Part 2 of the walkthrough for Hardcopy. This will get into some more advanced topics, but increases the versatility of what Hardcopy can do. This will also incorporate any new things I've found (best practices) from working with individuals to configure Hardcopy for their environment. In the … [Read more...]
Improving Vista File Search
Configuration One of the coolest features of Vista, which is now somewhat available for Windows XP, is the search feature. With background indexing, there's no denying that Vista's search functionality is zippy, faster than Windows Search ever was before. Along with the fact that the animated creatures are gone (the dog by default, "Goodbye Clippy 2.0"), Vista's file search is … [Read more...]