My Insights

I just discovered a ‘feature’ on my computer. When I press a button on my Microsoft Mouse which (Labeled ‘Instant Viewer’ in control panel), I get the following-

This is basically a window switching utility. Trouble is, I NEVER INSTALLED ANY SUCH UTILITY! I can’t complain - I actually like this. However, I would still like to figure out how I got to benefit this little feature. And just so we are clear, I don’t believe in a guardian angel.

Here is a list of software that I recently installed-

1. Safari
2. FolderShare
3. Digsby
4. Google Desktop

Please leave a comment with your guess!

I recently installed a windows theme on my XP machine. It is fairly simple - you simply have to replace uxthemes.dll with a patched version that allows you to use non-microsoft signed themes in xp. No Bloatware.

Instructions & Download

Now for the screenshots of my machine. Some details have been obfuscated.

About a month ago, I downgraded to XP from Vista. This is after using Vista on a daily basis for close to a year.

WHY? Most avid windows users know that windows installations tend to get bloated. In my personal experience, I’ve had to redo my Windows installation every 1-2 years on a regular basis. So after about a year of Vista, things had gotten bloated - REALLY bloated. It got to the point where I couldn’t watch YouTube videos on my computer.

This is not something that I blame Microsoft for. I think Vista is definitely more advanced than XP and I even miss some features of Vista (such as integrated search in the start-menu) after I downgraded.

I DO however blame the lack of support from third-parties. Sony was slow to roll-out the HotKey utility software for my computer. This meant that I couldn’t turn down the volume on my laptop or change the screen brightness by pressing a button like I could on XP. The lack of Video driver support for my integrated ATI video card was also a big factor.

In part I also blame myself for being a little ambitious and installing Vista on a Pentium 4 machine with a little less than 1GB of RAM. I also had a hardware issue where my processor would downgrade from 3 GHz to 1.6 GHz when the computer got a little hot. This hardware issue was alleviated to some extent by cleaning the ventilation fans.

In any case, I am back on XP and loving the little utilities that I had lived without over the past year. I would love to go back to Vista once I have a strong enough machine. I recommend that if you are buying a laptop, buy one that is designed for Vista so as to minimize compatibility issues with respect to various utilities and drivers.