Boost Netbook Speed with an SD Card

Boost Netbook Speed with an SD Card & ReadyBoost

Looking for a way to increase the performance of your netbook?  Here’s how you can use a standard SD memory card or a USB flash drive to boost performance with ReadyBoost.

Most netbooks ship with 1Gb of Ram, and many older netbooks shipped with even less.  Even if you want to add more ram, often they can only be upgraded to a max of 2GB.  With ReadyBoost in Windows 7, it’s easy to boost your system’s performance with flash memory.  If your netbook has an SD card slot, you can insert a memory card into it and just leave it there to always boost your netbook’s memory; otherwise, you can use a standard USB flash drive the same way. Also, you can use ReadyBoost on any desktop or laptop; ones with limited memory will see the most performance increase from using it.

Please Note:  ReadyBoost requires at least 256Mb of free space on your flash drive, and also requires minimum read/write speeds.  Most modern memory cards or flash drives meet these requirements, but be aware that an old card may not work with it.

Using ReadyBoost

Insert an SD card into your card reader, or connect a USB flash drive to a USB port on your computer.  Windows will automatically see if your flash memory is ReadyBoost capable, and if so, you can directly choose to speed up your computer with ReadyBoost.

The ReadyBoost settings dialog will open when you select this.  Choose “Use this device” and choose how much space you want ReadyBoost to use.

Click Ok, and Windows will setup ReadyBoost and start using it to speed up your computer.  It will automatically use ReadyBoost whenever the card is connected to the computer.

When you view your SD card or flash drive in Explorer, you will notice a ReadyBoost file the size you chose before.  This will be deleted when you eject your card or flash drive.

If you need to remove your drive to use elsewhere, simply eject as normal.

Windows will inform you that the drive is currently being used.  Make sure you have closed any programs or files you had open from the drive, and then press Continue to stop ReadyBoost and eject your drive.

If you remove the drive without ejecting it, the ReadyBoost file may still remain on the drive.  You can delete this to save space on the drive, and the cache will be recreated when you use ReadyBoost next time.

Conclusion

Although ReadyBoost may not make your netbook feel like a Core i7 laptop with 6GB of RAM, it will still help performance and make multitasking even easier.  Also, if you have, say, a memory stick and a flash drive, you can use both of them with ReadyBoost for the maximum benefit.  We have even noticed better battery life when multitasking with ReadyBoost, as it lets you use your hard drive less. 

SD cards and thumb drives are relatively cheap today, and many of us have several already, so this is a great way to improve netbook performance cheaply.

Boost Netbook Speed with an SD Card & ReadyBoost - How-To Geek

How To Fix the 10 Biggest Windows Annoyances

How To Fix the 10 Biggest Windows Annoyances

Let’s face it: Windows can be seriously annoying sometimes, but thankfully there’s also usually a workaround or third-party utility that fixes the issue. We’ve rounded up the ten things that annoy us most, along with how to fix them.

Messy Windows Context Menus, and How to Clean Them Up

One of the most irritating things about Windows is the context menu clutter that you have to deal with once you install a bunch of applications. It seems like every application is fighting for a piece of your context menu, and it’s not like you even use half of them.

Thankfully cleaning them up is possible, though it will require you rolling up your sleeves a bit. We’ve got the entire process covered, from the registry hack method to using freeware tools to do the job.

How to Clean Up Your Messy Windows Context Menu

Stop Windows Update from Automatically Restarting Your PC

If you like to keep your applications open and running on your screen, you’ve probably come back to your PC and noticed that Windows Update had rebooted you, losing everything that was open on your screen. Sure, you can temporarily disable the automatic reboot if you happen to be sitting in front of the PC, but what happens when you were away when it popped up?

That’s not the only annoyance, but you can stop Windows Update from hijacking the sleep button if you need to.

Prevent Windows Update from Forcibly Rebooting Your Computer

Disable Irritating Windows Sounds, Like that Explorer Click Sound

The default Windows settings enable this click click click click sound for anytime you are browsing around the filesystem, and the same thing in Internet Explorer when you click on a link. It’s extremely annoying, but the fix is a simple one.

Turn Off Windows Explorer Click Sounds in Windows 7 or Vista

Typing Your Password to Login Every Single Day

Nobody wants to admit it, but unless you encrypt your files, using a password on your PC won’t stop any tech-savvy person from getting into your data—all you have to do is use the System Rescue CD to change the password, or you can even use an Ubuntu Live CD to access files off a Windows PC.

So if you’re tired of logging into your Windows PC, just make it login automatically instead.

Make Windows 7 or Vista Log On Automatically

Disable the Caps Lock Key

The Caps Lock Key is something that most people will probably never need. Sure, you can always Map Any Key to Any Key and turn it into something more useful, like a Ctrl key for that Lenovo notebook with the awkwardly placed Fn key, or you can just disable it outright. Either way, up to you.

Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista

Map Any Key to Any Key on Windows 7 / XP / Vista

Finally Get Rid of Internet Explorer (Windows 7 Only)

About half of the people reading this article in Internet Explorer will be scratching their head right now and thinking… “what?” The other half using Firefox or Chrome will be thrilled that you can now delete Internet Explorer in Windows 7. It’s easy.

Uninstall, Disable, or Delete Internet Explorer 8 from Windows 7

Get Rid of Sticky and Filter Keys

It’s great that Microsoft builds in accessibility features to help those that need it. For the rest of us, they are really irritating and need to be disabled.

Disable the Irritating Sticky / Filter Keys Popup Dialogs

Disable Aero Snap, Aero Shake, or Aero Peek

All the new Aero features in Windows 7 are absolutely great, and I recommend that you learn how to use them.

But… if you are tired of windows snapping to the side of the screen or everything else minimizing when you move a window around, you can easily disable one or all of the features.

Disable Aero Snap (the Mouse Drag Window Arranging Feature in Windows 7)

Disable Aero Shake in Windows 7

Make Aero Peek Display Instantly (or Disable it) in Windows 7

Disable Program Compatibility Assistant

This dialog can be seriously annoying when you are trying to install software—it pops up asking if you really installed the application correctly, even though 99% of the time the application installed just fine. It’s extremely annoying, but we can disable it.

Disable Program Compatibility Assistant in Windows 7 and Vista

Make User Account Control (UAC) Less Annoying

What Windows annoyance list would be complete without a way to disable those irritating User Account Control popup dialogs? There’s really no need to describe it, you already know how annoying they are.

Disabling them is just as easy, but what you might not know is that you can actually create shortcuts that bypass the UAC prompts instead of just disabling it entirely, though either way is up to you.

Disable User Account Control (UAC) the Easy Way on Win 7 or Vista

How To Fix the 10 Biggest Windows Annoyances - How-To Geek

Best Windows 7 Tweaking Applications

Five Best Windows 7 Tweaking Applications

Windows 7 has been well received both critically and on the street. And while Lifehacker readers love Windows 7, a well-built OS isn't a perfect OS. Check out these five applications that tweak Windows 7 and customize it to your heart's content.

A stock Windows 7 installation a fairly pleasant place to work, judging from our readers' reports. Even so, a little tweaking of its behavior, looks, and other features lets you optimize and personalize that desktop. Check out these five great tools for doing so.

God Mode (Windows, Free)

The "God Mode" in Windows 7 isn't quite like a video game God Mode—alas, no infinite laptop battery life or unlimited bandwidth—but it is a pretty nifty hack, and doesn't require any new installations. Create a new folder on your Windows desktop, save it with the name God-Mode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}, though you can substitute whatever name you want for "God-Mode." The folder will change icons, and when you click on it, you'll see every configuration option available in the control panel. That's the real power of the Windows 7 God Mode—it takes all the toggles you have to dig through the control panel menus and sub-menus to get to, and puts them right in one master list. It's worth trying out God Mode just to see settings you may not have even been aware of.

Regedit (Windows, Free)

The Windows registry is a treasure trove of tweak-friendly variables and values. You shouldn't muck around in it blindly, but by reading up on specific variables, you can tweak all manner of things that slightly irk you. Stroll through #registry here at Lifehacker to read up on all sorts of neat tricks, like how to speed up the Windows 7 taskbar, customize the login buttons, and tweak Aero peek . While you're learning about the registry, you'll want to check out our guide to the registry and registry cleaning. If you're not comfortable directly editing your Windows registry, we'd advise you to check out some of the other Windows tweaking applications in the Hive Five. Many of the settings they provide are just a neat graphic interface for the variables hidden in the bowels of the registry.

Windows 7 Manager (Windows, $40)

Windows 7 Manager doesn't do anything that you can't do with various pieces of freeware or registry tweaks, but it does roll together dozens of functions into a unified, simplified interface. Not only can you tweak the GUI of Windows 7 but you can also tweak your boot routines, find duplicate files, securely erase files, retrieve and backup software keys, and more. Windows 7 Manager comes with a 15 day trial, so you can pit it against the free options in today's Hive before shelling out your hard-earned cash.

Rainmeter (Windows, Free)

Rainmeter is a skinning application for Windows, but that doesn't quite do it justice. You can do nearly anything with data using Rainmeter, from embedding the weather into your desktop to massaging the entire way you interact with your OS into something new. The best testament to the versatility and outright coolness of Rainmeter is wandering through the #rainmeter tag here at Lifehacker, and checking out all the unique desktops and tweaks readers have shared with us—also worth a peek is the best desktops of 2009, many of them featuring Rainmeter. If you look at your Windows desktop and go beyond thinking, "I wish the taskbar had different spacing," and more toward, "I wish my Windows interface looked like something totally new and Star Trek-flavored," then Rainmeter is for you.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker (Windows, Free)

For those of you that remember and loved the TweakUI utility from Microsoft, Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a freeware tool that takes the concept of the old TweakUI and supercharges it for Windows Vista and 7. You can tweak hundreds of settings and variables—system tray icons, the menu pop-up speed, security settings for the control panel, and a lot of other things you can't normally get to. It's a 380 KB, stand-alone portable application, so if you're curious to see just how many things you can tweak, it's no hassle at all to take it for a spin.

Five Best Windows 7 Tweaking Applications - Tweaks - Lifehacker

Best Tools for Managing Your Multi-Monitor Setup

Five Best Tools for Managing Your Multi-Monitor Setup

Multiple monitors expand your screen real estate, boost your productivity, and give you tons of extra room to spread out your work. Boost the benefit of your multiple monitors with these great tools.

Photo by jonnypage, from featured workspace Office Makeover: Multiple Monitors and Middle Earth.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite tool for getting the most out of your multi-monitor environment. You responded, and we tallied up the nominations. Now we're back with the top five tools Lifehacker readers use to maximize their multi-monitor enjoyment.

DisplayFusion (Windows, Basic: Free/Pro: $25)

DisplayFusion is a multi-monitor management suite. It adds a taskbar—complete with Aero peek—to every monitor, supports spanned or monitor-dependent wallpaper with position fine-tuning and integration with Flickr and Vladstudios, and customizable titlebar buttons for window management. In addition, you can configure hot keys for everything from randomizing wallpaper to moving, spanning, and tiling windows. The free version covers almost all the major features sans the multi-monitor taskbar—which is polished enough for a lot of folks to completely merit the $25 upgrade to Pro. Click on the image above to take a closer look at a multi-monitor setup running DisplayFusion Pro.

Synergy (Windows/Mac/Linux, Free)

Synergy takes a different tact than the other entrants in today's Hive Five. While all the other entries are concerned with making the multi-monitor experience awesome on one operating system, Synergy focuses on bridging your multi-monitor experience across systems. If you routinely use your multi-monitor setup to display output from different computers—one for your Windows machine, one for your Linux machine, and one for your Mac, for example—installing Synergy on all three systems will allow you to use the same keyboard and mouse to control all three systems seamlessly. Pushing the mouse against the edge of the Windows monitor towards the Mac monitor will slide it right across to the other OS as though they were all running in parallel virtual machines on the same operating system. Check out our guide to setting up Synergy for an in depth look at configuring Synergy on your systems, or take a look at recently mentioned QSynergy for a nice new interface.

Windows 7 (Operating System, Starting at $70)

Earlier versions of Windows practically acted like multi-monitor setups were so fringe as to not be worth considering. With Windows 7, the support for multiple monitors has grown to the point that many people find they no longer need to use 3rd-party software to power up their multi-monitor setup. If you just need simple, multi-monitor support without any bells and whistles, you'll find Windows 7, right out of the box, gets the job done. Little things—like extending the taskbar across multiple monitors—are still overlooked in Win7, so if you want a unified look and the convenience of a taskbar on each monitor, you'll probably want to check out other tools in this top five, like DisplayFusion Pro, UltraMon, or MultiMon.

UltraMon (Windows, $39.95)

UltraMon, like DisplayFusion, is more of a suite of tools and modifications than a simple fix. Ultramon extends your taskbar across all your monitors—click on the screenshot above for a closer look—adds extra windows management buttons to application title bars for easy screen-to-screen movement, and even handles multi-monitor wallpaper and screensaver management. In addition to the tweaking the primary interface, UltraMon also has a powerful mirroring tool to mirror all or part of a screen to another monitor—great for giving a presentation where you want to control the output going to the projector or what a client will see on the other side of the desk. You can try UltraMon out for free, but after the trial a license is $39.95.

MultiMon (Windows, Basic: Free/Pro: $28)

MulitMon is a multi-monitor tool focused on spanning the taskbar across multiple monitors. It supports up to 3 monitors with the primary monitor in the center. The freeware version doesn't support system themes—the screenshot above is of the free version, note the very generic looking left-hand taskbar. The Pro version supports themes and will mirror the appearance of your main taskbar. In addition to the taskbar functionality, MultiMon has a clipboard extender built into the secondary taskbar and better integration with the Windows shell.

Five Best Tools for Managing Your Multi-Monitor Setup - Multiple Monitors - Lifehacker

Microsoft’s Free Sync Service

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/microsofts-free-sync-service/

Last week, I wrote about an underpublicized gem in Microsoft’s Windows Live suite of free online and offline services and programs: SkyDrive. It’s a free, 25-gigabyte virtual hard drive on the Internet, accessible from any computer.

My readers gently pointed out that I managed to miss an equally spectacular feature: Windows Live Sync. It’s another very good, very free Windows Live service, for Mac and Windows, that everyone should know about.

The problem: you have a work machine and a home machine. Or a desktop PC and a laptop that’s frequently out of the house. Or a family. Or a small business.

In any case, you find yourself having to copy certain important files back and forth after each trip: when you return home with your laptop, when you get to the office after doing work at home over the weekend, and so on.

The solution: Windows Live Sync. You designate one folder on Computer A, and another folder on Computer B. Then Sync keeps them synced with each other, magically, over the Internet, with no effort on your part. Add, change, or delete a file on your laptop; you’ll find it added, changed, or deleted on your desktop. Edit some chapters or spreadsheets on your Mac at home; you’ll find them edited the same way at work.

There are plenty of services like this online-SugarSync, for example-but they’re not free. I’d venture that they’re not even as simple.

Here’s how to set it up. Suppose, in this example, that you have a PC at work and a Mac at home. Suppose, furthermore, that you’ve already signed up for a free Windows Live account (www.live.com).

On each computer, visit https://sync.live.com/clientdownload.aspx. Download and install the little Live Sync app. It puts a tiny Sync icon on your menu bar (Mac) or system tray (PC).

Now sit at the PC and sign into the Sync Web site (http://sync.live.com). Click “Create a personal folder.” Navigate to the folder on your hard drive that you want to sync; select it by opening it, right there on the Sync Web page, and then clicking “Sync folder here.” (You can also create a new folder at this point.)

You’re shown a list of the computers on which you’ve installed the Sync program (and that are turned on and online). Click the one you want this folder to sync with, and then, on the “Select a folder” screen, specify which folder on the Mac you want synced with the PC folder you chose. Finally, choose either Automatic or On-demand synchronization, and click Finish.

And that is all. When you add, change, or delete anything in a synced folder on one machine, it’s automatically updated on the other, over the Internet. It’s totally great for keeping the latest versions of everything accessible at all times. And it has a lot of fans among my readers.

As a handy side effect, Live Sync lets you grab files from any of your computers, from the Web site, even from folders you haven’t set up for syncing. Left the Smithers presentation at the office, and now you’re on-site at the client’s place? No problem. You’re covered.

You can also make certain folders available to family members and coworkers, making the whole thing even more useful.

The fine print: You can synchronize up to 20 folders, each containing up to 20,000 files, max. Files can’t be larger than 4 gigabytes each. Files can be synced with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Macs. Microsoft recommends that you don’t sync your Outlook mail stash, because it’s an enormous file that’s constantly changing.

This, by the way, isn’t even the end of the story. The next-generation Microsoft free sycning software is called Windows Live Mesh. It’s roughly the same idea, but it’s even more powerful and complicated. It creates a Web-based “desktop” with 5 gigabytes of storage-and your Macs, PCs, smartphones, and even authorized friends can sync up to it.

Details are at www.mesh.com

Clearly, Microsoft is aiming to be the leader in giving away that syncing feeling. And it’s doing a darned good job.