Contributed by Faisal Shahzad

How To Speed Up Your Windows XP By Disabling File Indexing:

File indexing is a Windows service like many others is totally useless – unless you search alot on your computer. As most users don’t, it’s a good idea to disable it to speed up actions like opening and closing files and folders on your Windows XP.

In order to disable the Indexing Service:

Go to “My Computer” and right click on your hard drive. At the bottom of the window that opens, you should see a check box titled “Allow Indexing Service to index the disk for fast file searching.”

Protect your Media identity:

Like many other audio players, Windows Media Player rushes out to the Internet to find information for you when you play a CD. Some of this information, such as song titles and album art, is useful, but Media Player also identifies your copy of Media Player to the site where it’s receiving data. Why? According to the help file, “The server uses this unique identifier to monitor your connection. By monitoring your it, the server can make adjustments to increase the playback quality and to alert you about events that occur when receiving streams over the Internet.”
If you’re disturbed by this exchange of information, here’s how to cease it.

In Windows Media Player, click Tools > Options and go to the Player tab. Notice the option that says “Allow Internet sites to uniquely identify your player?” Turn it off.

Enable Clear Type:

When you use the windows, sometimes there are fonts and colors are not sharp and blurry and irritating, so this trick helps.

Easy way- Click on or cut and paste link below:

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/cleartypeactivate.htm?fname=%20&fsize=

or

• Right click on a blank area of the Desktop and choose Properties
• Click on the Appearance Tab; Click effects
• Check the box: Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts
• In the drop down box select: Clear Type

Turn of CD Auto Play:

• Open My Computer
• Right click on your CD ROM and choose Properties
• Click on the Auto Play tab
• In the drop down box you can choose the Action for each choice shown in the drop down box

Or

1. Go to Start->Run->gpedit.msc
2. Computer Config -> Administrative Template -> System
3. Double click Turn off Autoplay
4. Enable it.

Increase BROADBAND:

This is for broad band connections. I didn’t try it on dial up but might work for dial up.

1. Make sure your logged on as actually “Administrator”. Do not log on with any account that just has administrator privileges.
2. Start – run – type gpedit.msc
3. Expand the “local computer policy” branch
4. Expand the “administrative templates” branch
5. Expand the “network branch”
6. Highlight the “QoS Packet Scheduler” in left window
7. In right window double click the “limit reservable bandwidth” setting
8. On setting tab check the “enabled” item
9. Where it says “Bandwidth limit %” change it to read 0

In some system immediate effect is earned while some require to re-boot. This is more of a “counter what XP does” thing. In other words, programs can request up to 20% of the bandwidth be reserved for them, even with QoS disabled, this is no big deal and most programs do not request it. So, although QOS has caused a big stink because people think it reserves 20% of their bandwidth, you can still disable it, just to be sure, hehe.

Do Not Highlight Newly Installed Programs:

Tired of that annoying little window that pops up to tell you that new software is installed? If it gets in the way when you are logging off, turn it off completely.

• To do this Click Start, right-click at the top of the Start menu where your name is displayed, and then click Properties.
• In the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box, on the Start Menu tab, click Customize.
• Click the Advanced tab, and then clear the Highlight newly installed programs check box.
• Click OK, and then click OK again.

Now that message won’t be popping up when you least want to see it.

Speed up the Start Menu:

You can use this tip to speed up the Start Menu in Windows XP release candidate 1. You can customize the speed of the Start Menu by editing a Registry Key.

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. Type Regedit in the box, and then click OK.
3. Expand the menu in the left panel and select the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop folder.
4. Scroll down in the right panel and double click on the MenuShowDelay file.
5. In the Value Data box, change to default value for the menu speed from 400 to a lesser number, such as 1.
6. Click OK.

Caution: Incorrectly editing the registry may severely damage your system. Before making changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data on your computer.

Show yourself or don’t Show yourself:

Only the Administrator can set up new user accounts (go to Control Panel > User Accounts > Create A New Account). You can select a picture to identify the account. When you’re logged on to the system under your username, this picture, along with your username, peeks out at you from the top of the Start menu. There are a slew of 48×48-pixel bitmap images to choose from within XP. They’re housed in D:\Documents And Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\User Account Pictures\Default Pictures. But why limit yourself? You can also copy any graphic you want into this folder or browse for another from your hard drive. Usable file types are BMP, GIF, JPEG, or PNG. However, always use a square picture, to limit the white space on the side. Your image can be any size but will be displayed as 48×48-pixel image, so a close-up works best.

Hide yourself:

Once you’ve created a user account, password-protect it to keep other users from viewing your files, Favorites, and cookies. Why? You may not want your child to see the note that you’re sending to his or her teacher, or you may be planning someone’s surprise party. (Note: Anyone with an Administrator account can still see them.)

Worried about remembering your password? Create a hint to help you when you initially create it by following the prompts during setup. XP stores the password hints in the Registry at Hkey_local_machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Hints.

What if the hint doesn’t help? Any user or Administrator can create a password reset disk, which you can use to log on and create a new password. Go to Control Panel > User Accounts and select “Prevent a forgotten password” in the Related Tasks box on the left. Follow the wizard’s instructions. After creating the disk, find a safe place for it. Don’t forget the password or where you put the disk. Someone else could use it to change your password without you knowing it.

NOTE: It is somewhat risky to touch the registry entries, but also these tricks make the system fast and more efficient. : )

About The Author:

Faisal Shahzad is currently working as a Software Engineer and maintains a blog at  www.faisalshahzad.com

While Windows 7 makes its mark on the worlds market, IBM and Canonical announced their collaboration in order to target windows 7 customers from all over the world. Their cloud- and Linux-based collaboration package turns out to be cheaper than Microsoft-based alternatives.

The IBM Client, based on IBM productivity and collaboration software, helps organizations save up to 50 percent per seat on software costs,as compared to the expensive nature of Microsoft-based desktop. This is not it, it also provides its clients with facilities for avoiding requisite hardware upgrades. The package allows companies to use their existing PCs, lower-cost netbooks and thin clients. It includes Lotus Notes and other Lotus applications such as Symphony and LotusLive.com, an online collaboration suite which lets distributed groups manage activities and tasks, share documents, network, and hold Web meetings with up to 1,000 participants. The companies say that since the package is based on Eclipse, Linux and Web standards, it can integrate with “any” third-party software.

The press release claims that Microsoft shops considering a Windows 7 migration face costs of up to $2,000 for many users, owing in part to added hardware requirements for Microsoft’s new operating system. But IBM and Canonical sates that their package can be easily utilized on PC’s which are currently being utilized by organizations. This package will also run on low-cost client machines and even netbooks. IBM is also offering professional services from IBM Global Technology Services and IBM Business Partners in order to aid with installation and other integration tasks to their clients.

Maybe the fancy word became a curse, but being back to the roots seems more natural and more ‘Microsoft’. So the reviews are positive and Microsoft definitely needs to relax this time.

“Windows 7 is safe, simpler, snappier and simply works.”

Each time a famous brand publishes or makes something the whole universe rushes towards it in order to praise it and criticize it. Microsoft said, “It’s all about personalization today.”

Arriving at a time when companies are all set for refreshing their systems. Around 15 million copies of Windows 7 RC and Beta have already been downloaded and tested. Even on the day of its launch computer users had already paid prelaunch orders. These were more in number as compared to its predecessor Vista.

Vista’s disaster disappointed many Microsoft fans. Microsoft spent all its might in order to convince its costumers and in making Vista successful by removing all the disastrous elements. “Vista was a bit of a nightmare for Microsoft, and people didn’t buy it”. But Due to lack of efficiency and simplicity, number of Vista’s fans decreased at a remarkable pace.

Windows 7 takes a step back from Vista’s craziness, with just three main versions

• Home Premium

• Professional and

• Ultimate

It’s stable, smooth, and highly polished, introducing new graphical features, a new taskbar that can compete handily with the Mac OS X dock, and device management and security enhancements that make it both easier to use and safer. Well we would rather sum up the Windows 7 as ‘Windows Lucky 7′. It has fixed most of the problems in Vista and set a stage for the future of Windows versions which are yet to come. It presents a stable platform that can compete comfortably with OS X, while reassuring the world that Microsoft can still turn out a strong, useful operating system.

The battle between the two rivals Microsoft and Google heated up as Twitter announced its deal with the two giants yesterday. Now tweets can be searched through these search engines very easily. Twitter has given access to Bing, so that it can detect and determine tweets coming from all over the globe.
So if you want to search for a tweet just type into the search bar and you will have your results. “Twitter currently presents tweets based simply on timeliness, Bing is experimenting with new solutions such as ‘best match’.”

Thus it will be showcasing the most popular Tweets of the moment. At the same time, it will also be allowing Web surfers to view Twitter messages that contain links to other Web content. Microsoft will filter Spam and other extraneous data. Three year old Twitter has become a part of every users life, and it is accessed by many and there is no restriction of time or place.

“Twitter is producing millions of tweets every minute on every subject you can imagine. The power of those tweets as a form of data that can be surfaced in search is enormous…Were you as fascinated by the 6-year-old boy floating away in a balloon as we were? Was it a hoax? We know that people are going to twitter more and more for information surrounding all the latest chatter … You can now search for what people are saying all over the web about breaking news topics, your favourite celebrity, hometown sports team, and anything else you use Twitter to stay on top of today.”said Paul Yiu, its head of search, on a Microsoft blog.

He had earlier announced the deal on stage at the Web 2.0 Summit. Microsoft stands face to face with its dominant rival Google which actually has more then 70% users across the globe. Although Microsoft has ruled the market since years. Today it has made an attempt to bing its users again and has offered them to search for desired tweets, produced by twitter users daily in real time.

Both Microsoft and Google have embarked on a journey where in the near future they are expected to offer all that real-time information to the masses from its most innovative sources. In the same way Google with a goal of creating the most comprehensive, relevant and fast search in the world has followed the same deal and said,

“We are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results,” said Marissa Mayer, the vice-president of search and user experience. “We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months… Next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.”

In the midst of all this competition it is twitter which takes the lead. Twitter social networking and micro-blogging website came into being in 2006, and by 2009 it has proved itself to be the most desirable and the most wanted property on the World Wide Web. Giants such as Microsoft and Google have now chosen it for their own business purposes and in order to facilitate their users with something new.

Every day we spend hours on social networking websites in order to cure boredom. We have some good news for everyone in form of Goby. Goby will help you find the perfect leisure time activity for your boredom. Users don’t need to hop around from website to website in order to be entertained, because this is it.

Our goal is to stop the madness and eliminate the need to hop around to multiple Web sites and sort through information that’s often incomplete and/or irrelevant or hard to find. Also, we’re total technology geeks and love to build stuff for the sake of building it.

For things like music or performing arts, you can choose sub-categories, like music genre or dance. You can also define the radius of your results by entering in a custom address or zip code. Goby’s events come up in an easy to read manner and specific event information and provide links to the specific listing.

Goby has the ability to help you access information in an easy to use manner. It also searches things like hotels, hostels, and vacation homes, which make it a nice option for either the would-be-traveler on a budget or anyone looking to spend time in a particular location.

Today, we are all waiting for our Pakistani developers to launch such resource that is dedicated to Pakistan and its people in its entirety. Our objective is to show you and bring in front of you the development that is happening around the world. So that our software professionals bring up original and top quality work in front of the world.

In the recent past, we have heard a lot of stories concerning Microsoft, MS, planning to take those companies to court that are currently using pirated version of Windows. While MS Police is on the loose let’s have a look at your plan of action.

Well Microsoft is currently taking all the precautionary measures required to catch the criminals and tell them not to use that which is not theirs. Plus there are millions of computers being used inside the country in colleges, universities and in various government and private organizations where pirated version of softwares is being used. Due to the usage of computers in every sector of Pakistan from day one pirated software are being used.

I would like to stop you over here from thinking about piracy and ask u a simple question. Would you DARE to report your employer’s pirated version of windows which you yourself are using in your office PC? Or any other software on which your life depends?

Probably you wouldn’t, or in some extreme cases you would. Let us tell you your plan of action for this week.

Firstly, you hate your boss, you hate your job, you hate the working environment, and your salary sucks big-time. What would you do, obviously you will find ways to quit, but on the other hand you are unable to find a perfect job for yourself and have to stick to this one for the rest of your life. You wouldn’t dare to budge your nose from your seat in spite of the fact that you hate yourself completely. Or you will sit behind your desk with your resume right in front of you. At this very moment all you end up doing is praying for the exact moment when you find a new job and leave the current one.

In a completely contrasting situation, you admire your boss, you love your job, and you work in a perfect working environment. And your boss makes sure that your pockets are full of money every weekend. Well there is probably something very fishy happening over here. Everything that seems perfect is not actually perfect. But even behind the suspiciousness you won’t even budge from your seat. Because in these times where there are very few opportunities available and perfect jobs are hard to find no employee whatsoever would dare to report usage of pirated versions of software being used, to the authorities.

And then come your ethical values where the big question of should comes in front. You could simply inform the management to buy a legitimate version of the software in use. But then the company might be threatened by your presence since it is making money due to that pirated copy. So warning or informing both ends up being bad ideas, because sooner or later everyone gets caught. And in our country a new wave of anti-piracy is making an effort to cleanse the illegitimate. Let’s see how many come under the influence of this wave.

But the question still remains, WOULD YOU DARE TO?

Microsoft will be launching Windows Mobile 6.5 in this October on the 6th. Then onwards, Windows Mobile 6.5 will hit the retail stores worldwide. Because this time Microsoft has planned to surprise its users by providing them improved and advanced browsing capabilities with additional access to valuable services, including Windows Marketplace for Mobile and My Phone services. Windows Mobile 6.5 is said to have a redesigned Internet Explorer Mobile browser, built-in Adobe Flash Lite support for better rendering and completion of tasks.

Its “heavily retooled user interface”, emphasizes touch interactions. The start menu will take you directly to honeymoon pattern of icons which will enable the users to easily launch programs and move directly to their desired destination. Thus the users can enter voice mails, e-mails, and missed calls directly from the lock screen. With an updated version of Internet Explorer Mobile, Windows Mobile 6.5 enables its users play Flash videos from YouTube or Hulu.

Microsoft stated: “With the new version, users can change the look and feel of their phones with designer themes or a personal background and customize their home screen with widgets so the information they need is always easy to find.”

Todd Peters, corporate vice president of the mobile communications marketing group at Microsoft, said: “A Windows phone gives people a single phone that works for their whole life, keeping them connected to the people and information they care most about by harnessing the power of the PC, phone and Web.”

With the launch of its store Microsoft will stand face to face in competition with its competitors Apple, Nokia, RIM, Google, and Palm, who have already launched their centralized mobile application stores .

The store will enable its users to back up and sync their contacts, photos, videos, calendars, and text messages over the air. The service is somewhat similar to Apple’s MobileMe, and Microsoft has also  announced that is easier for users to switch devices, or replace a lost smartphone.

Microsoft has now decided to change the way we make use of Internet. Today, we are waiting for the time when everyone will be using their mobile instead of their PCs to perform tasks. Now we are waiting for its launch and reaction of users worldwide.

]]> http://www.codeweek.pk/2009/09/microsoft-windows-mobile-6-5-launches-this-october/feed/ 1 http://www.codeweek.pk/2009/09/india-a-role-model-for-pakistan%e2%80%99s-software-industry/ http://www.codeweek.pk/2009/09/india-a-role-model-for-pakistan%e2%80%99s-software-industry/#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:01:04 +0000 Admin http://www.codeweek.pk/?p=802

Do We Have a Silicon Valley in Pakistan?

Pakistan still stands at the 20^th position and India enjoys the first as far as software exports are concerned. Do we need help from world`s IT giant, India? Should India act as a role model for our Software Industry? What is your opinion?

Most of the IT companies in Pakistan and India belong to expatriates. Some of these companies are run by foreigners and still others have investments from the West. But in case of India, IT firms, whose managers have worked in the West, are generally more expensive than those working in Indian firms, which creates problem as they demand high wages. The willingness of Pakistanis to return home, from the West, is in complete contrast to most Indians who attend schools or work in the West and never look back. But we wonder how India has top IT Industry than any other country in Asia.

Indian city Bangalore is known as The Silicon Valley of India as it is a major hub for IT companies. Do we have a Silicon Valley in Pakistan as well?

And then the question arises “Do we need India’s Help?”

Waqas Khaleeq, from Smart Logics said,

“Undoubtedly India is the Asian tiger when it comes to Software market. Firstly, Indians are more saturated in international software houses. As a matter of face 34% of employees in Microsoft are from India. Secondly, the strength of software professionals inside software houses is a measure of market capture. The largest software house in Pakistan has almost 250 – 300 employees while India’s largest software company (Tata Consultancy Services) has 140,000 employees.
Thirdly, Total revenue earned by software development, technical consultancy and software outsourcing of India is way far above that of Pakistan. India aims for 60 billion USD. And Pakistan touches 4-5 Billion.”

Bilal Ahmed, a Software Architect said,

“It is because in Pakistan multinational companies are afraid of investing due to the growing political instability. On the other hand, almost every software market leader has its office in India. We, Pakistanis are far behind in research as well. We are only concerned with the immediate money making things while research is a long term payback and we are neglecting it. India’s education system is focused mainly in what is new and innovative in the Software market and we Pakistanis are still following the same old syllabus. Which is not even practical any more.

But on the other hand, Pakistani Software professionals are better than Indian Software Professionals. I have personally worked with some of the Indians and therefore have an idea. (This should not be taken as true in all the scenarios). Pakistani Professionals are more focused on quality, while Indian’s are more focused on the quantity. When it comes to Ethical issues, we are much better than Indians. (Not all the fingers are equal, so leaving a few). They will easily sell you the ideas of other client and even the whole project with a little makeup.”

Waseem Hassan, a Software Engineer, said that, “Questions arise in our mind that whether the IT entrepreneur, investors, policy makers and also dynamic IT Industry in Pakistan and India are similar or not.

When we compare IT industry, it is clear to us that Pakistan’s Software Industry is relatively small in terms of manpower and employment. One study on this comparison shows the total employment at 60 of the most prominent firms, is around 5000 people. Last year alone, Indian exported over $17 billion worth of IT services to the world.

There are several significant differences which explain why Pakistan’s Software Industry is half the size of India’s Software Industry. First, the degree of concentration in the Pakistani Software Industry is much less than that of India’s. There are no Tatas or Wipros in Pakistan. The ratio of revenues between the most successful and the median firms in Pakistan is around 1:100 and in India it is 1:2000.  Second, Pakistan has seriously suffered (and continues to do so) from a weak human resource, both in terms of quality and quantity of its product. This, to our mind, is the single most important hindrance in the development of Pakistan’s software industry and the key differentiator between where it stands today vs. where India’s software industry stood a decade from now.

As we know we are lacking in IT industry so from my point of view it can be improved. Most importantly government should take interest in it and should draw an elaborate and long term plan. And for most of the organization IT should be on the top of agenda of CEO.  We should deploy IT in core industry to achieve competitiveness and for business promotion. IT should be used for solutions not for record keeping only. Awareness about IT in public sector should be enhanced and public sector spending on IT should be increased.”

But then again, the question arises, how long will it take? Do we have time for implementation of above mentioned options. Such solutions have been given by many, repeatedly. But still we face major problems. The greatest dilemma lies with the fact that the

“Government of Pakistan has failed to appoint a suitable minister for IT and Telecom. IT and Telecom sector has been playing a major role in our countries economy for the past seven years and has contributed over Rs300 billion to the national exchequer from 2005-06 to 2007-08. Various operators have invested over $8.8 billion in telecom infrastructure during the same period. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in telecommunications stood at around $5.6 billion, which on average was over 30 per cent of the total FDI between fiscal year 2005-06 and 2007-08.” The News

Farhan Khalid, a Web Specialist and Software Lead, said,

“A good website developer will get up to Rs. 25k for a beautiful website in Pakistan. The same developer can get up to $2000 dollars from the States! The choice is obvious, go where there’s more money. Organizations that are not computerized are mostly small and medium enterprises. Due to the declining economy these small companies do not have resources to purchase their own Point-of-Sale (POS) systems and ERPs.
The market is huge, there is competition everywhere. Pakistanis face competition from India (one of the biggest outsourcing engines in the world, if not the biggest) and several other countries. The sea is huge and even though we are capable to a considerable extent, there are a few sharks and we can’t always get all them.”

Many strategies have been implemented by the government over and over again, but ‘have we succeeded’? Yes we have (to some extent), but the credit of this success goes directly to the people of Pakistan and to the Pakistanis who are living abroad and providing employment opportunities for the people in Pakistan. With the growing cross-border competition one wonders about the future of Pakistan’s Software Industry.