March, 2010 | Windows Tools, Help & Guides

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Start Menu 7 Pro Giveaway Worth $20 [Competition][Expired]

Posted by Stu On March - 31 - 2010

www.mintywhite.com is giving away 3 licences of Start Menu Pro 7.
Start Menu 7
Entry to the competition is now open.

To enter, simply register and head over to this thread and post a reply showing;

A) A screenshot of your Windows Desktop,

B) A description of your customisations.

That’s it!!

You will then be entered into a public vote held here on Windows Guides.

Deadline for the screenshots is 11:59PM (UTC) Sunday 4th April 2010.

The public vote will close 11:59PM (UTC) Sunday 11th April 2010.

The winner will be announced here shortly afterwards.

Trillian Astra – Multi-IM Client

Posted by DarkNovaGamer On March - 30 - 2010

Trillian Astra, a full featured, multi-IM client developed by Cerulean Studios. Most of its features are simple ones, such as offline messaging, group chats, file transfer with proxying (for those with restrictive firewalls), etc.

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Start Menu 7 Overhauls your Windows Start Menu

Posted by Stu On March - 30 - 2010

Windows Guides’ Rating	Compatible with
3.5 out of 5

PROS: A simple to use Start Menu alternative. A small choice of Skins. Low resource usage. Better function & flexibility of Power Options such as a timer. Text magnifier. The ability to move the Start Menu to any location on screen and resize to your liking. Easy to remember keyboard shortcuts and easy additions to the sidebar also make this very handy. x64 support.

CONS: Slightly buggy Aero Skin. Reboot required after uninstallation (even though the dev blurb states no changes are made to the system). Start Menu sometimes displays unknown items. No major updates from Vista Start Menu (same dev). Search results erratic and slow.

VERDICT: A decent alternative to the native Windows Start Menu, though don’t expect much Windows 7 integration or frequent updates. The ability to move and resize the menu to your liking will make many users happy. A Pro version is available that brings additional features.

The developer Dennis Nazarenko has kindly donated 3 Pro licences to our community.

The competition is now live in the forums, head over for a chance to win a copy of Start Menu 7 Pro.

PRICE: Free.

VERSION REVIEWED: 3.6

DOWNLOAD: Start Menu 7 (Freeware)

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Activate Your Copy of Windows Vista or 7 [How To]

Posted by Rich On March - 29 - 2010

When you install Windows, you are prompted for your product key. This key determines which version of Windows Vista or 7 should be installed on your PC. Later in the installation process, you are asked whether you would like to activate Windows or not. If you choose not to activate Windows, you have 30 days before you need to do so; otherwise, Windows will not let you log in and access your programs and files until you activate it. Learn, in this guide, how to activate Windows Vista or 7.

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Windows Live Wave 4 Beta Screenshots & Brief Overview

Posted by Stu On March - 29 - 2010

Windows Live Wave 4 is hitting the streets soon and it looks to be a significant improvement over the
previous version.

The new(ish) “ribbon interface” makes life much easier, heightens productivity and gives the UI a general, cleaner and logical feel while not being too intrusive or overbearing (OneNote is a culprit of this). And the Windows Phone 7 Series look and feel popping up in some places is also a refreshing change too.

This is just going to be a quick overview of the new Beta as I’m sure many things will change between now and the final release. When the suite has been a little more finalized I’m sure we’ll go into more detail of the applications then.

Installation

Lets start the screenshots with the installation. The installation wizard is much cleaner and nicer looking that it’s predecessor.

We have a couple of new additions to the installation in Wave 4. Notably; Companion and Bing Bar. We’ll talk more about those later . Read the rest of this entry »

Change Windows Logon Background WITHOUT 3rd party software [How To]

Posted by Thomas On March - 28 - 2010

If you want to change your Windows 7 Logon Background you would normally be advised to download a 3rd party application to do the job for you. With this Registry Tweak you don’t have to.

Remember, since this does involve editing the Registry you should take a backup before you start, but you already know that don’t you :-) If you’re new to editing the registry, start here.

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