Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Windows Guides’ Rating	Compatible with	System
5 out of 5

PROS: Easy installation, in-browser, free, open-source, cross-platform, detailed history reports, built-in RSS feed, transfer calculator, plug-ins. CONS: None VERDICT:  BitMeter OS from Codebox Software is an exceptional way to keep tabs on your bandwidth consumption. Its built in tools which allow you to query the data it collects, send alerts if you reach a certain amount of data, calculate a transfer and build an hourly or daily RSS report (and more) coupled with a sophisticated web interface are a god-send to anyone who requires to keep an eye on their bandwidth. PRICE: Free VERSION REVIEWED: v0.7.2

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One of the first things to do on a machine running IE 8 is turn off the Suggested Sites feature.
This feature looks at the sites you visit and then attempts to guess what other sites you might like and suggest them to you.
Awe, the thought is nice, but … no thanks.

Here’s how to turn it off

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Microsoft Research have released an Internet Explorer Add-On that lets you play “Spot the difference” with websites.

Diff-IE is a prototype Internet Explorer Add-on that:

• Highlights the changes to a page since the last time you visited it
• Allows you to view – and compare – previously cached versions of a page

When changes are made obvious, especially the subtle and unexpected ones, you get a whole lot more out of the web pages you visit.

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I’ve stopped buying music.

Now hold on, before you jump to any wrong conclusions – I don’t illegally download it either. I rent it … sort of.

These day it seems, the music industry are doing what they can to make it harder for honest people to get the music they want (and according to some, encouraging them to “steal”). Some smart people have come up with a great solution: Legal Streaming. Almost with the industry’s blessing.

There are several online solutions for streaming music legally – but in my book there are only two worth checking out: Spotify and Grooveshark. Both of which give you all the music you can ever listen too, free (ad-supported) and legal. Both also provides a paid service without ads and commercial breaks.

Mini Review.

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Being a multi-computer household, we have chosen one computer to be the dedicated multi-media computer. This is where we store all our music, videos, images etc. On occasion you want to access some of this media, sitting at another computer.  If you are at home, using  Homegroup in Windows 7 is the ultimate solution (see this article by Rich).

But, What if, you are not at home?

The good news is that you can stream the music and videos from your home computer to your laptop over the Internet.

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I have earlier told you about PhotoMagician, the program that let you convert pictures “at the drop of a hat”. Now this great tool has become even greater.

One-Click Conversion to Device and Output Format

As before you can predefine  custom settings to suit your needs, but now PhotoMagician also comes with preset settings for the most common devices out there. But the most interesting new functionality is Format to Format Settings.

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