Rajat Jaswal

Well, till now, i have told you almost everything that’s required to turn your XP into Vista. The only thing that remains is ‘The Theme’. Now if you aren’t really interested in the transparency thing, then a theme file that works with StyleXP would work just fine. But, if you actually want your system to have a transparent kinda interface, the go for Stardock’s WindowBlinds. This software allows you to transform almost everything that can be transformed . Plus, you can apply other themes like that of Mac,Tiger,Leopard,etc. Just to show you how the user interface would look like using this software,here’s a cropped snapshot of my desktop

WindowBlinds

PS: It doesn’t alter any system files,which makes it perfectly safe to use.

Ok ! Here’s another customization that you can do to your windows XP. The name of the software is Visual Task Tips and this is what it’s exactly going to do to your taskbar

So grab your softcopies now, this is one essential utility.

Visual Task Tips

 PS: The installer is on the top right of the page that you going to open. (Just incase you can’t find it)

To add the sidebar to your XP, download and run this software provided by thoosje. It’s more of a clone of vistas sidebar and looks somewhat like this.

It sure looks good, and if you want to try it, then visit Thoosje Vista Sidebar

Now personally, I wasn’t really satisfied with it so I tried the google gadgets. The best thing about it is that it can also be set as the sidebar and applications can be added to it too. Though it may not be as stylish as Thoosje’s sidebar, but it does the job for me and without any bugs.

Google Gadgets

The choice is yours…

Hey..!! I know its been a long time since i introduced the ‘XP to Vista’ Category. And i guess its about time that i start posting the real thing. So, lets get started !!

The Vista Transformation pack !

What all is it going to provide you with :

• Vista style boot screen, logon screen
• Vista-like theme (with all the icons, transparent task bar, wallpapers, Progress Dialogs and media player skin,etc)
• Vista’s sound scheme
• 3rd party softwares( the sidebars, the vista style start menu, window transparency, 3d flip etc)

Going by my personal experience, i wouldn’t recommend this for users with RAM 1GB or less. Because this is one resource hungry pack and trust me, it will eat up your memory, your PCs memory that is .

Now the good thing about this is that it allows us to specify what all we want to install. And the bad thing about it is that uninstalling the pack can be real troublesome for users who don’t have much knowledge about this. When i uninstalled it, it took with it the icons of ‘my computer’, ‘my document’ etc !! But i did manage to get them back somehow.

You can find the screen shots of it here

And this is the link from where you can get the download link of the latest transformation pack(at the time of writing this post )

Vista Transformation Pack

PS: If you have an anti virus which keeps check of your system files, then DON’T forget to turn it off before you install the pack. Because the pack makes changes in your system files folder only.

PS2: If you are a gamer(like me), then don’t install the 3dflip application because it WILL make your game lag.

PS3: There are alternatives to everything in this world . And I will come up with them in the following posts.

One fine day, when i got tired of switching to different internet radio websites in my pursuit to listen to some quality music, i decided to search Google to get a solution, and this is what i came across.

SCREAMER !!!!!!!!!!

Its Features:

1. Comes as a package i.e. requires no installation,save it to your disk and run it directly. Great application to have on your flash drive (hardly occupies any space)
2. Lots of preset radio stations, arranged according to the genres,the countries,the networks and the languages . And you can obviously save your favorite stations too.
3. Shows all the required information about the track being played, information as in,bitrate and all(helps make out if your broadband can stream it continuously or not).
4. Now for the best part !! It can also record the music being played which means you can listen to the tracks you liked, later on.
5. It all comes free of cost.

So, now that i have made you aware of this, go, get your soft copy now, before the guys run out of bandwidth

Here is the official site

SCREAMER RADIO

Happy SCREAMING!!!!

As i said in the Disclaimer (which i believe you haven’t read yet), its all about keeping it simple yet stylish. So, based on that, and some other features, let us see which browser is the best. I’ll rate them according to the features below:

Browsing Speed:

IE - takes a lot of time in sending and receiving requests, and what makes matters worse for it is the fact that it refreshes the web page when you press the “go back” button

Mozilla - again,refreshes the pages every time but the sending and receiving of requests is really fast, so that makes it better than IE

Opera - It does not refresh d pages when you go back to them(thats the bets part), so if you are a kind of user who browses through lots of pages everyday and like things to be fast, then opera is what yo need.

RATING: IE 5/10, Mozilla 8/10, Opera 9/10

Bandwidth Consumption :

Maximum>> IE - because of the reloading of pages and also because of the adds that keep popping up.

Mimimum>>Opera - no reloading thing and you can block all adds, plus it has the easily accessible option of hiding the images in a webpage which reduces the bandwidth consumption greatly !!

In Mozilla, the consumption is considerably higher than Opera but lesser than IE because it also blocks adds effectively

NO RATING !!

Security :

Based on personal experience, I’ve arranged them in decreasing order i.e. the most secure browser first. I havnt’t given any more info on this because i don’t want to get technical( or may be i can’t….he he)
Mozilla>Opera>IE

RATING: IE 4/10, Mozilla 8/10, Opera 7/10

Looks n Style :

IE: Not Bad, the latest versions do look good but the skinning is quite limited

Mozilla: Same as IE, only the address areas can be skinned

Opera: Better than the two, greater area for skinning,the speed dial feature makes it possible, plus you can change the colors of a particular theme too!!!

RATING: IE 7/10,Mozilla 7/10,Opera 9/10

These are the only comparisons i can think of right now, I’ll add more when i find more. Other than that,ive pointed out things which make every one of the three browsers important to have

IE: There are some old old sites on net which are only compatible with IE, thats the only reason why you need IE

Mozilla: Its compatibility, opens almost every site without a hitch,then you have unlimited add-ons to go with it,all combine to form one great application

Opera: Fast browsing, extremely simple interface, inbuilt notepad(rocks),inbuilt download manager,its own widgets,great style and Speed Dial Feature, check the official opera site to find out what it actually is .

Overall , for me Opera is the best, followed by Mozilla and then obviously IE.

PS:

1. IE stands for Internet Explorer
2. All the description is based on personal experience …….. nothing personal