Tag Archives: Vista

PerfectDisk 2008 Professional Worth a Try

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Posted by Alisha on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 – 1:24 am
Filed under Reviews, Software

Having been a huge fan of Diskeeper for years, it was very hard to try another software because I was always comparing to Diskeeper. I had purchased Diskeeper and then switched over to 64-bit Vista and couldn’t run the Home version that I had purchased. I wasn’t about ready to spend even more money to buy the version that supported 64-bit.

PerfectDisk 2008 Professional supports 64-bit, so I thought it was definitely worth a try, especially when I don’t currently run anything to defragment my system. Diskeeper and PerfectDisk are almost similar in functionality. They don’t look exactly the same, but there are some features that do remind me of Diskeeper, which is a good thing because it made me feel comfortable using it.

One feature I look for in most software is the “set it and forget it”. I don’t have time to worry about my system running fast and working right, so that is a must-have feature that PerfectDisk has.

After changing a default setting, I was able to see and schedule my external USB drive to be defragmented.

The defragmentation took quite a while to complete since I modify, add and remove files almost daily on it. I found the process to be slightly slower than Diskeeper, but that could very well mean it is more thorough. Since defragmenting usually occurs when I’m not using my computer (using the idle feature), it’s not really that big of a deal. Defragmenting my main hard drive didn’t take as long even though it is slightly larger; it has a lot more free space on it.

For those of you concerned about how large of a hard drive you have, PerfectDisk does not have a size limitation like Diskeeper does. You are allowed to have multi-terabyte hard drives with PerfectDisk - no need to worry about spending more money on a version that supports larger hard drives. It also allows you to defrag with as little as 1% free space available!

PerfectDisk performs file defragmentation in a single-pass unlike other software which helps improvement of drive performance. It also does a single-pass defragmentation of free space.

PerfectDisk 2008’s patented SMARTPlacement™ optimization is paired with its exclusive single-pass defragmentation and Space Restoration Technology™ to maximize PC and laptop performance.

My favorite PerfectDisk feature is that it also defragments the hibernate file. Since using PerfectDisk, I noticed that Vista resumes from hibernation noticeably faster than it did prior to using the software.

PerfectDisk has also helped Photoshop load faster and while editing several (10-20) large images for work, I don’t notice it lagging like it used to. I have always hated opening Photoshop because of how slow it was and now I can actually enjoy using it. Diskeeper has never done this much of an improvement on my system.

PerfectDisk is easy to use for anyone, very thorough and will keep your system running smooth! I recommend trying it out. Check out the comparison charts.

I am still a huge fan of Diskeeper due to its speed, but PerfectDisk has definitely improved my system in a shorter amount of time than Diskeeper has. PerfectDisk gets my vote for the amount of improvements.

Check out screenshots below:

                

If you use PerfectDisk 2008 Professional or older versions, I’d love to hear what you thought of it in the comments!

Hidden Feature of Windows Vista

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Posted by Alisha on Friday, March 21st, 2008 – 5:33 pm
Filed under Software

It’s been a while since my last post. I have been very busy with work. I’ve also been keeping myself busy learning ActionScript.

Anyway, while working today, Windows Update popped up that little window that says Windows needs to restart. I went to postpone the restart for four hours, except that I accidentally clicked the wrong button.

I started to panic because I had some things open that I didn’t want to lose. Then, the screen showed a list of programs that were still open and asked if I wanted to restart anyway or cancel. I was relieved to see that!

This may not actually be a hidden feature, but I didn’t know about it and it’s not something that appears unless you restart with at least Flash 8 open. In the screenshot below, it says under Flash 8: This program is preventing your computer from restarting.

Hidden Feature of Windows Vista

If you know about this feature, does it work with just Flash, or does it happen with other programs? Is it because I hadn’t saved what was in Flash, so Flash prevented the restart?

Vista Gadget: Wallpatch Video

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Posted by Alisha on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 – 7:16 pm
Filed under Software

I just found a Vista Gadget that has become my favorite. It’s difficult finding really good Vista Gadgets.

Wallpatch Video lets me watch movies right on the desktop. Now, I know some of you are thinking that most other players let you watch movies on the desktop, too. But, this is different. I don’t need to open up a player and I can customize the size of the screen and it’s on the desktop and out of the way. No toolbars, borders, or menus in the way. The options only appear when the cursor is over the gadget and auto-hide when the cursor moves off.

Wallpatch Video
Wallpatch Video

It’s very simple to use. I have been looking for something like this for a while. It lets me to continue doing anything else on the computer while the movie is playing.

I don’t know what video types it supports except for AVI, WMV and can play DVDs. It wouldn’t play W4V, which comes from iTunes. I would be very happy if it could!

Go check out Wallpatch Video, which is at version 2.0 now.

Make Windows Vista Appear Faster

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Posted by Alisha on Monday, January 28th, 2008 – 6:24 pm
Filed under Software

Make Vista Appear Faster

There are some things you can do to make Windows Vista seem a little faster without upgrading the RAM. Usually there are visual effects that are enabled by default that don’t need to be for Vista to function. I disabled them in XP and now finally decided to do the same in Vista, just to see a small improvement.

Some of you may already know about this and some may not. I just wanted to share with you the ones I chose to disable and how it helped.

Right click on Computer in Vista and click on Advanced system settings on the left side of the window. You can also access the System Properties window from the Control Panel. Click on the Settings… button under Performance in the Advanced tab. You will notice in the Visual Effects tab that there are a few options to choose, including a Custom one. Because I still want some of the visual effects to be enabled, I use Custom by disabling the ones I don’t want:

  • Uncheck Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
  • Uncheck Fade or slide ToolTips into view
  • Uncheck Fade or slide menus into view
  • Uncheck Fade out menu items after clicking
  • Uncheck Slide open combo boxes
  • Uncheck Slide taskbar buttons
Performance Options

Optionally, you can disable any of the other visual effects or all of them if you choose. I find that disabling the ones above really helped Vista to appear faster. I’m not saying Vista is slow (at least not for me), but I also disable the visual effects in XP because it helped in XP, too. Do you really need things to fade or slide? I don’t.

Could I just disable other unnecessary effects, like Aero? Yes, but I do like the transparent appearance over the ugly plain one.

Now windows and menus open much faster, instead of slowly appearing on the screen.

Posts Around the Web

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Posted by Alisha on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 – 12:16 pm
Filed under General

Google Reader

Today, I thought I would share some posts around the web from feeds that I am subscribed to.

Is Your Desktop Naked?

This one comes from Mitchellaneous and caught my attention, because like Mitch, I also like a clean desktop. The only difference between mine and his though is that I use gadgets from the Vista Sidebar. But, it’s still clean because I don’t have icons cluttering my desktop.

Clean Desktop

This is useful if you are working on a project for a client, because whatever you decide to save on the desktop is for that project alone. Then as Mitch said, you can move file(s) to another location when you’re done, or delete if you no longer need the file(s). Great tip.

Photoshop Tutorial: Candy in a Plastic Wrapper

This tutorial comes from Larissa Meek showing us what to use the plastic wrap filter for in Photoshop. I haven’t put her tutorial to the test, but it looks easy to follow. I’d be interested to know if anyone’s used the filter for anything else.

Candy in a Plastic Wrapper

5 Packs to Transform Windows to other OS

One thing many people like to do is making Windows look like another operating system. The two most common ones I see are Mac and Vista.  This list comes from MakeUseOf.

  • Vista Transformation Pack
  • Mac OS Transformation Pack
  • FlyakiteOSX
  • Fedora Transformation Pack
  • Ubuntu Transformation Pack

For screenshots, check out the post.

Google Takes Feeds Out of Search Results

I read this great news over at Jeffro2pt0.  This is very important to me, because I was starting to consider using another search engine because it annoyed me that every search result included a lot of feeds, rather than the actual content. And it takes time to manually find the link to the content.

It’s also important that if you have a blog, that your feeds aren’t showing up in the first results, possibly resulting in less visitors.