Is it just me, or does Windows 7 feel a bit long in the tooth compared to Android?

@thomg57 - regarding current tablets, you're absolutely right - iPad and Android have Windows completely beat. For now.

I am willing to bet that in 12-18 months time, when Win8 is released, that it will sport a new UI for tablet scenarios that takes the best elements of Windows Phone's Metro UI along with a bunch of new and improved features including voice recognition (which is already well served via Windows and improved upon by Windows Phone 7), touch and gestures (from WinPhone and Surface) and a host of other improvements born from IE, Silverlight, XNA, etc.

Since we've already seen early builds of Win8 running on credit-card sized ARM boards, I also expect that Win8 will be available on a wide variety of slim, sleek, fast but power-frugal ARM-based tablets and phones.

Microsoft is already hard at work making sure Office (and many of its other products) support ARM and Windows8 specifically.

Remember what happened with netbooks? I fully expect that when MS ships Win8 on tablets, that a similar thing will happen to the tablet/slate market.

Put it this way: If Microsoft was to ship (either itself or through partners) tablet devices that last 10 hours on a single charge and offer a great touch experience and yet are able to run full MS Office, Lync/Communicator/Messenger, any WinPhone app/game and sports a "tablet mode" UI with dockable live tiles as it's primary "home" experience, I'll be delighted.

View the original article here

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Windows 8: How to Change the User Tile for Your Account

Contributed by Rob Rogers April 18, 2011  
Tagged: Windows  

1. Left-click the User Tile located on the far right portion of the Taskbar.

2. Select My Look.

3. Select the image you want from the list of available tiles or scroll to the bottom and select Browse for more pictures and then go to the location of the desired image and select it.

4. Click the OK button.

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Portal 2: Display FPS

Contributed by David Kirk April 19, 2011  
Tagged: Games  

Portal 2, like most valve games, has a way to display an estimation of your FPS.

1. Open Portal 2
2. Select Options
3. Select Keyboard/Mouse
4. Then set Allow Developer Console to Enabled

5. Back out of the Options menu
6. Press the hard accent key (`) to open the developer console
7. Input one of the following command: cl_showfps 1 or cl_showfps 2

You will see an estimation of your frames per second in the upper left hand corner of the screen. The “2? version is an average and seem more accurate in my testing.

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Facebook: How can I change the cover of a photo albums?

Contributed by TipzTV April 17, 2011  
Tagged: Internet  

1. Log in to your Facebook account.

2. Go to Photos app -> My Uploads.

3. Click on the Edit Album button of the album you want to change the setting.

4. Go to Edit Photos tab (This should be your default tab when you edit album information)

5. Find the photo you want to set as album cover, check This is the album cover.

6. Hit Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

7. The album cover will be changed.

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OS X: How to Lock Your Computer from the Menu Bar

Contributed by Rob Rogers April 20, 2011  
Tagged: Mac OS X Leopard  

First we need to add Keychain Access Status icon to the menu bar.

1. Open Finder.

2. Click Applications in the left pane.

3. In the right pane, click Utilities and select Keychain Access.

4. When Keychain Access opens, go to the menu and select Preferences.

5. From the General tab, check the Show Status in Menu Bar checkbox.

6. A lock icon will appear in the menu bar.

7. Close Preferences, Keychain Access and Finder windows.

Now that we have the Status icon on the menu bar, we can lock the desktop easily by clicking it and selecting Lock Screen. Your credentials will need to be entered to unlock the computer.

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Windows 7: Disable Registry Editor for All User Accounts

Contributed by sourojit April 19, 2011  
Tagged: Microsoft Windows 7  

This only works in the following versions — Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate, and Windows 7 Enterprise.

1. Press windows + R to bring up the Run dialog box.

2. Type gpedit.msc in the dialog box and press ok button/ Enter. This will open Windows Group Policy Editor.

3. Go to User Configuration and expand Administrative Templates.

4. In Administrative Templates select System. Every content of System are shown at the right hand side.

5. Scroll through the contents for Prevent access to registry editing tools and open it.

6. Enable the option to prevent registry access.

Well it’s done. Now any user account including yours is prevented to use the Registry Editor.

If you are having Administrator privilege and want to enable the Registry Editor again, follow the same steps and just Disable the option which was Enabled previously.

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Firefox 4: Disable Tab Animation

Contributed by sourojit April 18, 2011  
Tagged: Mozilla Firefox  

Earlier, Shamanstears prepared a tech-recipe about disabling GPU acceleration in FF4 to increase it’s performance. Adding that with these directions on disabling tab animations, will free up those previous CPU cycles.

1. Open Firefox configuration page by typing about:config in the address bar.

2. In the filter option search for browser.tabs.animate.

3. Go to this option and double click on it to change it’s value from true to false.

Restart your browser and now you will see simple tabs without slide in/ slide out or the glowing effects.

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Outlook 2011: How to Resend a Message

Contributed by Rob Rogers April 25, 2011  
Tagged: Apple Mac Microsoft Outlook  

1. Open Outlook and select Sent Items from the left pane.

2. Find the desired sent message in the list and select it.

3. Go to the menu, click Message and select Resend.

4. The message will open. Make any necessary changes (if any) to the Subject and/or the body and then click the Send button in the Ribbon.

Your message has been resent to the recipient.

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How to Play Xbox Live on a College Campus Network

Contributed by Aaron St. Clair April 21, 2011  
Tagged: Games  

PLEASE NOTE: This tutorial is for connecting to Xbox Live using an Ethernet cable. I’ve yet to find a workaround for wireless connections. If you figure one out, please post in the comments below.

First and foremost, connect your desktop (or laptop) to your school’s network via an Ethernet cable. Do not plug the cable to the Xbox yet. If you unplug and then plug it back into your computer, some settings could get changed and you would have to do the first few steps over again.

The second step is to register your computer on your school’s network. I am not going to go into detail about this because it is likely different for each campus. Once you are registered, you will probably see a screen similar to this:

MAC Users: Go to the following links, follow what they say and write down the corresponding info. Skip the next four steps.

IPv4 Address: http://www.wikihow.com/Find-Your-IP-Address-on-a-Mac
DNS Servers: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/find_the_dns_servers_on_your_mac.html
MAC (Physical) Address: http://www-dcn.fnal.gov/DCG-Docs/mac/ (Choose your OS from the list)
Subnet: http://www.ehow.com/how_6312220_subnet-mask-address.html
Default Gateway: http://kb.iu.edu/data/ajfx.html

PC Users:

Once you’ve registered your PC on the network, open your Start menu.

Search for “CMD.” (Without the “quotes”) When you find it, click it.

Type “ipconfig /all” (without the “quotes”) into the Command (CMD) Prompt that you opened and hit Enter.

You will be presented with a list of information concerning your computer’s current network configuration. There could be many things listed here, but you’re looking for a section titled “Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:”. When you find this section, copy down the information highlighted in red.

DOUBLE CHECK that you’ve written down the numbers correctly and make sure you’ve labeled them so you don’t get them mixed up.

MAC Users continue here…

Now, unplug the Ethernet cable from your PC and plug it into your Xbox 360. Turn your Xbox on. Since you’re not connected to the internet yet, I’ll assume you’re presented with a screen similar to this:

If not, scroll up or down until you get to the My Xbox menu. Press until you get to System Settings. Press .

Scroll down to Network Settings and press .

Press on Wired Network.

Press on Configure Network.

Under the Basic Settings menu, press on “IP Address, Subnet, Gateway.”

Make sure Manual is selected and press .

Press on IP Address.

Enter the number you wrote down for “IPv4 Address” from the CMD. Be sure you press on the button.

Go down to Subnet Mask and press .

Enter the number you wrote down for “Subnet Mask” from the CMD. You must press on the button.

Go down to Gateway and press .

Enter the number you wrote down for “Default Gateway” from the CMD. Once again, be sure you press on the button.

Go down to Done and press .

Go to DNS Settings and press .

Press on Primary DNS Server.

Enter the first number you wrote down for “DNS Servers” from the CMD. MAKE SURE you press on the button.

Go down to Secondary DNS Server and press .

Enter the second number you wrote down for “DNS Servers” from the CMD. You must press on the button.

Go to Done and press .

This will bring you back to the Basic Settings menu. Go right to the Additional Settings menu. Go down to Advanced Settings and press .

Press on Alternate MAC Address.

Enter the alphanumeric address you wrote down from the CMD. NOTE: On the CMD it’s listed as “Physical Address”. It’s vital to press on the button.

Go down to Done and press .

Now press to return to the Network Settings screen. Go down to Test Xbox LIVE Connection and press.

Three things will happen now.

1. Your Xbox will test for a connection to a Network. If this passes then you know everything you entered worked. If it doesn’t pass then you need to double check your credentials.2. Once the Network connection is established your Xbox tests for a connection to the Internet.3. Finally, your Xbox will test to make sure it can connect to Xbox Live.

Once all three pass you’ll be fully connected to Xbox Live.

Troubleshooting

On rare occasions, while testing for your Network, your Xbox will give you a DNS Error.

To fix this error, try entering Google’s free DNS Servers. (Primary: 8.8.8.8    Secondary: 8.8.8.8 or 4.4.4.4)

This is the only problem I’ve ran into thus far. If you have any other error PLEASE leave a comment below; I will respond ASAP.

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