Raymond.CC Blog

In my opinion, USB flash drives are one of the best invention because it is fast, can be used on most computers without installing any drives and small which makes it portable. At the same time this will also allow data to be easily stolen from a computer if the owner of the PC is not on his desk. Windows does not provide an easy way for an average computer user to check if any unauthorized USB drives has been connected to the computer. For a more experienced user who are familiar with Windows registry, it is possible to analyze the USBSTOR registry keys and see if there are any unrecognized devices. I have previously written about using USBDeview to view all installed or connected USB devices on your system and if you find that the information displayed on the program is a little overwhelming, you can give USB History Viewer a try.

Google Chrome gets updated quite very often. You may not have noticed it because Google automatically updates and installs the latest stable version of Chrome. Even Firefox is trying to play the catch up game but I still don’t think they will ever catch up when Chrome is already at version 16 now and Firefox is only at v9. Whatever the case is, have you ever wondered what goes on when Google Chrome is being updated? Will the new version overwrite the old version? Or does the old version gets uninstalled automatically? The answer is the previous version of Google Chrome are kept and not removed. If you check the folder where Google Chrome is installed, you would noticed that there are 2 folders with different version numbers and two chrome executable files (chrome.exe and old_chrome.exe).

Obviously chrome.exe with the newer version number are the most updated Chrome while old_chrome.exe and the folder with older version number is obsolete. One probable reason that the old version is still kept because of rollback purposes but the official Chrome FAQ page mentioned that they don’t recommend you to roll back Google Chrome to a previous version.

Do you think is it even possible to browse websites by using only keyboard without a mouse? I am not going to lie that it is possible by breaking the Tab key but no one would do it from a vanilla browser that does not get any help from third party extensions or plugins. I have previously written about a Firefox extension called Mouseless Browsing where you can easily visit the link on the webpage by referring to the unique ids behind every link or element. Press the Control key and followed by typing the number of the id to get to the link. It is that easy and fast.

However if you want something that has more features that makes you a total pro in surfing the web without even touching the mouse, try Vimperator. Vimperator is a Firefox browser extension with strong inspiration from the Vim text editor, with a mind towards faster and more efficient browsing. If you haven’t heard of Vim text editor, it is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Without a doubt that it is hard at first trying to learn how to browse the web without a mouse by using Vimperator but once you get used to it, I am confident that you will surf the web faster, more efficiently, and even saving your shoulder because you don’t need to reach for the mouse.

Since Windows 95, there is a registry entry “MenuShowDelay” where you can make the Start menu expands automatically and instantly when the cursor is on the menu. During my teenage years when I was working part time at a computer shop building desktops, my boss made sure that I added this registry entry to every computer that is being sold so that it seems to work faster. In today’s Windows 7, the MenuShowDelay registry entry still works on most programs that has the normal menu bar, but definitely not on the Start menu since Windows 7 no longer comes with the classic Start menu.

There are normally 3 types of users. The first one is they want everything to be fast and don’t need the unnecessary eye candy animations. Second one is they don’t care about it and the third one is they find it hard to keep up with the controls. As good as I am in controlling Windows using the keyboard more often than the mouse, I actually find it hard to type using the on-screen keyboard in my android smartphone. Anyway, if you find it hard to navigate around with the menus and submenus because it automatically expands after hovering the cursor on it, you should set it only open the submenus via mouse click. In fact, I even find myself clicking on the menus itself to expand the submenu because the two seconds pause to auto expand seems to be a little too long for me.

There are so many strategy that we can use to make sure we are able to get back our files when we accidentally deleted it. If you don’t use any backup methods, the only way to get back deleted files is by using data recovery software to try to put the file system back together so that the data files can be accessed only if they are untouched or not overwritten by new data. If we prefer to play safe, we can use backup software that automatically transfer new files to a backup medium. Some may opt for drive imaging such as Acronis True Image to create an incremental offline snapshot and while others may use snapshot programs such as FarStone RestoreIT or Rollback RX.

Here is another unique method used by a software named Undeluxe where it automatically backup the file before it is deleted. This could be really useful because I have a bad habit of ALWAYS using the SHIFT+DELETE key to delete files without putting it to Recycle Bin. In fact there were a couple of times I accidentally shift deleted important files and I had to use data recovery software to get it back.

THE KEYS AT KEYBOARD MAY GET STUCK DUE TO DUST, HARSH USAGE OR LOW BUILD QUALITY. YOU MAY ENCOUNTER THE KEYS BEING REPEATED BY ITSELF OR IT DOESN’T WORK AT ALL AND YOU HAVE TO HIT IT REALLY HARD FOR THE KEY TO APPEAR. HOWEVER, IF THE CAPS LOCK KEY IS BROKEN, YOU CAN STILL USE THE KEYBOARD TO TYPE EXCEPT PISSING OFF THE READERS BECAUSE ALL THE LETTERS ARE IN CAPITAL CASE WHICH IS QUITE ANNOYING AS IT SEEMS TO BE SHOUTING.

I bet the above paragraph is hard to read so it is advisable that the user either change the keyboard or disable the key if they are tight on budget. You can use third party software such as KeyTweak and SharpKeys to disable the CAPS LOCK key but here is an easier method which doesn’t involve installing any software.

I normally disable any not frequently used hardware in Device Manager such as the webcam, fingerprint reader, DVD-RAM, Modem, Firewire, PCMCIA adapter, and most importantly the wireless adapter. So far I only noticed that the computer boots up faster since it doesn’t need to load up the devices and most probably it could even prolong the battery life on my laptop. Many times I’ve seen people using their laptop connected to both wifi and LAN that is on the same router. Although this shouldn’t cause any problems because Windows routing table is smart enough to automatically detect and use the better connection, but it is still good to disable the unnecessary connection to avoid any possible dual interface routing issues. Previously I’ve tested the Windows routing table by connecting 3 different types of connection (3G, ethernet and wifi) on my computer and it puts 3G at first priority, followed by ethernet and then wifi.

If you normally have to switch between wifi and ethernet connection but find it a hassle to manually disable or enable the devices, here is how you can do it automatically.