June 29, 2009 12:57 pm by Jal
After much anticipation, Samsung finally released NC20 laptop and added a charm to its mini notebook family. Samsung NC20 is reviewed so much positively that I personally wanted my hands on it. So I visited the Samsung store in my city and did my best to accurately test it.
First of all, Samsung NC20 is for all. I mean, this is a complete notebook, power-packed with all the necessary features that anyone would need. Choosing a laptop is very complicated task these days, but Samsung NC20 is something which will urge you to make it yours. Why? Here’s what I felt while I experienced it for complete 2 hours.
The glossy screen of 12.1 inch WXGA (1280 x 800) is just perfect for everybody. When I travel in trains, I want something large enough to see my HD movies crisp and sharp but also it should not occupy more space. Samsung NC20 is slim and can fit in your lap so perfectly and comfortably. With 1.6GHz VIA Nano U225 processor and VIA Chrome 9 HC3 Graphics, I am sure it will play my Blu-ray 1080p Hi-Def films so smoothly without any lags.
Now, as I travel a lot I want my laptop to run for long hours and Samsung NC20 was able to impress me a lot. It has a mindblowing battery life of 8 hours. That surely can make a journey interesting. I also found out that it has an anti-bacterial keyboard which provides hygienic computing environment. Other features include a 1.3 MP camera and an integrated mic for video conferencing and chatting, Bluetooth and it comes with a Genuine Windows XP Home edition.
So, after 2 hours of experiencing the awesomeness, I would say that Samsung NC20 is more than just a notebook. It can be a companion for me while travelling, for my Dad to do his office work, for my Mom to keep it in the kitchen and learn cookery tips over the wireless internet, for my grandparents to talk to my relatives abroad using the integrated camera and mic. It is really made for all.
Know more about Samsung NC20 and its features.
You can read more Samsung NC20 reviews here.
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June 23, 2009 22:47 pm by Jal
You must be aware of the fact that Microsoft has striped down utilities like Photo Gallery, Windows Mail, Windows Messenger etc. from Windows 7. So these utilities won’t be available out-of-the-box but one has to download a package called ‘Windows Live Essentials’ in order to install these utilities. Windows Live Essentials include the following utilities: Windows Live Toolbar, Family Safety, Movie Maker Beta, Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery and Writer.
Once you download the whole package and run the installer, it gives you an option to select the utilities you wish to install. However, if you are wondering about how to get the individual installers of all these utilities instead of one big installer then you can follow this trick:
1) First, you need to unhide protected operating system files. In Windows Explorer, click Organize >> Folder and search options.
2) In the window that appears, click on ‘View’ tab. Here, uncheck the option that says ‘Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)’. Confirm by clicking ‘Yes’ in the warning message dialog box that appears. This will unhide the files which are super-hidden by the system.
3) Now assuming C:\ as your Windows partition, navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Windows Live\.cache (Note: 64-bit Windows users will have to navigate through ‘Program Files (x86)’ folder)
4) Here, you will find many folders with random names. These folders contain individual installers of Windows Live Essentials utilities. You can copy these installers to another folder. I don’t recommend moving or deleting the existing installers. Enjoy!
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June 23, 2009 10:35 am by Jal
Previously we discussed about the upcoming new antivirus product called Morro from Microsoft. Well, Microsoft has now released its Public Beta. So without elaborating further, here’s the link to the official download page. But there are two things to keep in mind. First, you need to sign-in to Microsoft Connect and go through a little boring survey in order to download Morro and second, if your computer is running on a counterfeited Windows installation then it is useless to download Microsoft Morro as it validates your Windows installation before installation. So pirated users won’t get the cake this time.
Download Microsoft Morro.
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June 17, 2009 22:19 pm by Jal
One of my friend and a blogger asked me how to add a favicon to a Blogger powered blog. So I decided to write a post on it so that many others having the same question can get their answers. A favicon is a small (usually 16×16 pixels) image that appears in the title bar when a webpage is being viewed. It has no information value but looks nice and professional. So here’s what you need to do to make your own favicon for your Blogger powered blog.
1) First create a 16×16 image that represents your blog and upload it to any photo hosting sites like Photobucket, Imageshack, etc. The image can be a little bigger but anyways Blogger will display a 16×16 image only.
2) Now login to your Blogger account and navigate to Layout >> Edit HTML.
3) Now at Tech Explorer, we don’t take any chances. So back up your blog by downloading it. Click ‘Download full template’ link. But if you promise to be extra cautious, you can skip this step.
4) Now locate the following code in the HTML:
<title> <data:blog.pageTitle/> </title>
5) Insert the following code immediately after the above code:
<link href='LINK TO YOUR FAVICON IMAGE' rel='shortcut icon' type='image/vnd.microsoft.icon'/>
6) Replace ‘LINK TO YOUR FAVICON IMAGE’ in the above code with the link to your image.
7) Click ‘Save template’ button and enjoy your new favicon of your blog!
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June 16, 2009 21:37 pm by Jal
The recent news is that the software giant is on its way to give away free antivirus which is currently in its alpha testing stage. Microsoft has revealed that it is going to release a free antivirus, codenamed ‘Morro’ by the end of 2009.
However, this is not the first step of Microsoft in the antivirus arena. It has developed an antivirus suite, which was of course a paid product, called ‘OneCare’. But it failed to make its mark. This time Microsoft is releasing its very own free antivirus product and a handful of Microsoft employees are currently testing it. “Again, this is just a striped down version of the Microsoft OneCare suite which provides basic protection. But a complete antivirus suite is recommended for full security” said Janice Shaffin, the president of Symantec’s Consumer Division. One of the Microsoft employee has given out the following three screenshots of what we can expect it to be. The UI does look quite appealing but this is an internal build so the final product may vary.
Screenshots of Microsoft Morro (Thanks to Neowin):
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June 9, 2009 22:28 pm by Jal
Popular social networking site Facebook announced today on its
blog that from June 13th onwards, it will allow users to have their own usernames for their Facebook profile. Till now, the user profile had a random URL address but once the user chooses his username, his/her profile URL becomes much more justifiable and simple to understand.
So, till now my Facebook profile URL was some random number. If I choose a username say ‘jal.desai’ then my URL would become much more simple to remember. Something like this:
That’s pretty neat. What say? According to Facebook, this move will give user a new destination, a new home on the web. Pretty nice!
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June 9, 2009 21:31 pm by Jal
I always wanted to post this. Mozilla has released the preview version of Firefox which is very stable compared to its previous Beta versions. What makes this brand new browser special are the new features that are power-packed in Firefox 3.5 Preview. As Mozilla claims it, Firefox 3.5 will have the following features:
1) Full support for HTML5 tags with video tags. This is a kind of revolution as it will consider the video as a continuous webpage and not a different component added to the webpage. This directly implies that there is no need of Adobe Flash Players to view videos of open-source video formats like OGG Vorbis and Therora. (Dailymotion, a well known video hosting service, is currently using these open-source formats to promote them). This could very well be the final hour for Flash video.
2) Firefox 3.5 Preview now includes private browsing feature which is a similar to the ‘InPrivate’ mode of IE 8 and ‘Incognito’ mode of Google Chrome. To be precise, this feature will let users to surf the web without storing any session details on the host computer.
3) Firefox 3.5 Preview detects your geographical location and optimizes your browsing experience based upon your geo-location. Geo-locations are provided by Google.
5) Support for downloadable fonts is incorporated in Firefox 3.5 Preview.
As I said, this is a very stable Beta 4 release of Firefox. So we can assume the final version of Firefox 3.5 is just around the corner.
Go to the download page of Firefox 3.5 Preview (Beta 4).
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