A lot of computer users consider that once their PC's display looks good and the colors are all right, they don't need more, but I have seen too many people using their monitor and video card the wrong way, so I have to give you some hints about this. Anyway, since I got a really good software for helping people get the best out of their display hardware, I will get straight to it, instead of giving you tips on how to improve your Windows visual experience without using additional tools...


Setup

EnTech Taiwan, a company with a decade of experience in software development, has recently released version 3.75 of its advanced tweaking program for a wide range of graphics cards and monitors, an application called PowerStrip. The full program is priced at $29.95, but I got a shareware version free to download and try, as usual.

Offering support for virtually any operating system from Microsoft, apart from the ancient MS-DOS, PowerStrip comes in two small setup packages, one English version with almost 1MB in size, and an International one, having 1.42MB in size. Obviously, if you don't need support for any other language than English, the small package would do just fine.










<-125x125 Button - left->As you can see in the screenshots above, there isn't anything really different when it comes to installing this program, but I must confess that I would like to see an installer that uses windows with the same size, next time. It's not really a bad thing, but I always get a bit confused when I see an installer that displays 3 or 4 windows with different sizes and shapes as I setup a new program...

Interface

With PowerStrip, the interface problem is really simple, because you don't get to see it often. Anyway, as you can see in the screenshot to the left, the place where all the features of the program are gathered is the corner of your monitor where PowerStrip's system tray icon is located. All you have to do is right click that icon, and move on to explore the program's features, as I will...

Features

The first thing to notice is the warning you get when you graphics hardware is detected, because this is really important. While you don't need a Computer Science degree to use this program, having the documentation of your video card and monitor at hand would be a great idea! After you press the OK button, you're taken straight to the Quick setup screen...

In this window, you can notice the default clocks of your graphics adapter, as well as the maximum resolution and refresh rates of your monitor. Be aware that these won't combine - in my case, for example, I won't be able to run 1600X1200 at 120Hz! As I was saying earlier, be sure to check your hardware's manufacturer site for information about what you got, or simply grab the manual, if you have it close at hand.

The profiles that you can save and use are 4 in number, namely the application, display, color and performance profiles. Without getting too technical, things look really simple - first, you set your own display, color and performance profiles, save them, then create application profiles to use the presets that you saved. For example, you can create a default power saving mode with low GPU and memory frequencies and a low-contrast color scheme, together with a high resolution to use when performing office tasks that require a lot of space on the screen, as I do.












Of course that games always need the best out of your computer, so you can also use PowerStrip to overclock your card, but don't forget to test the new frequencies carefully, increase them step by step and check the temperatures of your card often, because it would be a shame to fry your $400 video card...

Sometimes, you don't need a profile to slightly change the visual settings, so using the keyboard shortcuts available for changing gamma or to quickly restore the video card's clocks when smells like a 90 Celsius degrees card is as easy as 1-2-3, and that's all you'll find out from me today, before drawing the conclusions...

The Good

PowerStrip has support for an impressive amount of video cards and monitors, is very easy to use, and the price required to register your copy isn't really high either.

The Bad

As I was using it, the program suddenly stopped responding, but that happened only once. I would really love to see some updated graphics pumped into PowerStrip's interface, because the ones we can see now have been there for ages...

Conclusion

While I can't advise you to grab this proggie and start overclocking your GPU and video memory like crazy, this one of the main goals of this program, and it does its job the right way. Other than that... check it out and see for yourselves, I strongly recommend you to give it a spin, but be careful with those dangerous low level settings, because sometimes, there's no second chance, if you get things wrong...

Developer: EnTech Taiwan
Price: $29.95
Trial Link: Download

The most basic software that every user uses on his computer is, without any doubt, the operating system. Another sure thing is that, with all its problems, Microsoft Windows has been the dominant operating system on the market in the last decade, and things aren't going to change anytime soon, as I see it. While Windows Vista didn't receive it's first Service Pack, new information about its follower is already surfacing...



Windows 7, known as Blackcomb in its early days, and then codenamed Vienna, is expected to be Vista's successor on the market, but the planned development time frame should be at least 3 years, according to Microsoft. If they manage to delay it as they did with Vista, then we shouldn't expect it to become publicly available as a final release earlier than 2012, but let's not draw early conclusions, because there are more important things to find out!Probably the Vienna codename will also become a part of the past, because now, this future product is known as "Windows Seven" or "Windows 7", and the University of Illinois had recently the privilege of seeing an amazing demo from Eric Traut, a chief operating system design engineer from Microsoft. To view the movie of this demo, simply click this link.

Did you like the looks of the Windows stripped to the bone? Fortunately, the next Windows version is not going to look like that, but it's good to see that Microsoft is working on optimizing the old NT-based kernel.

For now, this can be considered only a technology preview, and I am not going to tell you anything about Microsoft's efforts headed towards virtualization, because at this time, I want to consider "MinWin" exactly what it is: a split-second glance into the future. Please watch the movie and share with us your opinions below...

Every time I install Windows XP, I forget about a thing I must do, and that is to disable the low disk space warning. Why disable it? Obviously, there are a lot of methods to find out that your drive is low on free space or not, and Microsoft's operating systems also have a different opinion than mine regarding what "low disk space" is...


<-234x60 Half Banner - left->The good part is that you don't need a Computer Science degree to get rid of the annoying Low Disk Space warning, and to make things even better, there are 3 ways to do this, as you're going to see right now...
1. Edit the registry

First of all, there's the 4-year old method that was made public by no one else than Microsoft. This method describes how to create a registry key to disable the Low Disk Space notification in Windows XP, and since this is the most notorious one, I'll tell you about it before the others, but don't hurry up to apply it yet!

- Open the Run dialog, using the Windows key+R shortcut or Start menu>Run, type "regedit", and then click OK.


- Browse the registry until you find the key located at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
\Policies\Explorer.
- From the Edit menu, pick New, and then choose DWORD Value.


- Baptize the new registry value as NoLowDiskSpaceChecks, and press Enter to finish this step.

- Now, change the value of this item to 1, by selecting it and choosing Modify from the Edit menu.
All done here, let's move on to the second method!


2. Ninja-style removal

While I was surfing the Internet today looking for hot tips and tricks that I didn't discover yet, I had a revelation - there is an incredibly easy solution for the Low Disk Space problem, and this one involves only one command line that needs to be entered at the command prompt!

Here's what you need to do...

- Open a command prompt window, by typing "command" in the Run dialog or by opening the Start menu and going to Programs>Accessories>Command Prompt.

- Copy and paste "regini HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Policies\Explorer "NoLowDiskSpaceChecks" = REG_DWORD 1", and it's all done! (be careful to remove the space before "Policies" first!)

Probably you figured it out, the command above creates the registry key mentioned before without having to go through all the hassle of browsing the registry, creating a new value and changing its contents.


3. Call a friend!

Well, if you have some computer geeks in your phone's memory, you can try this too, but I was thinking about a virtual friend. To be more precise, I am thinking about a software helper. Why? Here's my reason...

Sooner or later, you are going to use a specialized program to tweak your computer and unleash all the power of your operating system, so why not use it to disable the Low Disk Space warning? The only problem remaining is to choose the right program to do that, but that shouldn't be that hard to solve - after all, you're in the Software District here...

At this time, I suggest that you take a look at TweakNow PowerPack, a very nice system optimization suite that may help you with a lot of things, and also keep an eye on our Reviews area, where you can find this kind of programs pretty often, so... stay close!