Do you care about your privacy? I am sure that you do, and if you want to disable the "history" items in Vista, there are a lot of things to do. One of the areas that can be checked by somebody that uses your computer for only a minute or even less is the Recent Items section of the Start menu, but from now on, we'll leave it empty...

It is very easy to disable showing the history of recent documents and programs located in the Start menu, and here's how to do it in only a few easy steps...

- Press the Start Orb to bring up the Start menu and check the Recent Items, because this is the last time you'll see them, and maybe you need to place one of these items in a safe place...


- Right click the Start Orb and choose Properties from the menu that pops up.


- In the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window, uncheck the two items in the Privacy area, and then press Apply.


- Open the Start menu again and check the Recent Items menu to be sure that everything worked.


As you can see above, this works like a charm, and I am sure anyone can do it. These being said, I'll leave you with Vista, but be sure to check back tomorrow for more tips and tricks!

Yesterday, when we talked about disabling the Security Center warnings, I mentioned those popups that appear when you have disabled Vista's automatic updating feature, and this is a topic I left aside so far. Since I am sure there are a lot of people asking themselves how to do this, today we'll learn how to disable the automatic update feature in Vista...

<-234x60 Half Banner - left->To change the updating settings, you have to use the Windows Update tool, and I'll show you the fastest way to get to it and get things done, because "time is money", after all, isn't it?

- Press the Start Orb to bring up the Start menu, type "update" in the search box and then click on Windows Update, as you can see below.



- In the Windows Update window, click on the text link Change Settings.


- Choose Never check for updates, and remember to do this manually from now on, because I don't want to be held responsible for any data loss that may occur because you missed some vital security update...



As usual, the power to use this knowledge is yours. After all, you can also change the automatic update settings to suit your needs better, without completely disabling the feature. Good luck!

When I started my computer today, I was hit right in the head by the same warning I had since I disabled UAC, but this time I got really annoyed, so I decided to put an end to it. Even if you don't turn off UAC, you can turn off automatic updates and the result is another annoying pop up of the Windows Security Center, and here's how to disable them all...

If you have a popup in sight, right click the icon in the System Tray and then select Open Security Center, but if you already closed that popup, as I did, follow me...

- Press the Start Orb to bring up the Start menu, then type "security" in the search box and then click on Windows Security Center, as you can see below.


- In the Windows Security Center window, click on the text link Change the way Security Center alerts me.


- Choose one of the last two options in the screenshot below by left clicking on it, and it's all done.

One less Vista annoyance, checked. Not bad at all, and I really hope you'll enjoy the result of this trick as much as I will, from now on! Obviously, if you want to revert these changes, simply go through the whole thing again, but choose the first option in the last step. Good luck!

If Vista is the latest operating system from Microsoft, that doesn't mean it's also completely clean, and it won't produce junk files that get to fill up more and more space on your drive, as time passes. The good part is that, when you know what you are looking for, starting an application and using it is a piece of cake, and now we're going to use the Disk Cleanup tool for a quick cleaning job...

- Press the Start Orb and type "disk clean" in the search box. You can stop after typing only "disk" or even earlier, as soon as you see the Disk Cleanup tool appearing.


- Left click the Disk Cleanup tool, select the drive you want to clean and press OK.


- In the Disk Cleanup window, watch carefully the description for each item and decide which one to remove. Notice that the ones that are very safe to remove are selected by default. Usually, Temporary files are also safe to remove, and take up most disk space of all items here, but this is not selected by default!


- Press Delete Files in the confirmation dialog that appears and wait for the process to complete.


Don't wait for any confirmation, because you won't see it, but if you want to check the result of your cleaning task, simply start the Disk Cleanup tool again and check the amount of junk files available. Good luck!

To manage your files properly, you always need more than the operating system offers, and EF Commander is one of the programs from this category that is worth checking out, especially since a new release arrived today, bringing the current version number to 6.30.


Born way back in 1994, when was built for the OS/2 operating system, EF Commander was ported to the Windows platform in 1996, and today, it is available for all Windows versions, including Windows CE.

This program's features include a tabbed interface, a built-in media player, multitasking optimizations, a built-in FTP client, support for a lot of languages, including German, Korean, French or Chinese, and many others.

Without having any special system requirements - according to the official site, a "Pentium computer" and Windows 95 or higher, together with 6MB of disk space should be enough, EF Commander is available as a 30-day trial with a nag screen.

The full version is priced at $35, and you can download the trial I mentioned above by clicking here. Enjoy this new version and don't forget to get back here and drop us a comment with your impressions!