Usually, as soon as you get Vista setup, a file manager is one of the first things to install, but I must admit that I still end up using Explorer from time to time, and I know that lots of people use it and nothing else, so speeding it up is a very good idea...

Before we start, I must warn you - if you like to wait for ages to have all thumbnails displayed, browse through system folders and display hidden files and folders, although you don't really have to do that, then this article is not for you!

- Press the Start Orb, type "control folders" in the search box, and then press Enter.


- In the Folder Options window that opens, go to the View tab.


- Be sure to have the next options checked:

* Always show icons, never thumbnails
* Display the contents of system folders
* Show hidden files and folders


- Uncheck the following items:

* Hide extensions for known file types
* Use Sharing Wizard (Recommended)



- Notice the interesting bug in the screenshot above (OK, Cancel, OK button). Please let me know if it happened the same to you!

On the other hand, if you want to speed up your system's overall Vista performance, you can check this article. Good luck!

One of the best audio players for the Windows platform, namely foobar2000, just got an update. This wouldn't be such a big event by itself, especially since last updates to this program didn't bring any major changes, but this time, Peter Pawlowski made some serious changes to its offspring, and you really have to know about this!



Just for the record, I should mention that Peter Pawlowski is a former freelance contractor for Nullsoft, so this program doesn't simply come "out of nowhere". While foobar2000 was more about sound quality and less about good loooks, so far, with version 0.9.5, things are headed into the right direction.

I know a lot of people using Winamp for its easy to use interface, and even more that use it because nobody gave them a better solution, but I am sure that in less than a year, foobar2000 will become the favorite player of more and more people. Why?

I won't tell you about the noise shaping, sound dithering, 18-band EQ or the support for Unicode, as well as the extensive list of audio formats it can play. These are things you can discover by yourselves, and once you download the program, I am sure you will get back here and say "thank you", but now I want to show you something...

Do you like what you see above? Well, foobar2000 is not yet skinnable, but using the Quick Appeareance Setup window, you can setup the main layout, colors and playlist layout in a snap! I won't say anything else, because I am overwhelmed...so if you are using at least Windows XP, give this hot audio player a chance!

FLAC is an excellent losless audio compression format, but has a major drawback for those that want to have their music around anywhere, anytime - only a few portable media players can handle it, so converting FLAC files to popular formats, like MP3 or WMA, is the only solution, as long as you don't want to purchase an expensive player yet...



FLAC Ripper and FLAC2CD are two programs from SoftRM, first for solving the problem I mentioned above, and second for burning FLAC files back to CD(when the original CD gets scratched beyond any hope, for example, don't think of anything else!). The big news is, obviously, that they just got new versions...

FLAC Ripper and FLAC2CD are both Vista compatible, have support for using skins, and registered users get free upgrades. For FLAC Ripper, the new version is 3.5.0, and FLAC2CD just got up to 3.1.0. As usual, trial versions are available, but they have some limitations...

FLAC Ripper 3.5.0 is available as a 15 days trial version, and only 3 FLAC files can be ripped with it, until you purchase a license, valued at $29.95 by SoftRM. To give this program a try, you can grab it from here.

For the same price, you can purchase FLAC2CD 3.1.0, but there's also a trial version available for you to try. The limitations are similar to those found in FLAC Ripper's trial, with 15 days time limit and only 3 FLAC files that can be written to discs by the unregistered version. The trial version can be downloaded from here.