XP Quick Fix Plus is a tiny portable application that provides fixes to 40 common Windows XP problems. Its Portable, small and fast, and is a must have on every computer.

The essential thing to be noted here is that the application is all about registry fixes since on Windows majority of the problems arise in the registry. However I suggest you create a system restore point before you proceed with any of the fixes.

What if there is no way for you to run XP Quick Fix Plus from Windows or if you need to run the fix from a batch file or script? There’s a small (~38KB) batch script that provides some of the most common fixes like :

• QFC /t – quick enable the Task Manager
• QFC /r – quick enable the Rgistry Editor
• QFC /f – quick enable the Folder Options
• QFC /e – quick restore the Run Dialog
• QFC /p – quick restore My Computer Properties
• QFC /x – Quick fix Windows can’t run exe files

So essentially XP Quick Fix Plus is a tiny and portable application that does its job perfectly well. A must have for any Windows XP user.

Download XP Quick Fix Plus | Via Download Squad | Image Credit : gui.tavares

The Mojave Experiment has been the center of the latest round of controversy surrounding Microsoft and its flagship operating system Windows Vista. Initially I thought Mojave was a brilliant marketing ploy and it would work wonders to clear the bad air on Windows Vista..

Well it is not really the best marketing ploy ever! If I were to choose my words, I’d call it the lamest marketing exercise of the year. The Mojave Experiment means Microsoft has stooped to an all time low, trying to do every single thing it can to clear the air about Vista. But trust me Microsoft its not as easy creating a beautiful new OS codenamed Mojave only to reveal that its nothing but Windows Vista.

Here’s how Microsoft describes the Mojave Experiment :

What do people think of Windows Vista® when they don’t know it’s Windows Vista? We disguised Windows Vista as codename "Mojave," the "next Microsoft OS," so regular people who’ve never used Windows Vista could see what it can do – and decide for themselves. Now decide for yourself.

Oh well, here are my top 5 reasons why the Mojave Experiment is Epic fail…

• Microsoft treats its customers as though they are stupid

  One of the chief reasons, why many people dislike Windows, is plainly because of the number of steps it takes to do a simple thing. Microsoft makes sure that the user has to go through an endless sequence of steps to get a simple job done. It’s always click, click, click, click, click, click, click, where one or two clicks should suffice.

  Microsoft treats its customers as though they are kids. They feel that the user should be shown around the system, and be told what’s right and what’s not.. These way of holding users hands just like a parent holding a child’s hands is not the way Microsoft should be working.

  It should instead focus on giving the power back to the user, in his own hands. Let him do as he pleases, after all its his PC. What MS feels is that by giving the power in users hands, it is going to make Windows more vulnerable. But in real life that isn’t the case, take for example Linux where the user is supreme and the number of attacks just pale in comparison to those on Windows.

  Come on Microsoft its high time you gave your users some respect, and treated them as smart humans!

• Microsoft tries to seduce its customers

  Microsoft’s initial campaign on Vista, was all about the new interface and the WOW! features. Somehow the we never heard people saying Wow while looking at Vista. Now Microsoft was downright frustrated and it wanted those Wow’s somehow, and that’s why Mojave began in first place.

  Here’s what MS told the participants of the Mojave experiment, “Hey! Listen, I’m going to show you a peek into the latest operating system from Microsoft. You’re really lucky and special, and I hope you like it”.

  Now when a tester hears that he’s all excited, and when he sees the demo later only to find that it was Vista he’s embarrassed. Of course he’s going to like it!There’s no one way he’s going to tell he didn’t like Mojave or Vista or whatever its called.

  Now this is something that’s human nature. When we are shown something that’s top secret we’re almost always going to like it, and that’s what Microsoft’s been targeting. I believe they have a good psychologist on the Mojave team.

• Microsoft completely controls the test environment

  The chief complaint of millions of users when Vista came out was it didn’t work well with their existing hardware. It ran terribly slow and many of there hardware didn’t work properly.

  Now with Mojave, Microsoft set up the hardware. Microsoft brought the accessories. Microsoft picked the software. Microsoft sat people down with Vista experts driving the mouse, and walked people through Vista.

  In such an environment, people liked Vista. What Microsoft fails to understand is that these guys want to be able to run Vista smoothly on their computers back home, and not have to run to the nearest computer store to buy a computer that can run Vista smoothly even though their existing computer is less than a year old.

  Windows users have always wanted to set up their own hardware, and they would expect Vista to work properly with the hardware they have, and not use the hardware that Vista is comfortable with.

• Mojave Experiment blames the customers for all the problems, rather than Vista

  What do you think is the problem? Why is it that thousands of people are downgrading from Vista to XP? Why is that many OEM manufacturers are still selling PC’s with both XP and Vista?

  What Microsoft feels is that all the negative perception behind Vista are because of the bloggers, forum posters, reviewers and hell even the Apple’s marketing campaign. Microsoft’s attitude has been more like, we’ve solved many problems with SP1, and we’ll solve many more with SP2. Until then just hang on tight alright!

  The first step in fixing a problem is admitting that you have one and this is something which Microsoft fails to do. The only way I read this experiment is that Microsoft considers Vista’s failure to be due to customer ignorance rather than failings of the product itself.

  Way to go Microsoft!!

• Mojave is Microsoft’s Arrogance at its best

  Microsoft’s attitude with Mojave is something on these lines, “We’re smart. You’re stupid”. Microsoft’s methods of choosing testers, specifically on the basis that they had strong negative attitudes about Vista isn’t right.

  What Microsoft feels is that by tricking people and making them feel that Vista is way better than they thought its just another way to reinforce its new corporate mantra “Customers are Stupid!”

  The problems that Vista has become famous for are not the kinds of problems you encounter in a few minutes of playing with it in a controlled environment that Microsoft setup with Mojave.

If Mojave is what Microsoft spends $300 Million to promote Vista, then am afraid that the bad is only going to get worser. What are your thoughts on the Mojave Experiment?

Atleast for me Mojave is Epic Fail!

Which do you feel is the better? Is the Mac dude better than the Uncool PC Guy? Sound off your opinions..

Let the war of the fanboi’s begin

cartoon credit: ageekstoty

Share more videos and cartoons in the comments. I will update the post with more of them in the future.

Meanwhile my personal favorite is the Mac. Doesn’t mean I’m Gay Alright!!

Consider this as a rant, but with today’s announcement of Live Search Cashback program Microsoft has stooped itself to new lows. I cannot believe  that Microsoft is actually trying to be the number one search engine ahead of Google, Yahoo by actually by paying the users in return for visiting their advertisers. Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me though.

More like the proverbial, “If you can’t get users to your site, buy them!!“.

If you are wondering how this scheme actually works, head over to the detailed explanation by Microsoft. Basically you search for deals using Live Search; when you find deals with a special coin shaped icon like above, it means you’ll receive a small amount of money after you’ve bought something. When your balance reaches $5, you can claim your cash.

I know you feel this is some kind of cool idea, but let me take some time and explain why this program simply doesn’t cut it, why it’s a chock-full of failure…

According to the FAQ, to be eligible for the program you have to be U.S. citizen or legal resident, and at least 18 years of age. Everyone else, forget about it. Moreover, Microsoft does not guarantee you’ll receive cashback bonuses if you use an alternative payment method when purchasing items, such as PayPal or Google Checkout. Seriously Microsoft are you kidding me?

I personally feel that Microsoft is running out of ideas on how to improve the effectiveness of its advertising system in comparison to Google Adwords that continues to grow steadily. By changing from a Cost Per Click model to Cost Per Acquisition model, Microsoft is giving out higher returns to the advertisers for sure, but it doesn’t show good faith in its advertising platform.

Another point is that the payouts are set to a pretty low amount and are pegged at 5$. I know what I’m going to say next might sound like crazy talk but try thinking this way. Why on earth would Microsoft keep the payouts so low, if they have faith their initiative and they think there is quite a bit of money to be made by shoppers. I know you could say that are trying to attract more users, but another way of attracting them would be stating something like earn atleast 1$ for every complete transaction.

I’m skeptical if this program will work or not, but I’m sure paying the users in pennies isn’t going to help much when they are purchasing products worth tens or hundreds of dollars.

Google has a superior product search engine and way ahead of Microsoft at the moment. I’m sure Microsoft will be able to attract buyers who enjoy saving a buck here and there but these are not the kind of people that are advertisers are looking for. Advertisers are looking for people who are high spenders not the kind who save pennies.

Throwing away goodies at both searchers and advertisers isn’t a good long term strategy if you ask me. This initiative of Microsoft is no way going to help it beat Google or Yahoo in the search game. Come on Microsoft show some real stuff, not all this throwaway goodies. It ain’t going to help much.

Do you feel that Live Search Cashback program is chock-full of failure, or it has the potential to be a big success?

Finally it looks like Steve Ballmer and his team found too much of trouble running behind Yahoo for the past three months. Microsoft considers Yahoo to be its golden goose, and it feels that it will lay golden eggs in the future of online advertising.. I had written a post detailing What A Combined Microsoft Yahoo Looks Like weighing all the pros and cons if this deal went through. Somehow Yahoo managed to push Microsoft to such an extent that it had no choice but to accept defeat.

Now that Yahoo is staying on as an independent company, Jerry Yang and his team have some important tasks at hand. Let me reserve what exactly do they need to do for another post and focus on the ramifications of the breakout of this deal.

Microsoft issued a statement here

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,” said Ballmer.

Yahoo! responded by issuing a statement

“From the beginning of this process, our independent board and our management have been steadfast in our belief that Microsoft’s offer undervalued the company and we are pleased that so many of our shareholders joined us in expressing that view. Yahoo! is profitable, growing, and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market. Our solid results for the first quarter of 2008 and increased full year 2008 operating cash flow outlook reflect the progress the company is making.”

Looking at the two statements, it is clearly evident that Microsoft sounds like a looser while Yahoo sounds like a clear winner either way you look at it. Considering that Yahoo already has a search advertising deal with Google, Yahoo should now focus on improving the services and increase the ad revenue across the board.

With the Microsoft hurdle out of the way, I feel that there are more important Google and Yahoo tie ups on the way. This is just the beginning and from now on, Google has got some interesting times ahead, and it will be worth watching how Google dodges the challenges being thrown at it.

Look out for a post soon, wherein I’ll be detailing as to what Yahoo needs to exactly do to stay clear and profitable in the future. I’m no guru but I love Yahoo and would never want it to go into the evil hands of Microsoft.

What do you think about the fall through of this deal? What do you think is going to happen to Microsoft, Yahoo and Google as individuals? How do you think the Internet will react to this? Pitch in your opinion by dropping a comment.

I never wanted to this deal to go through and it looks its finally happening. Yay! I can’t be more happy for Yahoo than am right now .

Photosynth is currently supported as an addon for Mozilla Firefox and Internet explorer.Another requirement is a good graphic subsystem installed for all the graphic shine. So if you have an older graphic card on your pc like the Intel’s 8xx series then Photosynth will not work.The application is free to boot and has an inbuilt image gallery to view some cool stuff.

Here is a screenshot of Photosynth in action:

Here are some notable features of Photosynth :

• Occupies less memory – You must have an active Xcontrol in the system (about 5mb) for Photosynth to run. It doesn’t occupy large disk space.

• Awesome Zooming capacity - Perhaps the best feature of the Photosynth, whether the image is megapixels or gigapixels in size you can zoom in and out without any hesitation whatsoever.

• Navigate in 3D model – Photosynth provides easy controls for exploring large collection of photos in 3D with a simple click of the mouse button.

• Web application - Photosynth can help you connect your photos to the tubes we call the Internet, allowing you to browse a virtual universe of interconnected scenes that constantly evolves and changes over time.

Microsoft Live Labs says their are plenty of other features as well which are to be explored, but i suggest you try out Photosynth Now!

Windows Vista SP1 has been out in the wild for some time now. Though SP1 has brought about a lot of improvements in Windows Vista, there still remain a few problems that need to be ironed out. When I first installed SP1 even though it said it installed correctly, I kept having random crashes from time to time. I reinstalled it and everything is running fine now.

While I was randomly searching around the net, I found that Microsoft is officially providing Free Support to all Windows Vista SP1 users. Microsoft Support provides you with email, chat, or telephone support where you can talk to a Microsoft Support Agent to assist in troubleshooting your installation issue.

If you are looking for some Official Microsoft Support follow the link below :

https://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?prid=11274

I have personally not tried the service, but its nice to see Microsoft owning upto its mistakes in the past, and supporting the customers through out.

What do you think about the service? Did you try it?

The future of computing is here. First we saw the iPhone that took Touch sensitive Mobile Phones to the masses and revolutionized the world of Mobile communication. The area of Multi touch devices is fast developing and the Microsoft Surface PC that was launched sometime back in retail AT&T Stores is just another example, how fascinating multi touch really is.

I’ve been looking for photos of Microsoft Surface in action and thanks Long Zheng I found this Flickr Set uploaded by a Microsoft Employee Jean-Luc David containing photos of applications running on Surface.

So here are a few of my favorites. For more have a look at this Flickr Set.

Rockpool Water-Ripple Demo, Pretty Cool eh!

The photo application now with support for categories and labels.

Virtual Earth on the Surface.

A puzzle game called ScatterPuzzle. Nice way to Kill time.   

Ghosts, an adoption of a puzzle game where the objective is to move objects so lines do not cross each other.

The music player. Neat Implementation IMHO!

A Cool Looking Visualization.

Surely Microsoft seems to be doing an amazing job with Microsoft Surface. Who knew you could have so much fun over a coffee table?

Hot on the heels of the 3days ultimatum given to Yahoo by Microsoft, Yahoo is doing everything it can to subvert the deal. Yesterday it acquired analytics startup Indextools and today it has announced a search advertising deal with Google.

Here’s the press release :

Yahoo! Inc. , a leading global Internet company, announced today that it will begin a limited test of Google Inc.’s AdSense for Search service, which will deliver relevant Google ads alongside Yahoo!’s own search results. The test will apply only to traffic from yahoo.com in the U.S. and will not include Yahoo!’s extended network of affiliate or premium publisher partners. The test is expected to last up to two weeks and will be limited to no more than 3% of Yahoo! search queries.

Looks like Yahoo has finally given up on Panama. A report from last year shows Google’s RPS (Revenue Per Search) at $25, versus $16 for Yahoo. So if the RPS has remained more or less the same for the past year, this deal could mean more cash in Yahoo’s registers. Google’s earning atleast 30% more than Yahoo, and considering that Yahoo’s major source of income is from advertising, this deal could help the company deliver a better than expected Q2 earnings call.

Microsoft’s reaction to this deal was on the expected lines, saying that it would give Yahoo+Google an unprecedented market share of nearly 90% in online advertising, which it thinks isn’t good for the internet.

Eventhough Yahoo has mentioned that this is a test run and will last for only two weeks, at the moment it looks like Yahoo is looking for a long term relationship with Google rather than being acquired by Microsoft.

The evil side of me thinks that, Google will give higher quality ads than usual so that it could win the confidence of Yahoo, and in turn stop the Yahoo – Microsoft merger from happening.

What do you reckon will be the implications of this deal in the trilogy of Google-Yahoo-Microsoft?

Microsoft has just released the beta of FolderShare. The idea behind FolderShare is pretty simple and its main purpose is to Keep files in sync across your computers, Share folders with friends, Access your files from any computer. FolderShare does not store data remotely so to be able to Sync you should have a broadband connection which isn’t hard to come by these days.

Microsoft released a fresh beta of FolderShare with an interface that is heavily borrowed from Skydrive. With all the bells and whistles and Windows Live branding FolderShare seems to be ready for primetime.

Here are a few screenshots of FolderShare in action :

FolderShare is useful software specially if you work over many computers. I know a few people who actually use FolderShare regularly, and even I’m planning to use it more often. The other good thing FolderShare is that it is the only program that can sync between different platforms, yeah Windows and Mac OSX.

Give FolderShare a try and drop in your comments on it.

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