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From Netbook to Jetbook- Make your notebook super fast

The birth of the Intel Atom processor has been instrumental in paving the way for low-budget, ultra-compact and energy-efficient laptops which are popularly known as netbooks. These are the most compact mobile computing solutions that offer a complete web experience when on the move. The Intel Atom N270 clocked at 1.60 GHz along with 1 GB RAM, which is the bare minimum for running Windows XP, and a bunch of everyday applications such as an office suite, image viewer and a media player. However, you might want to upgrade the memory or hard drive for better performance and increased storage capacity. It becomes a necessity especially if the capacity of the stock 80 GB or 120 GB hard drive isn’t enough to hold your entire collection of music, videos and photos. In this hands-on story, we show you how to upgrade the memory and hard drive of your netbook. There’s also a big surprise for Eee PC users.

Opening the memory and hard drive compartment

This step is pretty straightforward in the case of Asus Eee PC and Lenovo IdeaPad S10. You will find a small plastic panel fastened by screws on the base of the netbook. Use the appropriate screwdriver to remove the screws and detach the panel to expose the compartment in which memory and hard drive are located. Opening the MSI Wind U100 is a bit of a hassle as the entire base has to be detached. You need to carefully unscrew each screw on the base and pull it out gently. Be careful while unfastening the interlocking clamps along the inner edges of the U100. The only netbook we gave up opening was the Acer Aspire One because the base lid failed to open despite removing all the screws.

What are the available upgrade options?

The only components upgradeable in netbooks are the hard drive and memory. Most entry level netbooks ship with an 80 GB hard disk except for a few high end models, which are fitted with a 120 GB or 160 GB hard drive. If you’re facing a storage space crunch you can opt for a higher capacity hard drive. Like laptops, netbooks are fitted with a 2.5-inch hard drive. These drives are available in 80 GB, 120 GB, 160 GB, 250 GB, 320 GB and 500 GB capacities. Choose your upgrade depending on your storage requirements and budget.

Currently all netbooks come installed with 1 GB RAM which suffices for handling basic office applications and Windows XP. An upgrade to 2 GB is recommended if you want to do multitasking or perform heavier tasks such as basic image editing. Since most netbooks have only a single RAM slot you will have to get rid of the old module and replace it with the new one. The MSI Wind U100 is an exception with 1 GB on-board RAM as well as a RAM slot.

Replacing the components

To replace the RAM, first eject the installed module by gently pushing the metal clamps on both sides of the slot outward. When the module pops out, slide it out from the slot holding it by its edges. Now insert the new module into the slot and press it down until the clamps snap in and hold it in place. Before replacing the hard drive, back up all your data and the drivers to an external storage device. The hard drive can be unplugged by first removing the screws holding it in place and then pulling it out. If the drive is fitted in a cage, you will have to remove it from the cage and fit in the new drive. Plug the hard drive into the SATA port and fasten it with screws. Finally, fit the panel back and your netbook is ready to fire up.

Install the operating system

Since netbooks don’t have an optical drive you will have to install the operating system and applications using an external USB optical drive or storage device. Install the device drivers and restore your backed up data to get back on track.

Overclocking the Eee PC

Now for the surprise. If you own an Asus Eee PC 900 or higher, you can overclock the Intel Atom N270 for a performance boost. Go to www.cpp.in/dev/eeectl and download the latest version of Eeectl (23 kb), which is a nifty utility to overclock the Eee PC on the fly. It also allows you to control the fan speed and screen backlight. Extract the contents of the archive into a folder but don’t run the utility yet. Eeectl loads the parameters from the file called eeectl.ini which is located in the same folder. Open it and scroll down to the section called Speed.Profiles and replace it with the following text:

Speed.Profiles = 54,188,1,2000 MHz;

Speed.StepDelay = 500

Speed.FSBIconMul = 1

Save the file and run Eeectl. It will show up as an icon in the system tray. Before hitting 2.0 GHz, set the fan speed to 100 percent in order to prevent the netbook from heating up. You can access the functions by right clicking on the Eeectl icon. Use CPU-Z to check if the processor is running at 2 GHz.

From Eee PC to Ooh PC!

We fitted the Eee PC 1000H with a solid state hard drive and 2 GB memory. Due to the absence of the hard drive motor, the battery life increased by 30 minutes to 3 hours and 30 minutes under load. In idle mode the Eee PC was alive for 7 hours and 25 minutes which is 3 hours more than the battery life with a regular hard drive. Next, we overclocked the Atom N270 from 1.60 GHz to 2.0 GHz and found out the difference in performance. The 25 percent increase in clock speed boosted the overall performance by 27 percent—very commendable!

Multi-touch trackpad

You can now add multi-touch capability to your Eee PC’s trackpad by using Elantech Smart-Pad which can be downloaded for free from . Although the website is in Chinese, you won’t miss the link to “Smart Pad” which is spelt in English. After installing the application, an additional tab called Elantech is added to the Mouse Properties dialog box which can be accessed from Control Panel. The add-on adds the ability to scroll, zoom, magnify and navigate pages using multi-touch.

Tweaking memory

You must have come across numbers such as 5-5-5-15 or 4-4-4-12 or CL4 on memory modules. Do you know what these numbers mean? These are memory timings or the speed at which the memory processes certain data required by the processor. The higher these numbers, the longer the processor has to wait for the memory to respond and fetch data from it. Hence, the lower the memory’s timings, the better it is. Therefore high end memory capable of running at faster speeds and tighter timings are more expensive than the regular entry level variants.

The series of four numbers separated by dashes are listed in the following order: CL – TRCD – TRP – TRAS. Out of these the first number which is the CAS (Column Access Strobe) Latency is the most important timing. In simple terms, this is the amount of time (number of cycles) that elapses between the memory controller sending a read command and time taken to read data from the module’s pins. For optimal system performance it is recommended to set the memory speed and timings in the BIOS to the rated specifications listed by the manufacturer. If you install memory onto your motherboard and leave the memory speed and timings on automatic mode, it’s quite likely that the memory will run at BIOS’ optimal settings and not at the memory’s rated specifications. Thus the memory may run at a lower frequency or looser timings thereby reducing your PC’s performance. So here’s a quick guide on how to configure your RAM and gain a performance boost.

Step 1: Finding out the specifications of your RAM

First determine the speed and the timing of your RAM. This information is mentioned on the module. If not you can find the information on the manufacturer’s website or you can ask your hardware dealer. Most entry level DDR2 memory modules have timings of 5-5-5-18 or 5-5-5-15. This is also true if only the CAS Latency (CL) is mentioned and specified as 5. Incase you’re building a new PC, buy memory that will run at the maximum (or lower) speed supported by the motherboard. If the speed of memory is faster than that supported by the motherboard, it will run at lower speed.

Step 2: Tweaking the BIOS settings

After noting the required information, restart your PC and enter the BIOS settings. Navigate to the section which has the memory settings. If the speed and timings of the memory are set to auto, set them to the rated specifications manually. Save the BIOS settings and restart the PC when you’re done.

Step 3: Verifying the settings

If your PC boots means everything went fine. You can use the utility called CPU-Z to check if the memory is running at the specified settings. If your PC doesn’t boot, reset the BIOS and check whether your configured the memory correctly. Incorrect memory settings can also lead to system instability.

For Your Help:

Install Windows from a USB drive

One might need to reinstall an operating system from time to time, but the netbooks and ultra-portable laptops gaining popularity today have no optical drives.

Install Windows from a USB drive

One might need to reinstall an operating system from time to time, but the netbooks and ultra-portable laptops gaining popularity today have no optical drives.

What do you do when there is no optical drive in your PC and you want to install a new operating system on it? Before you invest in an external drive, we will tell you about a more cost-effective solution. Why not install Windows XP or Windows Vista from a USB flash drive instead? All you need are the following items:

A desktop or laptop with Windows XP/Vista (according to the OS required to be dumped onto the USB flash drive).

An optical drive in the PC.

The original Windows XP or Vista installation disk.

A 1 GB or 4 GB USB flash drive for Windows XP/Vista respectively.

A software called ‘Komku-SP-usb.exe’ (for the Windows XP part) which can be downloaded from ‘http://www.mediafire.com/?zlvkwwzmjmt’. Alternatively, you can avail of the utilities from this month’s CHIP DVD or search for these on http://download.chip.asia.

This step-by-step workshop will be in two phases—Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Installing Windows XP from a USB flash drive

Step 1: Download the software ‘Komku-SP-usb.exe’ from the websites mentioned earlier and execute it. The executable file will extract the necessary utilities to a folder called ‘C:komku’.

Step 2: Once the package has been extracted, go to the folder ‘C:komkuPeToUSB’ using Windows Explorer. Execute the file ‘PeToUSB.exe’. Plug in the USB flash drive and make sure you choose the following (see image below) before clicking the start button. Select ‘USB removable’, ‘Enable Disk Format’, ‘Quick format’, ‘Enable LBA (Fat 16x)’ and finally give the drive a name under ‘Drive Label’. Once it’s done, click start to let the utility format the drive.

Step 3: Next you will need to start the command prompt. Click ‘Start | Run’, type ‘cmd’ and press [Enter]. Then go to the ‘bootsect’ directory by typing the command ‘cd C:komkubootsect’ and pressing [Enter]. Now type the command ‘bootsect /nt52 F:’ and press [Enter]. (The ‘F:’ is the USB flash drive letter represented in ‘My Computer’. Check to verify the drive letter used by your USB flash drive). Let the utility do the needful. Do not exit the Command Prompt yet.

Step 4: Now you will need to change to the directory ‘Usb_Prep8’ by using the command ‘cd C:komkuusb_prep8’ and pressing [Enter]. Here execute the command ‘usb_prep8’ and press [Enter]. Press any key to continue and you will see a welcome screen with a menu appear in the Command Prompt.

Step 5: Now at this stage, you will have to insert the Windows XP installation disk into your optical drive. At the Command Prompt menu, type ‘1’ and press [Enter]. A new popup will appear asking you to choose the location (path) of the Windows installation disk. Select the optical drive and click ‘OK’. Next choose ‘2’ from the menu and change the drive letter to any drive letter which has not been taken. It is drive ‘T:’ by default and you can ignore this step unless you do have a ‘T:’ drive on your computer.

After this, choose ‘3’ from the menu and enter the drive letter of your USB flash drive (in this case it would be ‘F’). Finally choose ‘4’ from the menu and press [Enter]. Wait for a few seconds for the process to complete and you will see a prompt to allow the utility to format the USB flash drive. Type ‘Y’ and then press [Enter] at this stage to let the utility proceed and install the necessary files from the Windows XP installation disk to the USB flash drive. This process will take a few minutes and depends on the speed of the flash drive.

Step 6: After the files are copied, you will see a popup window asking you for permission to copy files from the temp drive to the USB flash drive. Select ‘Yes’.

Step 7: Next there will be another popup window asking you to allow the utility to change the boot drive letter of the USB flash drive from ‘F:’ to ‘U:’. Select ‘Yes’.

Step 8: Finally, after all the processes are complete, you will see yet another popup window asking if you want to unmount the virtual drive. Select ‘Yes’. Exit the Command Prompt now and you will see that your flash drive is ready to install Windows XP to another computer.

To install Windows XP to the computer, you will have to go to the BIOS and enable the option of booting from a USB removable device. This option is usually found under the boot sequence menu of the BIOS. Plug in the USB drive to the computer before you turn it on. Now your computer will boot from the USB flash drive and will be ready to install Windows XP. Follow the necessary steps to install Windows XP and your computer will be up, raring and ready to go and running Windows in no time.

Installing Windows Vista from a USB flash drive

Making a bootable Windows Vista installation USB drive is far simpler than doing so for Windows XP because the utility is built into the operating system and can be deployed from the Command Prompt itself. All you would need is a computer running the Windows Vista operating system, the original Windows Vista installation DVD and at least a 4 GB USB flash drive. Follow the simple steps ahead to make your own Windows Vista bootable USB drive.

Step 1: Start Windows Vista, insert the pen drive into the computer’s USB port. Start Command Prompt, type ‘diskpart’ and press [Enter].

Step 2: Type ‘list disk’ and press [Enter]. Carefully note down the USB flash drive’s disk number listed here. In this case it would be ‘Disk 1’

Step 3: Type ‘Select disk 1’ and press [Enter]. Here the Diskpart utility is instructed to choose the disk 1 as the drive to be worked on.

Step 4: Type ‘Clean’ and press [Enter]. This command clears out all the information of the volumes, partitions, boot sectors and the MBR from the USB flash drive.

Step 5: Type ‘Create partition primary’ and press [Enter]. This command will create a primary partition on the USB flash drive.

Step 6: Type ‘Select partition 1’ and press [Enter]. This command instructs the Diskpart utility to select the newly created partition.

Step 7: Type ‘Active’ and press [Enter]. This command will make the current partition (primary) active to enable the USB flash drive to boot from.

Step 8: Type ‘Format fs=fat32’ and press [Enter]. This command formats the selected drive partition using the FAT32 file system.

Step 9: Type ‘Assign’ and press [Enter]. This command assigns a drive letter to the newly formatted partition. As there is no drive letter specified in the command line, the next available drive letter is assigned to the drive.

Step 10: Exit from the Diskpart utility using the ‘exit’ command and pressing [Enter]. Now insert the Windows Vista DVD in the optical drive and type the command ‘xcopy e:*.* /s /e /f F:’ and press [Enter]. This command will dump all the contents of the Windows Vista DVD onto the USB flash drive. Your USB drive is now ready to install Windows Vista on any computer. Just set the boot sequence in the BIOS of the system to boot from the USB, insert
the USB flash drive into the computers USB port and turn on the computer. Follow the regular installation for Windows Vista.

Note: To know more about the Diskpart utility commands, browse through the URL ‘http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415’.

Installing Windows XP or Windows Vista from a USB flash drive is much faster as compared to installing from a CD/DVD. A high-speed flash drive would make a difference.

download: http://riteshsanap.googlepages.com/Komku-SP-usb.exe

How To Make Your Own Windows Media Player Theme

It’s a bit of a complicated process, but it’s very similar to designing a web page using raw html and javascript code. So let’s get started. WMP uses a conjunction of many image files and one code file, with the file extension ”.wms” (windows media skin). The code file is basically a bracket system, very similar to html, to define areas of every skin. You will be using the windows notepad to construct most of the skin, and saving the file with a .wms extension. The first few sets of brackets have to be in every skin in order for them to even work, so I’ll put the code up here for you. Anything in bold can be changed to whatever you want (for now, once you get a more advanced understanding of how WMP skins work, then everything is fair game. For now though, follow what I say and everything will work.)

<THEME title=”Skin Title” author=”Me” copyright=”©whatever” id=”skin” > <VIEW id=”main” titleBar=”false” resizable=”false” backgroundImage=”background.bmp” clippingcolor=”#00FF00” > </VIEW> </THEME>

That will give you the most basic of skins. No buttons, no elements (what things such as the playlist and video are referred to as), no nothing. Just a background image ( background.bmp : and I recommend using bmp for your background images, because unlike jpg or other image types, bmp defines exact colors for every pixel, which is needed when you do skins without square edges). Speaking of transparency, if you want to have an edge on the skin that has any king of curve, you need to have a background color of green. Pure hex #00FF00 Green. It’s important also that you learn hex colors when working with WMP skins, you can familiarize yourself with them in photoshop’s color chooser if you don’t already have them.

To get something a little more complex, say buttons (play, stop, etc), you need to make another set of images and bracket set. This one called a button group. Again, I’ll give you the base code. And everything you’ll be adding to the skin, will always go inside the view bracket, in between <VIEW> and </VIEW>.

<buttongroup mappingimage=”map.bmp” hoverimage=”hover.bmp” > <PLAYELEMENT mappingColor=”#00FF130” /> <STOPELEMENT mappingColor=”#FF0110” /> <NEXTELEMENT mappingColor=”#00FFFF” /> <PREVELEMENT mappingColor=”#FF00FF” /> <PAUSEELEMENT mappingcolor=”#FFFF00” /> </buttongroup>

Now, we’ll assume at this point that you’ve designed your background image to include what the buttons look like when the cursor isn’t over them in the arrangement and placement you want them. Take that image and edit the buttons to appear how you want them to appear when you move the mouse cursor over them. Save that image as “hover.bmp” Then, it’s time to map the images, and this is the fun part that drives a lot of people away from WMP. Take the background image and color over all of the buttons with a pure solid color that they are shown as by their respective “mappingcolor”s (green for the play button, red for stop, yellow for pause, cyan for next, and magenta for previous. All those are their pure hex color versions as shown in the code above.). ONLY COVER THE AREA WHERE THE BUTTON IS WITH EACH COLOR! then save that image as map.bmp, this image combined with the mappingcolor codes tell WMP exactly where each button is.

That’s really all you need to make your basic skin. Just those main brackets and the buttonelements, which you can also add additional button elements to any skin such as the following. The uptooltip=”” is the tip that’s displayed when you mouse over the particular button, and the cursor=”hand” is just there to change the cursor from the pointer to the hand.

<buttonelement mappingColor=”#000000” uptooltip=”Close” onclick=”view.close();” cursor=”hand” /> <buttonelement mappingColor=”#FFFFFF” uptooltip=”Minimize” onclick=”view.minimize();” cursor=”hand” /> <buttonelement mappingColor=”#0000FF” uptooltip=”Return to Full” onclick=”view.returnToMediaCenter();” cursor=”hand” />

Now all you have to do is close your tage. After all this code, at the end of the file, put in </view></theme> to finish the skin.

Once all of this is done, and you’re ready to test the skin, simply make sure that all of your files (.bmp images and .wms file) are in the same directory, and double click the .wms file. You should see your skin open up in windows media player. Now, wms files are temporary, to make a skin that you can share, upload, and choose from in the skin selector, you have to compile it. Don’t worry, it’s extremely simple. Take the files in the directory that relate to the skin, and put them all into one compressed .zip file (it must be a zip file, not rar, not bin, zip.), then manually rename the file extension from .zip to .wmz (windows media zip). Double click the file, and it will save in windows media player and you can choose from it in the skin selector now, and give it to everyone you want to with just one file.

This is also a huge thing I recommend you do. Because the filename HAS to be manually changed, you can take anyone else’s skin that they’ve made, rename it from a .wmz extension back to a .zip extension, unzip the file to a directory, and look at how they built their skin. It’s the best way to learn how other elements are made and how certain things are done in the code. Definitely try that with at least one skin after making your first skin successfully. And here’s a skin I’ll recommend you try this with, just for starters. One of MY first skins, and thus an excellent learning skin. Black N’ White

Like the classiest “Winamp” skinned .bmp’s images, WMP skins could support a varied platforms by Microsoft’s partners – such as for example “Mainsoft” with lotus notes sharepoint sync function (an option which isn’t commonly known), this option should be checked before getting to the final steps of the wmz file.

This was a very basic tutorial showing how to make the absolute SIMPLEST of skins. I suggest playing around with it and mastering everything here before moving on. However, when you are ready to move on, you may contact me to learn everything else (and trust me, this is only about 1% of what windows media player skins can do). My Website (I’ll be putting up a better WMP page in my next redesign), and I suggest directly contacting me about learning more. I’m always willing to go out of my way to help anyone who wants to make WMP skins, I helped Arnitald when he was starting, and look what he did …

You can directly contact me via email. “Reeses2150 at MSN.com” Just put “WMP HELP” in the subject line somewhere, and make sure to explain the problem your having in some detail. That way I don’t have to guess whether your version of WMP is corrupt or whether you just don’t know how to use mspaint.

Make Free Calls All Over The World

This is a just a just a software with which you call international and local calls its a cool software it just require a installation and account which can be made through this software .

Using this VOIP program, you can call landline numbers in any country for FREE.

FreeCall is still a Freeware app but you only get 300 minutes a week.

To bypass this restriction:

Keep the setup.exe. Freecall’s protection system is quite flawed, when the program announces you cannot use any more minutes = Uninstall and reinstall and it will reset your 300 minutes which only takes a moment.

A)You MUST make an account with the program when it loads up. Then when your logged in (it will say at the bottom: ‘The client is logged on’)

B)Go to the dial pad TAB, ignore the on screen buttons, at the bottom type in your number and remember you need to add country codes at the beginning – NO spaces in the number either.

C) And it does do all countries for free – i’ve used it from NZ to england, USA, Spain and Aussie and they used it back.

D) If it didn’t work, you need to check your firewall settings etc, this is an obvious but a program like this needs full access.

Download

How To Make Your Own Run Commands : Must See

Today I was just playing with Windows XP Registry Editor and suddenly I found a way to make our own Run Commands.e

Before moving further I feel a need to tell you what are Run Commands. As we know that when we will type IEXPLORE.EXE in the RUN, Internet Explorer will execute, in the same way when we will type pinball.exe and hit enter, Pinball game will execute. In the above two examples IEXPLORE.EXE and pinball.exe are the Run Commands that we use as a shortcut to execute desired programs.

Today I am going to tell you that how you can create your own Run Commands to open any program you want.

Let’s start :

Below is a step by step procedure :

1) Open Start Menu and click on RUN.

2) Now type regedit and hit Enter. (regedit means Registry Editor)

3) Now navigate to the following path :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE >> SOFTWARE >> Microsoft >> Windows >> CurrentVersion >> App Paths

Note : To explain you clearly, I take an example to make a Run Command to open Adobe Photoshop.

4) Now right click on App Paths and select New >> Key and name is as Gagan.exe

5) Now highlight ritesh.exe and have a look at the right hand side panel. You will see a String Value named default. Double click on it and in the value data field enter the path of the program that you want you want to execute. As an example I entered C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\Photoshop.exe as I want to open Adobe Photoshop.

You can enter the path of any executable file you want.

6) Now right click on right hand side panel and select New >> String Value and name is as Path.

7) ,Double click on Path and enter the path of the folder where the executable file is and put a semicolon at the end of the path. In my case it is C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3;

8) Now click OK and close Registry Editor.

Restart your PC and in the RUN type ritesh.exe and hit enter. Hitting enter will result in opening in Adobe Photoshop.

In this way you can create your own Run Commands by naming key from ritesh.exe to any text you want.

How to Save Online Flash Games and Greetings from the Internet for Offline Play ?

Here is a simple trick to download Flash games from the Internet.If you are searching for games then head over to MiniClips website which has some of the top flash games.Also search the online world to find tons of interesting and addictive flash games.

Save Online Flash Games Using Simple Trick in Firefox

* Save Online Flash Games and Greetings from the InternetOpen the flash game in the firefox browser.
* Click on “Tools” from the firefox menu when the game webpage loads completely.
* Go to “Page info” which opens a dialog box as shown.
* Press the “Media” tab which will list all the components in the current webpage such as images, swf flash files and other scripts if at all they are present on the page.
* Click on “Type” which will show the components in a specific order.
* Scroll down and search for “Embed” files, the one with .Swf extension having larger file size is your flash game. (See Below)

Select the file, “Save as” and you are done!

This trick is applicable to some of the basic flash games which embeds swf file to the page.To start saving flash games to play in offline mode you must be using Mozilla Firefox browser.

I Lost My MotherBoard Driver CD/DVD ! What To Do ??

Whenever I install Windows I have to search for my motherboard CD for installing drivers of sound, LAN, graphics etc and majority of times it takes hell a lot of time to search for driver CD. At least I find it very difficult to keep my CD in a safe place so that I can use it when I need it.

But what will you do if motherboard driver CD gets lost, I know you will say that you’ll go to Internet and download all the desired drivers from there but for that you should know the model number also. If you have lost your motherboard CD and do not know your motherboard model number and want to download or update your drivers, here is a very good application for you.

Driver Genius :

Driver Genius Professional manage your PC to get 100% up to date Drivers and optimize PC performance. Driver Genius Professional is a powerful driver manager for Windows that can backup, restore ,search and update your drivers automatically in several mouse clicks!

Yes, you can backup all your installed drivers and can restore it back when needed. Without going to any website you can easily download and install required drivers. Isn’t this a useful application !!

Have a quick look at some features of this software :

* Quickly backup device drivers for your computer.
* Backup your drivers to a ZIP or EXE self-extracting file.
* Clone your drivers to an auto-setup package.
* Wizard mode allow you step by step backup or restore your drivers.
* Get detailed information about your installed devices.
* Search for drivers for non-Internet connected computer.
* Easy to get the most recent drivers for your computer.
* Search all available drivers update by one click.
* Live update your drivers information database online.

It works on the following Operating Systems : Windows 98/98SE /ME/2000/XP/2003/Vista/XP x64/Server 2003 x64/Vista x64.

This is a must have application and visit their official website to download this application.