Commonly Used Windows Fonts for Windows 7

Segoe: The variations of this font can be found in elements of the Windows interface.Calibri: Common font used in Office 2007 applications and documents.Verdana: This font is often used on web pages and applications.Arial: Another common web page font, and used in applications.Trebuchet: Common application font and used in some web pages back in XP days. Some older applications may still require it.Tahoma: Common Windows font that you may want to hold on to for application and web page compatibility.Times New Roman: The default font for web pages and word processing applications such as Microsoft Word.MS Sans Serif: Default font for Visual Studio applications that is now required for a lot of legacy and newer applications.For more resources, look into graphic arts classes through online universities.Source...

Which Unneeded Hardware Devices Should I Disable in Windows 7?

Each user uses (or doesn�t use) devices differently depending on the system setup. = Nonetheless, some classes of devices are more commonly disabled than others. Knowing which ones will help you make your decision as to which devices you should disable. The following classes of devices are frequently disabled: People who have completed computer repair training may need these tips as they are working.� Network adapters: Especially on notebook computers, there is often more than one network device. Disabling the network devices that you do not use will definitely save you some booting time.� FireWire: If you have 1394 connections, otherwise known as FireWire, you might consider disabling them. Unless you are using your FireWire port to connect your digital video recorder to your computer, or...

Benchmarking Windows 7 with PCMark Vantage

PCMark Vantage Basic Edition, from Futuremark Corporation, is one of the most popular benchmarking programs for power users. PCMark Vantage has a cool online component that allows you to view your benchmark data and compare it to other users� computers. Additionally, the application generates an overall score that can be used to compare your system to other systems. The comprehensive score that is assigned to your system is the result of numerous test results testing various parts of your computer.You can download a copy of PCMark Vantage from www.futuremark.com/download/.The user interface of PCMark Vantage is very simple and easy to use. Simply click the Run PCMark button to start the tests. The free version includes only basic tests that simulate various computer usages to come up with...

Configuring Task Manager to Display CPU Utilization

When Windows Task Manager is started, a small histogram is displayed in the system tray that shows the CPU utilization. This little feature can be very useful if you always like to keep an eye on your CPU utilization but do not want Task Manager on top of all your windows. With a little bit of work, it is possible to start up the Windows Task Manager automatically on every start and run it minimized and hidden from the taskbar except for the system tray:1. Click the Start button, navigate to All Programs, and locate the Startup listing.2. Right-click Startup and select Open. A new window opens with the contents of your personal startup folder. Any shortcuts that you place in this folder will be automatically loaded when Windows starts.3. When the Startup folder is opened, right-click in the...

Using Event Viewer on Windows 7

Event Viewer in Windows 7 is a centralized source for reading all the system�s various log files. When a component such as the Windows Firewall service has an error, notification, or a warning, it can be viewed in Event Viewer. When a third-party application causes your computer to crash, the details of the event can also be found in Event Viewer. Even when any user logs on to your computer, the details of the event can be found in Event Viewer. As you can see, Event Viewer is the ultimate source to find out what is happening and what has happened to your computer.How can Event Viewer help with increasing the performance of your computer? Event Viewer enables you to identify hardware and software failures that you may not even know have been occurring. If you want to increase the performance...

Using the Windows 7 Reliability Monitor

As with the Performance Monitor, the Reliability Monitor is a system monitoring tool that is designed to help you diagnose problems and improve the performance of your computer. To start it just click the Start menu, type in view reliability, and hit Enter. The Reliability Monitor is especially geared to helping you solve various types of system failures that can lead to poor performance in all areas. It works by tracking all the software installs, uninstalls, application failures, hardware failures, Windows failures, and general miscellaneous failures to compile a System Stability Chart and System Stability Report.Any of the icons on the System Stability Chart can be selected to move the scope of the System Stability Report to a specific time period. This is very useful because it allows...

Using Third-Party Windows Media Center Add-ons on Windows 7

There are many very useful and cool third-party add-ons for Windows Media Center that really help you get even more out of it. As Windows Media Center is becoming increasingly popular, even more add-ons are being developed and released. The following is a list of some of the best add-ons available now for Windows 7 Media Center:� mcePhone for Skype (www.scendix.com/mcephone): mcePhone is a great add-on for Windows Media Center that allows you to make and receive phone calls using your Skype account through Windows Media Center. This can be very useful and cool because you can use Skype through the Windows Media Center interface while sitting on your couch.� mceWeather (www.scendix.com/mceweather): This is a useful add-on that allows you to get the latest weather forecasts and conditions for...

Configuring Media Center to Look for Recorded Shows on a Network Share on Windows 7

Personal network attached storage devices are becoming more and more common in the home environment. I recently purchased a 1TB NAS (Network Attached Storage) that I use to back up all my personal documents as well as store recorded TV shows. I have my Media Center recording shows all the time, so the hard drive on my desktop fills up very quickly. For the shows that I want to keep, I move the file from my record folder to a special folder on my NAS that I have configured Windows Media Center to watch and play files from. This is possible with a few setting changes within Media Center.Follow these steps to configure Windows Media Center to watch for recorded shows in locations other than the main record folder:1. Click on the Start Button, type in Media Center, and hit Enter to start up Media...

Creating Shortcuts for Windows Media Center on Windows 7

Windows already includes shortcuts to start Windows Media Center in the Start menu. Next, you�ll create advanced shortcuts that will allow you to jump directly to different sections of Media Center. For example, how to make a shortcut that, when clicked, will open Windows Media Center and go directly to the TV Guide. It is also possible to go directly to other sections, such as Live TV, Recorded TV, Pictures, Music, and even Sports Scores.This is all possible with a special /homepage command-line argument that the Windows Media Center executable uses. First, right-click your desktop and select New and then Shortcut. Next, enter the location as shown in the following options, depending on what you want to happen. Press Next, name the shortcut, and you are finished.Start Windows Media Center...

Turning Your PC into a DVR with Windows 7

So, you have an edition of Windows 7 with Media Center but no TV tuner card installed? You are missing out on the main Media Center experience. With the help of this section and an inexpensive TV tuner card, I show you how to turn your PC into a fully functional DVR that will give any TiVo set top box big competition.Before you can get started, there are some minimum system requirements that I must go over so that you will be able to watch TV on your computer. Your computer must have a video card with at least 128MB of RAM. To support the best appearance your video card must also support the Aero Glass effect.The most important aspect of adding a tuner to your PC is picking one that is compatible with Windows 7 Media Center. Several tuner cards are on the market, but not all are compatible...

Removing Items from the Context Menu in Windows 7

Over time, your context menus can become cluttered with program entries from old programs that you may not use anymore. You might experience programs that take over all your context menus. Compression apps such as WinZip, WinRaR, or Picozip always end up adding program entries to all the context menus. I have Picozip installed on my computer and every time I right-click any file or folder, I see five entries from Picozip giving me different compression options. This can be a convenient feature, but if you don�t compress and extract zip files very often; you might not need the added convenience. Instead, you could remove these entries from your context menu, which will give your system a cleaner interface as well as a small performance boost if you have a lot of extra entries in your context...

Cloud Broker

One method of achieving interoperability is through a cloud broker. A cloud broker is a cloud that provides services to cloud consumers but might not host any of its own resources. In this example, the broker federates resources from Cloud 1 and Cloud 2, making them available transparently to cloud consumers. Cloud consumers interact only with the broker cloud when requesting services, even though the delivered services come from other clouds.As the DTMF stated in its white paper on Interoperable Clouds, the goal of the Cloud Incubator is �to define a set of architectural semantics that unify the interoperable management of enterprise and cloud computing.� Building blocks provided will be used �to specify the cloud provider interfaces, data artifacts, and profiles to achieve interoperable...

DMTF

Industry-wide, the standardization effort is being coordinated through The Distributed Management Task Force, Inc., (DMTF33) a not-for-profit organization devoted to developing management standards and promoting interoperability for enterprise and Internet environments. Winston Bumpus, VMware�s director of standards architecture and DMTF president, formed the Open Cloud Standards Incubator together with others as a committee within DMTF. The Open Cloud Standards Incubator (OCSI) was to focus on ways to facilitate operations between private clouds within enterprises and other private, public, or hybrid clouds by improving the interoperability between platforms through open cloud resource management standards. The group also aimed to develop specifications to enable cloud service portability...

Interclouding, Standards, and VMware�s Focus on Open PaaS

Google started The Data Liberation Front31 at the urging of Vint Cerf. This is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. Google says,We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product. We help and consult other engineering teams within Google on how to �liberate� their products. This is our mission statement:Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google�s products. Our team�s goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.Source: www.dataliberation.org/The statement is a recognition that data liberation, in the end, grows the business faster and larger than forcing customers into lock-up data silos....

Today is Like 1973

Vint Cerf, a founder of the Internet back in the day and now a Google employee, says the situation today reminds him of the e-mail delivery situation in 1973. There aren�t yet universal standards for moving data around. Vendors need to work cooperatively so customers can easily move information between services. Until that happens, enterprises will exercise caution about moving vital data to the cloud. Cloud computing today is similar to the earliest days of snail mail delivery, when a nationwide network did not yet exist to reliably and expeditiously move letters from one location to another. From the need to deliver mail came peering, in the form of reciprocal agreements and flat rates. Mail began to be charged by weight. Address standards emerged. Standardized envelope sizes and stamps...