1. Go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘Preferences’
2. Expand the ‘Video’ option and click on ‘Output Modules’
3. Change the ‘Video Output Module’ from the drop down list to ‘DirectX Video Output’
4. Expand ‘Output Modules’ and click on ‘DirectX’
5. From the settings that appear, take the tick out of the ‘Use hardware YUV->RGB conversions’.
6. Save your settings and exit.

Step 3 in the process.

USB2 had turned back into USB1, I was getting read / write errors all the time and little messages about software I had never heard of. Sick to the back teeth of searching for adware or virus scanning I had to give in. Trouble is I had about 20 DVD’s of backups (general non vital stuff) to do first, but with a Saturday and Sunday spare I wrote off my weekend!!

I am now finally up and running again (must get another external HD) with the only significant issue is a load of documents I had encrypted and forgot to decrypt before the change.

Well worth the agro though, its like having a new PC and finally the nightmare ’s over (until about this time next year when Windows dies again)! I think the Mac fan boys might be finally winning me round to the dark side. Mmm OSX…….

IE7, while a massive improvement on IE6 with features such as tabbed browsing, RSS integration and improved rendering engine amongst others, it is still not right. Even with all the stink in the web community about the lack of a standards based browser from the major OS developer, IE7 is still some distance from Firefox 2 or even 1.5 for that matter. For all the effort that has been put into IE7 it’s ironic that as we enter a time for major change in the PC world with Vista, IE7 would have probably been a mostly cosmetic enhancement if it wasn’t for Firefox. Yet still I get the impression of IE7 being a ‘just enough’ browser to appease the majority and keep the web community just far enough from the door. I’d expect much more to come from Microsoft in future releases.

Firefox is continually evolving though, taking (relatively) small steps each time but each time getting the improvements right; creating a product that is a pleasure to use. The integration and perfection of the session saver add-on (extension) is a perfect example of doing the good things really well.

Battles require a contest and I can’t help but feel that from Microsoft’s point of view the browser battle is already won and aren’t really trying. Credit should be given to the IE team for the improvements to IE7 but they still have a long way to go until they are taken seriously by developers and designers and their browser being not being treated with the contempt it currently deserves. There will always be people who want to stray from the conventional but until businesses wake up and see the productivity and usability benefits, Firefox will continue to grow at nowhere near the rate it warrants.

From Mozilla’s and the privileged end users point of view, Firefox is still quite clearly a number of steps ahead of IE7 and they know this. While the gap between Firefox and IE7 has narrowed, and the competition will eventually benefit Firefox’s user too, I don’t get the impression the developers and people involved are too concerned about the developments coming from Microsoft at the moment.

A Browser War? A lovers tiff more like. Maybe in the future with the releases of IE8 and FF3 but at the moment this is just the beginning. As the consumer, the real benefit we will receive is an improved browser that many are forced to use in their workplace and the continued polish of an excellent browser in the home!

1. Open up regedit from using the run menu.
2. Locate ‘HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ Folder\ shellex\ ContextMenuHandlers‘
3. Add the following as a subkey: ‘{a2a9545d-a0c2-42b4-9708-a0b2badd77c8}’ (without the quotes!)
4. Exit regedit…… (Continued)………

Now, simply hold down the shift key when right clicking on any folder to show the updated context menu. From the menu click the ‘Pin to Start Menu’ option to add to the start menu. In my case I can now do the Windows key and ‘M’ key followed by enter to open the desired folder. This also works with your documents and programs as well.

Keep up the good work……

Updates include; MacIntel support, New AJAX HTTP interface, MSN and Growl “Now playing” plugins and they have done ‘Loads of bugfixes’.

IE7 is a massive improvement on IE6 and really looks as though Microsoft is finally taking the threat of Firefox and the opinions of web developers worldwide seriously at last. Interestingly in addition to IE7’s continual improvement, Microsoft has gone live with a IE Add-ons site offering extras for their browsers though I’d expect most to be written especially for IE7 upon launch. ‘Extensions for IE’ anyone!?

It might be worth all you gamers from holding fire just yet though. Michael over at Binary Bonsai has got the system up and running on his Mac Mini and as suspected this clearly isn’t gonna be the Mac gaming rig of choice. Early reports on the iMac are proving to be much better and when the video drivers are optimised results are likely to be much improved.

Interestingly, hot on the heels of Apple’s announcement though, the ‘get Linux running on everything’ community very quickly established that the first few stages of a Linux installation were possible. A complete install can not be far away, though the specific drivers are not thought to be available for a complete install at this stage.

• Prefs page from mozilla with browser settings
• Some UI fixes
• M4A playback (oops)
• Faster metadata scanning
• More file types (flac/wav)
• Slurping through <embed>

Nivi has also released a screencast for those wanting a walkthrough of some of the features available in the player. It serves as a great tutorial and, as Nivi states; it is also does a good job of demonstrating the technology and potential of the player.

With Apple’s OSX and the advent of Vista, Windows XP has begun to look really pretty stale and dated. This is understandable for an operating system that has been available for nearly 5 years but there’s a pretty simple stop gap solution that can keep us going until the next big Windows release.

The Energy Blue Theme originally came with Windows Media Center 2005 and then was released as part of an ‘Enhancment Pack’ for Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005. This slick and fresh theme has since been made available as a seperate download (one of the Tablet PC’s power toys) from Microsoft, but still no release for XP Home or Pro.

This theme is compatible with XP you just need to do a little more work to install it.

1. Download the theme direct from Microsoft or through File Forum and save to your desktop. If you attempt to install the theme by clicking on the executable, Windows pops up with a message informing us we are not using Tablet PC. You will need to extract the files into a folder using Winzip or in my case WinRar and manually install the applicable files. The easiest way to accomplish this if you have Winrar installed is to ‘right-click’ on the file and click to ‘Extract to….’ as shown though I’d expect Winzip to have similar functionality. Open the folder containing the extracted files.
2. Open ‘My Computer’ or ‘Explorer’ and navigate to the Themes folder, normally found on the C drive (’C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes’). Create a ‘royale’ folder.
3. Copy the ‘royale.theme’ file from the extracted folder into the Themes folder on your computer.
4. Open the ‘royale’ folder and create two more folders, ’shell’ and ‘wallpaper’.
5. Copy the ‘royale.msstyles’ file to the ‘royale’ folder and copy the ‘energybliss.jpg’ file to the wallpaper folder.
6. Open the ’shell’ folder and create the following folders; ‘homestead’, ‘metallic’, ‘normalcolor’ and ‘royale’.
7. Copy the ’shellstyle.dll’ file to each of these subfolders.
8. Right click on the desktop and go to properties. On the theme tab, from the drop down menu, select the newly installed Energy Blue Theme.

At this point its also worth getting some better wallpaper than the one included with this theme (its as bad as the luna wallpaper that comes standard with Windows). Veer has a quality selection, found here.