How To Hide / Show All Desktop Icons Easily with One Click

Wanna show or see your Awesome Desktop wallpaper always when you go to the desktop of your computer? But the whole Desktop is hidden under the shortcuts and icons? I’ve solution for you to reveal your stunning desktop and get rid of those cluttered desktop icons. Try AutoHideDesktopIcons! to hide the desktop icons.
What is it and How it is useful?

AutoHideDesktopIcons is the simple tool that will hide your entire desktop icons and shows them when needed by you. It is portable application, you can use it from any portable drives from anywhere, since it doesn’t need installation. Download the zip file and launch the file directly from there. It has nice little user interface window with settings for you configure it.

At the first startup, it will automatically hides the desktop icons. In settings window, you can configure this app to function when and which button click should show the desktop icons. You can choose any buttons (Left, Middle, Right) from your mouse to show the desktop when click that button or you can choose all three buttons.

In addition, this application has timer settings which is used to hide desktop icons when timer expires. You can alter the timer secs from 3 sec to 100 sec to delay the hiding action.

You can also turn on the start with windows option to run this program every time you start windows. You can utilize other options like always start minimized, always be on top, or to hide the taskbar.
Conclusion

AutoHideDesktopIcons is the great program to hide your cluttered desktop icons all at once to show uncluttered desktop to everyone. Also, you can access all your favorite program icons with one click. It is pretty useful one to get the place in your software list.

Download AutoHideDesktopIcons | 21KB | Free

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Posted at 23:44 |  by Unknown

How to fix Web pages that print too small

 Reader Tammy wrote in with this hassle:

"Whenever I try to print a page from the Internet, the size of the print and the photos is extremely small and difficult to read. I do not have this problem with Word documents."

Tammy says she uses Windows 8, but neglected to specify which browser--so I'm going to assume Internet Explorer.

Let me be the first to note that Internet Explorer can be terrible when it comes to printing. On my Windows 8 system, for example, I went to any number of pages on Microsoft's MSN (the default site for IE), then loaded Print Preview. The result every single time: several pages of little more than links, with none of the actual text of the story I was viewing.

But that's not Tammy's issue. (It's Microsoft's. And it's ridiculous.) When printed Web pages come out too small, the likely culprit is the Shrink to Fit option, which Internet Explorer uses by default to try to squeeze all the elements of a Web page onto a sheet of paper--often at the expense of proper sizing.

Thankfully, it's easy enough to fix. Here's how:

1. In Internet Explorer, while viewing the page you want to print, click the little gear icon in the upper-right corner, then choose Print, Print Preview.

2. In the preview window that appears, notice that in the toolbar's print-size selector, the default setting is Shrink to Fit. Click that pull-down and choose 100%.

3. Now you should see bigger text and photos. If everything looks good, go ahead and click the printer icon to proceed with printing. If not, click the selector again and choose a different zoom setting.

It's worth noting that your printer drivers might be a factor here as well. If you press Ctrl-P and access the printer's properties/settings, you can look for a zoom setting that might be overriding the browser's settings

You may also want to look for a Print or "printer-friendly" option on the page you're viewing, which will usually strip away the extraneous graphics, ads, and whatnot that can fudge up the formatting (and cause smaller-than-desirable print).

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Posted at 09:24 |  by Unknown

With an SSD, backups are more important than ever

Welcome to the dawn of the SSD age. Solid-state drives now offer great performance at affordable prices, which is why more and more users are choosing them in new PCs and adding them to older ones.

I'm a big fan myself, but I want to share a cautionary tale. About six months ago, an acquaintance of mine installed an SSD in his laptop. Initially, he was delighted: the drive helped his system boot faster and run longer between trips to the wall socket.

Then, one day, out of the blue, the drive died. No clicking, no "imminent failure" message, no warning of any kind--just a dead drive.

It's under warranty, but so what? He has a laptop that won't boot and data he can't access.

Now, I've encountered a few failed (or failing) hard drives in my day, but all of them were traditional, mechanical models. In most cases I was able to rescue my data using various conventional methods: booting from a Linux flash drive, pulling the drive and connecting it to another PC, and so on.

But for the most part, a dead SSD is a dead SSD. If you've ever had a flash drive go bad on you, you get the idea. It's not just corrupted data, which is often recoverable; it's simply a hardware failure. And unless you're willing to pay for a professional data-recovery service like DriveSavers, you're outta luck.

That's why I make this recommendation to anyone using an SSD for the first time: Make regular backups. (Actually, I recommend that to everyone, but it's especially important with SSDs.) Keep an external hard drive on hand for local archiving, and take advantage of cloud services for secondary protection.

Remember: The data you save could be your own.

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Posted at 09:11 |  by Unknown

Will One Antivirus Program Take Care of Your Security Needs?

Bvs1216 uses Microsoft Security Essentials. He asked the Answer Line forum if he needs to supplement it for additional protection.

That all depends on what kind of supplement you're looking for. You only need one antivirus program, and Microsoft Security Essentials fills that role. But an antivirus program isn't the only kind of security software you may need.

Don't be misled by the term antivirus program. These programs don't just protect you from viruses (which, technically speaking, are passé, anyway). They protect you from Trojans, worms, spyware, rootkits, and all sorts of malware. As the term is generally used, an antivirus program is software that loads automatically when you boot, then stays in the background, protecting you against malware in real time.

But no software is perfect, so it's a good idea every week or two to scan for malware with another program. But you don't want another antivirus program; two of these running in the background at all times, doing the same job, is asking for trouble. You need an on-demand malware scanner--a program that only runs when you launch it and scans only when you ask it to. I recommend either SUPERAntiSpyware or Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, or both.

You also need a firewall that can check for suspicious packages going in and out of your computer. Windows has its own firewall, but Windows 7 is the first version where I actually felt I could trust it. If you're using XP or Vista, you might want to consider the Comodo Firewall.

There are other types of security software you might want, as well. If you need to protect sensitive files, consider TrueCrypt. And Password Safe can help you safely manage your passwords.

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Posted at 08:20 |  by Unknown

Add custom news and alerts to new tabs in Google Chrome

If you're a Google Chrome user (it remains my browser of choice), you already know how to reduce tab clutter with OneTab and add a clock and weather station to new tabs.
But if you really want to amp up Chrome's tab acumen, install OneFeed. It turns new tabs (that is, those you open by clicking the new-tab button or pressing Ctrl-T) into a personalized portal, a page stocked with news feeds, e-mail notifications, social-network updates, and more.

Indeed, OneFeed goes beyond Chrome's default new-tab options, which consist of thumbnails steering you to your most-visited sites or, if you scroll to the next "page," links to Chrome apps.

Once installed, you still get the most-visited sites thumbnails, but with the option of dragging them together to create folders (similar to how you do on an iOS device). And there's already a folder of Chrome apps, which saves you have to flip pages to access them.

But it's on the next page that OneFeed becomes a news reader, turning the latest updates from your favorite sites into an attractive, scrolling page of story thumbnails. You can, of course, edit and add sources, either by searching for them or pasting in an RSS feed (which is how I added PC World, ahem: http://www.pcworld.com/index.rss).

OneFeed also integrates with various social networks and Web services: Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Twitter, for example. Once you've approved one or more of them, you'll be able to get updates and notifications within that reader page, just by clicking the Social button.

This thing is really slick. On my system it was surprisingly quick to load (given all the information it's fetching), and I liked both the look and organization of new tabs. OneFeed may well earn a permanent place in my Chrome home. Your thoughts?

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Posted at 05:45 |  by Unknown

How to get a full-screen Gmail compose window every time

We talked about Gmail's spiffy new inbox-sorting tabs. Today let's look at another new feature, one that's just starting to roll out to users: a full-screen new-message window.

By default, when you click Gmail's Compose button, you get a window that appears in the right corner of the screen.

Now there's a new option. In the top-right corner of that Compose window, you'll see three icons: Minimize, Full-screen, and Close. Clicking that middle one enlarges the window, though the description "full-screen" is a little disingenuous here: you actually get a larger, centered window that darkens the background.

At least, that's how it appears on my system, which runs at 1,920 x 1,080. If you have a lower-resolution screen, the window may indeed seem closer to full-screen. (Anyone running, say, a 1,366 x 768 display? Hit the comments and let your fellow readers know if the window really is "full-screen," or still just bigger and centered.)

In any case, I greatly prefer that enlarged Compose window, and want it to appear every time I write a message--without me having to click the aforementioned icon.

Fortunately, it's easy to make this the default:

1. After you click Compose, look for the little arrow in the lower-right corner of the Compose window.

2. Click that arrow, then choose Default to full-screen.

That's it! Now you'll get the big window every time. If you decide you prefer the smaller window, just repeat the process.

Speaking of which, which size do you prefer: big or small?

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Posted at 05:21 |  by Unknown

Install any version of Windows using any Windows disc you can find

Reader Chris needs to reinstall Windows 7 Home Basic on his laptop. Just one problem: he lost his recovery discs.

A more common problem is when you need to reinstall Windows and you never had recovery discs to begin with. Few manufacturers provide them anymore, and many new PCs don't have optical drives even if they did.

Thankfully, there's a way around this. All you need is a Windows ISO file (basically the entire Windows operating system in a single container) and the free Ei.cfg Removal Utility. The latter deletes a key file inside the former, thus allowing you to install any version of Windows.

Let me explain that a bit further. Windows 7 and 8 installation discs are version-specific; they're designed to match up with your product key. That's why you can't use, say, a Windows 7 Home Premium product key to install Windows 7 Professional, even if you have a disc for the latter.

Likewise, even if Chris somehow laid hands on a Windows 7 Home Premium disc, his Home Basic license key wouldn't work. That's where Ei.cfg Removal Utility comes in: It effectively creates a "universal" Windows ISO, one that will install whatever version matches your product key.

From a high-level perspective, the process would work like this: Borrow a friend's install DVD, copy the ISO file from it to your hard drive, then run Ei.cfg. When it's done doing its thing, use the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool to put that tweaked ISO on a flash drive.

Now, just boot from that flash drive and choose the version of Windows you want to install. Enter your license key and you're good to go. (Don't bother trying to sneak an upgrade; remember, your key will work only with the version of Windows that came with your PC. In Chris' case, that's Windows 7 Home Basic.)

Can't find an install disc or don't have an optical drive? There are "official" Windows 7 SP1 ISO downloads available from the Windows 7 Forums.

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Posted at 02:58 |  by Unknown