Category: Windows 7

Microsoft has announced some of the features of its upcoming version of Windows – Windows 8. The most talked about feature of this new version of Windows is its new user interface called Metro UI. It basically has many tiles which can be customized to hold different kinds of widgets like weather, control panel and various other widgets. If you cannot wait for Windows 8 to be released, then you can add the Metro UI of Windows 8 in your Windows 7 system using the Mosaic Project for free.

The most annoying thing that I have come across when using Microsoft Office is when you copy some text from a web site and paste it inside a Word document, then it also copies all the formatting and style (like color, size, font etc.) of the original text. It takes so much time trying to remove all the formatting and strip it only to just the plain text. But there is a freeware called PureText which can alleviate you from this painful task.

By default, Windows 7 is set to enter the sleep mode if the system has been idle (no user input) for ten minutes. This can be a problem if you set Windows to run a task for a long time like downloading something off the internet. An easier solution would be temporarily stopping Windows to sleep, shutting down, hibernating or logging off etc. For this, you can use Don’t Sleep, a freeware tool which can help you stop your system from powering down, sleeping, hibernating, restarting and more.

When you encounter some text or document written in a foreign language that you do not understand, you usually go to Google Translate web site, copy paste the text and see the translation. But this is a very tiring and cumbersome process. What you need is a simple application that can translate the text right within a document viewer like Notepad. You can use the free Google Translate Client to automatically translate any language right inside any application in Windows.

Many times while working with files and going through repeated tasks, we think that only if a function was in the right-click menu then life would have been so easy. For example, having the ability to move a folder by just right-clicking on it, can save you from many steps and clicks and save your valuable time. You can add, edit and remove items to your Windows right-click context menu by using the free Right Click Enhancer.

Often you wonder about what your IP address is, how fast your internet connection is, if you are even connected to the internet etc. among many other things about your network. You can display all this information right on your Windows desktop using a gadget called Network Meter. This useful Windows gadget shows up all the network statistics like internal and external IP address, network bandwidth, internet download speed and transferred bytes etc.

Are you pulling your hair and clenching your fists, because your Windows system is taking a long time to boot? Over time, as you install new programs, Windows configures newer programs to start at the boot time. Loading so many programs at the boot time makes Windows itself boot slower. The free utility Soluto can calculate the time taken by all the programs starting at the Windows boot. Then it checks its online database, to suggest which programs can be removed to make Windows start faster.

Windows 7 incorporates many new features like the native support for speech recognition allowing you to dictate to your computer through the microphone. Once you setup speech recognition in your Windows 7 system, it automatically runs at the Windows startup which may be annoying to some of us. If you do not like it running every time you start Windows, then you can disable it to run at Windows startup.

One of the many reasons why a Windows system gets sluggish after some months of regular use is the fragmentation of files on the hard disk. This increases response time of your hard disk when you try to open a document or run a program in Windows. Although Windows 7 comes with a defragmenting program of its own, but it is not very efficient. Instead, you can use free IObit Smart Defrag to automatically and quickly defragment all the partitions on your hard disk.

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 has come a long way since the Windows XP days. But there are still some things or buttons that you wish were present in the Windows Explorer toolbar. Windows provides no way to add extra custom buttons to the Windows Explorer toolbar. But there is a third party free utility called Customize Explorer Toolbar which can help you customize the Windows 7 Explorer Toolbar. Using it, you can add buttons like Copy, Cut, Delete etc. in the Explorer toolbar.