Software Free

Designer Vijayakrishnan gives us a tour of his gorgeous Windows multi-desktop, which makes you look at it three times to figure out what operating system he's using. With a Mac style and a few free...

While new owners of low-cost and ultra-portable computers can still get Windows XP pre-loaded through 2010, anyone looking to buy a fresh copy of a relatively stable system well-liked by our readers...

Asus will bring the Eee Box desktop to the UK in August, the company announced today. However, it confirmed to Register Hardware that machine will initially only ship with Windows XP Home Edition.

The Simplehelp blog posts a Windows customization idea that's easy for anyone to make and potentially really helpful to anyone who does regular system tweaking. By simply dragging the items from your...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Today Microsoft announces that they will extend the amount of time manufacturers can ship low cost PCs with Windows XP until 2010. Clearly someone in Redmond is reading Lifehacker.

This is getting truly hilarious:

Microsoft has further extended the life of Windows XP so that computer makers can include the operating system on low-cost desktop PCs, the company announced at the Computex trade show on Tuesday.

Microsoft has been under pressure from computer makers to provide a version of its OS for an emerging class of very low-cost laptops and desktops. Its new Windows Vista OS is widely seen as too resource-hungry for those machines.

In April Microsoft extended its deadline for selling Windows XP licenses for low-cost laptops like the Asus Eee PC. It had originally planned to stop selling most XP licenses on June 30.

At Computex on Tuesday it said it has now also extended the deadline for low-cost desktops. PC makers can now include Windows XP in those systems until 2010, the same as the deadline for low-cost laptops, said Rob Young, a senior director with Microsoft's OEM group.

One thing I've never understood is why more low-cost PC manufacturers don't routinely include free software with their offerings. After all, it's the perfect way to provide all the capabilities most users need without increasing the price, or, indeed, taking away the possibility of adding certain other non-free software later.

Perhaps it's simply that PCs haven't been cheap enough for it to matter so much given Microsoft's deep discounts for hardware companies. That's another great thing about the ultraportables: they really do take down prices to new levels.

Against that background, maybe this interesting news will finally signal the opening of the floodgates: a German review of the new Asus Eee PC 900, running Windows XP, that comes not only with the utterly useless Microsoft Works package, but also StarOffice, Sun's supported version of OpenOffice.org. (Via Erwin Tenhumberg.)

Simple File Sharing is one of the Windows service which is by default switched on in Windows XP. Though, you might not use it, its being enabled by default certainly takes away some of the essential Windows resources.In this post, i shall be presenting to you a step by step process of disabling Simple File Sharing service in Windows XP.

Follow the steps below to disable Simple File Sharing on Windows XP

1.) Open My Computer by double clicking on it.

2.) In the Explorer Windows which opens, click on Tools –> Folder Options

3.) Click on the View Tab.

4.) Scroll down to the item with the checkbox with the name “Use Simple File Sharing (Recommended) “

5.) Uncheck the checkbox to stop the file sharing service.

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Source: Technofriends

If you're a veteran Windows XP user, you're familiar with the "helpful" count of your unread email messages you'll find at the login screen—which is usually wrong or overstated (my screenshot...

Despite the fact that most of you prefer XP to Vista and would rather Microsoft extended XP's shelf-life, several new and improved features available in Vista would be great to have in XP. This new...

In my last post, i wrote about Windows XP SP3, in this post, i shall be explaining the process to identify the version of Windows and Windows Service Pack installed on your computer.

In the good old days of DOS, we used to enter ver at the command prompt to get the version number of the Operating System being run on the PC. You can use the same command in Windows as well to identify the Operating System version.

Windows XP SP3 is in the news since few days now.

The theme of this post is to bring to your notice the fact that Windows Service Packs are cumulative and includes all updates from the previous ones.

This means that if, for example, your XP CD has neither SP1 nor SP2 integrated, you can still go ahead and install Windows XP SP3.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) is now available for download and install via Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center. Windows XP SP3 includes all previously released updates for the operating system, in addition to a small number of new updates. Windows XP SP3 will not significantly change the Windows XP experience.

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Source: Technofriends

The majority of you told us that you prefer XP to Vista and that it'd be best if Microsoft extended its cutoff date for XP, but we can't help but wonder if there's something about Vista that's worth...

On Open Enterprise blog.