Free utilities for tweaking Windows part 2

A few other utilities I got from the PC World article linked to in the previous post are RocketDock and Ultimate Windows Tweaker.

RocketDock

Being the multi-tasker that I am, I found this little tool to be pretty handy along with VirtuaWin. I have a few programs in my quicklaunch bar, but I don’t want to overload that so I use RocketDock for a few more shortcuts that I access on a regular basis. I have it set to auto-hide so that it isn’t always a distraction – it’s only there when I need it.

There are different skins for it that you can use and you can go to their website to download icons, more skins, and docklets. I can’t think of a complaint about this, I’ve been pretty happy with it.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker
This is actually an easier way to adjust things that I posted about in my trimming Vista’s fat post. The three sections of the tweaker that I like the most are the personalization, system performance, and additional options.

In the personalization section you can choose which items will show in the start menu, remove some or all icons that show in the taskbar, change the window padding, along with some other features.

The changes I made in the system performance section have made the biggest difference. In there you can change the time the computer waits for services to shut down, the time it waits to end non-responsive applications, and waiting time to kill applications timeout during shutdown. My computer shuts down MUCH faster now.

Finally, the additional options section just has a few things in there that I changed. You can add some useful options to the context menus for files and folders and drives. Also, being able to remove the arrows from creating shortcuts was nice. Definitely not anything that improved performance, but useful changes for me.

There are a lot of other things you can edit with this. I only highlighted the sections that were the most useful to me.

Free utilities for tweaking Windows Part 1

I decided to come up with a list a programs I use to maintain my Vista laptop.  I got some from this PC World article and others I found on download.com.  Instead of making one massive post I’ll break it up into two or three.

First on my list and the most exciting to me is a cool thing called VirtuaWin.

I use Linux all the time at work, the only time I use Windows is when I have to do some maintenance for those in the office who use it. I fell completely in love with the multiple workspaces that you can use in Linux. I have a separate space for email, another for my browser, and another for whatever else I happen to be playing with or troubleshooting. Having multiple workspaces is absolutely necessary for my job, I do way too many things at once to not need that feature.

I got so excited when I heard from a friend of mine about a nifty little program that allows you to have multiple workspaces in Windows. I then read an article somewhere, that I can’t seem to find the link for, about it so I thought I’d give it a try. I was a little worried about how much memory it would suck up and whether it would slow down the start-up and shutdown process of my laptop. I noticed a bit of a slowdown but the benefits outweigh it since it really doesn’t make that much of a difference.

You can have up to 9 workspaces, which I find to be way too many. I have 4 set up but probably only use 3 of them on a regular basis. By default, the hotkey to move between desktops is the windows key + arrow key. There’s an option to make it so that when you’re mouse is against the edge of your screen it switches to another workspace, but I found that to be incredibly irritating so I stuck to the hotkey.  Another thing I like about it is that I finally have a use for the ability of the wheel on my mouse to click.  If I click on the title bar of a window with the mouse wheel it gives the option to move that application to one of the other workspaces – I use that all the time.  You can also add modules from their website to add features, although there aren’t very many.  That’s another plus, they didn’t add a bunch of useless features to the basic installation, if you want extras you can install them yourself.  This is compatible with Vista all the way back to Win98, so if you have a Windows machine this will work for you.

I need a nap, more to come.

Recycle old TVs, laptops, computers, and monitors for free

Electronics are popular Christmas gifts and we all love getting them but what do we do with the old crap it’s going to replace?  We used to have two choices, toss it in with the garbage or pay to get them recycled.  Paying for them could get pretty expensive depending on the size and weight of the item so that obviously was not a popular option.  According to the EPA, “In 2007, discarded TVs, computers, peripherals (including printers, scanners, faxes), mice, keyboards and cell phones totaled about 2.5 million tons.”

Now we have an easy way to get rid of all that old equipment, at least here in Washington State.  As of Jan. 1st, 2009 a new law came into effect allowing residents to recycle those items for free at various locations throughout the state.  Even if your item still works you can take it in and the company or store has the option of trying to resell it before sending it off to be chopped up and recycled.

I’ll be posting more links as I find them, but finding places to recycle this kind of stuff has turned out to be far more difficult than I thought.  These links are not only for Washington State residents as you can see.  I’ll be adding links from all over the country as I find them.

State-run  or local programs

• 1-800-recycle – Washington State.  To find a place near you choose drop off and buy-back sites and to select multiple material types hold the ctrl button down while selecting them.
• E-Cycle Washington – Has a lot more information about what can be recycled, why, etc.
• eRecycle.org – If you live in California you can go there to find a local recycle center.  I’m not sure what’s free, I’ll have to do a little more research into it.
• Oregon E-Cycles – According to oregonlive.com “you can recycle your old televisions, computers and computer monitors for free.”

Company or business-run programs

• Apple.com – Go there for info about recycling your iPod or cell phone, regardless of the manufacturer, for free.  If you buy an Apple computer or monitor they will also recycle your old monitor and computer for free, regardless of the manufacturer.
• Best Buy recycling – If you buy some new appliances from them or new TVs, they’ll take the old ones for free.  There is also a link at the bottom for recycling events where you can take computers and other larger items.
• Best Buy trade-in – You can trade items in for Best Buy gift cards or just have them recycled.  I had an old laptop recycled for free that they wouldn’t give me anything for.  I just printed the shipping label right off their website, pretty simple.
• Dell – They recycle Dell products for free.
• Green Disk – You do have to pay to ship things to them, but $6.95 for 20lbs or less is a pretty good deal.  I’ll be using them in the near future if I can’t find a free alternative.  They also have options for businesses and bulk recycling.
• Toshiba – They have a similar program to the Best Buy trade-in.  Get an estimate on what it’s worth, if it’s worthless you can print a free shipping label.

A lot of stores like Office Depot, Best Buy, and other stores that sell electronics take ink cartridges, batteries and cell phones for free.  Typically they have little drop boxes directly inside their doors for that kind of stuff.

If you have any links to add please feel free to leave them in a comment and I’ll add them to my list, whether it’s a Washington State thing or not.

Comcast blog hunters

I recently read an article on msnbc.com called “Comcast customers startled by customer service“.  I thought it was interesting because that actually happened to me back in April.  I will be the first to admit that I have had some pretty bad experiences with Comcast’s customer service people; on a scale of 1 to 10 I would give them probably a 4.  The main reason behind this was because we kept losing our connection on a regular basis and it would go down anywhere from a couple minutes to a couple hours.  I called Comcast probably 3 or 4 times, in the span of a few months, complaining about it but without fail they all told me that it was my gateway because “we haven’t had any outages in your area.”  Well that’s great but my gateway still wasn’t getting a good enough connection.  I even asked them if I could send them the data from the status page that has all the downstream power info and such but they wouldn’t even let me do that.  The thing that bothered me the most is they wouldn’t send someone out to troubleshoot it for me.  I wasn’t about to go fork out 40+ bucks unless I knew with 100% certainty that it was my gateway and they weren’t willing to do that for some reason.

So back in April I wrote a blog about it and posted screen shots of my status page to see if anybody knew what all that info meant since Comcast obviously wasn’t helping me.  The same day I got a comment from someone at Comcast asking for my info so he could help me out.  I couldn’t believe it.  I honestly thought it was some sort of scam because it seemed a little weird to me.  But it turned out to be legitimate.  I really appreciate them doing that and I think it’s a good idea, but at the same time I think it’s pretty sad that they have to hunt blogs for unhappy customers because their phone reps obviously aren’t doing a good enough job.  It’s pretty bad when your own customers are surprised when they actually get GOOD customer service from you.

It turned out that the person I was in contact with was the customer service manager for my area.  He sent a tech out and he had to install an amplifier because the signal wasn’t coming into the house strong enough.  It WAS NOT my gateway like the phone reps kept telling me.  I like the techs a lot.  I’ve had to deal with them for work as well and never had a problem.  It’s only ever been the people on the other end of the phone because they apparently don’t like sending techs out to check out problems.  Silly me, I thought that’s what their jobs were.