Instant Fundas

You might have placed shortcuts of your frequently used application on your desktop for easier access. But then, to reach them you have to show your desktop. This might be a bit annoying if you have another application or window open. You will have to minimize all open windows to see your desktop and only then you can click on the shortcuts. Not a very "shortcut" method, isn't? So how to get around this? Enter Shock Desktop .

"Do you refresh your desktop?" . Ask this to any Windows user and 9 out of 10 will reply with a "yes". Sometimes you might need to refresh the desktop but the majority of people who refresh their desktop don't even know why they are doing it. Refreshing the desktop is perhaps the biggest computer myth among all Windows users.

Windows provides some very helpful tips and messages through tool tips (the messages that pop up when you hover the mouse pointer over an icon) and dialog boxes. Do you wish to replace those messages with your own peppy comments? That is what I'm going to show you today.

This is one tool that you might like to have. You know that there are various ways to access your opened windows, the ones that are visible on the taskbar. You can simply click on the items on the taskbar to open them or use Alt+Tab to cycle through the opened windows. There is another way to open these windows, and that is to integrate them into the right-click context menu.

Windows has a very helpful feature of drag and drop for copy-pasting files. To perform this operation you have to open two explorer windows and keep it open side by side on your desktop. The first explorer window is the one where the file you want to copy is located and the second window is the one where you want to paste the copied file. Then click on the file you want to copy and without releasing the mouse button, drag the file into the other. Most people use this and is the quickest way to copy paste files. However, there are several difficulties in using this feature: you have to open two windows at the same time and you can't maximise either of them.

There are many open source application for Windows, but one that you will rarely see is an open source firewall. There are some firewall projects on sourceforge but they are possibly defunct, and none of them has an easy to use user interface. Imagine my surprise when I discovered this firewall called NetDefender that actually has a decent interface. I haven't tried it yet but I plan to do it soon.

DM2 is an open source application that packs several Windows enhancement features together that can help you greatly in your every-day work. Let us see what features DM2 can provide you.

Did you ever wanted to know which satellites are over your head at the precise moment? Did you ever wonder where the International Space Station could be right now? Do you want to catch a glimpse of it in the night sky? The answers to all these questions can be found in this wonderful tool called Orbitron .

You must be aware of the task switching utility available on Windows that can be accessed by the key combination Alt+Tab. Except the one on Vista- the Flip 3D, the task switching on Windows XP is so plain boring. So dump the inbuilt Windows tool and use any of the following alternatives to spice of the looks as well as improve it's functionality.