Windows 7 already bigger than Snow Leopard and Linux combined originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

You spend more time on MSN Messenger than ANYTHING else originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gallery: MSN.com through the years

MSN.com gets its first major redesign in a decade originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Windows Live Sync finally gets an update for Snow Leopard originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

1. Restart the computer - your system will automatically roll back to Windows Vista.
2. Click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Properties.
3. System Properties will open. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Environment Variables.
4. Click the New button.
5. Enter MIG_UPGRADE_IGNORE_PLUGINS into the Variable name field.
6. Copy the following bold text: iphlpsvcmigplugin.dll and paste it into the Variable value field (or type it manually)
7. Click OK three times to close the dialog boxes.
8. Re-launch your Windows 7 Upgrade installer!

How to fix a Windows 7 upgrade from Vista that is stuck at 62% originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Have you ever received an iWork file created in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote on a Mac, and not had any way to deal with it? Next time, try changing the file's extension to .zip, then unzip it with your favorite zip utility. Inside you should find a PDF preview document containing a nicely formatted version of the document in question.

It seems strange that Apple doesn't promote this fact more, as it's a real usability win for iWork users that want to share their documents with non-Mac users. Wouldn't it be nice if Word, Excel, and Powerpoint did this?

[photo by *keng]

iWork files are really just zip files, and contain PDF previews originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Yesterday I told you about the new Firefox 3.6 Beta -- and today, I can show you a neat bit of Windows 7 integration. Windows 7 uses Microsoft's Aero window manager and theme -- you've probably heard about it, or learnt to hate it in Vista -- and in it there's a cool technology called 'Aero Peek'. As you can see in the screenshot above, in Firefox 3.6 Beta, Aero Peek is now fully enabled, and smoother than its implementation in 3.6b1pre.

Aero Peek lets you see what's going on in a particular program without having to actually click anything -- you can just mouse-over it on the alt-tab running-programs menu or on the Superbar. In Firefox 3.5 this works for the Firefox window itself, but not the tabs within. Now, in 3.6 Beta, you can see what's going on in any tab by hovering your mouse over the thumbnail. I do wonder if this requires massive disk-swapping though, or if it takes snapshots -- but I'm pretty sure Aero shows you the window contents in real-time. Either way, it's cool, and beats the hell out of tabbing through 20 different tabs to find what you're looking for.

Those of you that are already using 3.6 might have noticed another neat thing: when you have a bunch of tabs (10+ in our testing) open, you get a "buttonized" list of favicons and page titles, instead of thumbnails. You can still jump straight to a tab or see a preview from the Superbar.

Don't like the Aero Peek integration? You can easily disable it -- if you're worried about the potential performance hit -- just whack about:config into your Firefox address bar and set browser.taskbar.previews.enable to false.

[Download Firefox 3.6 Beta here]

Firefox 3.6 has juicy Superbar integration with Windows 7 (and you can disable it) originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Microsoft Security Essentials rated best free antivirus for Windows originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Microsoft to discontinue Office Accounting next month originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gamers: Save $100 and get DirectX 11 for Vista! originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Just hit 'Install'! With that out of the way, on with the show!

1. Weather Bug: One of the things you'll soon notice about the gadgets I'm sharing here is that they all do one specific thing, and they do it well. I hate feature-creep. If I want to know the current weather -- then show me the damn weather. Weather Bug lets you select a nearby weather station and shows you everything you might need to know: current temperature (Celsius or Fahrenheit), forecasted high and low, wind speed, and the current cloudiness (or lack of). There's also a link for extended website-based information, and even a webcam stream if your weather station has one!

2. UEFA Informer: Here's one for the non-Americans (do Canadians like soccer?) -- a football gadget! Keep track of every major football (soccer) league in Europe, from Italian to English to even the Champion's League. The greatest thing about this gadget is you can even pull up the recent results and upcoming matches in a given league, or for your favourite/most hated team. There's an option in the settings to show even more leagues, so I assume it will be be kept updated -- perhaps to show the World Cup when that finally ticks around next summer?

3. Gmail Reader: There isn't really much I can say about this one. It tells you when you receive new mail. It tells you how many unread mail you currently have. It shows you the subject and sender of your unread mail. What more do you want?

4. TweetZ: Apparently created to do away with the annoyances inherent to Twadget, TweetZ is a full-featured Twitter tool disguised as a desktop gadget. Unfortunately its default setting is to tweet some birdsong annoyingly every time someone twits, but it's easy to turn off. As you can see in the screenshot, links are replaced with [link], and you can mouse-over them to see where they link to -- it even expands the link-shortening services, so you can actually see where you're going! And it doesn't seem to steal away all of your CPU cycles like Tweetdeck does...

5.Facebook Explorer: Now you can stalk your friends without constantly alt-tabbing back to your Facebook browser tab! Not only can you see pending friend requests or event invitations but you can also see if you've been poked -- life-altering, I know! All of your friend's updates are here too, with a break-out box popping-up to give you more details if you click on an update. You can't seem to comment on or 'like' anything though -- perhaps that will come at a later date? Or maybe this gadget has been designed with the idea of improving your productivity at work...? So there is a God... Either way, confining Facebook to a gadget would seem like a sensible thing to do. I imagine most of us know what it feels like to be sucked into the Facebook Void, sometimes never to resurface.

---

Some gadget niches are missing; most notably: an RSS reader! There are still relatively few gadgets compared to other computer customisations and, perhaps surprisingly, there are no decent RSS readers as a result.

The only good one seems to be Google's own gadget which only works with Google Desktop. If someone out there wants to design an RSS feed-reading gadget that can log into Google Reader... you'd be a very popular man.

The best I can offer you is a system-tray notifier called GRaiN that was featured over on Lifehacker in July. Or, if you want to subscribe to a few individual feeds, the Hermes RSS reader gadget might satisfy you.

I've also not mentioned the thousands of system-diagnostic gadgets, or the Google Search gadgets -- I figured I would try and show you some new gadgets that you might not have seen before!

A bunch of fun and productivity-boosting gadgets for Windows 7 originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Trial/crapware banished from PCs bought from Microsoft store originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Valve's Steam now has Windows 7 support! originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Microsoft ducks out on Family Guy, proves they still don't get "hip" marketing originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I've had plenty of good things to say about Microsoft Security Essentials to this point. On my own systems, it's been a good, lightweight layer of protection.

However, the folks over at H-Online have noted a bit of a problem. There are what H-Online refers to as "certain circumstances" under which Security Essentials seems to be forgetting to 1) update definitions and 2) notify users that their definitions may be as out of date as yet another Kanye West interruption joke.

By default, MSE only checks for updates once per day - when it's working, of course. Fortunately, making it check more often is a fairly simple task.

If you're comfortable editing your registry, read on after the break. If not, it might be best to wait for Microsoft to release a fix.

Continue reading How to make Microsoft Security Essentials check for updates more often

How to make Microsoft Security Essentials check for updates more often originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Save $80 on your Windows 7 purchase - the Upgrade does full installs, too originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Windows 7 and DirectX 11 - not just good news for gamers!

Windows 7 and DirectX 11 - not just good news for gamers! originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Microsoft opens its first retail stores - Video originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Microsoft offers tool to burn Windows 7 ISO - or put it on a USB flash drive originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

How to make a DVD of that student-only Windows 7 you bought for $29.99 originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.