As Jon already pointed out, today is Clean Out Your Computer Day, which makes it the perfect time to review some useful applications and routines for spring cleaning your Windows computer. That said, I hope you don’t limit these routines to one single day every year; all computers can benefit largely from frequent cleaning sessions, in terms of drive space, speed and performance. Here we go!

1. If you install new software apps quite often, you should probably check the list of installed programs on your system and start cleaning there. Ask yourself whether you still need that 500 MB program you haven’t used lately, and don’t be afraid to uninstall anything you don’t need anymore.

2. After months browsing the web, your browser history files and cache memory will have surely reached a huge size. Trim those down the easy way by using the browser’s own history manager (Tools > Clear Recent History in Firefox) or using a third-party app such as Free Windows Sweeper.

3. Check the folder where you save all the files you download from the web, and make sure you clean them up. Keeping a program’s executable file after it’s been installed is just a waste of space!

4. Use disk analysis tools like SpaceSniffer to locate the largest files and folders on your system, and decide whether you need to keep them or not. Maybe it would be a good idea to store those gigabytes of old photos somewhere else…

5. Last but not least, use your favorite cleaning tool to get rid of any other additional junk data your computer has been storing in the background, such as Windows temporary files, recent document lists, log files and more.

These are by no means the only tips we’ve we’ve got about computer spring cleaning. If all this isn’t enough for you, check our previous posts about how to recover hard drive space, five tools to clean up your computer, cleaning tips for a faster PC, how to free up disk space with Scanner, how to use a USB memory device to clean your PC and how to configure advanced options in CCleaner.

What about you? Do you have any other personal routines for computer maintenance?

Because they’re amazing, you might think you never have to think about spring cleaning your Mac, but it’s still a good idea to keep things in order. The second Tuesday of February is Clean Out Your Computer Day, so today’s a good day to start!

There are some myths about optimizing your system, and perhaps the most damaging is that of cache cleaning. Tools like Cache Out X will find and ‘clean’ your various caches, some of which may look pretty big. While that may save you disk space for a few moments, it’s a bad idea. Cache files in OSX are created precisely to speed up performance, so if you delete them, the system will have to recreate them, actually slowing you down!

That’s not to say there aren’t things you can do, so here’s some good advice:

1: If your browser is slow, perhaps it’s time to delete its history, cache and cookies? A year’s worth of browsing with a saved history and cache will seriously decrease efficiency. Instead of relying on the history, bookmark your favorite sites, then hit clean (File>Delete Cache in Safari, Tools>Clear Recent History in Firefox).

2: If you’re running any OSX up to 10.5 (Leopard), and you turn off your Mac at night, there are some scripts that perform clean up tasks automatically in the early hour of the morning - they clear up any unnecessary log files and system cache. Left in sleep mode, they’ll run when you wake up the computer but if you turn off your Mac they won’t. You can’t do any harm by running these scripts anyway, and doing so is really simple:

Open Terminal (look in Applications>Utilities) and enter the following text exactly: sudo periodic daily weekly monthly. You’ll then be asked for your system password - enter it, and hit return. You won’t see anything happening, but it will finish when the blinking prompt reappears.

3: Run Disk Utility. Found in Applications>Utilities again, this will just make sure your directories are in order, and keep things running smoothly. It’s easy to use - click on your Hard drive in the Disk Utility window, then click Verify Disk, wait for the process to finish the click Repair. Repeat for Verify Disk Permissions. It may not speed your system up, but it won’t do any harm.

4: Clean out your folders. Over time it’s easy to let your pictures, documents and downloads folders get messy. Take time every month to clear them out. It makes finding things easier, and will free up some hard drive space. Go through your applications folder and delete apps you never use - they’re a waste of space!

Do you have any other cleaning routines?

I was surprised to learn that the new version of Firefox is 15% faster than the previous version. When I say surprised I actually mean I didn’t believe a word of it. I decided to challenge this figure by putting Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.6 up against each other in a series of three benchmarking tests. I also included comparisons with the latest versions of Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer. In the name of transparency, I’ve decided to explain the benchmarking process for each of the three tests I applied. Why not try it for yourself and see which of your web browsers runs the best?

Test One:  Peacekeeper Browser Benchmark

Peacekeeper is a free service that puts your browser through its paces in a series of thorough tests. It checks performance in the following areas: rendering, social networking, complex graphics, data, Document Object Model operations, and text parsing. Each test takes about five minutes and simple involves hitting a button on the Peacekeeper site in the browser you want to test. To make a fair test you should ensure that you just have one tab or window open, and disable or uninstall any extensions you have running.

Peacemaker gives each browser an overall performance score, and you can view a more detailed breakdown of how that score was arrived at by clicking the ‘Details’ link on the graph. Here’s the graph generated by the browser tests I performed:

Test Two: SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark

The second test I performed was the same one run by Computerworld in its tests on Firefox 3.5 and 3.6. The SunSpider JavaScript benchmark is a utility that tests the speed of a browser by running a series of JavaScripts and measuring the speed at which the software process them. It breaks the results down into a series of different categories based on the scripts it ran. These results are a little harder to interpret than the Peacekeeper test, but you can look at the total time and use this as your benchmark for comparing the browsers. Here are the overall times (fastest first) for the browsers I tested:

• Chrome 4.0 - 649.4ms

• Firefox 3.6 - 1415ms

• Firefox 3.5 - 1700ms

• Opera 10.10 - 3051ms

• Internet Explorer 8 - 6346.2ms

Test Three: The Acid 3 Test

The third and final test is much quicker and simpler than the previous two. The Acid 3 Test is used to measure a browser’s compliance with web standards, particularly relating to the Document Object Model and JavaScript. To pass the test a browser needs to attain a score of 100/100 and the final image it displays must match the reference image.

Of the five browsers we tested, only Google Chrome and Opera attained the maximum 100 out of 100. Firefox 3.6 (94) and Firefox 3.5 (93) both almost made the grade. Microsoft should hang its head in shame though, because IE8 only scored a measely 20 out of 100, meaning it falls way short of standards compliance.

Analyzing the results

Our benchmarking supports Computerworld’s claim that Firefox 3.6 is much faster than version 3.5. In fact, according to the SunSpider test we ran, the newer release comes out 17% quicker than the previous version. It’s still not as speedy as Chrome though, which was more than twice as fast as Firefox, and way ahead of Opera and IE.

What’s more, the Mozilla browser performs very well against its competitors in the Peacekeeper benchmark. Again, it’s only Chrome that pips the latest version of Firefox. And again, Internet Explorer is left floundering in final place, this time in a test than examines the overall capabilities of the browser.

So, my advice based on these results is to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 if you haven’t already done so. Better still, install Chrome and use that to browse the web instead. Having said this, ut’s definitely worth running the benchmark tests on your own browsers because the results can vary considerably depending on your setup, the amount of extensions that you have installed, the OS you’re using, etc.

Last night I was reviewing messages in my Gmail account, trying to get them all sorted out and reach the much-coveted inbox zero. I needed Gmail to display only my unread emails so that I could process them one by one, when I realized Gmail didn’t have that option anywhere. Sure you can select all unread messages, but that’s of little use if they’re all scattered over a dozen pages. So I started searching for a solution, and only a few minutes after I found Gmail Advanced Search.

The advanced search options in Gmail let you use special words or symbols – called operators - to filter the messages displayed on your web browsers. It’s a quicker, more accurate way to find certain messages. You can filter you inbox to display only unread emails, only starred emails or only emails that came from a specific sender. What’s more, you can combine different operators and create super-refined filters like “messages from Peter with the word ‘dinner’ in the subject”.

These are some of the most useful operators you can use in Gmail:

• from: - displays messages received from a certain sender: from:peter
• to: - displays messages sent to a specific recipient: to:john 
• subject: - displays messages with certain words in the subject: subject:bbq
• label: - displays messages filed under specific labels: label:work
• in:(inbox, trash, spam) - displays all messages stored in any of those locations: in:trash
• is:(starred, unread) - displays messages you’ve starred or haven’t read yet: is:unread
• filename: - displays messages with a specific attachment: filename:softonic.pdf

One of the great things about Snow Leopard is that you no longer need Cisco’s VPN Client to connect over a private network. Snow Leopard has its own Cisco VPN network configuration tool that works within OS X 10.6. Cisco’s VPN client doesn’t even work with Snow Leopard so if you’ve still got it on your system, you can dump it in the Trash. However, setting up a Cisco VPN network might be a little tricky for those doing it for the first time so here is a simple guide.

Go to System Preferences and select Network:

Use the “+” symbol at the bottom of the list of network connections on the left-hand side to add a new network. Read the rest of this entry »

Today sees the arrival of another edition of Softonic’s software blog, OnSoftware. That’s right: fr.onsoftware.com has launched!

We’re very pleased to welcome our French colleagues to the blogosphere. They’re all experienced software journalists with Softonic.fr already… and they’ve really been chomping at the bit to get their blog online.

As you’ll expect, they’ll be providing the very best software coverage, tips, tricks, advice and more… just in French! So whether you’re a French speaker or you’re still learning, check out fr.onsoftware.com and let the guys know what you think!

I’m planning to visit Japan this year, and as part of my preparations for the trip I’d like to learn a bit of Japanese – at least some basic words and sentences to move around the country. Before starting with vocabulary though, you must learn the two Japanese alphabets, hiragana and katakana; luckily there are dozens of online resources that can help you with this task. The only thing you need to do is configuring your computer to display Japanese characters, and you’ll be ready to go!

Setting up Windows XP to display Japanese – and other Asian languages – properly involves a bit of tweaking, and requires the Windows XP CD as well. Simply follow these steps:

1. Open the Control Panel (Start menu > Control Panel)

2. Click the Regional and Language Options icon and go to the Languages tab. Tick the Install files for East Asian Languages option and hit OK. Follow on-screen instructions and insert the Windows XP CD when prompted.

3. Once the installation is finished, and after the correspondent system restart, go back to the same dialog window mentioned before and in the Languages tab, click the Details button. Read the rest of this entry »

When you install Windows XP for the first time – or perform a clean reinstallation from scratch – you usually get a bunch of default icons on your desktop, namely My Computer, My Documents, My Network Places, Internet Explorer and the Recycle Bin. These are special system shortcuts, different from standard desktop shortcuts, and have their own tweaking options to hide them or bring them back in case they’re lost.

If you want to recover those lost system icons, right click anywhere on the desktop to open the Display Properties window, select the Desktop tab and click the Customize Desktop button. This will open the Desktop Items window, where you can see a box containing all these special system icons, and small checkboxes to enable or disable them. Now simply select which icons should be displayed and which ones should be kept hidden, or hit the Restore Default button to go back to the standard configuration.

Incidentally, the Desktop Items window also lets you change the icon in these special system shortcuts. It’s as easy as selecting the icon you want to customize, click Change Icon and select a new one.

In case you hadn’t heard, rumor has it that Apple will release a new ‘tablet’ on Wednesday. Here at OnSoftware, we decided that rather than add to the echo chamber, we’d stay out of any debate on the putative features and software of this alleged device. We’ll be offering our thoughts when we know how the machine looks and feels, which version of OS X it runs and what software-enhancing goodies it has packed into its super-thin body.

At the same time, there is a lot of great analysis and gossip-mongering going on out there in the blogosphere. So with about 28 hours to go, here’s a round up of some of the best articles we’ve read about the mysterious “Jesus Tablet”.

TUAW has a rundown of their tablet coverage. They discussed the ramifications for software developers, ‘print’ publishers and how the tablet might connect with the world. They also think that Steve Jobs might be planning to revolutionize the education sector with this device.

Seth Weintraub at 9 to 5 Mac wrote a great post arguing that the tablet will be a breakthrough convergence device. In short: it’s going to do most of what you want it to, plus lots more.

Plenty commentators reckon that the Wall Street Journal is receiving lots of leaked information directly from Apple, which would explain why that newspaper is so packed with insightful, authoritative articles about a device ‘no one’ has seen. Like this one.

MacRumors has been, as usual, a great place to read up on the latest gossip. One of its most repeated topics is that the tablet might be called the iPad.  Personally, I prefer Canvas as a name, but a forum user has pointed out a good reason why that might not be so.

John Gruber’s Daring Fireball blog is always an excellent place to visit for news and analysis, and he’s been particularly good as the hype has built around the tablet. (That last link includes a link to a very entertaining and incisive article by Chicago Sun-Times writer Andy Ihnatko, which is among the best tablet-related pieces we’ve seen so far).

Leigh McMullen at Cult of Mac wrote a piece which really resonated with us. He doesn’t want to see a tablet that runs something like iPhone OS. Nor do we. A hybrid between Mac and iPhone makes more sense… but Apple might well ignore that.

The Guardian is also crowdsourcing a prediction on the possible specs of the new tablet. It’ll be interesting to see how close the results are to reality.

Finally, here’s Mosspuppet reviewing the tablet [via: 9 to 5 Mac]

Deleting files by mistake is one of the most stupid things you can do with a computer. Actually, it may be the most stupid one. Because Windows always asks for confirmation, because you have time to check and double check before clicking “Yes”, because you still have the Recycle Bin to use as last resource… but we’re human, and most of us end up deleting files by accident at some point in our lives. This is why it’s great to have a program like Recuva.

Recuva helps you recover accidentally deleted files, whether they are photos from your last holiday trip or an important essay due next week for your Literature course. It’s a completely free app, created by the same guys who developed CCleaner, that scans your hard drive in search of lost files – because, in case you didn’t know, deleted files are not actually deleted; they’re simply “marked as deleted”. This means that if you have the right tool – and believe me, Recuva is simply brilliant – chances are you’ll be able to recover those files. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s Symbian smartphones are more like digital swiss army knives. They arm you with tools for listening to music, browsing the web, watching videos, and managing your files. However, as you’ve probably noticed to your frustration before, not all Symbian phones support all formats. This means you can have all manner of problems opening multimedia, accessing web content, or viewing files you’ve transferred from your computer. Help is at hand though, and there are a few crucial add-ons you should download and install in order to improve your smartphone experience. Here’s a quick run-through of what you need.

Video

If you have downloaded movies in DivX format then you might be wondering how to watch them on your phone. The answer is simple: install DivX Player Mobile. The program lets you watch DivX, AVI or MPEG movies in the player window or in full-screen mode. Control elements such as Play, Pause, Stop, Fast Forward and Rewind, as well as the volume can be controlled easily via buttons.

Another very popular video add-on is SmartMovie. It’s getting a bit long in the tooth now, and the interface looks very dated. However, it’s perfect for cropping and shrinking movie files to be stored and played on your phone. It also helps you install codecs onto your device that let you play video files you wouldn’t otherwise be able to.

Nokia Video Converter is also a massively popular app, and is designed to take care of all your video conversion needs. The app is designed to convert movies from popular files formats and DVDs in just a few clicks, preserving picture and sound quality as best it can. The application’s interface is very clearly labeled with large buttons for adding video, adding DVD, playing, and converting.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you want to get your personal finances in order, then the good news is there are plenty of options on Macs. Whether it’s sorting it out your own personal debts or just keeping a tighter grip on whats coming in and out, there is plenty of financial software to suit all budgets and experience. With the recent news that Quicken for Mac might well disappoint dedicated users, here are five excellent alternatives:

iBank is probably one of the best finance apps there is for Macs and a serious rival to Quicken. iBank’s Aqua interface not only looks great but it allows you to manage bank accounts, credit cards and investments, analyze income and like Quicken, can directly connect to your bank to download transactions. The latest release has been made even better by the addition of an iPhone app too.

Squirrel is an excellent alternative to iBank if you prefer something that still allows you to connect to your bank account but uses a stunning iTunes or Front Row style interface. Squirrel allows you to preview accounts, reports and budgets and most importantly, supports online bank connections. Reports created in Squirrel can be printed or saved to PDF and you can import files in OFX format.

Moneywell is all about setting targets and simplifying how you manage your personal finances. Your money is displayed in buckets listed down the left side of the program window to give you a clear overview of your finances. You can create buckets for any sort of income and expense such as transportation, education or clothing. The right part of the interface shows details for a specific item while the center shows general info.

iFinance is an elegantly-presented and highly-polished finance application that allows you to monitor your income and outgoings, as well as stocks, in a very easy to use interface. Down the left-hand side you have your Funds, Budgets and Stocks, followed by Diagrams according to the period you want to monitor. Click on each subsection within these categories to display data on the right-hand side, which is the main window.

Debtinator lets you handle all of your debts in one single place. It collates several accounts into one tidy window so that you see where your money is going every day. Adding new entries is simple and fast and you can setup handy transfer rules which prevent you from worrying remembering to move money from one account to another.

You may have seen icons like these ones before. Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with your computer.  They just indicate that there’s some kind of problem with that specific file type: either you don’t have the appropriate application to open it, or the file extension hasn’t been associated yet – that is, Windows doesn’t know which program to use to open them, even if it’s already installed on your system.

Fixing this issue is easier than it seems: it only takes a couple of minutes and doesn’t require extended computer knowledge. All you have to do is double click the file as if you were actually going to open it and the system will display a dialog window asking you which program should be used. The question has two possible answers:

Read the rest of this entry »

Using an external monitor with your Macbook is beneficial in many ways. Firstly, it’s much easier on your eyes to use a bigger display than a Macbook screen. Secondly, it makes it much easier to spread-out your work and organize your desktop. Thirdly, if you are video editing or need a large working space, an external monitor expands your screen estate. Finally, it can extend the lifetime of your Macbook monitor because you can work with your Macbook closed.

Note that Macbooks are designed for use with DVI monitors but you can connect a VGA monitor by using a Mini-DVI to VGA Adapter cable.

However, when you attach an external monitor, you might find that the colors and resolution are a bit amiss. Fortunately, OS X has a very simple to use calibration tool which makes sure you are getting the best out of your external monitor.

To open the screen calibration tool go to your System Preferences and select Display.

Select the Color tab and then Calibrate:

The calibration wizard then takes you through a series of configuration tests. The first step is to ensure that your contrast and brightness settings are set to their highest levels on your monitor: Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine being able to access and control your computer from anywhere on Earth using your iPhone. Sounds pretty futuristic, right? Actually, it’s not because there are apps  available already that let you tap into your PC or Mac on your phone. And these remote control apps do a lot more that just allowing you to view your files and folders. In fact, they actually let you use your operating system interface, running apps, carrying out commands, and even typing. Essentially this means you can turn your iPhone into a PC!

1. The creme de la creme of remote access apps is LogMeIn Ignition. To use the service, you first need to sign up for a free LogMeIn account on the developer’s web site.

2. Now you should download the LogMeIn desktop client when prompted and run the installer. Once it’s running, you’re ready to starting accessing this machine. If you like, you can install multiple clients on multiple computers, then you can access all of these on your iPhone. Read the rest of this entry »