Category Archives: Technology - Page 6

Windows XP – Tangofied

Posted by on December 23, 2008 No comments

Windows Vista is all the rage these days & with cheap Windows Vista capable hardware available these days, you can very well make your Vista certified PC within Rs 20k. However there are many users out there who are still running old or low end hardware configuration for today’s standards & the herald of Netbooks have sparked another interest in Windows XP as Windows Vista is heavy on the GMA 950 available on most Netbooks out there. This is soon to change with nVidia Ion platform but till then, those using a Netbooks or low end configuration are either stuck with Windows XP or can install Linux.

In my office, I got a workstation running Windows XP SP3, so I decided to make the look & feel a bit more consistence, new & something black…like Vista. Now, instead of going with numerous Vista Shell Packs available, I decided to try something new & decided to go with the Tango Icon theme & something matching to it for Visual Style & Icons because Tango theme is simple on the eyes & easy to work with. They are not 3d Icons, they are all 2D Icons but still they do the work just fine & look good. I found some resources & made some of my own icons etc to make my Office’s Windows XP look like this.

This is how some applications look on my setup


When it comes to Casual Home use, Netbooks or Cyber Café or Office or even schools, users do not need much application to be installed. They just need some application as neither Netbooks are supposed to be uber powerful nor they are supposed to replace a desktop. So for place like this who are still using Windows XP, I decided to make this guide which can give their Computers running Windows XP a new & refreshing look. Keep in mind that I m making this guide strictly for the usage scenario’s I mentioned above. This isn’t some performance or tweaking guide; this is a guide to enhance the look & feel, as well as User Experience of the old & arcane operating system for today’s standards. All the applications mentioned below are free & there is no piracy. The icons are at a maximum size of 48X48 only.

Requirements.

1) A Clean unmodified installation of Windows XP. If you have any previous Shell pack or skin or theme installed, it will be removed. I am assuming that you have a newly installed Windows XP PC.

2) The following downloads…

a. Uxtheme Multipatcher & Luna Elements Black Visual Style for Windows XP

b. Tango Icon set for Windows

c. Tango Shell Patch for Windows

d. Tango uTorrent theme

e. Free download manager & tango theme

f. Abiword (In case you don’t want to use Microsoft Office or OpenOffice)

g. Tango Firefox 3 theme for Windows XP

h. XNView & Gnome theme

i. Segoe UI font

j. CCleaner

k. 7Zip & Tango 7Zip theme, also Tango WinRAR theme if you want to use WinRAR which in my point of view is useless for our use here. You just need to zip & unzip files so for that 7Zip is enough

l. Miscellaneous Tango Icons for various application

m. IcoFX. A free software to make your own icons from PNG files

n. Tango Icons which I have collected or created.

Customization

1) Start by installing Uxtheme Multipatcher & restart Windows. After this, extract the Lune Elements Black zip file & copy the “LE Black” folder to c:\windows\resources\themes. Extract the Segoe UI font & copy it to the Fonts folder. Now apply this skin by simply going to Display properties ->Appearance tab. Now click on advance & set the following fonts to Segoe UI.

a. Active/Inactive Titlebar

b. Icon

c. Menu

2) Now install the Tango Shell Patch for Windows & Install the Tango theme. There are other themes too which you can try. Let it patch the whole system & reboot windows.

For a PC like this, you don’t need many applications if it is a netbook or a cyber café or casual PC. So I will only install some simple & generic Application which are enough for a new or novice user but might help power users too.

1) For torrent client, nothing beats uTorrent for Windows. I prefer to use a portable uTorrent. To do this, just make a folder with any name, anywhere on your Hard disk. Copy uTorrent.exe to this folder, & then copy the content of the following folder to this new Folder.

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\uTorrent

After this, extract the content of the uTorrent theme given above & copy them to this new folder. Now your uTorrent is running in Portable mode with Tango theme & doesn’t need to be installed. You can simply zip it & take it with you anywhere you want.

2) Free download Manager is what it says it is. Install FDM, then extract the content of the FDM theme I gave above in the following folder

C:\Program Files\Download Manager\Skins

Now start FDM, configure it the way you want for speed, default download location etc & go to Tools -> General Settings -> Skins & select Tango from the Combo Box.

3) You can either install Abiword or Openoffice.org suite as you like or Microsoft Office.

4) Download the Tango Firefox theme mentioned above & extract it. Copy the folder to the “extension” folder of your firefox profile folder. After this select to use this theme from tools -> Add ons -> Themes

5) XNView is a free Image browser with some basic editing capability which should be sufficient for any casual user. Install XNView, then copy the XNView theme given above to the “skins” folder Inside the XNView installation folder. After this select this theme from Tools -> options -> Toolbar section -> Skins.

6) I prefer WMP11 but many might prefer something else. For a generic scenario I recommend VLC player as the new version is using Tango Icons. Install VLC Player & associate it with the file types you want. Since it is not your home PC (unless it is a netbook, in which case WMP11 is the way to go), a Library management is not required in most cases but still VLC should be able to do it just fine.

7) For CD Burning try InfraRecorder which already uses Tango Icons.

This does for the application customization for tango theme. You can search for or download many other icons all over the net for various applications as you require.

Is it time for Optical Media to die?

Posted by on December 15, 2008 4 comments

Since the last few years, I have been buying a new Optical drive almost every year as the tray soon starts to give problem which is the most common problem & the drive isn’t being used much either.

I was thinking, do we really need an optical drive now anymore? Other then Installing Windows on a new computer, I seriously see no use of my Optical drive today at the end of the year 2008. The availability of cheap bandwidth & Torrents has changed the way I get my digital media.

I have a 512kbps BSNL Dataone connection which I m soon upgrading to 1mbps cos I can easily pay the cost of it & the bill will just continue to reduce. Sure it feels good to have a physical movie DVD but I can easily get the same movie or documentary or T.V Show from Torrents or legally through online movie rental stores & save the clutter of multiple physical DVDs.

We can already see how successful Steam has been in selling games online, you download the game to your computer, login using your steam account & you can play the game on any computer. No Anti-Piracy measure required & no need to buy a DVD from store either.

iTunes has been extremely successful in selling music & T.V shows, as well as rented movies through there distribution system with or without DRM. There are other Music stores which are now going DRM free way so you can use your digital media content anywhere. No need to buy a Movie DVD or Audio CD when you can get DRM/DRM free DVD rip/480p H.264 movie under 2.5 GB or Lossless FLAC/Mp3 for Audio off the internet which isn’t that big in Megabytes considering today’s fast Internet Speed.

We can already see how successful Linux Package Managers have been in distributing Software online. Synaptic & Click n Run has been quite successful in just searching for the application & installing it along with all the dependencies automatically.

Microsoft has followed suit & even they are now providing Microsoft Store from where you can buy all Microsoft Products & download them or have them shipped to your doorsteps in Physical form. It won’t be long before they start an iPhone App Store like Application Distribution service for Windows Mobile & the next XBOX may come without an Optical Drive at all.

We are aware of the Virtual harddisk (.vhd) & Disk Image (.dmg) format of Windows & Mac OS, which could meen, digitally secure hard disk images, which can be compressed & distributed off the internet & there is no need to extract the content. Just mount & run the software from it. NFS Undercover can very well be distributed as a Digitally secure VHD file which you can download after you purchase the game from some online Game store & simply double click on the VHD to play. It will mount it somewhre cos basically, it is just another folder with files in it.

The only use in my digital life today for an Optical Media is for backup & archival purpose but even then the Media isn’t very reliable. I can burn 5 DVD rip movies on a Rs 12 DVD or 12 episodes of some T.V show after I m done watching it, but I m still uncertain whether the Media will work after 2 months or not as it is prone to scratches etc & if it is corrupted, then all the data is destroyed.

External Hard disk are getting cheap these days. I can buy a 160 GB Western Digital External HD for as low as Rs 2,500 & store all the game VHD/ISO, movie shows on it, although DVDs are still cheaper. I can get 160 GB worth space in Optical Media under Rs 500 which in case of external hard disk will cost Rs 2,500.

If it is about installing Windows or an OS on a new PC with no OS on it, then we can still do it using Flash Media. Windows Vista can very well be installed through a 4 GB flash drive, after you extract the Vista DVD ISO to a pen drive, make it bootable & set the BIOS to boot from USB drive. Infect, even Windows Vista can be distributed using Right ones Memory Cards or Pen drives so that you can at least install Windows on a new PC. Also, using EFI/Splashtop you don’t even need a Media for installation. Start the EFI, go to your Microsoft Store Shopping cart, download the ISO/VHD to your hard disk as EFI detects the hard disk & install from that VHD after EFI automatically mounts it. Same goes with installing Linux Distribution ISO on a new PC.

Now, I want to ask you all one thing….is it time for Optical Media to die? I mean, seriously, when was the last time you used it & for what.

Windows 7 : Where is the future heading?

Posted by on September 24, 2008 1 comment

Windows 7 is all the rage these days. With Microsoft PDC 2008 just around the corner with the eyes of all third party developers, anti-trust lawyers & fan boys set on it as Microsoft will give the first Beta 1 release to its partner companies to start developing applications & drivers for it.

When Vista was released & Windows 7 start to make noise as some people for no apparent reason declared Vista a failure without even using it, I predicted something that with Windows 7 Microsoft doesn’t need to start fresh to make an OS. What many users don’t realize that Microsoft makes Windows as a platform on which third party developers develop & sale applications. With Vista, Microsoft gave the developers & for the first time, designers a lot of power when it comes to developing & designing applications for Windows.

With .Net 3.0 & now .Net 3.5, developers & designers find it very easy to make applications for Windows. I can’t say about development side as I am a Designer but from my point of view visually designing an application with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 & Microsoft Blend is much better then what we had in past. Microsoft has given WPF, WDDM, WCF. WWF & a plethora of technologies inside Vista due to which at least I don’t call Vista a failure.

Before Vista it was hard to design an application for Windows with good native & fast look & UX but now it is very easy. WPF brings Vector based, resolution independent, GPU accelerated UI to Windows due to which that powerful GPU installed in most of the people’s computer won’t be sitting idle when using just the OS to do something & not playing games. This brings more efficiency to the computing environment when heat & electricity are becoming a growing concern rapidly.

GPGPU is the next big thing & right now the time is absolutely right to make a career in GPU programming. nVidia has already shown with CUDA what level of performance and scalability a GPU can reach if applications are coded with GPGPU support. ATI demonstrated it long back with there AVIVO Video converter which converted H.264 in fraction of time which it usually used to take with CPU based encoding. It won’t be surprising to see Microsoft supporting GPGPU in DirectX 11 or Visual Studio’s next version using which even Software vendor like Adobe can make Photoshop apply filters faster then before because as we all know, a GPU is simply a processor which can do lots of calculations like a CPU as calculation power of a GPU is more then a CPU. It is actually a good thing as right now we have CUDA API only for nVidia cards & ATI’s own Firestream API. With Support from Microsoft in Visual Studio or DirectX, developers can make one code which will run same on both AMD & nVidia hardware instead of coding for 2 APIs.

WPF & Microsoft Blend are already making lots of noise. Designing an application using WPF is easy & fast, also they look cool. I really love that for the first time since the beginning of Windows, Microsoft is paying attention to the user experience & interface making it easy for people to do things on there computer.

.Net 3.5 & soon .net 4.0 will sure be making head turn the Microsoft way. Due to the native code generation & MSIL support, the applications can be made really fast by JIT when installing. Now just imagine the flexibility of .net CLR, the speed JIT brings, the look & feel WPF brings, the secure environment of Managed code & it’s not hard to believe that the future of Windows foundation is upgrading itself to be more solid.

Some people will sure say that Microsoft is going the Linux or Apple way, well…here is the thing. There are only some ways of doing something & Linux/Apple did it before Microsoft, so is it wrong for Microsoft to copy something good? Well, it is copying for sure but to make something better & I myself say….”Redmond start your photocopiers.”

With Windows 7 Microsoft doesn’t need to make a completely new OS. They just need to optimize the code & polish the features of Vista. Even if it is like Windows Vista R2, even then it will be big because with Windows 7, Microsoft will give all those features & speed it ones promised with Vista but wasn’t able to. The foundation technologies are already there in form of WDDM, WPF, Aero, WCF, WWF, Office Technologies, Windows Live Services….they don’t need to code anything new, they just have to optimize what they already have & tweak it.

 

The reason for the success of Microsoft in the past was that it integrated things & made it easier for the hardware & software developers to work together. As an example, before DirectX we had many 3D API from many different GPU hardware vendors. 3DFX had glide, nVidia/ATI had OpenGL & all of them were not compatible on the same hardware. Now a developer can’t code a game in Glide for 3dfx & then again code it in OpenGL for the rest of the GPU. Microsoft solved this problem with DirectX due to which today it is the de-facto standard when making games for Windows. The developers were now able to make the game in DirectX be assurance that if it runs on Windows, it will run across a wide range of GPU. Microsoft is doing the same thing with Windows 7 & the technologies it gave in form of DirectX 10, XNA & those mentioned above.

Why I like DRM & Internet based distribution

Posted by on August 9, 2008 No comments

It’s been 2 months since I am in Delhi & distances are quite long here, it’s hard to do all things at one time. 24 hours in a day seem less to me sometime. Why don’t we have 8 hrs for work, 8 hrs for our personal stuff, 8 hrs to sleep & 4 hrs for traveling from one place to other?

Life is following a static cycle but its good, what else will I do in my free time?? There is nothing much to do. Sometimes I feel bored on weekends. My roommates wait for weekend to finish their pending work, I don’t. I do what I have to do even if it is a weekday but due to all this I don’t have time for time pass. I get weekends but that is passed in doing pending work like shopping etc which means I work, work, work….which is what I hate. I like to work & I don’t sit Idle but I need breaks too. I like being social, meeting people, making friends but I am unable to due to all the work. This isn’t a problem with just me; everyone these days in a Metro City like Delhi has this problem. A person doesn’t know the other & doesn’t even give a damn about him. Lucknow was better, people were better there or maybe I have yet to understand Delhi people. Here, if someone doesn’t know you then talking to you is like a crime for them they don’t want to commit. I even had to initiate conversation with my neighbors here myself.

Entertainment is something everyone needs. For me it is more of a distraction then entertainment. When I am out of my home then either I am talking to a friend on phone or listening to Music as it keeps me distracted from rest of the world. After coming to Delhi only I have realized the worth of “Content on Demand”. I don’t watch TV as there are not many shows which I like so I don’t need a physical TV or DTH here. News I get from RSS feeds of Indiatimes.com or NDTV Delhi which I access in my K750i as well as my Dekstop so I don’t even need news paper, however I do watch some TV shows such as Heroes or House but like I said, I don’t have time to watch House every week on AXN at 11 PM as I have office next day. This is why I prefer IPTV or Internet based Distribution.

Everything is available on Torrents & considered piracy but I would actually like to pay for it if I get a proper distribution system via torrents. If the companies charge me Rs 200 monthly for a subscription based service like we have with DTH of a TV show in 720p HD resolution which should be about 500 MB then I would gladly pay for it because then I can download the Video file even when I am in the office & then watch it on weekend, in my phone or anywhere else as I “own” the file. I don’t mind them putting DRM on it as Piracy is wrong & it is something you realize when you are yourself making such broadcast content but implement the DRM in a better way. Microsoft has playforsure DRM which is available on a wide range of Devices due to which if you buy a song from a Playforsure service provider then you can be rest assured that it will play on any compatible device. I would urge other device manufacturer to provide support for playforsure or some other unified DRM system.

Today I bought a game from Nehru Place for Rs 120 & it is not working. Now, I am not going to go back to that shop keeper & fight him for Rs 120 but I paid him so I need service at least. Valve has been distributing games via Steam & those are original games tied to your account which means you can download & play the game at any computer provided you are logged in with your steam account. I just love this concept. I can simply download the game without thinking of all the hassle or running to the shopkeeper then praying that the game works. I am going to download the same game from Torrent but I am all in for legal digital distribution. Give me a proper & legal digital distribution system for games, videos & music & I am all in & will be the first one to opt for it. Since I like a mobile phone to do everything for me, including if possible, baking cookies once in a while. I have decided to buy Nokia N82 because with it I can download a whole 500 MB House Episode HD rip via torrent in the phone itself using SymTorrent or even Rapidshare & other such file sharing networks with an Unlimited EDGE connection from Idea for Rs 600 a month.

I have a computer which is my TV, Gaming Machine, Web browsing device, Bank & Finance management, account management, Media Center, Video Player, Music Player, Picture Organizer & Album etc etc etc. My Workstation is the center of all my digital needs. I use it for everything so why not enhance it further. Learn something from Microsoft, get your ass up & listen to the customer. We need one, yes just one DRM scheme out there compatible across all devices. You don’t want us to distribute our songs & videos to curb piracy, well….then lock the content with a Login Key. Like I should have one Windows Live ID which I can enter in my computer & it will play all my DRM based files in my computer, I should also be able to enter it in my Mobile Phone to play the same & I should be able to enter in a PMP like iRiver Clix using a software in the OS after which I can play the files in PMP too.

Some people don’t like DRM & in a way I find DRM restrictive too. There are two things a company can do now, either stop supporting any DRM & give content without DRM as today with torrents, DRM content isn’t making any money anyway or Provide a standard DRM scheme tied to one particular Login Account which is compatible across a long range of device out there.

Windows Live Writer : Portable

Posted by on June 22, 2008 2 comments

Since the only source of Internet in Delhi for me is my Office, I needed a portable application for blogging because installing my own applications is not allowed in Office. This is the reason I use portable version of Firefox, Pidgin, 7-Zip etc for my work but so far I wasn’t able to find a proper & good Portable Blogging application. I use Windows Live Writer for posting my blogs which is a boon to all Windows Users who blog. This is an awesome application which even Microsoft haters agree that it is a good application. While looking for a portable replacement I came across something interesting. Windows Live Writer is already available in Portable format.

Presenting Windows Live Writer : Portable by Scott Kingery. It requires Administrative rights to run. The following text is taken from his blog.

Download Windows Live Writer : Portable

The zip file does NOT contain everything you need to run Windows Live Writer. This is simply a launcher which will run Windows Live Writer in a self contained environment so you can take everything with you between computers via your USB memory stick or other portable device.

To get this portable app to work you need to follow these steps closely:

1. Unzip this file to your USB or other portable drive
2. Download Windows Live Writer from: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com
3. Install Windows Live Write as usual. You don’t even have to run it, just so long as it is installed.
4. Copy ALL of the files FROM c:\program files\windows live writer TO the new structure on your USB drive that looks like the graphic below \WindowsLiveWriterPortable\App\WindowsLiveWriter

5. You can now uninstall Windows Live Writer if you want

To use Windows Live Writer from your USB drive simply double click on WindowsLiveWriterPortable.exe and it will take care of the necessary registry settings and document paths. If you have used WLW on your computer before, the launcher will copy all your settings and files to the USB drive.

Creating an extremely low cost Value PC

Posted by on May 18, 2008 2 comments

My last article about How to make an inexpensive & efficient Computer was praised by many readers. Now that PC was meant to be a one stop solution for everything you can think of. It was a gaming machine, music device, HTPC, all in one. But I was thinking, how low can you go?

In the market there are many people who want to buy a cheap PC for their home for kids or to get online once in a while or for the kids to study for school stuff like some HTML or C++ or to use in the office for Office suites. They don’t even open there computer every day, so they won’t require the previous configuration of PC I mentioned. This is another PC configuration for such use, office & cyber cafes where compatibility is required but high end components are not required & no one plays games on these PCs but still there is a small upgrade path. One thing for sure, this PC is going to be a looker in sleekness & style.

CPU = Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+. These CPU will not win any benchmarks or contest for number crunching but still at a very low price you will get a Dual Core CPU from Intel & AMD with enough horse power for your day to day tasks.

Motherboard = My personal preference is Asus P5N MX for Intel or Asus M2N-CM  DVI for AMD. These are very low cost yet stable motherboards based on nVidia 7050 chipset. They have most of the component ever required on board already like on board LAN, sound & graphics & people don’t even need to go beyond this. Whatever you need this small & cost effective PC to do, this motherboard will help you.

Another option if the above Asus motherboard are not available is Intel DG31PR motherboard.

CPU fan = No need to spend extra money, the Stock CPU fan from Intel & AMD are good enough. If you still want to spend some money on a good & silent CPU Cooler than simply get Cooler Master Hyper L3.

RAM = 2X1 GB DDR2 667 MHz RAM. Any cheap brand like Dynet, Simmtronics or Kingston Value RAM would do the job. It should cost you a maximum of Rs 1,600 for 2 GB RAM.

Cyber Cafe owners should just go for 1 GB DDR2 667 RAM.

Cabinet & SMPS = iBall Baby 306 is my preferred CPU Cabinet for this PC. Not only it is very small in size but also sufficient for this PC. Just get any 500W SMPS like one from Frontech or ColorSit. These SMPS aren’t very powerful but then you don’t require powerful SMPS and these provide adequate electricity for this PC. Install a 80 MM fan on the side & rear exhaust & keep the cabinet in horizontal position not vertical.

UPS = Get an APC 650VA UPS which can easily provide up to 10 minutes backup.

Cyber cafe owners should skip this & use a unified inverter.

Hard Disk = It depends on the user but 160 GB should be enough for such PCs to start with. Get a Western Digital WD1600AAJA SATA 2 Hard disk with 8 MB buffer, it should cost around Rs 2,000.

Cyber Cafe owners should look for old 40 GB or 80 GB hard disk which they can buy 2nd hand for Rs 800.

Optical Drive = There are many optical drives in the market right now but one Drive which is enough for this computer’s needs would be Samsung SH-S203D DVD Writer at Rs 1,200.

Cyber cafe owners need not to install any optical drive on the nodes. Just one at the server is sufficient.

Audio & Video = The onboard Audio & Video of this motherboard is all anyone will ever require in an office or home where computer is used once in a while only. The onboard graphics on Intel DG31PR which  Intel GMA X3100 & on the Asus motherboards are nVidia GeForce 7050 which are enough to run Windows Vista with Aero.

If you still want to buy a graphics card for home use then a low profile Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3450 based graphics card with 256 MB RAM should be adequate.

Onboard Audio is Realtek 5.1 channel which again is sufficient because most users will either use a headphone or 2.1 channel speaker setup with such computer.

TV Tuner Card = Buy it if you need it else leave it. I would recommend Leadtek Winfast TV2000XP Global Media Center with my eyes closed as this TV Tuner is by far the best analog TV Tuner card I have seen. It is compatible with Windows Media Center & even comes with a Media Center Remote. If you can find the PCI Express X1 based WinFast PxTV1200 Media Center Edition then buy that instead to use that idle PCI Express X1 slot to some good use. You can also use these TV Tuners with the DTH service such as Tata Sky or Dish TV

Speakers & Headphones = This is a completely personal choice & I would advise you to go to the market & check yourself after listening to some available models. Since you are looking for a Value PC then buying a 5.1 channel speaker system doesn’t make sense. Entry level Altec Lansing & Creative Models are what you should look for. My personal choice although is Creative Gigaworks T20 or Creative I-Trigue T3000 for Stereo Sound but they will cost you about Rs 4,000 easily.

Webcam = Buy it if you need it. These days webcam start for as low as Rs 500 in the market. Considering the state of Indian broadband, a Microsoft LiveCam VX-1000 should suffice or Frontek Webcam which are surprisingly good for the price at Rs 500.

Keyboard & Mouse = Again, this is a personal preference. Look yourself to judge which keyboard & mouse you find comfortable with your hands & posture. A good & low cost yet effective keyboard is Zebronics Desktop Commander Keyboard which has laptop like keys & is easy on the hands. iBall Laser Precise Speedster mouse is a good low cost laser mouse which works surprisingly well within Rs 1,000.

Cyber cafe owners should go for Logitech Internet Desktop wired edition. A very cheap combination of wired keyboard & Mouse.

Monitor = Despite of this PC being a Value PC I will not recommend a CRT Monitor due to their sheer size & power requirements. LCD Monitors are dirt cheap now so it makes perfect sense to invest in a LCD Monitor instead of a CRT now as monitors easily last for many years & is generally the last hardware component to upgrade.

For Home use buy the LG L206WTQ Monitor. It is 20” TN Panel based but HDCP compliant. You can easily upgrade to a Blu-ray Drive later & still enjoy all your HD Movies as Blu-Ray requires a monitor with HDCP connection. It has a native resolution of 1650X1080 pixels which is more than enough for whatever you want to throw at it, even 720p HD Videos play flawless on this monitor as 1080p will look different from 720p only when seen on a 32? or higher LCD Display. You can also connect your gaming console such as XBOX 360 or Playstation 3 to this monitor to play games on a wide screen LCD with real HD resolution.

Cyber cafe owners should go for 17" LCD from Samsung or LG with 4:3 aspect ratio. They won’t need a widescreen monitor in a cyber cafe. CRT monitors are also an option if you want to go dirt cheap but I seriously don’t recommend buying CRT anymore.

Operating System = For home use 32bit Windows Vista Home premium is adequate for this computer. Once installed & configured for which you can have a look at my article “Using Windows Vista: The MVP Way” & your setup will be like Set it & forget it. Just start the system, work on it & do whatever you want.

For Cyber Cafe, Windows XP SP3 is advised.

We all know that people in Cyber cafe or casual home users in home pirate the OS anyway so instead of going with Linux & a new environment they would rather prefer going with Windows XP.

About other software, most of the basic home related work can be done these days with free software available for Windows. Some of them are Open Source applications like OpenOffice which will do the work just fine instead of Office 2007. This will further cut software cost & you don’t even have to pirate stuff.

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