Make Open Office Start Faster With This Speed Boosting Tip!

Open Office is a great piece of software - and at its price, it’s pretty hard to beat! The default settings for Open Office might cause it to have a slow start-up speed though, but no problems! This tip will help you speed up Open Office’s start-up time instantly!

1. Start either Write or Calc
2. From the menu, go to >> “Tools”, then “Options”
3. From the left menu, select “Memory”. Then on the right, follow these settings:

   Number of steps is set to 20.
   Graphics Cache for Open Office is set to 128 MB.
   Memory per object is set to 20.0 MB.
   Enable systray quickstarter is checked.

4. Next, simply hit OK and exit the program

That’s it! The next time you run any application of the Open Office suite, you’ll realise that they will start up much faster!

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Lenovo Thinkpad X60s Sent to Service Center for Repairs

I’m using a Lenovo Thinkpad X60s, and recently I realised I couldn’t charge the battery anymore. Whenever I plugged in a battery, it just wouldn’t charge. So I lived on direct AC power for quite a while, hoping that the problem would miraculously fix itself. But that didn’t happen - so with great dread, I decided that I had to send it in to the service center.

I have loads of sensitive information on my Thinkpad, so before I could send it in, I did a full backup of my system, then formatted it clean. I thought I’d just drop it off at one of IBM’s many drop-off points in Singapore, but the customer service officer told me that it’d add a delay of a day or two, so I decided to just drop it off at the service center directly.

So off I went to Changi, and gave my laptop to the technician. He told me that service times took anywhere from 3-5 working days, so I was pretty much prepared to be laptop-less for the whole week. Imagine my surprise when I received a call from them the very next day, saying that my laptop was ready for collection!

A nice card that came with back with my repaired Thinkpad

Apparently there was a problem with my Thinkpad’s motherboard, which prevented it from charging the batteries. So they replaced the motherboard, charged my battery, and even cleaned up the whole notebook so that it looked as good as new for me!

I’m happy

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Default Mozilla Firefox Bookmarks Location - Windows XP

I was setting up an automatic backup process for my system, and one of the things that I wanted to backup was my Mozilla Firefox bookmarks. So I dug around and found out where they were. They’re all contained in a single bookmarks.html file, located here:

C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR_USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

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Windows Password Recovery / Reset

These are the things needed to edit the passwords on most systems. Fits on a single CD or floppy!

Tested on: NT 3.51, NT 4 (all versions and SPs), Windows 2000 (all versions & SPs), Windows XP (all versions, also SP2), Windows Server 2003 (all SPs), Vindows Vista 32 and 64 bit.

Note: If used on users that have EFS encrypted files, and the system is XP or Vista, all encrypted files for that user will be UNREADABLE! and cannot be recovered unless you remember the old password again. If you don’t know if you have encrypted files or not, you most likely don’t have them. (except maybe on corporate systems)

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

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Windows Backup with Acronis Review

As I just found out, Acronis True Image is an excellent tool to backup your system with! I thought that Norton Ghost was the industry standard, but Acronis just blew me away with its ease of use and powerful feature set.

With Acronis, you can backup either individual files and programs (even preferences) or backup your entire hard drive. And on top of that, you can also make incremental or differential backups. These are very useful features that allow you to save either space or time.

Click to see an enlarged screenshot

What’s the difference? Well in any case, you’ll need to make a full system backup initially. But in the future, any changes will be compared with the full system backup, and the differential or incremental backup only includes the changes since then. As you can expect, this is much faster than doing a full system backup everytime, and saves you tonnes of backup space.

However, you might face a higher risk of data corruption if you do too many differential or incremental backups. So you might want to do a few diffferential or incremental backups, then have a full system backup done as well, every once in a while.

The best thing about Acronis is that I am now protected against data loss from a system or hardware failure. If I keep to my regular backup schedule, it means that I only need to pop in my system backup disc to restore my computer system to its original configuration almost instantly.

And in Acronis, it’s really easy to create a system backup disc. Just select the “My Computer” option, and Acronis will guide you through the recovery process. Acronis True Image also gives you the power to specify the compression level of the backup - you can choose either normal, high, or maximum compression. Normal compression takes the most storage space while maximum compression takes the least space - but the drawback is that the backup process will take longer. If you need extra security, you’ll be pleased to know that Acronis also allows you to set your own password.

One very unique feature about Acronis True Image is that it will create a secure zone on your hard drive. This is a partition on your hard drive set aside specifically for backup and recovery, in the case of a system crash. It contains your bootable rescue data, and to make it secure, this partition is hidden, so no other software can access it. This secure zone backup feature is unique to Acronis - no other backup program has this, and I find it really useful to have.

Click to see an enlarged screenshot

If the world was perfect, Windows would never crash, viruses and spyware can be removed with one click, and installing new programs will never cause irreversible damage to our systems. But the world isn’t perfect - which is why the premium PC protection that Acronis True Image offers is something that absolutely no computer user should be without.

Millions of users have been using Acronis True Image, and that’s what started me on it. Now I’m a fan of it! You should try it out for yourself - there’s a free trial available, so there’s zero risk.

Note: Some of you have asked me about the difference between Acronis True Image 10.0 Home and Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation. Well the main difference between Acronis True Image 10.0 Home and Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation is that the latter provides you with the ability to manage backup/recovery process remotely. Generally, Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation is meant for use in business and networked environments allowing IT staff to manage backup tasks and protect employee laptops and desktops throughout the organization from one central location.

Try Acronis True Image 10 Home (Free Download and Trial Version!)

Buy Acronis True Image 10 Home (Instant Download!)

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