Most tweaks are present in a number of tweaking utilities available with just a quick web search. Here are some of my favourite tweaking utilities:

1. Microsoft TweakUI – One of the rarer instances where Microsoft has named a product which users will find easier to know the function of by looking at its name. The newer TweakUI PowerToy for Windows XP is one of those listed on the PowerToys page and needs at least Win XP SP1 or Windows Server 2003 to work. Lots of easily customizable options and explanations are provided. A tree style listing categories on the left and the actual tweaks available on the right make it very easy to work with.

2. Group Policy Editor: Although not an out-and-out tweaking software per se, it still has the ability to make changes to the UI and to other Microsoft components of the OS like Internet Explorer, Outlook Express and others. Very powerful, not for the faint of heart but worth taking a look if you love tweaking stuff to your staisfaction. Only available on Professional and better editions of XP & Vista – you’ll need admin rights to run it. START > RUN > gpedit.msc

An excellent guide for GPO. Heed the warnings well !

3. X-Setup Pro: The big daddy of tweaks! Supported by a community which frequently adds tweak and hacks that can be downloaded straight into the program. It has unfortunately gone shareware now, but here’s a link to an almost as capable last known freeware version 6.6. It’s largish in size ~4.1 MB but it also has the features to match – backups can be created, experimental plugins can be disabled depending on the user’s level of proficiency etc. What I like best is the RECORD mode which logs all the changes made to the registry and allows you to save it in a corresponding REG file. There are other tweakers like FreshUI too, but I’ve found X-Setup more than capable and beats the others hands down.

4. Ultimate Windows Tweaker: For Vista users, an unofficial freeware comparable to TweakUI does indeed exist. Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a freeware Tweak UI Utility for tweaking and optimizing Windows Vista, 32-bit & 64-bit. It can simply be downloaded and used as a portable application to customize your Windows Vista to meet your requirements. With judicious tweaking, It can make your system faster, more stable, and more secure with just a few mouse clicks. The tweaker detects whether you have IE 7 or IE 8 installed and accordingly offers you the relevant tweaks only.

• Adobe Flash Player – Google Toolbar
• Adobe Reader – eBay Desktop
• AOL Instant Messenger – AOL Toolbar
• Apple’s Software Updater – Safari Browser, QuickTime, iTunes
• Applian FLV Player – Yahoo Toolbar
• AVG 8 – AVG Security Toolbar (Yahoo Search bar)
• BitComet – Google Toolbar
• CCleaner (standard installer) – Yahoo Toolbar <<<Offers ‘Lite’ version, without toolbar
• Comodo Firewall Pro – Ask Toolbar (This toolbar is detected as spyware/adware by several vendors)
• Cyberlink PowerDVD 8 – Google Toolbar and BETA of Moovielive
• Daemon Tools – Search tool and sponsor ad module
• DivX – Yahoo Toolbar
• GoogleTalk – no addon but will change default search setting of IE
• GoogleEarth – Pre checked Google Toolbar installation
• ICQ 6 – ICQ Toolbar
• Iobit advanced one care – Yahoo Toolbar (selecting no will still do changes on the system)
• IrfanView (Google Toolbar for IE and Google Desktop Search)
• Logitech Setpoint (Logitech Yahoo! Toolbar)
• MP3 WMA Converter – Yahoo Search and Delio Comparsion Shopping Toolbar
• Nero Burning Rom – Ask Toolbar (This toolbar is detected as spyware/adware by several vendors)
• PC Tools Firewall Plus – Google Toolbar and Threatfire
• Shockwave Player – Norton Security Scan or Google Toolbar
• Skype – Google Toolbar
• Spyware Doctor – Google Toolbar
• Spyware Terminator – Web security guard, Crawler
• Sun Java RE (online installer) – Google Toolbar
• Sun Java – OpenOffice.org
• Trillian – Ask Toolbar and Weather Channel Desktop
• Veoh media player – Yahoo toolbar, search engine change & search protection
• Webroot SpySweeper – Ask Toolbar (This toolbar is detected as spyware/adware by several vendors)
• Winamp – Winamp Toolbar
• Windows Live Installer – Windows Live Toolbar and Sign-in Assistant
• Windows Update – Windows Genuine Advantage Notification – (pre-checked, not required, should not be high-priority)
• Windows SteadyState – Windows Live Toolbar
• Winzip – RegistryBooster
• xplorer2Lite – Conduit toolbar
• YaHoo! Instant Messenger – YaHoo! toolbar, with ‘YaHoo! Search Protection’ and homepage change to YaHoo!
• ZoneAlarm – SpyBlocker (Ask Toolbar) (This toolbar is detected as spyware/adware by several vendors)

CoU Link here

It’s available for Linux, Mac OS X 10.4+ and also for Windows XP / Vista.

There are a number of commercial tracking software that notify owners about the stolen notebooks whereabouts by tracking the IP address and location, but Adeona (named after the Roman goddess of safe returns), is different in that it takes the owner’s privacy very seriously. No one except the owner is allowed to track the laptop in question.

Adeona is designed to use the Open Source OpenDHT distributed storage service to store location updates sent by a small software client installed on an owner’s laptop. The client continually monitors the current location of the laptop, gathering information (such as IP addresses and local network topology) that can be used to identify its current location. The client then uses strong cryptographic mechanisms to not only encrypt the location data, but also ensure that the ciphertexts stored within OpenDHT are anonymous and unlinkable. At the same time, it is easy for an owner to retrieve location information.

The designers claim that Adeona will only start tracking operations after proper authentication by the owner and not a moment before to prevent any kind of abuse. A bonus for Mac OS X users is the software’s ability to take a snapshot of the person currently using the laptop using the built-in iSight camera and the freeware tool isightcapture. Like your location information, these images are privacy-protected so that only the laptop owner (or an agent of the owner’s choosing) can access them.

Oh, and before I forget – this service is free. Mind you, this isn’t foolproof software, not by a long shot. The client shows up in the Task Manager and can also be seen in the list of running processes in both Linux and Mac OS environments. Other commercial offerings certainly make it harder for thieves to detect and also to remove themselves, but then this is designed to trap “common” thieves – the kind you expect to grab your laptop and then try to sell it as soon as possible.

Adobe recently released version 9 of their famed Acrobat reader. It’s packed with new features mostly related to integration with the new Acrobat.com site, but all that does is take away from the fact that it’s supposed to be first and foremost a reader to open and read PDF files. Bloat has crept in and the installer alone now weighs in at a massive 34.6 MB.

Most geeks I know would recommend alternatives like Foxit Reader or Sumatra, but neither of these smaller installs provide the rendering of fonts and images as faithfully as Acrobat Reader does. So – how can one get the best of both worlds – faithful rendering and a small size? Enter Acrobat Reader Lite. It’s Acrobat Reader 9 that’s repackaged to deliver the best performance without cluttering your system with loaders or the excess plugins and advertising that comes standard with default install. Don’t believe me? Try it out yourself. The installer is half the size @ 16.5 MB.

Mozilla, in its ongoing bid, to increase penetration and usage of the Firefox 3 browser is asking users to come together to help set a new Guinness World Record for Most Software Downloads in 24 hours. Mozilla is trying for a record in a new category, according to a representative of the firm. That means it doesn’t have an existing mark to better. The open source browser outfit aims to secure over 1.6m downloads over 24 hours.

D-Day or Download Day ,hasn’t been fixed as yet is now set for Tuesday, 17 June 2008 due to the fact that a last-ditch release candidate version (RC2) will be due out shortly next week.

SpreadFirefox.com has a new section where you can pledge to download Firefox3 during Download Day to help create the record. Entering your email address will send a reminder to your mailbox and also make sure that you’re part of the neat statistics map of users who have pledged to help set the record.

Mozilla decided to release a second release candidate for Firefox 3.0 at a meeting on Tuesday, in response to the discovery of 10 performance and stability bugs.  Yet another round of testing is the best thing to do rather than have most users move on due to known bugs.

Carrying on this tradition, the Opera Mini browser is available for use on a wide variety of cell-phones. I currently use a Sony Ericsson K750i and the default WAP browser, which although usable is no match for Opera Mini. The latest version to roll off the coding line is OM v4.1.

Before I have a look at the features, a brief word on cell phone data plans. My service provider BPL Mobile (Mumbai) offers two GPRS plans:

• The one that I use is cheaper and allows for only WAP access, allowing me to access only sites written or optimised for viewing by WAP browsers (the default browser on most mobile devices).
• The other plan (Full GPRS access), which costs more, has no restrictions and allows all sort of data and socket connections to be made resulting in a much faster connection.

The beauty of Opera Mini is that it connects to its own servers over this low-speed WAP connection removes extra spaces and formatting and redisplays the full page so it fits your phone’s screen. No restrictions on WML only or WAP sites.

Too many features to list, but there’s support for SSL, so you can even perform secure transactions (although I wouldn’t recommend it if a PC option is available). Bookmarks and custom RSS feeds can be stored.

Navigation is a breeze especially if you have a joystick/four-way keypad. Page-wise scrolling is accomplished by moving the joystick left (Page Up) or right (Page Down). There’s support for cookies too, so if a site allows you to retain a login, you’ll be able to bypass entering your login credentials each time you visit.

Keyboard shortcuts take the chore out of having to navigate thru the menus. There are shortcuts for jumping to bookmarked sites (* + number) and for performing common tasks like reloading a page, moving to the top/bottom, viewing the history etc. (# + number). If you forget a particular number, just wait a second or two and a helpful reference screen will pop up.

Opera Mini also has a neat photo blogging feature which allows a person to take a picture from the phone camera and upload it to the Opera Mini Photo Blog. You’ll need to register to set up an account first.

Saving content off a page is also considerably easy with OM’s ability to download files and images from links shown on the page. One can also zoom in to certain areas of an image for a closer look.

VERDICT: It works extremely well, is hugely useful and will make you forget your other browser. Get it. Quickly.

Deligio claims to be a search engine devoted to software. The site encourages users to create accounts where they can add software that they use / like just as one adds website bookmarks on sites like del.icio.us or digg or reddit
. Software can be tagged to make it easier to find. They can also be rated – there’s a five star visual indicator although like all opinions on the Net and off, YMMV.

What I like about the site is its relatively clean interface and the fact that they include non-Windows software as well. As more and more people join the community and put in their reviews, we should see it gain popularity.

I would like to see the ability to edit each program entry’s description and tags added in the future. If someone has already added the software, there doesn’t seem to be a way for others to edit it – something that should be included to allow for new features and abilities as versions keep changing.
Ordinarily, I would perform a search at the usual suspects of sites like Google Groups’ alt.comp.freeware, tucows, sourceforge.net, CNet Download.com etc. and of course the run-of-the-mill search engines – Google / Yahoo / MSN. Let’s see how this site turns out.

The following Linux distributions are curently included :

Fedora Core
Mandriva
SuSE
Debian
MEPIS
Ubuntu
Kubuntu
Linspire
Xandros
PCLinuxOS
Yellowdog Linux
Gentoo
Slackware
Knoppix
OpenSuSE
ArchLinux
Foresight Linux

What I like about the test is that it asks simple questions based on your skill set level and proceeds accordingly. At the end, when its recommendations are displayed to the user, you get reasons why the candidate that is displayed has been selected for you. Another good thing is that the next closest alternatives are also displayed to give you a range of choices.

Informative links leading to Wikipedia pages act as a sort of glossary so users can see the meanings of terms that they don’t currently understand. All-in-all a very useful tool for newbies who want to shift to Linux but don’t know which distro to install.

This little button has put off my getting Carpal Tunnel Syndrome by a few months. I no longer have to hunt for the option in the drop-down list on the side.

Trillian was the first and it was good while it was free. It did all that was expected of it and connected to all 3 protocols at once without the overhead of the pretty and overly fancy individual clients. I was later introduced to GAIM and always being one to fly the OpenSource banner, I decided to try it out for a few weeks (of course – the fact that I was playing around with Knoppix and other *nix flavours at the time also pushed me to use the same client on my Windows partition too).

I am now a huge fan of the Open Source Miranda IM. Unbelievably large collection of plugins allows the user to customize it to a very large extent. There’s also support for so many different protocols, some of which I haven’t even heard of .

But then comes Google Talk with its simplistic interface and it’s innate ability to conduct voice chats all embedded in a client smaller than some images that I’ve seen. I was hooked.

Now it’s a combination – for most times I use Miranda for communicating with all 4 protocols (ICQ / Yahoo / MSN / Google Talk). For vox chats – I switch to Google Talk.

I’m now championing the cause of , a web based multi-protocol messenger service that functions within a browser window, has full support for Firefox and also keeps logs of the chats you’ve had so it’s easy to dig up references to any topic you might have discussed with your friends earlier. It’s being continuously developed and new features are being added regularly.