Every so often, you   might want to disable something on your PC. However, you’ll need to dig deep down in the Control Panel settings to make that happen. Here are five apps that let you disable everything from your Aero Glass effects to your keyboard at the click of a button.

1. Disable the touchpad with TouchFreeze

Changing specific settings to automatically disable the touchpad when typing could be cumbersome, so TouchFreeze comes to the rescue. You needn’t fiddle with the Control Panel settings anymore – just install the utility and you’re done – the touchpad will not be active during typing if TouchFreeze is running.

2. Disable Aero Effects with Aerofoil

Aerofoil is a simple utility that runs from the system tray and lets you disable all snazzy Aero Glass effects in Windows 7 with a single click. You can also use it to switch between multiple power plans you’ve created.

3. Disable the keyboard with Kid Key Lock

Kid Lock disables standard and special keys on your keyboard and mouse buttons. Pretty useful when you’re going to clean your keyboard or if you have kids or pets in your home. The program runs from the system tray.

4. Disable the CapsLock key with Handicapslock

If you find yourself hitting the Caps Lock key often when you shouldn’t, chances are you want to disable it. A Lifehacker reader created an AutoHotkey script that activates the Caps Lock key only when it’s pressed twice, and you can download the same as an .exe from here.

We haven’t tried this ourselves, but give it a go and let us know.

5. Disable UAC Prompts with TweakUAC

If you never want to get annoyed by those User Account Control notifications that often pop up, download TweakUAC and just hit Leave UAC off. The UAC is completely disabled, so you’ll never get to see those again.

=== About the Author ===

Shankar writes at Killer Tech Tips, on everything ranging from keyboard shortcuts that make you productive to advanced Google search operators you may not know about. Check out his blog!

If you’ve tried Linux before, chances are you found this frustrating. The NumLock key on your keyboard is by default OFF when Linux boots. There’s a way to enable NumLock key stay in the ON state when Linux starts up.

Here’s how to do it if you’re in Ubuntu:

Using the shell, install NumLockX by typing this command

$ sudo apt-get install numlockx

Otherwise you can download the tarball from here, compile and install it by executing the following set of commands from the directory where the tarball was extracted:

./configure
make
make install
make xsetup
make xinitrc

Reboot, you should see that the NumLock key is on by default.

Did you just switch to Linux and realise that pressing Win Key + D shortcut doesn’t take you to the desktop? Yes, by default this keyboard shortcut for ‘Show Desktop’ doesn’t work in Linux.

Show Desktop Shortcut for the Gnome Desktop

By default, Gnome should come with a Show Desktop icon. Look for it. You can also use CTRL + ALT + D shortcut on your Gnome Desktop to bring the Desktop View.

If you’re too used to the Win+D shortcut, there’s a way you can enable it to act as the ‘Show Desktop’ shortcut. Here’s how you can make Win+D to show up the desktop for you:

Just fire up the shell, and enter the following command:

$ gconftool-2 -t str set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/show_desktop “d”

That’s it. Press Win + D keyboard shortcut, and you’re taken to the desktop instantly.

Show Desktop for the KDE Desktop

The same CTRL+ALT+D key works on KDE as well, or you can add a panel (if it’s not there already) by right clicking on the panel, clicking on ‘Add’ >> ‘Special Buttons’ >> ‘Desktop Access’. Drag the button and place it anywhere on the panel.

I’m not sure of how to go about changing the shortcut combination in KDE, let me know in the comments if anyone has got a solution to this.

.RM files, short for ‘Real Media’ are media files that may contain audio and video or either of them. Some sites use the RM format to stream audio or/and video to your computer.

So how do you open .RM files and get them played on your computer?

RM files need Real Player to be played. You can download Real Player from the official website here.

But, Real Player is a bit bulky and is pretty much too slow on computers. I’d personally recommend you to use VLC player to do the same.

VLC, or VideoLAN player can also open and play .RM files. You won’t have any hassles at all. You can download VLC Player to open .RM files from here.

I recently switched to Winamp, thanks to a friend’s recommendation. One thing that’s been keeping me away from this player is the fact that it looks ugly (well, atleast to my eyes). There are lots of skins, I know, but they aren’t professional looking.

But I really loved Winamp because it’s very customizable. I tried a few skins. They are pretty, except for the fonts displayed. The default fonts and fonts sizes used in Winamp aren’t that good, and most of the time are really annoying and unreadable.

I know that it’s a customizable player, but the myriad of options took me aback, and I was unable to find the setting I need to change in order to customize the fonts used in Winamp.

Finally, I hunted down the location of the option. Here’s how you customize the fonts used in Winamp:

• Right Click on the Winamp Title Bar
• A context menu should open up
• Go to Options >> Preferences
• In the left pane look for ‘General Preferences’ and then select ‘Playlist’
• In the right pane, uncheck ‘Use Skin or Language Pack font’
• Now select the font that you want to be used in Winamp in the list that appears beneath it.
• You can also change the font size by using the options on top of the window

That’s it. Winamp’s interface just got a bit better!

Have you ever tried printing an entire CHM file from Windows? Chances are the file won’t print properly. This is a known bug, and there’s a workaround to printing an entire CHM file easily.

How to print the whole of a CHM file?

Here are the steps you need to take if you want a full CHM file to be printed:

• First, open the CHM file. It should open up in the default CHM Viewer
• Click on the topic you want to print
• Click the ‘Print’ button in the CHM Viewer Toolbar
• You’ll be asked if you want the particular selection alone, or also all the topics under the heading. Make a selection and click ‘OK’
• In the Window that appears, DO NOT click the ‘Print’ button
• Instead, navigate to C:\Documents And Settings\[Your User Name]\Local Settings\Temp\
• Now, you should see a .HTM file with a name like ~hh3256.htm
• Double-Click on the file and wait for it to open in a browser like Internet Explorer
• The file should contain the parts of the CHM file that you wanted to print
• Go to File >> Print and get the file printed!

So, that is how you print multiple pages/topics from a CHM file.

SpiceBird is a new application that aims to integrate Instant Messaging, Email, Calendar and Task Management, and also RSS reading under one wing.

I just downloaded it and gave it a try, and thought of posting my initial thoughts on this over here. First, it’s a beta version FYI. I had no problems with installing SpiceBird on Windows, it went smooth.

Starting it up

Upon starting up, two wizards opened up – one that asked you to configure your instant messenger settings and the other was a wizard asking for details on configuring your email account.

Instant Messaging and Email Configuration

Configuring the inbuilt instant messenger for Gmail/Jabber is quite easy, but I suspect you’ll have a tough time if you need to use some other network for chatting.

Setting up email is a breeze, just like it’s on ThunderBird, provided you know what settings you should choose.

Aggregated View

The default view is quite cool with applets that show you what’s hopping up on your inbox and your tasks. There’s a little RSS applet - but you can’t say that it’s an ‘RSS Reader’ but there’s minimum functionality for reading RSS feeds.

You can just add two or three feeds that you read everyday – the ones you must check over. Clicking on an feed item, you can set it to open it in an application of your choice.

You also have a little applet telling you the time, and upcoming tasks. Not a big deal right now, but I’d love to see more applets that’ll save me time and keep me productive a lot more. And since the program Open Source, I hope there’ll be new developer-created stuff for us to use.

IM Integration

Gmail users can feel it: Chats pop up as a tiny window in the bottom right of the screen.

While this is quite good, I also found that the contact list needs some work. The list can’t be sorted, and you have all your contacts listed there, you need to look into it for quite some time if you have a huge list of contacts.

You can set your IM status by using the IM Status icon on the toolbar. A sound alert for any incoming chats will be greatly useful. The program misses it right now.

Email, Tasks and Calendar:

Regarding these, I don’t have any complaints, and I’m quite satisfied with what the program offers. It’s based on ThunderBird, you should know.

A minor annoyance

You can’t rearrange the four tabs on top. I tried hard, but I couldn’t. :D I hope they fix it up soon.

Final Word

SpiceBird has a very good potential as an application. It has the capability to boost your productivity a lot. I must mention that the software is in its early stages and as days go by, it’ll be embraced by a larger audience provided they keep improving the software.

Download SpiceBird Beta | SpiceBird Video Demo

Miro, a free open source video player that brings Internet TV to your desktop has gone to version 1.1 with lots of new features. Miro 1.1 has been officially released for download.

What’s new in Miro 1.1?

The most noticable change in Miro 1.1 comes in the improvements in torrent downloading speeds, along with more control over torrent downloading.

Another improved feature in Miro 1.1 is that you can search for stuff simultaneously on all the five search engines that are integrated into Miro.

Download Miro 1.1

Miro 1.1 is available for download from the official site.

It’s definitely a great software program that you should have installed on your computer if you have a good bandwidth and enjoy watching things.

If you dual boot with Windows and Linux, and have data spread across different partitions on Linux and Windows, you should be really in for some issues.

It happens so sometimes you need to access your files on Linux partitions from Windows, and you realize it isn’t possible easily. Not really, with these tools in hand – it’s very easy for you to access files on your Linux partitions from Windows:

DiskInternals Linux Reader – Download

DiskInternals Linux Reader has a Windows Explorer like interface, and can provide access to Ext2 and Ext3 Linux partitions from Windows. You can extract files easily from those linux partitions to your Windows partitions. You can’t use this tool to write on those partitions, though.

Ext2 Installable File System for Windows – Download

A bit better than the above tool, this utility can give you both read and write access to Ext2 and Ext3 Filesystems from Windows. Plus, once you have this installed, Windows can use it your Linux partition as a paging file as well. a

Another similar tool is this one.

rfsd: ReiserDriver – Download

ReiserDriver allows access to ReiserFS partitions from Windows. The partitions appear like other filesystems, and can be accessed by any windows application. This is yet in kinda like pre-release stage, and installation should prove tedious for newbies.

Any other tools that I missed out? Tell everyone in the comments.

Want to get your PC installed with Windows Vista, but not sure of whether your computer is compatible with it? Vista requires some decent hardware configuration to run on. So how do you check if your computer hardware is compatible with Vista? Can your computer run Vista or not?

There’s a way to find out if you’re on XP.

In order to check if your computer’s hardware is compatible with Vista or not, Microsoft provides you with a tool called Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor.

So what do you do to find out if your computer can run Vista?

• Just download the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor from the official Microsoft Site (this tool in turn requires .NET 2.0 framework to run).
• Microsoft advises you to keep your other devices like printers, scanners, etc connected in order that their compatibility be also checked.
• Once installed, the Windows Vista Upgrade checker icon can be found on the desktop. Launch the application, and click ‘Start Scan’.
• Click ‘See Details’ to view whether your computer is Vista compatible or not.
• In the next screen, the results will be displayed.
• The tool will also recommend a particular flavour of Vista as well that is suited to run on your computer
• Any minor issues, will also be displayed down under.

So, that’s how you check if your computer hardware is compatible with Vista or not.