New Toys 3

I'm not a Mac lover. That is not to say they've not done some fabulous things, and that some Mac features do work wonders (the iPod Nano is amazing), but on the whole my opinion of a Mac is that it looks good but it's quite crap.

Basically, it's like Tara Reid. Looks good at a distance, seems to be fine to play with, but when you wake up teh next morning you're regretting it.

That said, i download these 3 addons for windows that make my PC look like a Mac, and I'm loving it. One is free, the others cost money (but have a free trial); but I wanted to share them with you anyway.

Yahoo Widgets (the free one)

Basically, it's a little program that does one thing. They can be shown or hidden with the press of a button. I have the weather one, the Google search and a "Post-it Note" equivalent.

I really want a good iTunes controller and possibly one that does a good job of reaching RSS feeds and my email. If I can find something that will automate the things I do alot of, then yeah, i'll be really happy with the whole Widgets package.

http://widgets.yahoo.com/

Object Dock

Makes your menu on your PC work like a MAC. Thats it really. The free version does anything you'd need, the one you pay for does some other things that I've never looked at.

http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/

Top Desk

Alt + Tab. In windows terms, it brings up a box with all the programs you have running. It's been teh same since Windows 3.1 (thats 15 years). THIS tool makes it all better. It has 3 modes, all of which need to be seen to be belived.

1. Pressing F9 makes all the windows minimize, so you can see your desktop.

2. Pressing F10 makes all the windows appear on your monitor, so that you can see them all at once. then just click the mouse on the one you want to use.

3. This replaces ALT + TAB, so that oou can see what each program is before you select it. It's amazing, and totally changed the way I do work at work. Really, i'm not over stating it.

If this interest you at all I'd suggest going to http://www.otakusoftware.com/ and looking at teh screenshots or videos to see it in action. It was well worth my £8. But there is the 30 day free trial too.

 

Comments

[Dave]

Yahoo Widgets-
Will have to download....

Object dock -
Windows toolbars but looks like a mac!- what more do I need to say...

Top Desk -
Point 1 - use the start and m - minimizes all the windows....

Point 2 - got a little of my interest....

Point 3 - isn’t that what vista Aero should do?

While you are looking around, have you found a spell checker for the comments part of the Blog? It would be very useful for me. Could you intragrate tinyMCE? I'm sure it has a spell checking option and lots of other usefull features...

[Steve Bank]

Yahoo widgets is really nice, but clearly it's far from essencial. I have a lovely big screen though, so it helps me alot.

As for Top Desk:

1. true, but thos does it in a different fasion. I also find using the start/windows key for more than one thing confuses alot ousers.

2. It's really great for those times when you have alot of windows or ducumets open and you need to flick to the right one. Alot of my work is compiling data from multiple sources - and this things is amazing for that.

3. Yes, and No. the vista UI has this option but it's off as standard. It was in the alpha, but it's one of a number of things that got scrapped after the customer trials. And, I don't think i'll be upgrading to vista until it's out for 6 months anyway.

[Steve Bank]

There are a number of AJAX widgets that I'd love to integrfate into the blog, and that's one of the reasons I'm moving to VOX (or thinking about it).

I'd love to let people spell check, bold, underline and format their commetns a bit more. Thanks for the feedback, it's good to know others are thinking abotu things like that too.

[dawn]

yes all the geeks out there love this chat! lol

[Kimberly]

Didn't you think of creating a journal based on your blog (many people already do so - have a look at their experience at http://www.pdfspirit.com/kemasukan-tingkatan-6-2010 the search engine on pdf periodical)? In comparison with the blog, journal is more convenient to read :)