Tag: pc tools

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Reviews

mHotspot – Simple Software to Turn Your Laptop into a Wifi Hotspot

The number of gadgets we connect to the internet are growing. Now with tablets and almost everyone having their own laptop and smartphones a typical family can even have five or six devices connecting to your Wifi router. Sometimes there are more devices to be connected, than a router can handle and the best option in such situations is to turn your laptop into a Wifi hotspot. mHotspot is a free and simple application that allows users to create Wifi hotspots out of their PCs.

How mHotspot works:

  • Install the software on your computer which you want to turn into a Wifi hotspot.
  • The software allows users to customize a name for the hotspot. This will showup as a Wifi network of other devices that your need to connect. This means it works with most mobile phones and tablets regardless of platforms.
  • You can monitor all the devices that connect through your PC and more importantly limit the number of devices that can connect.
  • It also supports WPA2 password security.
  • You can also allow sharing of Wifi without internet connection to enable playing multiplayer games on LAN.

Here is a video on how mHotspot works.

The software does require Microsoft’s .NET Framework 4.0 for it to work.

Try out mHotspot and drop in your comments.

Link: Download mHotspot

Categories
Tips

4 Tweaks to make your PC start faster!

No one in the entire World would like their PC to load slowly and wait for the Desktop to show up in a slow fashion. This is against the notion that a PC boot-up time is completely dependent on the Processor and RAM installed. The start-up time is very well affected because of user-activities and the ‘junk’ we install on our system.

Let us now see how we can let our PC take a sigh of relief.

BIOS Tweaks

  • Update your BIOS software – This will be truly useful if your PC manufacturer releases BIOS updates regularly. Most the boot-level problems are resolved with such updates. You can check the Support section for the update file and even how to update it. You need to very careful though while doing such an operation as a wrong action may even damage your PC completely.
  • Boot Order selection – Keep the Boot Order to start with your Hard disk instead of CD-ROM or Flash drive(s). You can do this from your BIOS setup. Read this if you need help.
  • Disable POST – Disable Power-on Self Test which is not necessary for modern-day computers. Also enable Quick Boot or Fast Boot if available in the BIOS options.

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Windows Tweaks

  • Manage your Startup – Don’t let ‘junk’ items to start alongwith PC start-up. This is a major reason your Windows loading time increases. To manage your Start-up items, go to Run (Windows + R key) and type msconfig. I have demonstrated an example below.

Step 1

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Step 2

(Going to the Startup tab)

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Step 3

(See the marked area which is Yahoo Search protection. This is often not required and gets installed when you install Yahoo Messenger. Disable it and apply the settings.)

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Looking forward to hear from you all, if you do have suggestions to improve PC boot up, do post your comments here!

Categories
Reviews

YourPC’sFontViewer: View Your PC’s Fonts Quickly

YourPC’sFontViewer is an online service which tells you about all the fonts installed on your computer. You don’t need to do tweak any settings or click any button to know about the fonts. Just open the website and it automatically analyzes all the fonts and displays them on the homepage.

You can change text, color, and size of the fonts and test them quickly. To change these parameters, there are boxes given on the left. In the text field, enter the text you want to display. Similarly enter the color and size of text and hit the “Click Me!!” button.

yourpcfontviewer

The good thing about this service is it doesn’t reload the page while you change any text. It displays the change immediately after clicking the “Click Me” button.

The other great use of this tool is for testing purpose. Install any new font and go to this service to check the font immediately by changing the size and color.

This service is free to use and no sign up is required. This is also a great tool for testing the fonts for websites purpose.

Check out YourPC’sFontViewer to quickly view the fonts installed on your PC.

Do you like to use different Fonts available on your computer? Do drop in your comments.

Categories
Reviews

Monitor energy consumed for computers using Joulemeter

Joulemeter is a new application from Microsoft to monitor the consumption of power in computers. This application was released by Microsoft on 19 May 2010 and is currently in alpha-test state.

About Joulemeter

joule

  • Joulemeter is designed to track the power and total energy consumption of running computers. This light-weight application will always reside in your memory, even if not started manually.
  • The statistics reports the power being consumed, average power, the total energy consumed and the total volume of CO2 released. The interface is so simple and neat. More developments can be expected in the stable version.
  • The statistics provides details about base power for running PC, power consumed for CPU, hard disk and monitor.
  • The uncalibrated model only gives the approximate statistics. For getting accurate measurements, calibration is necessary. But as far as I am concerned, the calibration always failed in all three attempts made. This may be due to some bug which is hoped to be fixed in the stable version.
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The approximate statistics of power being consumed is calculated in watts (W) and the total energy consumed in calculated in kilowatt-hours (kWh). 1 kWh is commonly referred as 1 unit of energy. It is the same unit as read on the energy meters at home. As you can see in the screen-shot, using my laptop for 48 hours cost me about 1 unit of energy. Read more on calculation of energy consumption at labnol.org.

Joulemeter is handy and consumes very less memory. It gives the basic idea of power consumption in computers. A few and old energy saving tips can be found here.

Links: Download Joulemeter | Joulemeter Project

Hope this application would help you estimate the cost of running the computer. Do share your views on Joulemeter here.