Lifestyles with Internet and Electronics

Yes, yes, yes, I know that. Windows XP/Vista has its own bundled software uninstaller when you install Windows. But have you noticed leftover files that still stays undeleted even you already finished uninstalling the software? You may not also notice, the bundled windows uninstaller does not completely remove the registry of the uninstalled software, thus does not only occupies unnecessary space on your hard drive but also makes your system virtually slower. The solution? REVO UNINSTALLER

Revo Uninstaller helps you to uninstall and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer even if you cannot uninstall them from "Windows Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet. It is alternative to "Windows Add or Remove Programs" applet and much faster from it!

With its advanced and fast algorithm, Revo Uninstaller analyzes an application's data before uninstall and scans after you uninstall an application. After the program's regular uninstaller runs, you can remove additional unnecessary files, folders and registry keys that are usually left over on your computer. Even if you have a broken installation, Revo Uninstaller scans for an application's data on your hard disk drives and in the Windows registry and shows all found files, folders and registry keys so you can delete them.


With its unique "Hunter mode", Revo Uninstaller offers you some simple, easy to use, but effective and powerful approaches to manage (uninstall, stop, delete, disable from auto starting) and to get information about your installed and/or running programs.

Revo Uninstaller gives you another 8 handy and powerful tools to clean up your system.

Here are the list of all of the tools and utilities that are included:

Auto Start Manager - stop programs that start automatically when Windows starts; Speed up loading of Windows!



Windows Tools Manager - handy and useful tools bundled with every version of Windows; Easily find useful system tools and options!



Junk Files Cleaner - find and remove unnecessary files from your computer; Free up disk space and delete data you do not need!



Browsers History Cleaner - erase the web site history, visited pages history and temporary internet files of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape and Opera web browsers; Free up a lot of disk space by deleting temporary internet files like temporary saved videos, flash files, pictures etc!


Office History Cleaner - remove the history of most recently used files in MS Office; Remove your tracks by deleting the list of last opened MS Office documents!



Windows History Cleaner - remove the history of recently opened files, delete temporary files, remove usage tracks and other history items that are saved by Windows; Remove your tracks saved by windows for a lot of operations!


Unrecoverable Delete Tool - erase files and folders forever; Be sure that nobody could recover your files and folders after deleting!



Evidence Remover - make sure already deleted files, folders and other data are unrecoverable!



I'm using this software myself, and so far I am pleased with its performance. Give it a try, click here to download. You don't have to worry about the price, Revo Uninstaller is completely free of charge. So what are you waiting for?




don't forget to leave your comments! happy valentines day!

Dual Booting your computer, just like mine, gives me more control and security to my personal files. For those interested, I am actually dual booting my pc with Microsoft Windows XP and Ubuntu 7.10 Gusty Gibbon. If you want your PC to dual boot just like mine, this blog post is for you. How is this possible? Let me explain.


Step 1: Check the Requirements

First and foremost, dual booting needs at least 2 hard drive partitions or better, two physical hard drives. If you already have this requirement then you are ready to dual boot your pc. You also need to know the architecture of your processor, whether it is 32-bit or 64-bit. Newer Intel processors like Pentium D, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, and most AMD processors are 64-bit ready. This should be noted because 64-bit OS will not run on 32-bit processors, although 64-bit processors can work with both 32 and 64-bit OS. Always remember to backup important files before making major changes in your PC.

Step 2: Get a Copy of Ubuntu



Ubuntu is a free Linux distro which you can download directly from it's website www.ubuntu.com. You can even request CD's if you want. Gutsy Gibbon is the latest release of Ubuntu and it's the one I installed. There are actually many, and I mean many, distros available. You can check this at www.distrowatch.com. You might be thinking why I choose Ubuntu. Well, to tell you honestly, I just am just trying and exploring it, and i can say it's as good as advertised.
If you download a cd image, make sure you burn it as a cd image and not as a file. Also, make sure what you download meets the system requirements (usually very minimal, but remember the 32-64-bit-thing).



Step 3: Boot the Ubuntu CD and Install Ubuntu.

Just restart your computer and then set it to boot from the cd drive. You can do this by pressing "DEL" when you see "Press DEL.." when your computer starts. Then, go to the boot sequence and prioritize the CD drive. Save then exit.

By the way, Ubuntu is a LiveCD, it makes you test the OS without even installing it. So after booting the cd, see the image above, just choose "Start or Install Ubuntu." You will be then directed to its desktop. You can explore it, open some programs, and view your files from your windows partition. If you're ready, just open the "Install" icon on the desktop to begin installing Ubuntu to your hard drive. Just follow the instructions and don't be afraid to click continue. Hehehe. Please make sure you install Ubuntu on your free partition (the other one aside from the windows partition). Ubuntu will reformat this partition so better be careful.


Step 3: Enjoy your new Ubuntu


If you have successfully install Ubuntu, you will see the Grub boot loader (above) every time you boot your PC. By default, your PC will now boot Ubuntu if you do not choose any OS within 10 seconds. If you have a fast internet connection, you can update Ubuntu and install additional software that you might need, all for free.


I hope you learned something with this entry. I know it's a little broad but I hope somehow you now have an idea on how to dual boot your PC. If you have any problems, you can always go to forums such as http://ubuntuforums.org/ or visit the official Ubuntu Website. Also try Googling any problems, there are a lot of linux users who want to help you. Enjoy!

You can also read my older post "The Other Look Of My Computer"



Don't forget to drop some comments!

Just this past few days, my niece asked me a favor for her class project. She wanted me to download an old song, "Ay Ay Ay Pag-ibig" by Pilita Corrales. As usual, I accepted the favor because I thought Frostwire (I don't use Limewire) can help me download that song. To my surprise, that song can't be found anywhere using Frostwire. So I tried Googling it to find more information about this old song. After a several minutes of research and research and more research, I finally found the song. I just had a little problem, the song was streamed on the internet and there was no-one who can help me download an audio stream.


And so I researched again on how-to's about downloading an audio stream right to my hardware as an mp3 file or the like. I actually found a few softwares, but these crap didn't help me much. It's either I need to buy them to fully use them, or they were just plain crap. Can you image, I was even very stupid to use a microphone connected to my PC then I tried recording the song from the speakers! What was I thinking during that time? Forgive me but I was just desperate.


After an hour of frustration, I tried searching at the open source softwares' website OpenSource.org . It was then when the historical event happened, Laytech met Audacity (damn, why didn't I think of open source software right away?).


Audacity is another quality open source software available for free. If editing photos have the popular Photoshop, editing audio have Audacity. It is a powerful but simple audio editing software that is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Anyway, my problem is not yet solved. So to make this story short, i will just enumerate the steps on how I recorded an audio stream right to my PC.

step 1: Download Audacity (click here to go to the download site)

Download and install Audacity (just 2.1MB!) and also download Lame Mp3 encoder, this will be used in saving your recorded song as Mp3 format. The Lame Mp3 encoder is a compressed file, you will need to extract it to any temporary directory. Make sure you remember this directory because you will be needing this in the last step.


step 2: Disable Line Volume and Mic Volume in your audio settings.

We need to disable these settings in order for us to record only the sound card's output (that's the music we hear from the speakers). Enabling Line and Mic Volume might cause unwanted background noise from the recording. Go to the Control Panel > Sound, Speech, and Audio Device to do this.
step 3: Prepare the song for the recording session.

Make sure that the audio stream has completely buffed before you record it. This will make the recording session run smoothly.


step 4: Record the song.

Using your newly installed Audacity, just click the record button to start recording the song. Immediately after clicking the record button, play the audio stream. Audacity will record what ever sound that your sound card will produce, so make sure there are no other music or sound playing during the recording.


step 5: Save the your recording session

This will be the last step. After recording your song, you can save it to either as Audacity file or as Mp3 file. If you don't want to edit the song any further, just save it as Mp3. In Audacity, go to File > Export As Mp3. Audacity will now then ask for the Lame Mp3 Encoder, so just browse to it then wait until Audacity finishes encoding your session as Mp3.


That's it! Job done and now I have the song that I needed, thanks to Audacity. It's simple, easy to use, and most of all it's free! Give it a try and you'll be amazed!




Go for free, go for Open Source!

I have been reading on some news on consumer electronics and I come across to an interesting article which I would like you all to read. Here are the details:


" A 3G Linux phone for sub $US100

NXP Semiconductors and Purple Labs have introduced a reference design for 3G Linux phone offering video telephony, music playback, high-speed Internet browsing and video streaming that they say will cost operators less than $US100.

They claim that their Purple Magic phone, which will debut at the global mobile congress in Barcelona later this month, will serve as a reference design for phone manufacturers creating entry-level 3G handsets, including those targeting mobile markets such as Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

"NXP believes in Linux as the basis for the next generation of mobile handset innovation," said Dan Rabinovitsj, senior vice president and general manager, cellular business, NXP Semiconductors. "We've been working closely with Purple Labs to develop Linux-based mobile terminals that meet the cost and performance requirements of the mass market. Our joint achievement is to bring the advantages of an Open OS environment to the mass market based on industry leading silicon and software."

NXP is in the top 10 semiconductor companies. It was founded by Philips more than 50 years ago and today has 37,000 employees in more than 20 countries sales of around Eur 5 billion. Purple Labs is a venture capital backed US company founded in 2001 specializing in Linux based mobile products."

source: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/16436/127/


Wow, I'm sure that mobile phone will be better than those already out there, plus the stability of the Operating System used. It just shows the simple fact that Linux isn't just a system for the Linux enthusiasts, after all, it was made primarily for end users like us.