Sometimes a good idea is so obvious you can’t help but wonder why no one had bothered doing it before.

Webmonkey reports that Google Chrome has released a new beta version of the Chrome browser that runs ALONGSIDE of the regular full-release version of the Google Chrome browser. The idea is that instead of having to commit to either the beta channel or the dev channel of Chrome as your one and only Chrome browser installed on your system, you could choose to have both a bleeding edge installation of Chrome with all of the latest features and functionality, while at the same time having a completely stable version of the browser installed as well.

This is such a great idea, it is a wonder that all beta software is not offered in this manner.

It wasn’t that long ago that beta software was something that was carefully controlled and offered only to specific partners who installed it in a testing environment. In this case, the only one model of software installation made perfect sense. Ever since Microsoft used mass beta and pre-release distribution and testing to go from releasing the embarrassing and widely hated Windows Vista to the almost complaint free Windows 7, software developers have been increasingly realizing the power of wide beta testing to virtually eliminate bugs and other issues before release. In this model the side-by-side beta version of software makes much more sense.

The developers of the Chrome Browser will no doubt see much wider adoption of its developer-level browser with the new Canary version that allows users to run both the "real" version of the browser and the new leading edge developer beta version at the same time. That broader usage will in turn allow bugs to be discovered and fixed more quickly and that will in turn allow Google to release updates to its Chrome browser faster than its rivals.

Like I said, some business strategy ideas are just so good, you wonder why they haven’t been used before.

While we do not condone piracy or copyright infringement in any form, the truth is that there are a lot of very useful files, programs, ebooks, white papers, research reports and more on the Internet’s numerous file sharing website services out there.

These days, there is less concern about sharing or hosting files on your own online profile or via one of the big free services like Live Spaces, Dropbox, and so on. However, there are still times where it would be better if particular files were not associated so closely with your name (competitor information, for example). And, even with generous online storage limits and high bandwidth traffic limits capable of handling most legitimate sharing purposes, there are still occasions where hosting on a dedicated file sharing service is better.

There are literally hundreds of online file sharing services, but some of the most popular are Rapidshare, Hotfiles, Depositfiles, and Fileshare. These file sharing websites offer anonymous free file hosting storage and sharing with varying features. You can require a password to access files or just allow anyone who gets the URL to be able to download the file.

Free Online File Host Services

Unlike social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, or specific purpose file sharing services like Flickr and Photobucket, the file sharing websites like Rapidshare and Depositfiles allow users to share any type of file. They also allow bigger files to be uploaded and most importantly do not require files to be associated with the user wishing to host the files online.

Therefore, a user could host all manner of controversial, topical, or large files and documents with little fear of repercussions or harassment.

For a researcher, access to exactly this type of books, research reports, notes, and white papers is very important. Rather than waiting days (or weeks) for an interlibrary loan of a doctoral dissertation written by a Harvard PhD candidate or just as long for one of the numerous law journals or other publications produced at colleges and universities around the country, an electronic version can often be found online with some diligent searching, or even with the help of a friendly librarian or fellow researchers.

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The catch to this utopia of free file hosting and unlimited bandwidth downloading for free is that it is not really free at all. Rather, each file hosting service permits anonymous users to download a small amount of material at a time. Some services go so far as to restrict free downloads to just one file per day or some equally low amount of megabytes in a 24 hour period. To get around this restriction, the file host offers a premium membership for a monthly fee or annual fee.

File Sharing Collaboration Strategy for Business

In theory, paying for access to unlimited files shared online would be a good business strategy. However,  there are simply too many of these file sharing services out there, and it seems that every uploader has their favorite. To buy memberships to all of them would be absurd. Even a collection of premium memberships to Rapidshare and a handful of other major players could cost hundreds of dollars per month, not to mention the administrative burden of managing all of the premium accounts, usernames and passwords.

It is a situation crying out for a type of co-op where researchers, freelance writers, students, and others could each purchase a premium membership to one of the file sharing services and then share access between members of the cooperative. Of course, that requires either the insecure sharing of passwords and usernames while hoping for the best, or waiting on the person with the right membership to find download and then either re-upload or otherwise distribute the files needed to the original requester. Some sort of online service could manage the process for individual coops, but would need to be low profile to avoid being banned or blocked by the sharing services.

In the meantime, there is a very elegant solution allowing users to download for free from any file host like RapidShare, DepositFiles, HotFiles, and more. It is an open-source program called JDownloader. JDownloader works by handling all of the waiting, logging in, and downloading of files on the file hosts. If a captcha must be entered, JDownloader displays an unobtrusive pop-up box at the necessary time and the user can quickly enter the required Captcha without having to monitor a timer or countdown manually.

Furthermore, the software will wait on the user’s behalf for the next free time to open up, whether that is one hour or 24 hours and then automatically start downloading the requested files. It is not an instant process by any means, but online research requests can be queued up and then retrieved over a few hour or overnight if necessary.

JDownloader monitors the clipboard for URLs and then automatically adds them to its download queue to be reviewed by the user before the downloads are started. Downloading a dozen links off of a website requires simply right-clicking and choosing Copy URL for each link. No real waiting is required, because by the time the user can copy a new URL to the clipboard, JDownloader has already added it to the list of file downloads.

If you need to get a handful of books or files off of multiple file sharing websites, give JDownloader a try. It might just be the solution you are looking for… at least until I figure out that co-op thing… or someone beats me to it

A final break if you need one for small business owners using section 179 deduction on taxes.

Free file sharing storage downloading is complete.

More small business strategies await you.

Update: Looks like Live Sync is working again and live.sync.com is up and running.

However, there is a new bummer. Looks like a new version of Live Sync is coming. It is currently in beta. However, it looks like the new beta version of Live Sync will not support Windows XP. That wouldn’t be so bad except that it also says that all of your Microsoft sync clients must be updated to the beta version in order to work together. That means you won’t be able to use Live Sync to keep files and folders synchronized between Windows 7 and Windows XP computers unless you keep your Win 7 boxes on the old (current) version of the client. (Maybe some of that will change when the client comes out of beta.)

Windows Live Sync, part of the Microsoft Live Essentials for Windows 7 and other operating systems has been down for a couple of days now. The sync.live.com website says that the Live Sync Website is offline for maintenance and gives a link to the Live Sync newsgroup for more information. Of course, there is no more readily accessible OFFICIAL information posted on the newsgroup, so we can only assume that this is some sort of default setting when there is a problem with Live Sync.

The Live Sync software client installed on each PC has an icon that displays the sync status. Currently, it has alternating arrows blue and white and says “Not Signed In” despite being logged in already with passwords saved.

For this mobile freelance writer, the Live Sync outage is starting to become a pain since I use Live Sync to keep folders and files synchronized between my desktop computer, writing laptop, and my writing netbook.

Hope it comes back up soon and this is not an indicator of things to come.

I was going to just leave Internet Explorer alone. Everyone knows that it is the bottom of the pile when it comes to browsers. The only people who use IE are those who are either not computer savvy enough to know that there are options and how to get them, and those who do know about the better web browsers out there, but figure that it just is not worth the effort. Even Microsoft knows IE 8 is already junk, that is why whenever it posts press releases about how fast Internet Explorer is compared to Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari, they compare them to the non-existent Internet Explorer 9 and not the currently released Internet Explorer 8.

Today, however, two of IE 8′s many shortcomings popped up in my face again and I figured that I would write this post in hopes that a growing chorus of user voices might just get Microsoft to pay attention to what is really wrong with Internet Explorer instead of what they think is wrong with Internet Explorer.

First and foremost is the Apple Computer-like arrogance that keeps IE from offering a way to choose your own setting for how IE 8 handles browser sessions. In every modern web browser out there, except for IE 8, you can choose to restore your last browsing session by default. That is, you can tell the browser to open all of the same tabs and webpages that were open during your last browsing session automatically the next time you start your browser.

Internet Explorer offers the ability to restore your last browsing session, but requires that you do it manually. The stated reason for this enormous deficiency in browser functionality is  privacy. Microsoft thinks that the possibility that someone might inadvertently see the website you were looking at last time is more important than you (the user) wanting to be able to pick right back up where you left off. Or, in the case of yours truly, not only pick right back up where I was online last time, but also to BE REMINDED of where I was last time without having to jot down notes or send myself a reminder or whatever.

While privacy is important and a worthy goal, allowing the user to use the software in the way that works best for them is WAY more important. It makes perfect sense that for privacy reasons Microsoft does not set Internet Explorer 8 to reopen the last browsing session by default. It makes NO SENSE whatsoever that Microsoft will not provide that option as one of the settings that can be customized in IE 8. I guess this feature wasn’t widespread enough during the development of IE 8 for Microsoft to bother copying it into their “revolutionary” new browser.

Spell Check Missing From IE 8

There is also no spell check in IE8 by default. In a world where more and more is done online on the Internet, being able to spell check your entries into fields and forms is paramount. Of course, at the time, although everyone else had a spellchecker, and Microsoft has access to arguably one of the most complete spellcheck programs anywhere (the one in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office), they didn’t bother to include it. You have to download an addon called ieSpell in order to get spell check in IE 8. I guess that they wanted to make sure that at least someone downloaded an IE addon since as we discussed above, anyone willing to go download add-ons would have long ago downloaded a better browser instead.

Password Saving Wrong Time

Finally, IE 8 has a very annoying flaw in the way it saves and remembers passwords for websites. Apparently when Microsoft sent down the command to copy the password save and remember function from better browsers like Firefox, they didn’t actually pay enough attention to how it was done to copy it right.

When you enter a username and password in Chrome, Opera, or Firefox, the next page continues to load behind the dialog box that asks you whether or not you want to save the password. This is critical because all webpages hide the password you enter behind astericks which means that you can never be sure that you got the password right until the login page loads and sends you on your way with a successful login. On good web browsers, you enter your username and password, and then, if there is any doubt in your mind about whether or not your login will be successful, you just wait and see. If the login works, THEN you click Save or Yes to Save your password. If not, you click No and enter the password again and the browser correctly offers you a chance to save THAT password.

The jack#ss that designed Internet Explorer 8′s password save and remember functionality makes you answer the question BEFORE the next page will load. That means that you have to say Yes in order to see if the login was successful or not. If it was not sucessful, then you have already saved the WRONG password thanks to this bassackwards feature.

The worst part is that when you re-enter your login information and actually get it right, IE may not even offer to change the wrong information it already saved, especially if you fat-fingered the username. Now that website has TWO username and password combinations saved and one of them will be wrong forever unless you go manually dig into the guts of the IE settings menus to find and delete that wrong information.

Microsoft, while you are building functions and support and speed into IE 9, if you could please fix these things that you got wrong in IE 8, we would really appreciate it. Of course, it isn’t really that big of deal. Those of us that know better only use IE for two reasons: to get stuff off your own website, and to make sure that our websites look right for the chuckleheads who use your browser.

Custom Windows 7 Sounds

When installing a new theme, you probably look at the pretty background images, the colors, and maybe how it does or does not support Aero. But, don’t forget that different themes can also come with different sounds.

After weeks of being annoyed by a banjo sound as my windows default beep, I finally went into the Personalize control panel for Windows 7 to change it. I was surprised to find so many sound themes inside. I thought everyone just basically left the default Windows sounds alone with the exception of one or two tweaks here and there.

To save you some time, let me tell you that the best way to search through the Windows sound themes is by selecting the Default Beep sound and then clicking on the little speaker to play a sample of what it will sound like.

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The Default Beep is what you will hear more than anything else while using your computer. It is the beep that you hear when you get an non-critical error message (like when you click the wrong thing), or the beep you hear when you get a basic status message like print job completed, or software updated or whatever. In other words, you had better like the sound of the default beep.

Go through the available Windows 7 sound themes and find the ones that have a default beep that you like, or that you can at least live with. THEN, you can check out the other sounds and pick your favorite customized Windows 7 sound theme. Otherwise, you are just wasting time because you’ll be back trying to fix that annoying banjo sound beep in no time at all.

Enjoy your customized Windows 7 installation. You deserve it.

Happy day.

The basic speed dial window all browsers have.

I usually don’t like to post stubs or preliminary articles like this, but I went all reviewer on Mozilla.org this morning and, of course, ended up writing a review of my favorite Firefox add-on of all time, Speed Dial. As that review got longer I felt myself wanting to show people how to really maximize productivity with this Firefox plug-in by configuring Speed Dial the way I have ended up tweaking it and setting it up. Don’t get me wrong, my why isn’t the only way, but when you see the power and customization of the Firefox Speed Dial plug-in in use in my setup, you can see why I think that Speed Dial is the most important Firefox add-on anyone can have. In fact, it’s the one real drawback to Google Chrome for me right now.

There is a Speed Dial extension for Google Chrome on the Google extensions website, but it is a pale imitation of this powerful Firefox add-on. It doesn’t have dial groups which is the main powerful feature of the Speed Dial plugin.

Anyway, it would be irresponsible of me to get into posting my Speed Dial Firefox extension review right now when I have deadlines barreling down on my like runaway trucks with no brakes on the side of a steep mountain. However, I don’t want anyone following the link I threw onto my review at mozilla.org to arrive and wonder where in the heck the review I promised is. Therefore, I’m going to post a couple of screen shots that I think will help any user with even a little bit of power browsing experience to understand the kind of productivity gains that are possible with this plugin.

If that is you, either install the plugin and start messing around with it. Just got to Tools -> Add-ons -> Options and start customizing away. (I recommend setting up either a Speed Dial icon on your toolbars, or doing like I did and setting the right click on a page to include the context menu option to Add to Speed Dial. You can make that work by right-clicking on the tab if you prefer, but I’m used to right-clicking on the page itself when I want to do something. One of the best things about this add-on is how much it can be customized to work exactly the way you need it to in order to help out with your own time management by making browsing faster and easier.)

The quick, quick, version of how to use Speed Dial to speed up your Internet browsing and boost your online power goes like this:

1. Use Dial Groups – Every web browser offers some sort of dial based start up screen. Opera was first, but Google Chrome has one now too. IE has a similar concept although it is done via text links instead of actual configurable dials. What makes Speed Dial great is the ability to have MORE THAN ONE page of dials.
2. Set Speed Dial to show up in new tabs instead of waiting to click something. Every time you press CTL-T you’ll get a list of your speed dials to use. Just make your current homepage the first dial on the first dial group to keep instant access to it.
3. Customize the dial group tabs – You can change the colors to make tabs easier to find. Just don’t go crazy or you’ll hate it.
4. Customize the dial groups – Need more than 9 websites for one dial group? No problem. One of the configurations is how many sites to show on a speed dial group. You can change both the default, and even better change on a per group basis. You can have 12 dials under Work and 6 dials under Facebook Games or vice versa, depending on your lifestyle – If you have a widescreen monitor take advantage of that width by setting your default dial group configuration to 3 rows and 4 columns.

Lastly, if you are a power user looking for maximum time savings, you’ll end up with a lot of dials that link to a lot of webpages. By default, the speed dial thumbnails refresh frequently which means you could end up with a slow running Firefox when running Speed Dial and switching through several dials because thumbnails are being generated for each site no matter how fast you click. (See the link for details.)

There is lots more power. Read the docs or poke around the settings to see what else you can do to improve online productivity with Speed Dial. Or, come back here in the next day or two when I get time to go on full tilt. Even easier, grab the Best Hubris RSS Feed to make sure you get the updated Firefox plugin reviews as soon as they come online.

Then you can check out my post about Firefox personas if you need to read more about the Mozilla web browser.

Need better search results on Google?

Need more recent results for Google searches?

Want to reduce irrelevant Google search results?

Consider using the More Search tools menu located in the left toolbar on the Google search website.

I’ve noticed a lot of Google search users arriving here on Best Hubris and other websites are trying to add dates to their searches in order to get better Google search results and reduce irrelevant Google search data. For example, several searchers appear to be inputting 2010 into Google searches hoping to get results from the current year.

Unfortunately, the Google search ranking algorithm doesn’t work that way very well. Any webpage that has the number 2010 in its text will qualify, while webpages and articles posted during 2010, but without the actual number used in the text will not qualify. This webpage for example has the keyword 2010 on it three times so far. That means it will match searches for 2010 better than many other pages that are just as current.

So, if you are looking for current HP LaserJet 1012 drivers for Windows 7 by putting 2010 in your search, you might find this page instead of the one on this website that actually has a way to use HP LaserJet 1012 printer drivers on Windows 7 with a workaround.

Most searches will show a choice of dates limiting functions that include Past Month, and Past Year. Using these search date parameters will do a lot to make your Google search results more relevant.

For more specific date range based searches, use the custom date search function.

A good tip for better Google searches made easy is to just enter a start date into the custom date search interface. Google will automatically use the current date as the end date giving users a way to search the Internet from a specific date up until now fast and easy.

For example, if you are searching for information about how to use Windows 7 or want to search on new Windows 7 features, limit your Google search dates to March 1, 2010 or April 1, 2010 start dates to capture information published about the actual full Windows 7 release software and avoid all of those webpages and articles that were written about the Windows 7 beta.

That way if you want more information about advanced search in Windows 7 you won’t be reading all the speculation about what might be in the final product, or trying to match up screen shots of Windows 7 search features that were taking on Windows 7 Release Candidate instead of the full retail version of Windows 7.

When you spend a lot of time in the world of technology it is easy to get jaded. New features that are promoted (self-promoted, and then echoed by lazy writers) are almost never as useful as they are supposed to be, and half the time, they are not even new. I almost ruined my eyes looking at computer monitors full of accolades for Microsoft Internet Explorer 7′s “new” tabbed browsing feature, especially since I had been a power-user of tabs in web browsing since they came out in Firefox years before.

When new features are both truly useful and actually new, like the Ribbon Interface in Office 2010 (updated from a partial integration in Microsoft Office 2007), they are often met with initial resistance.

As a freelance technology writer I not only spend a lot of time in the tech world, I am actually forced to look at and use new software features regardless of how useful I could possibly find them because a client needs a review of new software utilities or a customized newsletter could benefit from a comparison of program features.

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The other thing that happens to us technology types is that we stop reading about what a program does. We most certainly do not watch videos that show us how to use new features. (How many seconds of your life does it waste to watch someone show you how to click File then New on a training video?) Fortunately, most of the time it works out just fine because when you are used to how software works, you know where to look for functions you need. However, from time to time, I miss out on a cool new feature or a great new function that would increase my productivity.

Firefox 3.6 Coolest New Feature

When it comes to software development, there are two kinds of functionality. One type of functionality affects the usefulness of the product. These functions make the software, better, faster, easier to use, and so on. The other type of functionality makes the computer software more fun to use, or just makes it look nicer. These days, it seems like there is a lot of action in the latter category.

Most of the “improvements” in the user interface design realm are actually just ways to make a software product look nicer, or most commonly, to make it so that you can superficially customize the application. Think of it as the equivalent of being able to add bumper stickers to your software.

For the most part, I don’t have much use for these beautification features. A computer is, what a computer is, and while using my own wallpaper is fun, it doesn’t really matter what the wallpaper is when I’m switching between eight full-screen windows in a desperate race to beat an important deadline.

As you can imagine, I haven’t played around much with Firefox’s personas feature.

This morning, however, I was bored (actually, I was procrastinating and rendering my ADD planner worthless) and I ended up on the Firefox Personas page after re-installing the Firefox NoScript Plugin.

While I don’t have much need for a new persona for my web browser, I was clicking around to see what was on the Mozilla website when I noticed something happen to my default Firefox browser.

When you hover over the sample picture graphic of a Firefox persona, it previews what that persona would look like if you installed it on your Firefox 3.6 installation. Tons of applications do previews like this, but the fun part is that Firefox previews the persona on your real installation. That is, the browser you are currently using to browse the available personas actually changes when you hover your mouse over the preview.

Now this is fun.

Normally, would have to download and install the browser extension or browser skin in order to “play around” with what it would look like. Then, when I am finished wasting time, I would switch back, and if I remembered, uninstall all the different personas I downloaded to check out. Hopefully they all uninstalled cleanly and there were no residual effects, although that is never a guarantee.

But, with the Firefox persona preview functionality I can see what my browser would look like with a hundred different personas, all without downloading or installing anything. So, I can see what my Firefox would look like if I installed the Kelly Brook persona (First, calculate the odds of the wife using my computer and Firefox…). Or, for a more whimsical (and socially acceptable at a client site) persona I can check out the Snoopy persona.

Here is my usual Firefox (the default) persona:

Here is the Kelly Brook persona:

In the end, personas are a play thing, like putting up a Go Buffs sign on my home office wall, but sometimes, playing is good. After all, all work and no play make Jack go crazy and try to chop up his family at the Overlook Hotel.

As I read the release coverage from the technology community about the new Apple iPad I kept thinking, what could you actually do with it that would make it work buying one for $500? Sure, it can surf the web and read emails, but so can a lot of much cheaper devices. I began to wonder if it wasn’t just a myth that Apple gets a pass on all of its technology the way other companies, especially Microsoft, do not.

It is starting to become clearer that technology pundits, website bloggers, and other technology writers are too eager to like whatever Apple sends their way, regardless of how well the device actually performs.

Remember the problem with the iPhone antenna that everyone knew about, but Apple refused to admit even existed? A fix was silently rolled out and everyone went about their business. If a Microsoft device, Palm gadget, or BlackBerry had the same issue, it would have been pilloried in technology circles as having been not ready for prime time or something of the sort, but since it was an Apple product, it was just a little glitch that got fixed.

So far, I haven’t heard of any hardware troubles with the iPad, but it does seem an awful lot like certain techie folks are trying too hard to like the iPad.

Consider this blog post at Network World from a technology blogger using the iPad for business. The point of the column is that it is "still lacking," but the reasoning is absolutely comical.

First, there is an issue with using LinkedIn. There is no LinkedIn app for the iPad yet, so it doesn’t look very good. Um…isn’t LinkedIn a website?

Isn’t the core function of the iPad the ability to use the Internet and websites? If it has to have a native iPad app for websites to look and function well, then isn’t this a big failure of the iPad?

Shouldn’t the iPad be able to work as an online device without having to download a special application for every website you use?

Then there is the issue of not being able to open certain types of non-Apple files, particularly .ics calendar files. Ironically, ics files are from iCalendar which is an Apple application. If Windows Mobile refused to open calendar files from Outlook would it get a two liner in a blog post about how that is disappointing, or would there be calls for a mass boycott and anti-trust investigations?

Equally laughable is the lament about how few applications are ready for the iPad. Would a review for Palm, Microsoft, or other device mention that as a little nagging thing? Aren’t Microsoft releases of everything judged by whether or not they have a killer application?

So, in short, the iPad isn’t really a good gadget to be used for business purposes and if anyone else had released it, technology bloggers and media types would be giving away their demo units, but with this guy and many others, the course of action is to insist that the iPad will be great someday once there are more apps, once it works better, once it is less closed and proprietary.

The Bigger Fool

But the thing that made me pull my eyeball muscles from rolling them so hard was the writer’s complaint about the price of iPad accessories. He notes that it is outrageous that Apple charges $50 for a cover for the iPad. Wait, that isn’t entirely correct. The writer notes that it is outrageous that HE PAID $50 for an iPad cover. What is actually outrageous is how many people willingly overpay for Apple accessories.

I guess it isn’t so outrageous after all. When you know that people will pay anything you ask for whatever you are selling, why charge less? Wouldn’t that make Apple the sucker instead of — well, we won’t say it.

In all fairness, this particular blogger is a networking guy and writes for the publication because of his experience with Cisco et.al, which is why I read his stuff in the first place.

Keep reading this guy’s posts and you’ll find where he declares that AT&T should fire everyone who came up with limited data plans and how businesses will be pulling 3G cards in from the field because of it. I guess no one at Apple should be fired for any of its product’s shortcomings.

Ironically, you won’t find one mention about how Apple’s decision to lock its customers into a single carrier are the root cause of this issue. AT&T knows that, just like this guy will shell out $50 for a $15 case, they will also pay every month for a capped data plan because some people will do anything to like the iPad. That is what impartial, cool, in-the-know technology bloggers and hipsters do. If people could move with their iPads to another carrier, AT&T wouldn’t be able to change data plans to be more limited, but that would be something bad about Apple, and we never ever want to write that.

There have been many bugs, issues, and design flaws in Microsoft Windows over the years. Many of them have been chased out of the operating system. Others did not exist in earlier versions only to pop up later, typically as a new "feature" that nobody wanted. However, the most annoying Windows flaw still exists in Windows 7.

Autoruns 10 Utility Shows All Startup Locations

Nothing exposes a big computer programming flaw like a software utility created to fix that bug. Autoruns is a Windows based utility that does just one simple thing. Autoruns shows you all of the programs and services set to run at startup on a Windows computer system. Only, it is NOT a simple thing.

Originally, the only programs that started running automatically at boot up were those that were required by the operating system in order to make the computer work. However, programs added to the folder labeled "Startup" on Windows computers would also run at startup.

It turns out that people don’t necessarily want a bunch of programs automatically running every time that they start up their computer. In fact, most people would rather start programs when, and only when, they needed to use them. So, savvy computer users began deleting programs out of the Startup menu and the race between crappy, bloated, software and computer system users was on.

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Software developers can’t wean themselves off the crutch of starting their software automatically or pre-loading some or all of a computer program at boot time. Microsoft kicked this trend off by putting a Microsoft Office toolbar that nobody wanted – especially when they found out how much system power it wasted to run – in the startup folder. Other software developers followed cramming toolbars and other useless items into the various start at boot locations available on Windows operating system computers.

Bloated Adobe Acrobat Reader

Adobe became the poster child for system resource abuse when it began pre-loading a hefty chunk of its overweight Acrobat Reader at boot time.

As PDF files became a more commonly used format, the glaring bloat and inefficiency of Adobe software became more apparent to even non-expert computer users. When users were browsing a website with their Internet browser and clicked on a link that was to a PDF file, nothing happened.

Actually, that isn’t really true. What was true, was that nothing SEEMED to happen. What was actually happening, was that Adobe Acrobat Reader was struggling to load its enormous self in order to display the PDF link. It took literally 10 seconds on some well configured computers for a PDF page to load the first time. It got so bad that people stopped clicking on PDF links because they knew that meant a long weight for even a one-page document. In addition, savvy computer users turned to Acrobat Reader alternatives written by other developers.

In response, instead of re-coding and streamlining it Heifer of a PDF viewer, Adobe chose instead to penalize every computer in the world with Adobe Reader installed by pre-loading part of its software at startup and leave it running the whole time the computer was in use just so that its reader would appear to start faster. Of course, if you are going to abuse people’s system resources, you need to hide it and make sure that they don’t just delete a shortcut or something to end pre-loading the bloated software.

Good clipboard manager stores multiple entries.

As it turns out there are literally hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of ways that a software developer can force their applications or utilities to run at start up time on a Windows computer. Unfortunately, there are far fewer ways that users can view and manage all of these vampire processes that suck the performance blood out of computer systems.

Using MSCONFIG to configure which programs run at startup is a joke. Not only can programs easily re-add themselves to startup whenever you do end up running them, MSCONFIG only shows a tiny fraction of the ways that software can be installed to run at bootup. Autoruns 10 was recently released by the folks at Sysinternals (which was acquired by Microsoft, at least in part, no doubt, to stem the tide of data that made Microsoft Windows look bloated, badly configured, and deeply flawed).

Autoruns 10 claim to fame is that it is the most comprehensive startup manager utility in existence because it scans hundreds more potentially hidden startup locations than other startup configuration manager software does.

Computer screen causing eye problems?

Does anyone else see the painful irony here?

In order for the user to be able to make their computer do what they want it to do, they need a special extra tool to sniff out and find all the tricks software development companies use to get the computer to do what the software company wants regardless of what the user wants.

Considering the slow boot time was one of the top reasons people hate Vista so much, you would think that Microsoft would want to put an end to this practice. After all, part of the reason Vista boots so slow and one of the things that can drag the bootup time for Windows XP and the startup time for Windows 7 is all of these auto-starting programs. It doesn’t make the poor quality software that these companies sell look bad, it makes Windows look bad. A quick load would be one way to make people love Windows 7.

Unfortunately, Microsoft depends on these tricks as much as other computer companies, so until they can get their own house in order, users only defense against rogue programs wasting resources is vigilant use of programs like Sysinternals AutoRuns to keep programs from adding themselves to one of the numerous hidden startup locations. Of course, in order to really watch your computer’s resources, you’ll need another third-party utility by, you guessed it, Sysinternals.

Process Explorer is what Task Manager should be, except Task Manager allows software companies to hide what programs and processes they are actually running from Task Manager so, once again, they can look like their software runs better than it really does.

Get Autoruns 10. There isn’t anything else you can do.