Posts Tagged ‘software’

Turning Off the Windows Vista Account Control Feature

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

The Windows Vista User Account Control feature has been designed to stop your computer being affected by malware and prompts you for authorization before carrying out things such as putting on new software or making a change to the computer’s settings.

While the idea behind this is sound enough, in reality it can get a bit annoying after a while and will cause you to spend more time doing simple things than you would otherwise take.

To turn off this feature go into the Control Panel and then go into User Accounts and Family Safety followed by User Accounts. Here you will see the option to Turn User Account Control On or Off. A click here take you to the place where ticking or unticking the box will change the settings.

The official Microsoft advice is not to take turn off the User Account Control, but there are some parts of it you can deactivate without fear. For example, you can stop it blacking out your screen before it does some tasks. This is an option on Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate editions and you do it in the following way.

Go into group policy by choosing Start then Run then gpedit.msc. Now you need to go to Computer Configuration followed by Windows Setting and then Security Settings followed by Local Policies and then Security Options. Here you can look for the policy called User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation. If you put this to disabled then you will get rid of the rather annoying black out feature.

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The Benefits of Google Chrome

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

What do you look for in your web browser? If you are like the majority of internet users then you value speed, security and simplicity over most other factors.

These are the three main reasons why a lot of people have already switched to the Google Chrome browser. Chrome was launched in 2008 and has cemented its position as the third most popular browser behind Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. However, it has been steadily been gaining market share and recently passed the 10% share milestone. It has also been voted as being the most user friendly of the browsers currently on offer and seems certain to continue its climb in the popularity stakes.

The reputation of Chrome as arguably the safest browser around is in part based on the blacklists for phishing and malware which are constantly updated by Google and which let users know when they are entering a potentially dangerous site. There is also the fact that malware is stopped from doing any damage by the fact that each tab is individually separated and malware on one tab cannot find the information on another.

The speed which Chrome operates at is another of its big selling points, and it has repeatedly beaten the competition in speed tests. The interface is simple and rather basic, adding to the feel that it has been designed for speed and functionality rather than looks. You get just back and forward buttons, refresh and cancel and menu as standard.  The tab control is one of the main aspects of the browser, and these are highly useful ways of controlling and administering your browsing.

A recent change to the browser has also been designed to make it easier for businesses to use by letting system administrators oversee the process of updating and installing the software onto their computers.

There are versions of Chrome available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and it is well worth looking at if you fancy changing your browser and want to find the best one around.

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