How to Change the Behavior of Taskbar Grouping.

If you are a user of Windows XP and like your Taskbar organized, you will no doubt have the Grouping similar taskbar buttons” options enabled.

By default, when you enable the Group similar taskbar buttons option in Taskbar properties, items are grouped only when the taskbar buttons begin to get too small, and then the item that you opened first, is grouped first. This saves room on the taskbar by grouping similar entries (for example, all open Microsoft Word documents) together. However this does not always function as expected or wanted.

To change this behavior, create a “TaskbarGroupSize” DWORD entry in the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

The values for this key are:

0 – (Default) Group by age (oldest group first)
1 – Group by size (largest group first)
2 – Group any group of size 2 or more
3 – Group any group of size 3 or more

Log off and then back on for this change to take effect.

Source: KB281628

Word: Counterintuitive, Nomenclature.

Counterintuitive: contrary to what common sense would suggest.

Nomenclature: A system of naming; terminology: a system of words used to name things in a particular discipline; “legal terminology”; “biological nomenclature”; “the language of sociology.”

Example as used by Ed Bott to explain the system and boot partition:

The boot partition is the partition where the Windows system files are located. On most systems, this is the same as the system partition. On a multiboot system, where drive C contains files from an earlier Windows version and you’ve installed Windows XP to drive D or drive E, the boot partition is identified as such in the Disk Management window. (And yes, we know that it makes no sense to say that the boot files are on the system partition and the system files are on the boot partition. However, this counterintuitive nomenclature has been a part of the Windows NT family since the earliest days and isn’t likely to change any time soon. )

Joga Bonito.

Lucky guy that won a freestyle competition in Britain got to spend the day with C.Ronaldo,Zaltan and Ronaldinho.

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Word: Unabated.

Unabated – continuing at full strength or intensity; “the winds are unabated”; “the popularity of his books among young people continued unabated”; “WF does not block outbound traffic, so even in “no exceptions” mode, you can still use your browser to connect to the Internet. Similarly, other outbound connections— whether they’re legitimate services or some sort of spyware—continue unabated.”

80s Break Dance Clip Snip.

This is pretty neat.

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Ferrell Reunites Lance Armstrong with his Father.

This is funny.

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Exploding Japanese Notebook.

Although on the whole I am happy with my recently acquired Dell Inspiron 630m notebook, after reading this post, it seems that I may have made a bad decision in going with Dell. The spectacular images of the exploding Japanese notebook are definately scarey to any Dell notebook owner.

As Dell deals with its falling sales and profit forecasts this morning, it’s also facing revelations that its executives knew about severe overheating problems in its notebooks long before it issued a recall, according to a report.

Heat issues in Dell notebooks were recently highlighted by the case of the exploding Japanese notebook.

CRN has the scoop: Dell grappled with apparently severe overheating problems in scores of notebooks for at least two years before it announced a recall of 22,000 notebooks last year, according to a source close to the company.

The source allowed CRN to review documentation of investigations into the notebook problems, and the source said that documentation was supplied to Dell executives.

Read more at source…

To add fuel to the Dell fire, Dell’s customer support is apprently the pits, with customers going as far as calling Dell’s care service “a fraud.” For some Dell customer service horror stories, check out this post at Ed Bott’s blog.

Reduce Picture Size with Outlook.

If you one of those who sends loads of pictures via email, you will be used to the need of sometimes reducing the file size of the images before emailing. Recent versions of Outlook have a quick and easy to do this, without changing the original photo.

The steps below assume you have Outlook configured as your default email client:

• Go to the image/s you want to send in Windows Explorer, right-click on one or more images and choose Send To Mail Recipient.
• You’ll see an option pop-up that offers to make all the pictures smaller or keep the original sizes. Click on ‘Show more options’ to see the choices of dimension ‘Small’ 640×480, Medium 800×600 or Large 1024×768.
• When you click OK a copy of the image has the dimensions reduced and then added to an email message as an attachment. The file name is the same as the original, but the size will be smaller.
• From that point it’s just like any other email, add the text you want just like any other email then click Send.

Wireless Router AES Encryption Problem.

I have a Belkin Pre-N router that I use as my broadband connection. This router supports both TKIP and AES encryption. After googling on these encryption methods, I found out that AES seems to be pretty much the standard nowadays, however when I do activate AES, I experience web browsing problems in particular the following 2 main problems:

1. Inability to log onto my Hotmail account
2. Unable to run WindowsUpdate.

Once I restored encryption back to TKIP, the Web browsing problems were resolved.

Hoping to find a solution/update to this post soon.

Whilst on the topic of wireless routers, I thought it would be interesting to mention the fact that wireless networks never reach the advertised/theoretical bandwidth limits.

• 802.11b networks typically get 2-5Mbps.
• 802.11g is usually in the 13-23Mbps range.
• Belkin’s Pre-N equipment has been measured at 37-42Mbps.

Word: Allegorical

Allegorical – used in or characteristic of or containing allegory; “We go inside to ask to show something allegorical – something humorous perhaps, but with some sort of Timeless Meaning.” (as used in The Tao of Pooh).

An allegory (from Greek αλλος, allos, “other”, and αγορευειν, agoreuein, “to speak in public”) is a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than and in addition to the literal. …