Tweak Your Windows Settings

Have you noticed that Windows XP lacks a lot in the way of customization? Are there things you always wished you could do?

You should try out Microsoft's PowerToys. In a nutshell, these are awesome little programs that you can install to give added features to XP. Honestly, I think they're things that should've been in the OS from the start.

My favorite PowerToy is TweakUI. It provides settings to tweak lots of things in the user interface itself. You can set your machine to auto-login a certain user, you can change some of the default Start menu behaviors, the "places bar," and much more.

If you're looking to do something in Windows XP, you might check out the PowerToys first. They're pretty cool.

What's Up With Standby?

My laptop was doing terrific with the "standby" feature, until today. For some reason, when I press the power button (which is supposed to put it on standby), it actually goes into hibernation. It looks like something might be wrong with my power settings. Poop.

If you're a laptop owner, you should definitely check out the different power features of your machine. These can be vital to getting more battery life out of the machine. For instance, I have a setting configured for maximum battery life. It dims the screen, turns the display off when not in use, etc. Very useful.

Also, you should learn about standby and hibernation. From my understanding, they do almost the same thing. However, standby actually uses more power, but it is quicker to resume from. Basically, they save where you are working "power down" your machine, and let you pick up where you left off. I rarely shut my laptop down. It's almost always just on standby. It saves loads of time.

Dell and Win XP - A Bad Match?

I'm not sure if this falls under a Windows problem or one for Dell, but here goes.

I had my Inspiron E1405 on hibernate. I took it out of the bag, opened the screen, and pressed the power button. Instead of coming back into Windows with my programs where I left them, the machine opened up Dell's MediaDirect program. What?! I then had to exit from MediaDirect, at which point I was finally taken to Windows.

I'm really not sure what happened. Perhaps I accidentally pressed the MediaDirect button on the front of the machine. I really don't think I did, but it's possible.

More than likely, Dell and Windows are having an internal fight somewhere. I'm not sure how MediaDirect works, but it seems to bypass the standard standby and hibernate features. Windows might not appreciate that.

I guess I'll just be more careful next time.