Transform your Windows XP to Windows Vista Look

The above are some screenshots of my desktop and my Windows Explorer. Do you think I’m running Windows Vista Beta or RC1? Guess what? You were wrong.

I run Windows XP Media Center Edition on my home desktop and the new look and feel of Windows Vista was the wonder works of this “Windows Vista Transformation Pack“. It’s a comprehensive transformation package that even transforms the startup screen and all the icons and sounds and almost everything that was Windows XP’ish. I’ve been running this for a while now and it seems to be perform pretty decent.

If you get the paid WindowBlinds program then you can even get the Vista glass effect. But without that it even looks good and very much functional. Awesome work by WindowsX.

Get the latest Vista Transformation Pack from here.

Download takes a while as the file is bigger in size. But once downloaded the installer guides you thru the process pretty much and the one thing you should be careful about is to cancel out the Windows warning dialog for some system files replacement. Don’t worry it won’t sabotage your system. I’ve done that thrice and it’s okay to do it.

May be setting a restore point before you do this might not be a bad idea. So, how do you set the manual system restore point? Simple. Just navigate thru Start >> Programs >> Accessories >> System Tools and launch ”System Restore” tool. Click “Create a restore point” option and hit the “Next” button and on the second page just give it a name (like for example, “Prior to Vista Transformation Pack”) and hit the “Create” button. That’s it. Now you are pretty much worry free to try this out. On my experience the whole process was pretty smooth.

PS: The Yahoo Widget that you see on the top right corner of the screen doesn’t come with the pack. That’s something I run separate on my machine.

Technorati tags: Windows XP To Windows Vista Transformation Pack, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Transform XP to Vista look

Food Expiration Dates – Explained

BusinessWeek takes a shot at the confusions/misconceptions people have on the food expiration dates. For example,

Milk, for instance, starts deteriorating in quality quite quickly. Pasteurized milk usually remains fresh for five days after its sell-by date. However, if milk isn’t refrigerated promptly, it will develop a sour taste and spoil, even though it might not necessarily be dangerous. Interestingly, milk can lose vitamins when exposed to light, which is why it usually comes in opaque plastic or paperboard.

Read the full article here.

They even have a very nice slide show that details the topic in a much better way. You can view the slide show here.

Technorati tags: Food Expiration Dates, Health, Eat Healthy

Microsoft Is About To Release Vista RC2

Paul Thurrott at WindowsITPro says that Microsoft is going to release the final prerelease version of Windows Vista by Friday (10/06/2006). And they’ve named the release as “Release Candidate 2″ (RC2).

This build (in Microsoft terms, build# 5743) is not open for public and is only available for the beta testers, MSDN and TechNet subscribers, and some Customer Preview Program members. Also, this is the final release before Microsoft releases Vista for manufacturing (RTM). And so its expected that this release would be more stable.

Read the full article here.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista, Windows Vista RC2

Windows Live Writer Now Supports Blogger Beta

For those of you who use Blogger platform, you are now blessed with the Windows Live Writer team for providing support for the Blogger platform. They say that immediately after they released the new feature Blogger did an update and that caused some issues with the new functionality. But then they’ve corrected that and the latest bits out there are stable.

You can get the latest bits from this location (its a download location).

Technorati tags: Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Writer Beta 1, Blogger

A Comprehensive List of Passwords For Your Routers

Often I find myself in a situation where I set quite crappy/complex/idiotic/once-in-a-lifetime-I-got-that-word kind of passwords for my router assuming that will be the safe bet. But after a while once (obviously) I forget those passwords I keep resetting my router to its factory default mode.

Fine, now it asks for the router’s default login credentials. Who knows? I don’t have the time to look for the manuals (out of the many different manuals I’ve got) and so I end up calling the customer service to figure out the password.

Now there is an easy solution to that problem. Someone at phenoelit.de had composed a comprehensive list of default passwords for the various routers. Of course, it comes with the “terms of usage” policy that for this to work you shouldn’t have reset your router’s password. If you have then follow my way of life of resetting the router and then use the password from the list.

Isn’t that handy? To me…sure it is.

Here is the link.

Technorati tags: Router, Password List, Default Password List