Speed Up Internet Explorer ? 5 things to try

Is Internet Explorer slow? 5 things to try

Upgrade to a newer version of Internet Explorer

Download a newer version of Internet Explorer and experience faster and more responsive web browsing. If you're using Windows 7 or Windows Vista, downloadInternet Explorer 9. If you're using Windows XP, download Internet Explorer 8.

Reset Internet Explorer settings

If Internet Explorer stops responding or working, if you encounter errors indicating that Internet Explorer needs to close, or if browsing feels slow, you might want to reset Internet Explorer settings. When you reset Internet Explorer settings, you basically start with a fresh version of Internet Explorer.

To automatically reset Internet Explorer settings, run the Reset Internet Explorer Settings Fix It.

To run the Reset Internet Explorer Settings Fix It

1. Click this button:
   Fix this problem
2. When asked whether you want to run or save the file, click Run, and then follow the steps in the wizard.

For more information, see Reset Internet Explorer 9 settings, Reset Internet Explorer 8 settings or Reset Internet Explorer 7 settings.

Check your Internet connection

A slow Internet connection can be caused by many things, like the type of connection you have, the presence of spyware, viruses, and other programs, or outside factors, like heavy traffic on a website.

• For Windows 7, see Why is my Internet connection so slow?
• For Windows Vista, see Why is my Internet connection so slow?
• For Windows XP, see Possible issues and resolutions for slow Internet connection speeds.

Disable add-ons

While browser add-ons can enhance your online experience, they can occasionally interfere or conflict with other software on your computer. Try starting Internet Explorerwithout add-ons to see if the problem goes away.

If disabling add-ons solves the problem, you might want to use Manage Add-ons (which you can find on the Tools menu) to disable all add-ons and then turn on add-ons only as you use them. This will allow you to figure out which add-on is causing the problem.

To automatically disable add-ons, run the Internet Explorer Add-on Fix It.

To run the Internet Explorer Add-on Fix It

1. Click this button:
   Fix this problem
2. When asked whether you want to run or save the file, click Run, and then follow the steps in the wizard.

More information about add-ons:

• For Internet Explorer 9, see Internet Explorer add-ons: frequently asked questions orHow do browser add-ons affect my computer?
• For Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 7, see Internet Explorer add-ons: frequently asked questions or How do browser add-ons affect my computer?

Get more help

Here are some additional online resources you can check out if you've tried everything else without success.

• Internet Explorer Community—Microsoft Answers forums
• Internet Explorer Solution Center
• Internet Explorer Help & How-to
  
  

Optimize your computer for peak performance

Clean up disk errors

Run once a week

Whenever a program crashes or you experience a power outage, your computer may create errors on its hard disk (sometimes referred to as a hard drive). Over time, the errors can result in a slow PC. Fortunately, the Windows operating system includes several PC tools, including a Check Disk program, to identify and clean any errors on your computer and to help keep it running smoothly.

Note: You must be logged on as an administrator to perform these steps. If you aren't logged on as an administrator, you can only change settings that apply to your user account.

Run Check Disk:

Windows XP users

1. In the Start menu, click My Computer.
2. In the My Computer dialog box, right-click the drive you wish to check for errors (for most of us, this is the C: drive, unless you have multiple drives on your computer), and then click Properties.
3. In the Properties dialog box, click the Tools tab. In the Error-Checkingsection, click the Check now… button. A Check Disk dialog box appears.
   
4. In the Check Disk dialog box, select all the check boxes, and then clickStart.
5. You will see a message box that says you can schedule the disk check to start the next time you restart your computer. Click Yes. The next time you restart your computer, it will automatically run through a disk check before displaying your login screen. After the disk check finishes, Windows will automatically bring you to your login screen.
   Note: Check Disk can take more than an hour to check and clean errors on your computer.
   
   
   
   
   Remove temporary files

   Run once a week

   Your computer can pick up and store temporary files when you're looking at webpages and even when you're working on files in programs, such as Microsoft Word. Over time, these files slow your computer's performance. You can use the Windows Disk Cleanup tool to rid your computer of these unneeded files and to help your PC run faster.

   Windows XP users

   1. In the Start menu, click My Computer.
   2. In the My Computer dialog box, right-click the drive you wish to check for errors (for most of us, this is the C: drive, unless you have multiple drives on your computer), and then click Properties.
   3. In the Properties dialog box, click Disk Cleanup.
      
   4. Disk Cleanup calculates how much space you can free up on your hard drive. After its scan, the Disk Cleanup dialog box reports a list of files that you can remove from your computer. This scan can take a while depending on how many files you have on your computer.
      
   5. After the scan is complete, in the Disk Cleanup dialog box, click View Filesto see what Disk Cleanup will discard (if you accept the suggestions). You can select and deselect check boxes to define what you wish to keep or discard. When you're ready, click OK.
   6. You can also select the More Options tab within the Disk Cleanup screen to look for software programs you don't use much anymore. You then have the choice to remove these unused programs.
      
      

      Optimize your data

      Run once a week

      As you add programs and files to your computer, it often breaks files side by side to increase the speed of access and retrieval. However, as files are updated, your computer saves these updates on the largest space available on the hard drive, often found far away from the other adjacent sectors of the file.
      The result is a fragmented file. Fragmented files cause slower performance because your computer must now search for all of the file's parts. In other words, your computer knows where all the pieces are, but putting them back together in the correct order—when you need them—can slow your computer down.
      Windows includes a Disk Defragmenter program to piece all your files back together again and to make them available to open more quickly.
      Note: Windows 7 and Windows Vista are preconfigured to run Disk Defragmenter on a weekly basis. If you would like to run the tool manually or to adjust the schedule, click the section for your specific operating system.

      Windows XP users

      1. In the Start menu, click My Computer.
      2. In the My Computer dialog box, right-click the drive you wish to check for errors (for most of us this is the C: drive, unless you have multiple drives on your computer), and then click Properties.
      3. In the Properties dialog box, click the Tools tab, and then, in the Defragmentation section, click Defragment Now....
         
      4. In the Disk Defragmenter dialog box, select the Volume (most likely your Local Disk C:) at the top of the screen, and then click Analyze.
      5. After analyzing your computer, the Disk Defragmenter displays a message stating whether you should defragment your computer. PressDefragment to clean up your computer, if necessary. The Disk Defragmenter reorganizes files by placing them together and sorting them by program and size.
         

      Make Internet Explorer run faster

      The Internet is everywhere—from the home to office to the classroom. We use it to communicate, to work, to play—and even occasionally to waste time.

      Yet there's nothing more frustrating than having this technical marvel at our fingertips 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, only to wait while our computers access it at a crawling pace. Thankfully, Windows Internet Explorer provides some useful options for quicker web surfing.

      Reduce the size of your webpage history

      Internet Explorer stores visited webpages to your computer, organizing them within a page history by day. Although it's useful to keep a couple days of web history within your computer, there's no need to store more than a week's worth. Any more than that and the collected webpages can slow down your computer's performance.

      Note: Depending on which version of Internet Explorer you're using, the steps outlined and images shown may vary slightly.

      1. In Internet Explorer, on the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
         In the General tab, under Browsing history, click the Settings button.
         
      2. Under History, find the Days to keep pages in history: box. In the box, select 1, and then click OK.
         

      
      

      Don't save encrypted webpages

      Encrypted webpages ask for user names and passwords. These pages scramble information to prevent the reading of sensitive information. You can configure Internet Explorer to not save these types of pages. You'll free up space by saving fewer files to your computer, in addition to keeping secure information off of your computer.

      Change setting to not save encrypted webpages

      1. In Internet Explorer, on the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
      2. In the Internet Options dialog box, click the Advanced tab.
      3. In the Settings section, scroll down to the Security section. Select the Do not save encrypted pages to disk check box, and then click OK.
         

      If Internet Explorer is not as quick as you'd like it to be, check out the article Is Internet Explorer slow? 5 things to try for a few more tips specific to your browser.

      Automate Windows Update

      Configure once

      Microsoft works constantly to release updates to Windows and other Microsoft products, including Microsoft Office. With Windows Update, you can find and install all these updates—not just the critical ones. Often, the updates can improve your computer's performance.

      You can make life easier by automating Windows Update so that your computer downloads and installs all the updates without you having to worry about them.

      1. In the Start menu, click Control Panel.
      2. In the Automatic Updates dialog box, select the Automatic (Recommended) check box. You can define the time of day that your computer should check for updates. If the computer finds any updates, it will download and install them automatically for you.
      3. Click OK.
         

      Remove spyware, and help protect your computer from viruses

      Download once, and get automatic updates

      While you're busy surfing the web, spyware and other types of malicious software (also known as malware) are collecting personal information about you, often without your knowledge. The result is that your personal information could possibly be compromised. At the same time, spyware and malware can slow down your computer. Download Microsoft Security Essentials for free to help guard your system in the future from viruses, spyware, adware, and other malware. Microsoft Security Essentials acts as a spyware removal tool and includes automatic updates to help keep your system running efficiently and to help protect it from emerging threats.

      Note: For specific virus definitions and news, visit the Microsoft Malware Protection Center.

      
      

      
      
      
      
      
      
   
   

HP TouchPad available on Aug 12

The Wi-Fi version of the HP TouchPad will be available in Singapore on Aug 12, Hewlett-Packard said in a statement.
The 32GB TouchPad will come with a TouchPad Case and a TouchPad Wireless Keyboard during the promotion.

Google Plus vs Facebook

After rocketing to 10 million users in its first three weeks, Google's social-networking site appears to be getting less attention. The time spent on Google+ has also fallen well below time spent on Facebook. A consultant called Google+ just "another way for Google to gain market share."

Less Engagement Than Facebook
According to a Hitwise blog post by Heather Dougherty, as of July 19 the average visit time for Google+ was five minutes and 50 seconds, up from four minutes and 52 seconds the week before. But she noted that's a far cry from the average time users spend on Facebook, which was 21 minutes and 57 seconds the same week.

For the week ending July 23, Google+ received 1.79 million visits, down 3 percent from the previous week, and the average time spent on the site fell 10 percent to 5 minutes and 15 seconds, Hitwise said Wednesday.

By contrast, visits for the week ending July 16 shot up 283 percent from the week before, and 821 percent from the week before that, Hitwise said last week.

As of July 16, Google+ ranked as the 42nd-most-visited social networking site and the 638th-most-visited site overall in the U.S., Hitwise said last week. Hitwise didn't update those rankings Wednesday, but given the drop in usage it's unlikely that Google+ improved its position on either list.

Microsoft Mistake or Microsoft Social Networking 'Accident'

Microsoft Social Networking 'Accident' 

On http://www.socl.com/   shows this writing on main page

Thanks for stopping by. 

Socl.com is an internal design project from a team in Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the web.

We didn’t mean to, honest.

Happy Birthday, MS-DOS -- 30 candles 27 July 1981- 27 July 2011

Happy Birthday, MS-DOS -- 30 candles ( 27 July 1981- 27 July 2011)
MS-DOS ( short for Microsoft Disk Operating System) is anoperating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in particular by various generations of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The following versions of MS-DOS were released to the public.

• MS-DOS 1.x
  • Version 1.12 (OEM) - Compaq release of PC-DOS 1.10
  • Version 1.19 (OEM)^[7] - Zenith OEM
  • Version 1.25 (OEM) - Microsoft repackaging of PC-DOS 1.10
• MS-DOS 2.x - Support for 10 MB hard disk drives and tree-structure filing system
  • Version 2.0 (OEM)
  • Version 2.1 (OEM)
  • Version 2.11 (OEM)
  • Version 2.2 (OEM)
  • Version 2.21 (OEM)
• MS-DOS 3.x
  • Version 3.0 (OEM) - Support for larger hard disk drives
  • Version 3.1 (OEM) - Support for Microsoft Networks
  • Version 3.2 (OEM)
  • Version 3.21 (OEM)
  • Version 3.25 (OEM)
  • Version 3.3 (OEM)
  • Version 3.3a (OEM)
  • Version 3.3r (OEM)
  • Version 3.31 (OEM) - Compaq 3.31 supports FAT16 and larger drives.
  • Version 3.35 (OEM)
• MS-DOS 4.x - includes a graphical/mouse interface.
  • Version 4.00 (OEM)
  • Version 4.01 (OEM) - IBM patched Version 4.00 before Microsoft released it.
  • Version 4.01a (OEM)
• MS-DOS 5.x
  • Version 5.0 (Retail) - includes a full-screen editor. A number of bugs required reissue.
  • Version 5.0a (Retail) - With this release, IBM and Microsoft versions diverge.
  • Version 5.0.500 (WinNT) - All Windows NT 32-bit versions ship with files from DOS 5.0
• MS-DOS 6.x
  • Version 6.0 (Retail) - Online help through QBASIC. Disk compression and antivirus included.
  • Version 6.2 (Retail) - Microsoft and IBM alternate versions, IBM has 6.1, 6.3
  • Version 6.21 (Retail) - Stacker-infringing DBLSPACE removed.
  • Version 6.22 (Retail) - New DRVSPACE compression.
• MS-DOS 7.x
  • Version 7.0 (Win95,95A) - Support for long file names. New editor.
  • Version 7.1 (Win95B-Win98SE) - Support for FAT32 file system
• MS-DOS 8.0
  • Version 8.0 (WinME) - Integrated drivers for faster Windows loading.
  • Version 8.0 (WinXP) - DOS boot disks created by XP and later contain files from WinME. The internal DOS is still 5.0

Microsoft DOS was released through the OEM channel, until DRI released DR-DOS 5.0 as a retail upgrade. With PC-DOS 5.00.1, the IBM-Microsoft agreement started to end, and IBM entered the retail DOS market with IBMDOS 5.00.1, 5.02, 6.00 and PC-DOS 6.10, 6.30, 7.00 and 2000.

A number of beta versions have surfaced on the Internet, such as 5.0 (a ten-diskette version in the same vein as 4.0), 7.00 beta 1 (based on 6.00), 7.00 beta 2 (based on 6.22). An OEM source package for 6.00, and a late release of 6.2(b) have also been seen. These are not retail versions.

Solar Technology for Gadgets Samsung NC215 solar powered netbook

The Samsung NC215 solar powered netbook appeared first in Africa in May. And now you can already pre-order the Samsung NC215 on Amazon for $399. The shipping date is not published yet.

This item has not yet been released.
You may pre-order it now and we will deliver it to you when it arrives.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

The 10.1-inch Intel Atom N570 powered netbook has the lid covered with solar cells. Other features of the NC215 include 250GB HDD, 1GB RAM, Wifi 802.11n and Windows 7 Starter. 

Samsung is not really forward with information on how much benefit the solar panel is giving you. In any case it looks cool and gives you a green image right away. I heard that works well with the ladies.

Windows Phone 7.5 Toshiba-Fujitsu IS12T

Microsoft together with au by KDDI and Toshiba-Fujitsu announced the world’s first Windows Phone 7.5 device in Japan today – the Toshiba-Fujitsu IS12T. 

According to the official Microsoft Japan website, below are the full specifications of the new device:

Operating System	Windows Phone 7.5
Color	Magenta, Citrus, Black
Weight	Approx. 113g
Dimensions	Approx. 118mm x 59mm x 10.6mm
Talk time	400 minutes
Standby time	210 hours
Screen	3.7 inches (WVGA 800X480 pixels) Capacitive multi-touch touchscreen with fingerprint resistant coating TFT LCD screen
Camera	13.2 megapixels, auto-focus, LED flash
CPU	Qualcomm MSM8655
Memory	512MB RAM / 32GB Internal Memory
External Memory	N/A
Water/Dust Resistance	IPX5/IPX8, IP5X
Network	CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev.A (Multi-carrier)
International Roaming	Yes (supports both GSM and CDMA networks)
GPS	Yes
Wi-Fi	IEEE 802.11b/g/n
Bluetooth	2.1+ EDR
DLNA	Yes

The IS12T, produced by Fujitsu Toshiba Mobile Communications, will offer a 3.7-inch screen paired to a 13.2-megapixel camera. It will arrive on Japanese store shelves by September or later, according to an IDG video uploaded to YouTube and posted on multiple news Websites, including PC World. The phone supports CDMA-based (Code Division Multiple Access-based) networks.