Speed up shutting down your PC! When you choose to shut down from the Start menu, Windows attempts to close any open programs and windows. Although this usually works well, a stubborn program or error condition may leave Windows hanging for a full minute before shutting down (or restarting).

By changing four Registry keys, you can speed the process up significantly. After you open Regedit:

Step 1: Change
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP\WaitToKillAppTimeout
from 20000 to 1000;

Step 2: Change
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP\HungAppTimeout
from 5000 to 1000;

Step 3: Change
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTROL\WaitToKillServiceTimeout
from 20000 to 1000;

Step 4: Change
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP\WaitToKillAppTimeout
from 20000 to 1000.

I have experimented this on my system and works well.

HandySnap is a very useful little program that I have put to use far more than I thought I would.

This versatile program allows the user to outline a section of their screen for screen capture. The user interface is a small, thin window that doesn’t obscure the area you are working with, and can be easily moved around out of the way, but still accessed without the need to toggle between screens. It includes options such as entire screen capture, mouse pointer capture and shape area capture. The software also includes a few minor built in editing features, such as arrows, drawing and painting. The user can add text, draw or edit the picture in a number of ways. HandySnap is available in a free trial version, while the full version is $29.95. I have personally used the program while composing Power Point presentations, and while using One Note in class. The ability to grab screen shots of web pages used in class, or even better, pages from an e-book from a digital library for my notes has been an invaluable tool. I highly recommend HandySnap for anyone who needs a quick, small and easy to use interface for grabbing screen shots for their work!

There are a lot of programs with VoIP built into them, but I’ve found that it’s pretty dismal due to the time delay and overall quality.

While gaming it’s hard to hear what most people are saying and that doesn’t help if they trying to tell you that there’s someone creeping up on you. There are many online chatting programs like Skype, Xfire and MSN. But these aren’t perfect, you either have to pay (Skype), you’re talking constantly so you’ll get someone suddenly cursing in your ear when they’ve been killed or you have to minimize the game each time you want to talk. The best program I’ve found is Teamspeak, which works on the basic principal that phones do. It may not be as visually attractive as the others but it’s the best. The audio quality is near perfect and once you’ve found a server to join and chat with your mates that’s it! You can even run your own server (but that’s a bit more difficult).

Cybercafe Pro is one of the best software applications to use when you have an Internet or online gaming business. It has the most commonly used functions that every internet Cafe business owner needs.

Basic functions I personally need and is available to Cybercafe Pro are:
– Server can control clients, i.e. it can access the server remotely and can shutdown, reboot or sleep the client computers.
– Use timecodes or Account for user reservation
– Monitor time usage. Time usage depends on the users request.
– Generate report such as Daily report, Weekly report, Monthly report.
– Generate receipts.

System requirements are just a 128MB memory running a decent 1GHz processor with a couple of megabytes free disk space. Doesn’t need much, so you can put the server to a low end computer while making all your client computers high-end. Installation of the client and server software is a breeze. Just click, answers prompts, click and you’re good!

Task Killer is a small app that sits in your system tray and lets you kill tasks, close open program windows, start and stop Windows services and all with a couple of clicks.

It gives you a list of running processes along their memory usage, and highlights frozen tasks in red so you can easily single out the program that’s logging up your memory. It only takes up about a megabyte of RAM for itself, which isn’t much to have hanging around for dealing with a pesky process that just won’t let go. Some of the settings for Task Killer include starting at boot up, or confirming every task you want to kill. You can also set up excluded processes or services that you don’t want monitored by Task Killer and there’s also an option of a hotkey if you’re still used to Ctrl+Alt+Del! Task Killer is a simple way of getting rid of memory hogs for those sick of the default Windows task manager. It does its job pretty well and the best thing is that it’s free. A pretty good app to have around when you need it, a recommended download!

SciTE is an open source light-weight text editor for Windows and Linux operating systems.

It features a tab-based interface and built-in color markup for 30 or so programming and markup languages. It’s fast, and it lacks the bloat one might associate with other general purpose code editors. It’s available in various packages, one of which is a single 480kb Windows executable with no external dependencies, making it useful for situations where you need a good editor fast and without hassle.