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With our recently finished poll (Windows 7 – Love or Hate) we wanted to get our readers views on the Windows 7.  As you can see from the pie chart above (click to enlarge), 60% of our voters love windows 7, 8% hate it and 32% are yet to be swayed in either direction.  Here at PCToolbox we’re a big fan of Windows 7 and are recommending it to all our clients.  Whilst Vista was not a big hit with many users we believe that Microsoft have produced a class operating system in Windows 7 and have well and truly silenced the critics.

Check out more Windows 7 posts on Brandstar and PCToolbox

A couple of months ago we received our copy of Office 2010, so it must be about time we start blogging about it!  Sparklines is a new Excel feature which we’ve been impressed with. Basically they’re miniature charts that fit into a single Excel cell to allow the user to view individual trends at a glance.  A feature such as this is ideal when managing money, e.g. to assess how expenditure for different items has varied over a year.

Here’s how to create Sparklines:

1. Click on the ‘Insert’ tab and locate the ‘Sparklines’ box
   
2. Next you must select the type of Sparkline you wish to use by clicking on either Line, Column or Win/Loss
3. Finally in the ‘Create Sparklines Box’ you need to select your data range and location range
   

A neat feature I’m sure you’ll all agree

Windows Live Writer is a free desktop application for publishing to blogs and will work with almost any blog provider in the world including Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, WordPress, TypePad and more!

It’s a very simple piece of software which enables you to link your blogs to one central point for posting, rather than logging on to each website.

Live Writer has a variety of different tools available for use…from hyperlink, to pictures (single photos/albums), tables, videos, tags and more! Some of which may not normally be available from your software.

Interested in the software? Well download it from the Windows Live Writer site

Our poll this month was ‘where do you access Facebook?’ Bosses pleased to see that most people are checking their facebook pages at home rather than at work with a staggering 47% just viewing it from home.  Second up was people viewing their pages from both home and work. (Click on the image to enlarge)

21% of voters said they don’t check facebook at home or at work so I’m guessing they don’t have an account?  If you don’t know what facebook is and would like to find out more check out our post on it from back in 2007…Facebook – What’s it all about?

Don’t forget to become a Fan of Brandstar on Facebook!

Our most recent poll was ‘Do you use iPlayer?’ 67% voted ‘Yes’, 33% ‘No’ and thankfully there were no votes for ‘What is it?’

However, for those of you who don’t know what BBC iPlayer is read our Brandstar post about BBC iPlayer from back when it was introduced! See ‘BBC iPlayer – catch up on missed TV‘

Here at PCToolbox we think that the likes of the BBC iPlayer are brilliant and in the future I reckon they’ll be the main way people watch TV shows!

ITV (PCToolbox Review), Channel 4, Channel Five and Sky all have their own equivalents. Check them out!

Don’t forget to vote on this month’s poll…’where do you access Facebook?’

Nearly everyone that opens a PDF file will use Adobe’s Acrobat Reader.  But have you ever wondered if there are any good alternatives to the widely used program?  Here at PCToolbox we think we’ve found the ideal alternative in the Free Foxit PDF Reader (Download here).

The program involves a short and easy download/installation process.  Once installed you can then get cracking.

Foxit’s has the usual features that Acrobat has…but of course the designers have put their own mark on the software by introducing new features.  The actual interface (see right) of the program is simplistic with icons available to make the reader easy to use. You of course also have the option to use features through the usual menu/right-click routes.

A great feature is the annotation tool.  This enables the reader to add comments and annotations to the pdf as they go along.  It allows you to draw graphics, highlight text, type text and make notes.  You can then either save the annotations or print a copy of with the comments included.

When you open the reader there is also a welcome screen (see right).  This makes usage extremely easy.

One of my favourite features is the ability to use tabs (see below).  I don’t know about you but if I’m using a PDF I don’t usually have just one open, I normally have several.  Foxit have taken the idea of Tabs from the typical Internet Browser and applied it to PDF. So you can have several PDF’s open but in just one window!  This means it’s considerably easier to move between files so the experience you have when using the software is much more pleasant.

Finally there’s the text converter.  This ingeniously enables you to convert an entire PDF file into a simple text document.  I think you’ll agree with me when I say that this feature can could definitely be a time saver!

I am tremendously impressed by Foxit and I really do think if people give it a try they’ll make it their first choice PDF Reader!

Disk Cleanup is a computer maintenance application included in Microsoft Windows operating systems.  It’s designed to free up disk space on your computers hard drive.  Therefore, it’s worth performing a cleanup every so often.  The feature searches and reviews your hard drive for files which are no longer necessary.  It will then, after you’ve made some selections, remove any files that are not needed on your machine.

Here is how to run a Disk Cleanup on XP:

1. Firstly click ‘Start’ and select ‘All Programs’
   
2. Then Select ‘Accessories’, followed by ‘System Tools’ and finally ‘Disk Cleanup’ (Click on image to enlarge)
   
3. Your computer will now run a scan to locate files that could be removed or compressed.
   
4. Next you should make selections regarding which files you would like to be removed.  Simply click on the option, read the description and if you’d like this to be removed click in the box next to the option so it has a tick in it.   We recommend that you don’t select to compress files as it will slow down your computer considerably (Click on image to enlarge)
   
5. Your computer will now perform the Disk Cleanup.
   

Hopefully this tutorial has been helpful and will encourage you to run a Disk Cleanup.  It’s a free way to improve the speed of your computer!

We will post about Disk Cleanup on Vista next week!

See Also:
Defrag for XP
ScanDisk for XP

Last week we wrote a tutorial for the new Image Resizer for Windows 7 and Vista…and now it’s time to review it!  The software has been developed by CodePlex and is free to download!

As a whole we’re very impressed with the program and think it’s got a lot of potential.  The software itself is very easy to use and provides a very effective and efficient service.

If the product was to be developed further we’d like to see a couple of new features added.  Firstly, we think that there should the option to select the image compression.  By this we mean you can select the extent to which the image quality is compromised.  Secondly, there could be some basic image editing software within the application.

Overall we’re impressed and think it’s worth downloading!

See Also:
Downloading and Installing – Image Resizer for Windows 7 and Vista

So our first post on Windows 7 RC was relativly short, this one comes after a bit of use and testing and we stand by the previous title “Windows 7 RC is BRILLIANT”  we are very impressed.

If you don’t want to read on then you can take these three things away from our findings

• Speed
• Stable
• Compatible

For those with the time to read on we will explain what we are meaning by these three findings.

Speed

We have Windows 7 running on a pretty average system, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB Memory, 160GB Hard Drive. Nothing hugely special by today’s standards but we have found it to run very nicely.

The sort of use it has got is in the list below and at no point have we found it to be slow, non-responsive or sluggish. Obviously it is a new install and this helps but still we are impressed! So it has been used for the following over the last few weeks

• Website design
• Internet / Email
• General Office work
• FTP
• Remote Support

Stable

No crashes or hanging to date! What more can we say…?

Compatability

Software / Hardware we have successfully working on the Windows 7 system is as follows:

• Dell Optiplex 360 – ok, this is actually the hardware it is running on, but still useful to know!
• T-Mobile Mobile Broadband Adaptor – this didn’t work on the Beta so we are very impressed it works now!
• Macromedia Dreamweaver MX
• Microsoft Office 2007
• Hamachi VPN
• Filezilla
• Firefox
• Crossloop
• AVG 8.5 Internet Security
• Windows Home Server Connector Software

We still have got a bit more testing before we would be happy to adopt it as a operating system for a production office machine, but I am very tempted! Roll on Final Release…

We have been testing the Beta version of Windows 7 since that was released and downloaded the RC as soon as we could get our hands on it. In short we still think it is brilliant and are really looking forward to the final release.

Without writing pages and pages on this the best way to sum up Windows 7 is this  -  “Windows 7 is in short a refined version of Windows Vista”

If you have a spare machine then download the Release Candidate for free here: Microsot Windows 7 RC Download. And see what you think.

Have a read of our other Windows 7 posts and we will post back soon with of first impressions of Windows 7 RC !