My original list of Useful Netbook Software was rather popular so I’ve gathered together some more suggestions for getting the most out of your Netbook.

I’ve seen many similar lists on other sites but they seems to suffer from at least one of the following…

1. Concentrating on applications which are, well, generally useful and not really Netbook specific. Free antivirus? Hmm.
2. Recommending the same old “popular” choices – irfanview, OpenOffice, etc.
3. Recommendation are mainly around the theory of moving everything OFF your Netbook, so it’s online apps and USB storage.

I’ll try and avoid all 3. Some may be of use for non-Netbook owners, but they should all have a very specific advantage to those of use with these handy, portable devices.

Scrybe

Scrybe provides gesturing support to your touchpad – in particular those that support multi-touch (such as the Acer Aspire One). Draw a pattern on the touchpad, for instance, to launch a particular application.

Even if you don’t wish to use this facility, you do get an upgraded version of Synaptics touchpad driver.

TouchFreeze

TouchFreeze is a nice idea but I’m not sure how well it’s yet been implemented – it didn’t work for my netbook and there hasn’t been any updates to the software for a while. None-the-less, it’s worth a try.

In a nutshell, it disables your touchpad when you being typing so that your palm doesn’t accidentally do something it shouldn’t do!

winsupermaximise

This adds a system tray icon which, once clicked (or you can press a hotkey combination), will “super maximise” the current window – that is, it will resize so the title bar is actually above the screen boundaries, thus saving those extra pixels that you don’t want to waste.

Yawcam

Most netbooks come with webcams but few include any kind of software to make use of them. Yes, you can install Skype and video call, but is that all it’s good for?

Yawcam will add some much needed abilities to that webcam – video streaming, image snapshots, a built-in webserver, motion detection and FTP uploads.

Live Mesh

There are a number of providers of free folder synchronisation (that is sharing folders across different computers) but I, personally, prefer Microsoft’s Live Mesh.

The files are also accessable online – up to 5GB worth.

What sells it to me is its simplicity. I have a folder on my desktop which I’ve set up with Live Mesh to share – anything placed in that folder is automatically shared across all my PCs. This therefore provides a quick and easy way to share data with a portable device such as a Netbook.

AltDrag

Quite how I missed this from my original list, I don’t know.

With the smaller screen resolution of Netbooks it’s often the case that program windows aren’t always visible on screen, in particular with the top bar hidden off screen so you can’t move it back in view, or it may be a window without a “dragable area”.

Linux has a great function that allows you to move windows with the mouse when pressing the ALT key. Well, now, you can have this on Windows too thanks to AltDrag,  a small, free application.

Desktops

Desktops is a Microsoft utility that provides multiple desktops – ideal for those cramped Netbook screens. Quickly swap between different desktops with the system tray icon or with shortcut keys.

The Samsung NC10 is regarded as one of the best Netbooks available.

Dixons are currently selling it for £249 (with free standard delivery), which is the cheapest online price that I can find¹. However, get it from the Dixons site, use the code 10NET before 8am on Monday 1st February 2010 and get a further £10 off!

And, if you use the money back service Quidco, you will get a further 3% back (if my calculations are correct, that’s a shade over £7).

1. I could be wrong – let me know if I am. And eBay doesn’t count! [↩]

The Samsung NC10 Netbook has received many positive reviews since it’s release and many believe it to the best Netbook on the market.

A colleague of mine has recently purchased one at, what he thought, was a bargain price from Comet¹. It turned out that the low price was due to it having a far inferior battery. Indeed, the reason why it often garners such good feedback is its 7.5 hour battery life. This one struggles to a couple.

Some users are pointing out that some retailers are referring to this as the “award winning” NC10. In fact, it’s the bigger battery life version that has been winning the awards. Naughty.

So, be careful out there..

1. I’d provide the link but the site was strangely “under maintenance” when I tried [↩]

Lenovo has been “tweaking” its laptops and PCs in preparation for Windows 7, heavily improving startup and shutdown times.

Some of the methods, however, can be easily transferred to any Windows system – in this post I’ll be concentrating on XP, but I’m sure many of these will work on other versions.

So, here are some of the things that Lenovo did and what you can do that’s similar…

Fixed the drivers of on-board hardware components that were cumulatively causing massive delays.

Ok, so there’s not much we, as individuals, can do to fix drivers. However, it is important to stay on top of Windows drivers to ensure that you benefit changes of this type.

Personally, I have a spreadsheet of download links for my drivers and regularly check them. The other option is to use software that will look for updates for you. DriverMax is a popular example, although others are available.

Tweaked the BIOS phase of startup to temporarily hide some devices from Windows 7, so that the OS only loads the drivers after the boot is finished.

What they’re doing here is hiding hardware devices from Windows until its loaded. This may be a webcam, CD drive, etc. Now, there are some things you can do here for yourself…

1. Create a secondary hardware profile. This gives you an additional boot option where, say, lesser used hardware devices won’t be loaded. This is done by turning off different services (and having different startup options too). I used to have one for gaming, whereas non-gaming services would be disabled, saving memory and boot time.
2. Switch hardware off that you don’t use very often. No, ok, this won’t stop the drivers from loading but there may be some exchange (or handshaking) of information that may be reduced. My scanner and lazer printer, for instance, are used only occasionally, so are left unplugged when not in use. Of course, this also saves on electricity!
3. Uninstall old drivers. When you change hardware, you often leave the old drivers behind. Plug everything in, start up your PC and then find and uninstall any old drivers.

Tweaked Windows 7 to delay the loading of non-essential services and applications until after startup.

Ah, now this is definitely something we can do ourselves.

The first thing I’d recommend you do is to go through the various startup programs and disable those you don’t feel you need (RealPlayer, Quicktime and Java update checkers are popular ones to disable). You can use msconfig, but I find the option within the Tools section of CCleaner a better option.

A quick tip… you’ll find some startup options that don’t appear within the “Startup” folder in your Start Menu. If one of these is only relevant to particular users, who have their own profiles, then note the URL that this startup is running. Disable it and then create the relevant shortcut within the appropriate profile startup folder.

You can also delay when various startup options execute. So, lets say you REALLY want Quicktime, et al, to do their online checks, do they have to do them as soon as the computer starts? Programs such as Startup Delayer will allow you to delay startup tasks.

That’s applications. Now services. You have to be careful with these, but its still worth going through all your services and looking for those that are best set to manual or disabled entirely. There are many websites dedicated to which ones should be changed.

And that’s it. If you have any suggestions on how to improve startup and shutdown, feel free to contact me (or add a comment to this post).

A varied assortment of Netbook news and utilities today.

First of all, let’s kick off with the oft-mentioned absence of the CD/DVD drive in Netbook. You can, of course, buy an external drive at about £40/£50, but when you’ve only paid about £250 for your Netbook, it can seem a steep investment.

If you’ve got a PC at home with a drive, however, you can put your Netbook on the same network and use it. I came across the instructions on a forum – pretty obvious now, but it hadn’t occurred to me to do this.

Next up, something for the Acer Aspire One owners. Kuki is a Linux build specifically for this machine. I’ve put it on a USB key, using UNetbootin, and it’s quite good, with everything seemingly working as it should do. However, I’m assuming that this “live” version probably expects to be working from a CD and, hence, appears to be “read only” – configuration changes aren’t being saved. You’d need to install to unlock its full potential – my plan is to use the Storage Expansion SD card slot and install it directly onto an SDHC card.

Definitely worth checking out.

Lastly, the award-winning Samsung NC10 is available from eBuyer for £268.79 (including free P&P). This has been on sale elsewhere recently at a cheaper price but, and crucially, these have turned out to be 3-cell battery versions, rather than the standard 7.5 hour 6 cell version.