Windows 7 comes with a very nice looking Sticky Notes application, although it is rather lacking in features. Personally, I prefer Stickies, although it looks a little outdated (and I can’t find a “skin” for it that is any better).

Instead, I created my own variation simply by changing default options and style.

First of all, you’ll need the Segoe Print font – this comes (as far as I can tell) with Office 2007, Office 2010, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Now, go into the Stickies options and change the following options…

• In “General”, select “Drop Shadow” amd change the text width to 181 which is,  from what I can tell, the same default size of Sticky Notes. Personally, I prefer 255.
• In “Appearance” click on Font Style and select “Segoe Print”, “Regular” style and a font size of 11pt. Sticky Notes don’t go opaque, but I prefer to have Stickies with an opacity of 90%.

And that’s it – you can see the result in the image on the right (both types compared).

The developer of Stickies tells me that if I get into creating my own theme I can drop the top toolbar and create something that’s even more similar to Sticky Notes. I’m not sure when (or if) I’ll get the chance to try it, but if someone else does in the meantime, please let me know.

After more reports of personal data being lost, I’ve been left confused.

Where I work, only those who need laptops get them. And when they do, they don’t keep data ON the laptop, but on a remote server. When away from the office you have to sign in with a secure password, etc, to access any data, etc. If the laptop is stolen, you get nothing.

Most laptops these days come with built-in hardware security including finger-print readers, TPM chips and, if you have Windows Vista, technology such as BitLocker.

Additionally, you can prevent PC’s (whether desktop or laptop) from accepting USB devices, floppy-drives, writeable CD’s, to ensure that data doesn’t go wandering.

Now, I’m not a security expert (I leave that to friends) but why (and this isn’t just aimed at government who are not the only people losing personal data) is this happening?

I believe in the US they come down hard on companies who lose personal data such as this and we should do the same here. And that includes government departments. There really isn’t an excuse.

XP SP3 is due to pop-up on Automatic Updates very soon.

In the meantime you can download it directly from Microsoft. This is the final, release version of the SP.

As well as rolling up past fixes, this adds new features ported from Vista and early reviewers suggest that it increases performance by up to 10%.

Me? I’m installing this as soon as possible. Who needs Vista?