Windows 7: The Newest version of Microsoft Windows

Posted by Rakesh under Uncategorized

Windows 7 is the newest Operating System, released on 22 October 2009 by Microsoft Windows, for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablet PCs and media center PCs.

The Mac is the coolest OS and computer, and the Linux-based computers are expert-friendly and  Windows-based computers are user-friendly but Windows computers get infected with spyware and malware and it is reason of headache of many people around the world. But still today, there are a huge number of  users of Windows.

No matter where users intend utilizing Windows 7, it has something for everyone this to be more reliable, more responsive, and to make the things customers do every day easier, as its predecessor—Windows Vista—failed to win the hearts of consumers and was virtually shunned in the enterprise market. Complaints ranged from Vista’s incompatibility with older software to its intrusive security measures and heavy horsepower requirements.

Windows 7 has a glassy look which has been inherited from Vista  and apart from this, it has been added many more usability enhancements along with it. The UI features such as aero peek, desktop gadgets, aero shake, jump lists, themes and many more have been excellently embedded.

Windows 7 overcomes the drawback of Microsoft windows upgrade regarding the drivers with Device Stage which gives the flexibility to organize the pre-installed drivers.

It gives you flexibility to have specialized icons and pop-up menus with the help of which you can customize your devices like printer, pen drive, phone, camera etc.

The security feature of Windows 7 is much more powerful than Vista. The users are not allowed to access sensitive part of the programs as in Vista, but there is good balance and interaction in Windows 7 which makes the user feel more comfortable in accessing.

Networking was another issue in case of Vista, which is taken care in Windows 7 with the help of ‘HomeGroup‘ which gets multiple PCs on network and allow users to share files by forming a group.

Now Windows 7 has come up with Windows Media Player 12 which has abilities to stream music and videos on the network. The device compatibility is still being upgraded and will be released with future service packs for Windows 7. Its ‘Media Center‘ feature is most eye catching which has been enhanced from windows vista help. You can easily set up the cable card with Media center.

There are other cool features like the calculator making the mortgage payment calculations, Wi-Fi adapter for sharing the hot spot, cool graphics, and smart folder to arrange your libraries and many more.

Click here for full story

Formatting USB pen drive/ flash drive in Linux from commandline/ Terminal

Posted by Rakesh under Uncategorized

Insert your USB pen drive. Let it get detected and mounted. Open Terminal. Type The Following commands
1. dmesg | tail –> here the ‘|’ key is the pipe, ie, the key before the backspace key(the upper one, so press shift)

You’ll get something like

rakesh@debian:~$ dmesg |tail
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 7856128 512-byte hardware sectors (4022 MB)
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb:
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
SELinux: initialized (dev sdb, type vfat), uses genfs_contexts
Note the terms in bold. In your system it will be different, maybe sdb or something. Whatever it may be, make sure to substitute it in the commands below, else your hard disk may get formatted.

2. Unmount your pen drive by using
sudo umount /dev/sdb (In your case, please substitute sdb with the appropriate device, listed above.

3. use the mkfs.vfat command to format to FAT32 filesystem, or mkfs.ext3 to format to ext3 filesystem
sudo mkfs.vfat -n ‘Label’ -I /dev/sdb Replace Label with the name you want the pen drive to have.

4. That’s it! When done formatting, you’ll be returned to the prompt
rakesh@debian:~$ mkfs.vfat -n ’rakesh’ -I /dev/sdb
mkfs.vfat 3.0.0 (28 Sep 2008)

rakesh@debian:~$

Remove and insert the pen drive to have mounted again!

Enjoy Linux!