OnTopReplica

OnTopReplica uses the DWM Desktop Composition found in Windows Vista and Windows 7 to clone a window and run it in a small thumbnail that always stays on top. This is perfect for keeping only the video frame of a video player on top. OnTopReplica requires .NET Framework 2.0 and a Windows Aero theme.

When you launch OnTopReplica, you will see an empty grey window on your screen. Right-click the frame and select the window you want to clone.

Next, right-click the frame again, pick select region to define the region of the screen you want to clone. Finally, enjoy the result!

Note that the original window cannot be minimized and if you choose to replicate a browser window, you cannot switch the tabs. Also see this article for a more thorough review of the tool: Two Ways To Sneak A Peek At Videos While You’re Working

4t Tray Minimizer

4t Tray Minimizer adds several additional buttons to the title bar of your windows. One of them, the pin icon, will fix the respective window on top of everything else, until clicked again. A very simple and easy solution.

Besides keeping our windows on top, 4t Tray Minimizer allows you to manage open windows in many different ways. Besides the new title bar buttons, the options are also available via the top level system menu. 4t Tray Minimizer was previously mentioned in this article: 3 Best Strategies & Tools For Open Window Management In Windows 7

PowerMenu

This tool adds additional menu options to all top level system menus without compromising the standard options. Apart from making a window stay Always On Top, you can also minimize it to the tray or change its transparency. It offers some of the same options as 4t Tray Minimizer, but it does not add the extra buttons to the title bar.

See a full review of PowerMenu here: Keep Windows on Top & Minimize To Tray with PowerMenu

DeskPins

DeskPins lives in your system tray. When clicked, your cursor turns into a pin and whichever window you click next, will be pinned to the top of your screen. Clicking the red pin in the title bar of the respective window, will unpin it. Very neat one task app that doesn’t add any extra clutter to your windows or menus.

DeskPins was also reviewed in this article: How To Pin Any Application Window To The Top

AquaSnap

Like the previously mentioned tools, AquaSnap offers a host of features. One of them is shaking a window to at once make it stay on top and change its opacity. The shake detection sensitivity, speed, and duration can be customized.

See this article for a full review of AquaSnap: How To Enhance Your Windows Experience With AquaSnap (Not Only in Windows 7!)

For even more useful tools to manage your windows, have a look at these articles:

• 3 Simple Programs That Can Help You Manage Multiple Windows
• 3 Programs That Help You Snap Windows Like a Win 7 User
• 3 Useful Programs That Help Manage Multiple Monitors

Do you still need to manage several applications on one screen or have you dedicated a second or third screen to parking your videos or other must watch items on?

Image credits: Tatiana Popova

Lee-soft offers a variety of free programs aiming to make Vista or XP look like windows 7, perhaps the most useful of which provides XP and Vista users with 7′s famous new taskbar. Let’s check them all out.

ViGlance: Windows-7 Style Toolbar

If you’re not familiar with with the Windows 7 toolbar, it’s actually pretty cool. Like the old Windows toolbar, it sits comfortably between the Start menu and the system tray, showing you which windows are currently open. Like the Dock in OSX, it allows you to “pin” programs, meaning the programs you use most will remain on the toolbar whether the program is open or not. Finally, hovering over any open program’s icon will show you a thumbnail of what’s happening in the program right now, as well as a list of all open windows or tabs. Some media players even allow you to control playback from this thumbnail.

Microsoft claims this new toolbar comes with a huge productivity bonus, and it’s not hard to see why: it combines the strengths of Mac’s dock with the familiarity of Window’s old taskbar. It’s also a greatly improved way to launch and switch between programs than the taskbar introduced 15 years ago with Windows 95.

Sadly, it only comes by default with Windows 7. Download ViGlance, however, and you can have it right now from within Windows Vista and XP. Well, basically, anyway.

As you can see, ViGlance gives you the most important part of the Windows 7 toolbar: one pinnable icon for each program. ViGlance willl also give thumbnails of any open window when you hover over its icon. What ViGlance will not do, so far as I can tell, is allow you to control media players.

Go ahead and download ViGlance here. You don’t need to install the program to use it – just run the program and you’ll be able to try out your new toolbar – it’s a great way to make Vista or XP look like Windows 7. If you like it you can set it to start when Windows boots automatically; otherwise you can just close it and forget it.

ViStart: Vista-style Start Menu

Of course, the Windows 7 Toolbar isn’t the only feature Windows XP users might want. The Windows Vista Start Menu is an improvement over XP’s in several ways, and is basically unaltered in Windows 7.

ViStart is Lee-soft’s answer to this.

While it doesn’t replicate the look of the Vista/7 start menu perfectly, it does replicate what for me is the most logical feature: instant search of your programs.

Let me explain a little. I’m a Windows user by necessity, but a Linux user whenever possible. One of the things I’ve always loved about using Linux is the ability to press “Alt” and “F2″ to bring up a “launch” window, where I can type the command of the program I want to run.

The Windows Vista start menu essentially gives me this in Windows. I press the Windows button, then I start typing the name of the program I want to run. As soon as I see it at the top of the list I can hit “enter” to launch it. This is a lot faster than fumbling with the mouse once you get used to it.

ViStart does this perfectly in Windows XP, and for this reason I’ve taken to using it in the last couple of days.

Check it out: download ViStart here. Like ViGlance, you don’t need to install anything to try it out, so there’s no reason not to.

ViSplore: Vista-style File Manager

This one’s the most gimmicky of all, in my opinion. You can replace the Windows Explorer file manager with one that resembles the Vista/7 file manager, complete with Aero effects. Since the rest of your system theme doesn’t match the Aero look, however, this mostly just looks out of place.

Still, it’s worth checking out if you like the look and the simplified interface. Download ViSplore here.

ViOrb: Vista-style Start Button

Finally, if the only feature from Windows Vista/7 you want in Windows XP is the slick, word-less Start-button-replacement known as the Vista Start Orb, give ViOrb a chance. While ViGlance and ViStart already replace the Start button with the Orb by default, ViOrb is perfect if you’re not interested in the Windows 7 toolbar or the Vista/7 start menu but do want to save some space on your taskbar.

Download ViOrb here.

Warning About Stacking

Though you wouldn’t expect it from such similar software all coming from one developer, these programs do not stack very well. On my computer trying to run ViStart, ViOrb and ViGlance all at once resulted in having 3 competing start buttons stacked on top of each other. My advice is to simply pick the features you find most compelling rather than run all three at once.

Conclusion

Lee-soft offers a few good programs that replicate some of the nicer features of Vista/7. While few would argue these tweaks are a wholesale replacement for an upgrade to Windows 7, they do bring some of 7′s nicer features to XP users today. If you can’t afford the expensive retail upgrade, and don’t plan on buying a new computer anytime soon, they are certainly worth checking out – if imperfect in some ways.

Looking for more ways to make XP look like Windows 7? Check out Tina’s article on that subject. Or, if you have some tips neither of these articles covered, tell us what’s what in the comments below.

Do you want to add a window switcher that will knock your socks off? Well despite it’s name, Vista Switcher makes your Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 machine switch screens, real slick-like.

The 270KB 32 bit download page is located here and wow, there is also a 64 bit download for you serious 64 bitters out there.

After downloading and running Vista Switcher, you will have a new icon in your system tray. It resembles an X in a box. The icon looks like the image to the left:

If you either hit that icon or you just push the control and tab keys together, it will launch its interface that allows you to not only select the screen you want to go to but it shows you an awesome preview of that screen.  There are hot keys that we will get to a little further in if you want to leave your default alt tab functionality.

Check out the program’s interface below:

You can still see your desktop through the transparent window and it does not go away if you release the keys. You can mouse over each item and it will show you a preview. Click on it to switch to that active window.

The application smoothly switches between screens and has a bunch of options which we explore below.

On the general tab you can first off switch your default program language. If your language is not available you can click the Find more translations to do just that. You have the check boxes for Auto starting Vista Switcher, to show or not to show the icon in the system tray, do you want to replace the alt tab action with Vista Switcher and (or) replace the right mouse button plus the wheel to Vista Switcher, and you can set hot keys if you do not want to use the combinations they provide.

This screen above is all about looks, you can change themes, fade out animations, task numbers, items allowed to be shown and preview style.

Next up we have the behavior window that allows you to modify the position of the window if you hate for it to be shown dead center. You can have Vista Switcher disable when you release the mouse and you can also have it show only tasks that are active or not with the last check box.

The exclusion list allows you to exclude specific windows from the switcher. You will see what is actually running on your machine from here.

I love this application and I have installed it on my Windows XP desktop as well as my Vista laptop. Are you using an alt tab replacement? If so we would love to hear about it in the comments!

So hopefully this tutorial will allow you to share files and folders to other computers on your network without a password. This tutorial is assuming that you do not have or use any type of user account password on your computer.  Since we will not be using a password to share our files and folders, other network users will be able to access, read or modify the contents of the files you choose to share. Only do this if you trust all computers and users that have access to your network.

The first thing to do to enable this kind of file sharing on Vista is to head over to the Network and Sharing Center. To do this, go to “˜Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network and Sharing Center‘ (you can simply paste this into a folder URL bar).

The first step is to customize the settings under “˜Sharing and Discover‘. Under Network Discover, check “˜Turn on network discovery‘ and click apply. Under File Sharing, click “˜Turn on file sharing. It is up to you if you want to have Public Folder Sharing active or deactivated.

This simply means that any files and folders in the Public account on your computer will be accessible. If you only want to share certain files with all networked users, this is simply your easiest option to choose. However, if you want to share certain folders on your computer, continue reading.

The next thing is to ensure you select “˜Turn off password protected sharing‘. When I was testing this setting, when I had Password Protected Sharing on, I could not access my computer on another computer. When I had it set to Off, I could.

With the above settings set, you may already be able to access shared files on other computers. If you can’t, or you want to share individual folders, keep reading.

There is a folder on my hard drive that I want all users of my home network to be able to access. To share this folder, simply right click and choose Share.

If you do not see something similar to this, you must have “˜Use Sharing Wizard‘ disabled. To enable it, type in “˜Folder Options‘ in the Start Menu search bar, select view and tick Use Sharing Wizard.

Now to share files with every computer on the network without a password, you have to add Everyone to be allowed access to the folder. So what you have to do is type the word “˜Everyone‘ in the text bar and click add. Click on the Permission Level and choose Co-owner, then click share. Everyone on the network should now be able to access and change files in that folder. If you only want to allow read access, simply choose “˜Reader‘.

If Sharing Wizard is switched off, pretty much follow the same principles. Right click on folder you want to share, and choose Share. Then click on Advance Sharing, then click on Permission, Click on Add, type in Everyone and click OK. Then set the appropriate access controls, and click OK to all the open dialog boxes.

You should now be able to access the folders on network computers without using a password. But remember, not using a password enables all networked computers to access your files, so be careful about the files you share. If you are still having problems with file sharing on Vista, make sure you ask for help in the comments.

If you are stuck with XP or Vista and would like to have a piece of Aero Peek and Aero Shake, no need to get disheartened. This is what I am talking about:

Users over at the WinMatrix forums (the source of many such innovations) has created an excellent software that brings such functionality to Windows XP and Vista. The application is called WinShake and is available for download here. Make sure you download the latest version (2.02 at the time of writing). Written using AutoHotKey, Winshake offers quite a functionality as you shall see:

An improved show desktop which can only hide minimizable windows, leaving the gadgets and sidebars intact, or hide everything to show the entire desktop. It also remembers the minimized programs and can restore them to their previous state even if you fire up more any more applications or windows.

A very good Aero Shak-ish feature: In Windows 7, holding a window’s title bar and shaking it a little, minimizes all other windows letting you concentrate fully on the window, that is under the mouse pointer. Winshake does something similar – hold the shift key and middle click on any window to shake it and minimize all other windows.

A Ctrl + Middle Click on the right end of the taskbar activates the peek functionality similar to Windows 7 peek functionality. While this one lacks the eye candy it certainly does let you peek at your desktop. Using Ctrl + Middle Click on the close button in the title bar of any window, makes it translucent and lets you peek through it at the window underneath.

There is a taskbar peek function as well that lets you peek at specific windows using the taskbar, but that is part of a nag and you can only use that for seven days after which you would need to buy a code to keep running this specific function. All other functions will however keep running even if you don’t shell out those bucks.

The application also offers shortcut keys for the above functions, which are easier to use as opposed to the mouse control, however you can easily disable them if you desire. Alt-Win-D shows the Desktop, Shift-Alt-Win-D restores the windows, Alt-Win-S activates Shake, Shift-Alt-Win-S restores the windows. Alt-Win-Space can be used to activate peek functionality.

If you don’t like the mouse activation commands, you can customize those too using the system tray icon. In addition to that the tray icon gives you access to other settings as well. You can customize animation speeds and transparency levels that will be used while performing various actions.

The application definitely lacks the eye candy you would get if you use similar functionality on Windows 7. That said, it does a pretty decent job of emulating the functionality and if a very good alternative if you are wanting such functionality on Windows XP or Vista.

Also check out Tina’s article on how to make Windows XP to look like Windows 7. She mentions AeroSnap among other things which brings the Windows Seven’s Aero Snap feature to Windows XP as well.

Give Winshake a spin and pour in your thoughts about it. Know some other applications that emulate Windows 7 features? We would love to hear about them as well.

So I’m taking this opportunity to share the wisdom that I’ve gained from that experience so that, possibly, I can save the next poor soul the trouble and heartache that I had to suffer through.

Am I being over-dramatic? Maybe. But what you have to understand is that at the very center of my livelihood is the Internet. I earn income, learn and unwind all on the Internet. When I lose that connection to the virtual world – I’m not a happy camper.

Rewind several months to the day when I purchased a new, shiny Sony Vaio laptop. I brought it home, excitedly opened up the box and turned it on, expecting the brand new laptop with a build-in wireless ethernet card to instantly sense my home network and connect almost completely automatically. Unfortunately, it sensed nothing. Many hours later, after an unmentionable amount of coffee consumed, I finally had my new Vista laptop on the Internet and screaming.

To save MUO readers out there who find themselves in this situation countless hours of aggravation, I’d like to offer the most important lessons I learned about Vista during this ordeal. Earlier, Aseem offered applications you can install that will improve your PC performance. However, I’d like to present the top five ways you can tweak Vista itself to get your Internet connection working, and increase your overall Internet speed.

The Most Important Vista Internet Speed Tweaks – Once You Can Connect

New technology is fabulous when it works, but I was quite disgusted to learn that Microsoft implemented IPv6 on Vista and upon install it is set as the default. The silly part is that it simply doesn’t work well with devices that still utilize the IPv4 protocol – and to assume that most home networks are fully upgraded to the IPv6 protocol is a faulty approach to setting defaults.

Many people upgrade their PCs and laptops long before they consider replacing that old outdated router that’s been sitting in the basement for five years and still works perfectly. So, when they bring home that shiny new laptop with Vista installed, guess what – the laptop and the router simply refuse to talk.

So, if you’re unlucky enough to find yourself in this situation – the very first thing you should do before we can even get started speeding up the Internet, is to disable IPv6 so that you can at least get on the Internet in the first place. Here’s how it works.

First, go to Start -> Network -> Network and Sharing Center, and then click on “Manage Network Connections.”

In this screen, you’ll likely have a wireless connection displaying that it can’t connect to any network. Right-click on that icon and select “Properties.”

You’ll discover both IPv6 and IPv4 enabled. Go ahead and uncheck the box for IPv6 and click “OK.” You’ll need to reboot your computer, but afterwards if the protocol incompatibility was your problem (and it very likely was), you’ll find that your computer can now communicate fine with the router. Maybe. There is one other complication Microsoft introduced into Vista just to encourage you that much more to upgrade your router – it’s something called “autotuning,” and it’s also the next Vista tweak.

Vista Connection Tweak #2 – Autotuning

This is another case where the cutting edge technological advances being enabled on Microsoft’s operating system by default is a recipe for disaster for users who have older networks and older network devices (specifically older routers). Vista comes installed and enabled with something called “Receive Window Auto-Tuning.”

On advanced networks, it’s actually a pretty cool technology where the transfer of data is monitored and Vista automatically “tunes” the TCP window field to optimize packet transfer. Older routers simply do not “play nice” when it comes to that kind of window resizing. This spells trouble for home users who don’t know the difference between a packet of data and a packet of sugar. What was Microsoft thinking?

Luckily – there’s a way for you, the home user, to turn this default feature off as well. First, click on “Start” and type “cmd” and right-click on the command icon. You’ll see the following window.

Click on “Run as Administrator.”  Then, in the command box, type “netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled” which will disable autotuning.

Now that you’ve got your new Vista finally communicating with your router (hopefully), you’re ready to tweak Vista even more in order to dramatically boost the Internet speed.

Vista Tweak #3 To Increase Internet Speed – Take Back Your Bandwidth

Another unnecessary default setting that Vista (and actually XP as well) comes with is a 20% “reserve” of your available bandwidth in order to accommodate certain applications like Windows Update. This tweak is a pretty common one most old-school users of XP already know – it’s not at all detrimental and you can immediately gain 20% of your bandwidth back, increasing Internet performance significantly.

This is called the QoS Reserve Bandwidth Limit, and to reduce this on any version of Vista you need to edit the registry.

Go to Start and type “regedit“. You may have to deal with the UAC, unless you’ve read Sharninder’s advice on how to speed up your Vista by turning it off! In Regedit, navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows”

Right-click on Windows and create a new key called “Psched“, then right click on the right and create a new “DWORD” entry. Name it “NonBestEffortLimit” and set the value to zero to disable reserve bandwidth.

Vista Tweak #4 – Modify Your Browser For Optimum Speed

Believe it or not, not only is your Vista operating system not configured by default to blaze the Internet as fast as possible, but neither is your Internet browser! These instructions include how to increase your browsing speed on Firefox and IE.

First, in Firefox type, “about:config” into the address bar (and ignore any warnings).  In the filter field, type “network” and scroll down to “network.http.pipelining” and set it to TRUE, and set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” from 4 to anything from 8 to 12.

I use Firefox almost exclusively, and this one change increased my page-load time by what felt like a factor of 50%. Of course, there’s a similar tweak for Internet Explorer as well, but you have to edit the registry. As before, go to Start and type “regedit.”

Navigate to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Internet Settings” and find “MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server” and “MaxConnectionsPerServer.” Set these to at least 10, or a little higher if you would like. You should also see an increase in performance for IE after making this change as well.

Vista Tweak #5 – Increase DNS Cache

This tweak is one that anyone should do anyway, as it can significantly save time while surfing the web, especially if you tend to visit the same sites often. What the DNS cache does is store information retrieved from the nameservers (IP information) so that the next time you visit the same site, your browser doesn’t have to waste time retrieving the same information from the DNS servers.

You can optimize this by increasing the size of your DNS cache.  This is another registry edit – so go back in there (Start and type “regedit“) and navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters” and then right click on the white space at the right and add four DWORD values: CacheHashTableBucketSize, CacheHashTableSize, MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit and MaxSOACacheEntryTtlLimit.

After checking a list of sites for the optimum setting for these values, the consensus seems to be decimal settings of CacheHashTableBucketSize to 1, CacheHashTableSize to 384, MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit to 64000 and MaxSOACacheEntryTtlLimit to 301.Of course, instead of using those old DNS servers, why not use OpenDNS?  When you’re done making all of the changes above, restart your computer and when it boots back up you’ll find yourself with a Vista PC that screams on the Internet.

Did these Vista tweaks increase your Internet speed? Do you know any other cool tweaks for Vista that work even better? Share your insight in the comments section below.