How to downgrade from Windows Vista to Windows XP?

Throughout multiple posts on this blog, I never failed to express my complete dissatisfaction from the currently distributed with new computers Windows Vista. I am not alone showing the negative attitude towards this Windows Operating System. Our business customers refused to accept our equipment managed by Windows Vista. And, from other side, testing our high tech system performance with this OS produced less stable outcomes with original Windows XP. The problem is in ending support by Microsoft (in 2014), and by computer manufacturers (Dell in 2010) for Windows XP. Hopefully, Windows 7 will give the reliable platform not just for hope, but also industrial computer needs as well.

While the Windows Vista drawbacks are maybe less visible for home computers use, many users are still prefer to downgrade the supplied Operating System to more reliable XP. One of the readers of this blog asked for instructions on the OS downgrade. In response to this inquiry, I am offering you the article, published by Scott Dunn at Windows Secrets Web Site.

Windows 7's arrival is just a few months away, but many people aren't waiting and just want to replace Vista's newness — some say weirdness — for the familiarity of XP.

If you long for the good old days of XP and still have your install CD, this step-by-step guide will help you revert to Vista's predecessor.

These days, you have to work to find a new computer that comes with XP installed. Many PC users who upgraded their XP systems to Vista are disappointed with the newer OS's performance and other problems. In either case, as long as you have an XP installation CD, you can kiss Vista good-bye.

"Downgrading" from Vista to XP is not as difficult as you may think, but it does entail some time-consuming operations. Many online sources claim to offer techniques for reinstalling XP without having to reformat your hard disk. Based on my research, however, deleting the Vista partition and installing XP in its place is arguably the easiest approach. Moreover, this method ensures a clean install that is uncontaminated by Vista leftovers.

(Note: In certain cases, you may be able to undo an XP-to-Vista upgrade, even without an XP installation CD, by following the instructions in Microsoft article 933168. The article takes a command-line approach to the XP restoration, and also requires that you have a windows.old folder on your root drive.)

Make a pot of coffee and a new, clean XP machine

With your XP installation CD and your application discs in hand (and maybe a cup o' Joe), you're ready to begin:

Step 1. Back up your data. Unfortunately, you can't restore in XP a backup that you created using Vista's Backup and Restore Center. That means you have to either back up your data files manually or use a third-party backup tool that works in both XP and Vista. One such program is 2BrightSparks' SyncBack, which is available in free and paid versions.

Don't bother backing up your applications; you'll need to reinstall them from their installation CDs after XP is back in place.

Do back up the folders that your portable apps use to store their data. The portable apps themselves won't need to be reinstalled, but you'll have to restore their data files from the backup.

Step 2. If necessary, configure your BIOS to boot your computer from a CD, if one is present. Insert your XP installation disk and reboot.

Step 3. When XP setup loads, follow the on-screen prompts to accept the license agreement and continue installing XP. When you get to the screen prompting you for the partition on which to install XP, select the one containing Vista and press D to delete the partition. You'll need to press Enter and then L to confirm that you want to delete all data and software on the partition.

Step 4. Once you've returned to the partitioning screen, select the unpartitioned space that used to be Vista. You may see that this space has been selected for you automatically. Next, press C to create a partition. Specify the desired partition size, or press Enter to accept the default allotment, which is the maximum possible partition. (Simply pressing Enter instead of C also creates a new partition of the default size.)

Step 5. If you're still seeing the partition screen, make sure the desired partition is selected and press Enter. Choose the option that formats the disk as NTFS and press Enter again.

Step 6. Follow the prompts on-screen to continue the XP installation.

Step 7. Reinstall your applications and restore your data from your backup.

That's all there is to it. If you ever change your mind, you can always insert your Vista DVD and upgrade from XP to Vista all over again.

Use Supercomputer to Buy and Sell Stocks with Profit

The supercomputer dedicated to stock market analysis - this title was widely used in the press, when the online investment assistant, GStock.com, has been review. The latest articles in the New York Times and InfoWorld praised the service for its consistently accurate picking of profitable investments. According to the message delivered on the homepage, 2 out of every 3 “buy and sell” stock picks, made by GStock’s supercomputer in the last 3 years, have made profits for users who followed the advice. This statistics is pretty good if it is accurate enough.

So what does it mean - supercomputer? GStock is constructed of thousands of volunteered home desktop computers around the world, networked into one big distributed supercomputer, which indeed has a super power of combined computer resources. If you join the community, you might be willing to delegate some of your computer power to the main cause, but that is completely voluntary and will not impact the level of services, you can get from the site.

GStock’s will provide simple trading signals assisting the decision making process on any actions to be done with the stock market shares:

• BUY - Buy this stock and profit.
  
• SELL - Sell this stock and monetize your profit.
  
• No Signal - Don’t do anything with this stock right now (i.e. All BUY and SELL trading signals expire 7 days after a signal has been given).

Main Features

• GStock makes informed trading easy. Rather than overwhelm traders with industry education and advice on various sophisticated technical approaches, GStock does all the work. And as we’ve explained, that work involves a vast supercomputing power that analyses each stock independently. So when GStock gives investors money-making BUY or SELL alerts, those alerts are informed. All the investor has to do is BUY and SELL for profit.
  
• About 2 out of every 3 GStock trades have produced profit.
  
• GStock has used more than 60,000 trades to calculate results. So you can be sure that some “lucky” trade did not influence the results.
  
• These results were produced on a period covering 2004 - 2007. Information analyzed from a considerable period of time proves consistency for the results.

How can GStock help you profit

GStock gives you 2 options on the site participation: Free and Premium ($30/month).
1. Open a FREE GStock Account and scroll through recently calculated signals that you can invest in.
2. Increase your chance of profiting by subscribing to the GStock Premium Account. You’ll receive a daily email newsletter with a digested list of all the newly calculated signals, including past statistics and a direct link to each stock’s page.
Once you open an account (either a FREE or a Premium Account), you can build your personal portfolio with up to 100 stocks. This will enable you to:

• easily monitor these stocks and
  
• be notified whenever any of these stocks receive a BUY or SELL alert by GStock.

If you do not want to create account at all, you can proactively come once a while to visit the site and check for fresh buy or sell signals for your stocks of interest.

Gstock Use Recommendations

GStock provides valuable BUY and SELL alerts on over 4,000 large and mid-sized US traded stocks.. But how do you choose which stocks to invest in? Subscribing to GStock’s simple daily alerts email is a good start. Below are several guidelines that we found to be good practice when choosing stocks:

1. Search for cyclicality, not trends.
A past long-term trend is something that each and every strategy would have succeeded in. On the other hand, a strategy that managed to locate the peaks of a stock with cyclical behavior is the one to follow you can be relatively sure that a stock that has ups and downs naturally will eventually go up again. Having a strategy that pinpoints these peaks for you is quite valuable.

2. Timing - Buy no later than 4 days after a BUY signal and sell no later than 90 days after.
A BUY or SELL signal for a specific date is not carved in stone. GStock alerts are sometimes right on the spot - and sometimes they precede or follow a stock’s movement. It’s best to buy or sell no later than 4 days after a signal for a stock was given, and to expect each trade to last about a month on average. If a trade lasts 3 months without a sell signal in sight, it is better to abandon the stock in favor of a stock with a recently calculated BUY signal.

3. Build a portfolio of around 10-20 stocks.
Modern portfolio theory suggests that a balanced portfolio contains 10-20 stocks. This way, the portfolio isn’t too sensitive to an underperforming stock, yet is not too large for beating the market.

4. Don’t forget to add your stocks to Your Portfolio.
This is the most important guideline we could give you. When you buy a stock, add it to your portfolio. When GStock issues a SELL signal to this stock, you’ll immediately be notified via email. You’ll also see a big red SELL sign near this stock in your portfolio. So it’ll be very easy for you to follow alerts on stocks you have bought into.

Website Homepage: http://www.gstock.com/?picks

Useful Extensions for GMail

Have you ever sent and email and then realized a second later that you forgot an attachment or didn’t include some information? Even worse, if you realized that you sent the email to the wrong person, or included the undesirable recipient in the recipients list. While some email programs, as Microsoft Outlook, give you opportunity to recall the message, if it was not opened by recipient, using less advanced email client or Web-base interface will leave you with no reversal choices. Not anymore, if you use the best free email provider from Google - Gmail.

To help senders with this problem, Gmail has introduced several add-ins from their Labs to enhance the mailing capabilities related to the highlighted issues.

One of the add-in, worth mentioning, is “Forgotten attachment detector”. To add this feature to your Gmail account, click on the Settings link and then go to the Labs tab. Scroll down until you find the related option and enable it. As option will be enabled, it will prevents you from accidentally sending messages without the relevant attachments, prompting you anytime when you mention attaching a file in the body of email but there is no attachment was detected.

The second related add-in is even more powerful, as it gives you a certain grace period of a few seconds to cancel your correspondence sending. You can undo and edit your message before sending again. Search on the list the ‘Undo Send’ option and enable it. Once you do this, after you send a message you will see an undo link above your inbox for a few seconds which lets you recall the message you just sent.

While you are on the Labs page, feel free to look at the other experimental gadgets, offered by Gmail staff to make your mailing experience better. All options are free, so choose as many as you want. You can disable any features, you do not like, anytime later.