Windows Blue in Coming Months, Facts Remain Uncleared

90 million copies of Windows 8 has been soled out within the 3 months of its release. Even after it's huge success, expert's won't recommend to have it on your PC as if your PC dies. Windows 8 will be its killer. This is because Windows 8 has some drawbacks like Modern UI, bit defender not performing well and sluggish lock screen (though you can optimize it for better performance).

Clearly, releasing Windows 8 idea is not fully down and Microsoft has still some plan to release the newer and improved version to came over the drawbacks of Windows 8. Though, many sources have strong proof that the next big hit from Microsoft, would be Windows 8 blue to safegaurd the rapid decreasing popularity of Windows 8. According to popular Windows 8 blog of China, known for leaking latest news on Windows, Windows 8 blue will going to arrive at the end of 2013 (There is no proof of any date and month) and most probably, will be named as Milestone Preview.


windows_8_blue

Windows 8 would be expected to have same capability and powerfulness as compare to Windows 8 alongwith solid features like less power consumption, Modified Modern UI, close button for apps button. Sadly, there would be no improvement expected for removed start button and user's who're missing start button needs to compromise. .

How to bring back data from a bad hard drive?

Consider the case when the Mac HD is almost inaccessible to the user, raising pool of serious concern over the integrity of data & hard drive. Astonishing cases had been reported in the past where a Mac HD failed to appear in Disk Utility but surprisingly shows up when attached to a PC. Although on PC too the HD appears with little or no credentials.

However, the windows system let us examine the hard drive in a peculiar fashion, making everything on the hard drive almost locked & a right-click of the mouse ends up displaying 'HELP' options & all others as inactive (Grey colored). It's obvious that PC won't read/write the Mac formatted hard drive but at least it let us know that drive is not completely dead and may require a repair. 

Below are some points to repair/recover hard drive & data…

Run Disk utility: Use the Mac OS X Installation disk to boot the Mac & select your language to move to the main OS X screen. Using Utilities launch disk utility to verify & repair disk permissions. This might cure minor faults on the hard drive but won't be helpful for major faults. Bingo, if this works out otherwise there have to be other procedure soon to be followed.

Clone Mac HD: What if there exists No Startup-Disk, No Boot?

Too much extent the Mac will be unbootable due to lack of required boot disk, until you create a clone DVD of your boot volume. The clone of the Macintosh HD to an external media (supposedly a hard drive) with the help of Stellar Drive Clone can make you open disk utility from the cloned hard drive media and troubleshoot your Mac. 

Another superb method to boot a Mac without an Installation disk is the use of a great utility called 'AppleJack'. With the help of few command lines, Applejack software will enable the user to perform basic system maintenance tasks when Mac doesn't even boot. This utility is most suited for PPC & OS X up to 10.6 through which disks repairs, permission repairs, caches could be managed. And, also it's a free utility to have on your Mac OS X. An example of Applejack command line would be: -

type
/sbin/fsck -fy

You can repeat until the utility says 'Your file-system is good'.

Data Recovery through boot disk: There is good number of data recovery software available to a user that brings in Boot DVD with them. If you lack any installation/boot DVD, then don’t worry, you might get it from the data recovery software vendor. Once data gets off from the troubled HD, save it to a safe location & now you can switch to repair the Mac hard drive with the help of a volume repair. 


Screen-shot: Files ready for recovery on an unmounted hard drive using Mac recovery software.

Target a Mac: Firewire cable makes two Macs (hard drives) and even Mac - PC drives connect & share each other data. Though their exists few tools that can read Mac hard drives on a Windows system, it hardly makes any sense to access the files. Macs in target disk mode would facilitate as source & destination devices with the bad hard drive as source & healthy Mac as destination. 

If every other attempt failed on the Mac HD & seems like none of the recovery & volume repair tool would be of much help then take the HD to the nearest Apple care.

Drawback and Benefits of Using Lock Screen in Windows 8

Lock screen is another addition to great features of Windows 8 which lets you to lock your PC when not in use or just to prevent unauthorized use. This lock screen functionality is same as you see in Windows 7 but proves more beneficial.

You can usually get to this screen by rebooting or pressing 'Win + L' key and it requires you to enter administrator password to access desktop or charms bar. Lock screen have some components like wallpaper, time and battery notifications, which is always your primary need and you don't even need to unlock your PC.

      

The main advantages of having lock screen enabled in your Windows 8 is you can still able to get updates like recent mail notifications, battery status, date information etc. while leaving your system ideal. You can always able to customize these apps or the order in which these apps appears at lock screen.

You can easily customize lock screen apps appearance by going to PC settings from the start screen and choose personalize. A flying pane will open in right consisting set of apps currently enabled for the lock screen with an option to add or remove apps as well as an option to change background picture.

                  

Below are some quick benefits of using Lock-Screen,

a. Easily get mail, weather or time notifications from a single screen.
b. Prevent your system from unauthorized use
c. Customize apps of your need

Why user hates lock-screen (drawback)?
Probably, you'll get no reason to hate this Lock-Screen as it might serve many purposes without requiring you to sign in. Though, there are many users who doesn't like this addition in Windows 8 either because they didn't want to enter password all the time before getting to the desktop or just want to make their PC even more faster. Clearly, I do not recommend to do this as it will reduces the security of your PC and a wonderful functionality of Windows 8 OS.

 [Good Reads: Fix Windows 8 freezing at Boot Screen]

However, you can easily disable the lock-screen by following the below steps:
  1. Reach at the desktop screen and press 'Window button + R' key to open Run program.
  2. Type gpedit.msc in the text box and press OK.
  3. At the 'Local Group Policy Editor' window, navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Personalization > and double click on the option saying “Do not display the Lock Screen” 

     


  4. From the open window, check mark the radio button stating Enabled and click Apply/OK. 
  5.  Now, lock-screen window will no more pop-up and you can able to directly reach at the desktop.
[Also Read: Hard Drive Data Loss at a Glance]

Windows 8 brings lot of added functionality and tries to reduce the bridge between the modern PC's and tablet devices. That's why; Microsoft has provided this functionality as a hand on tablet experience even when you are using PC.

How you can say goodbye to slow Mac boot ups?

OSX-Daily 
A computer boot is a time taken by the OS X to load all the required systems files that are utmost needed to load the desktop & volumes information for the user's access. The ideal time for a Mac boot up may stretch from few seconds to a minute(s). Although this boot time strongly depends upon the condition of the hardware & software installed. With a malfunction of any of the components or logical trouble the boot time may be affected. Still, it is interesting to note that several Mac users have reported short boot time which indicates the fast processing of the OS X. Next time, if you feel the need to check your boot time, start your Mac & a stopwatch at the same time.


Interesting facts about the Mac boot up time. (Data shared from Mac-Forums). Had to admit, all of the below users received fast boot time speed with different Mac OS X specifications.


Mac OS X Boot time
PowerMac G4
27 sec
Powerbook G4 17" (HR) 5,9 - 1.67GHz, 2GB DDR2-533MHz,
23 sec
iBook
1 Min approx
Intel MacMini 1.66, 2GB
42 sec
iBook G4 1.33GHz 1.5GB RAM
35 sec
20" Intel iMac.
34 sec


Worth mentioning causes responsible for painful boot time?
  1. Troubled Startup-Disk: - Don't expect the Mac to boot fast or even properly if there exists a erroneous OS X startup disk. The symptoms of improper startup-disks are flashing QUESTION MARK (?) sign at the time of boot and even a blustering globe. To rectify the issue, jump to SYSTEM PREFERENCE & let the OS X know about the correct startup-disk. Until & unless, there exists other grave issues with the disk, this will solve the problem. 

  2. Set-Reset PRAMs: Most occurring in older Macs, the subnormal PRAM makes the OS X to delay its boot time as the OS locates information for devices & hardware stored in PRAM. To reset PRAM on your Mac, turn off the Mac & start again pressing the key combinations CMD+OPT+P+R. Don't release the keys until the known chime music is heard. 

  3. Login-items: - Trust this, even though everything seems to be fine with the Mac, the Login-items can alone cause the boot to slow down. Why, because, the items checked for startup during the boot takes more than required time to initiate causing the OS X to compromise on its fast boot. To resolve this, wait for the desktop to appear & drift through System Preferences<Select Account<<Click the Login item tab. The little window appears with the list of all items that you might check-uncheck for start-up at boot. It is recommended to unselect an unwanted item from the list.

  4. Almost filled-up boot volume: Left no free space on the boot volume then realize the need to create good amount of free space that boots the Startup-Disk sufficiently. Upon failing to do so, the Mac will rollback to painful slowdowns. It is advisable to maintain the boot volume space by using free speed up Mac utilities such as Onyx & Stellar Speedup Mac 2.5
Other than the above points let’s not forget to carry out disk verify & repair permissions for the entire Mac hard drive so that an occurring error is caught on time. Peripherals too, can also cause hurdles in booting a Mac. For that, check all the connections & apply for a hardware test.

Now Develop and Host Websites with Google Drive

Google Drive, one of the most popular cloud storage service now offering developers to host their HTML Code , CSS or Java Script on Google drive to run any website, confirmed on 5th Feb post at Google Plus. This can help developers to design websites and test their output without choosing a dedicated web hosting services or paying a single bucks for it. Moreover, a live URL is generated which can be shared with the client or any party to see the live demo of a web-page.

Also Read Hard Drive Data Loss at a Glance

Below is a snapshot of a sample web-page, designed by Google Drive team. You can check out this live page here.

Google-drive-webpage-sample

Here's what you need to do:
  1. Open the URL drive.google.com and sign in using your Google account.
  2. Create a new folder and rename it to “Public on the web”.
  3. Add your entire HTML, iFrame and CSS code to this folder.
    Note: Remember to pre test your code to make sure that it’s free from any error (s) and can run smoothly on any web browser.
  4. Open the HTML file and you will get a Preview button to see the preview of a live web-page.
  5. Copy and share the live URL from the browser address bar.
You are free to create as many web-pages as you want but remember, Google Drive is free for only 5 GB of storage, and after then, you need to pay for it. Though, I do not recommend to use this for running your business or product websites.

Cheers!!