Check this site before you buy anything!!!

One day my friend came marching towards our gang and proudly showed us his new NOKIA mobile which he had bought the other day. On seeing the mobile, one of our gang's techie boy gave a negative feedback on the model and on hearing it the proud guy's face was full of BULBS. He started to worry like anything that his mobile is not worth of its cost. We felt really bad for him and I, having a plan to buy a new mobile phone for over 2 years wanted to check out which mobile is worth for its money. But where will go to learn about the features, cost etc etc of such gadgets. Obviously , I can go to a mobile shop and learn them but after all those nerdy questions to the shopkeeper if i return without buying even a crystal cover, then you people know how badly a chennaite shopkeeper can damage your family. So I never wanted to take such a risk and i was back at my keyboard searching for answers to which mobile model to buy.

I got an opportunity to explore a site called TestFreaks! The developer has built it based on the basic quest of consumers to get advices and neutral reviews of products they are planning to purchase. As an electronic freak myself, whenever I buy something like mobile phones or whatsoever, I prefer asking people on their reviews and ideas in finding the perfect one. We always look for the best possible information about the product we are going to buy and so is this site.

TestFreaks aggregate all possible information about a particular product like manufacturer description, specifications, expert and user reviews, ratings and including deals on the rates. Every other site like CNET, Amazon has this kind of features but there’s something special about this site too. The limitation of information is not just ended up to user reviews and ratings, but TestFreaks have extended it to forum discussion too. Other good thing about this site is its video review for each and every product. Every time when we see a product in advertisement or in a poster it resembles different from real so in that case video review of each product would help a buyer understand the product.

Every product is valued by giving a FREAK Grades. Freak grades are determined based on performance, ease of use, quality, design, features, value for money and scores given from experts and users. So the monopoly of product rating can be avoided and users get the real best reviews about each product.

Another highlighting feature of this site is its BUZZ index which would probably show the buzz about a particular product among the users. Usually buzz index are zero for new arrivals and based upon certain manipulations and results the buzz index of a particular product increases.

Currently, TestFreaks is in its beta and their active categories include Audio / Video receivers, Camcorders, Cell phones, Digital cameras, DVD players / Recorders, Home theatres, Monitors, Mp3 players, Printers, Projectors and TVs.

And about my new mobile, all those models doesn't suit my budget and so i stick on with my old mobile. [ Wish our finance minister P.Chidambaram passes a special bill this march to cut off mobile prices or else irukavey iruku SARAVANA STORES :) ]

Speeding up your computer - Part 1

Well, this has been a great problem for every one of us who use their PC for many hours and complain to their buddies that their computer has slowed down and need to upgrade theirs.

There is no need to get into upgrade kinda stuff unless if you wished to go for a hardware hungry OS like Vista. If you are using Windows XP as your OS, then here are few tips to make it yield a optimum performance continuously.

Speed Start up:

After a few days of buying a PC, after you install some of the softwares which you use, your PC seems to take a lot more time to start than before. The reason for this is these newly installed softwares set themselves to start automatically on system start up and the loading of these programs consumes quite some time thereby increasing the start up time.

So forcing these kind of programs from running automatically during system start up is the only solution for this problem. How could be this done? Read on.....

• Click the START button of your taskbar and click on RUN. [ Shortcut: WINDOWS key + R button ]
  
• Type 'msconfig' [ without quotes ] and press enter
• In the newly opened window, search for the START UP tab and click it
• Under start up tab, you will see a lot of things with check boxes. The ticked or selected checkboxes contain those programs which are set to run on system start up. DESELECT those programs which you donot wish to run automatically and click APPLY and then OK
• Restart your system
  

P.S : This start up menu contains the drivers and other essential programs which are necessary to run your system. If you have no knowledge on what a program is meant for then please do not mess with it.


Delete Temporary Files :

Temporary files are those which gets clustered in your system when you visit a webpage or you click on 'Open' on downloading something from the internet. As days pass by, these temporary files occupy hundreds of MB's of spaces or GB's at times which will degrade your system performance. So to keep your system for optimum performance and to protect your privacy you need to delete these temporary files.

How can this be done?

Well for this, you need to download a software named C Cleaner, formerly known as Crap Cleaner and whats more advantage is that it is FREE.

To download this software, Click here

What you have to do is to download, install and run this software. At the first page of the software click 'Run CCleaner' and there you go your system is free from crap.

Other features of this software are

Registry Cleaner - Delete unwanted registry keys of softwares from the system memory

Start up Manager - Disable unwanted programs from running on system start up. This seems to be a better option than the previously mentioned method.

Uninstall Manager - Uninstall programs that are no longer required or not installed properly. Add or Remove programs from control panel takes a hell of a time to load the installed softwares and this software has them preloaded and you need not to wait.

This software is compatible with Vista too and hence Vista users can also use this software to free up system space.

Other optimization techniques will be posted later. So keep checking.

Nungambakkam

It is almost the same time as yesterday and i am feeling dizzy after a heavy dinner. Courtesy: Naren for his birthday treat at the Dabba in Nungambakkam. This place is known for some of the best things in the city namely

• Taj Coromendel - The best 5 Star hotel in the city
• MOP Vaishnav college - One of the women college in the city which has some cool and sexy girls.
• Ishphani Center - One of the best in class shopping mall. And again guys visit here to have a nice treat to the eyes.

As i was aware of only the above mentioned three things at Nungambakkam, i wished to know more about the place and started to google on it. The results which i got were truly astonishing. Here are a few of my findings.

Nungambakkam has been a part of Chennai for more than 2 centuries.

Apart from MOP Vaishnav college there is another gals college, the Womens Christian College, which is also well known for its beautiful gals and their all round performances in most of the cultural events.

And above all there is another famous institute which has produced the most talented people the world have seen such as Actor Vijay ( may be he is an exception ), Actor Vikram etc. ( The list is very big and so i keep it up to two ). Yes, your guessing is right. It is the LOYOLA College. It comes under the Nungambakkam area.

Talking about Loyola college, another thing flashes in my mind which i have read a couple of weeks ago in the tamil magazine Kumudam. It is all about Prostitution in the roads of Nungambakkam ( the roads name is not mentioned for some obvious reasons ) which is near to the Loyola college. Prostitution near an educational institute?? Shocking isn't it?? Well that is Chennai for you.

With all the above mentioned points if you people are interested to know more about Nungambakkam, follow the links.

To know about history, click here

To know about important facilities available, click here

Something for the first time......

The time is 11.58 PM at the lower right corner of my PC, which is my only close companion for the past 2.5 years. All these years, it has kept me occupied for almost 18 hours a day and most of the time keeping me at the peak of my teenage feelings. But am not blogging to express all the stories which i see in it. When all 'those' movies, music, games etc were overdosed, i felt may be i should try different things.
So i thought of seeking my fellowmen's advise regarding what can be done. One good friend of mine advised me to start blogging and here i am using my keyboard more than my mouse for the first time. Being a beginner in blogging, i have no idea on what could be posted and what people like to look out in blogs. While i gather some knowledge in such matters, let me share something useful, interesting information and experiences in the forthcoming postings.
Its already 00.30hrs in my taskbar and these fonts look blurred already. So catch you all later.