Get a constant overview of several time zones

                     When  making  a  call  to  another  country such  as  the  USA,  you  don’t  want  to inadvertently wake someone up in the middle of the night. But this can actually happen if you do not pay attention to the time difference.

              Windows provides help in displaying  several  time  zones.  Click the clock to the right of the taskbar.
A window with an analog clock and a calendar is displayed. Use the ‘Change Date and Time Settings’ link in this window. The ‘Date and Time’ dialog box
opens. Activate the ‘Additional times’ tab in it. This tab can be opened via the control panel as well as via the ‘Time, Language and Region’ and ‘Add times for different time zones’.
              Alternatively, in the classic view of the Control Panel, double click ‘Date and Time’ and activate the ‘Additional Times’ tab. You can define  up  to  two more time zones that Windows then displays near the analog clock with the local time. For this, there are two ‘Display this time’ fi elds in the ‘Additional Times’ tab. Checkmark the heading to activate the field. You can then select ‘Select time zone’ and ‘Enter display name’ with the help of which you can later identify the time zone. The country name would be an ideal entry. Repeat these settings for the third time if required and confirm with ‘OK’.
               Now after clicking the taskbar clock,Windows will show both additional time zones. If you simply hover the cursor over the time, a small tooltip with the current date and the various times is displayed.

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Defragment several disks automatically without monitoring

                 Regular defragmentation keeps the system performance consistent. But you cannot sit at your PC through this entire  process.  What  is  also irritating is that defragmentation needs to be manually activated if there are several hard disks.
                 The graphical interface of Windows’ defragmenter does not provide the option to process several drives one

after the other, at least under XP. What a lot  of  people  don’t  know  is  that  Windows has an additional command line tool called  ‘defrag.exe’  that  is  suitable  for batch processing as well. You can use it to automate the defragmentation of several drives. If you operate a system with the drives C, D and E for instance, enter the following in Notepad:
@echo off
defrag.exe -f c
defrag.exe -f d
defrag.exe -f e
Save the fi le as ‘defrag.cmd’. If you are using other drive names or more drives, change the file accordingly. Double click this fi le to defragment all hard disk partitions one after the other automatically without a break. However you need to be logged in with administrator rights for running the file. The used parameter ‘-f’ carries out the defragmentation even if the hard disk hasless than 10 percent free space, without pausing for an error message. But the process takes too long in that case. What you can do is delete the large fi les that are no longer required.
                  Vista and Windows 7 regulate defragmentation automatically on the basis of a schedule. Irrespective of that, you can either use the batch processing operation via ‘defrag.exe’ or even select several drives simultaneously with the graphical interface.
                  For this, right click a drive entry (e.g.in Explorer) for both the versions, select
the context command ‘Properties’, activate the tab ‘Tools’ and then click the ‘Defragment now’ button. Under Vista, click the ‘Select Volumes’ button and you can then activate several drives for defragmentation or select ‘Select all data carriers’. Under Win7, keep the [Ctrl] key pressed and then select the desired drives by clicking the entries one after the other.

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Switch off Aero interface automatically or programspecifically

               You need to switch of  the Aero efects  in Windows for taking screenshots or for some games, but using the display properties dialog box each time is extremely tedious.

          You  can  automate  this  task  by means of a property in the shortcut with which you can call up a specific program,  such  as  the  Screenshot  tool. The programs get more graphics power when  the  Aero  is  switched  of . The PC thus has a little more breathing room in case of intensive graphics applications such as games.

          Search  for  the  link  to  call  up  the relevant program on the Desktop or in the Start menu. Right click it and select the context command ‘Properties’. Then switch to the ‘Compatibility’ tab and activate the option ‘Disable desktop composition’ in the ‘Settings’ area.

          Confirm this change with ‘OK’. After this, Windows automatically switches to the ‘Windows 7 Basic’ color scheme when you start the relevant program.Windows automatically switches back to  the  previous  scheme  as  soon  as  you close the program.

             NOTE:  When  calling  up  Windows’  built-in components, it is not possible to set compatibility options. A shortcut to ‘notepad.exe’  is  thus  not  suitable  for this trick.

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