Turn Off Your Laptop LCD Monitor Screen Manually With A Single Click

Laptop LCD screen

As all of us are quite familiar with desktop computers, where we can turn-off the monitor just by pressing a button. But when it comes to a laptop, we know that you can always close the lid to turn off the LCD screen automatically. But wouldn’t life be simpler if we had a button to turn off the LCD screen of the laptop ?

Here is a simple program that can be used on windows based systems (including Windows 7 and Windows Vista) to manually turn off your laptop’s LCD screen.

This is pretty much useful when you want to just listen to the music on your laptop keeping its lid open. This also saves some energy, knowing which some manufactures do offer this kind of option on the laptop while most of the others don’t. (Sadly, my HP Pavilion notebook also lacks this feature).

A million thanks to Taimur Asad of Redmond Pie, who has developed this simple program called “Turn Off LCD” based on his experience with HP DV2799 Special Edition notebook that he owns. He wrote this application in C# with Microsoft Visual Basic 2008. It makes use of a DLL (User32.dll) file from Windows using System.Runtime.InteropServices namespace which then calls the required function.[ More tech info at Redmond Pie post]

Turn Off LCD shortcut

Just download the zip file from the following link and run the Turn Off LCD.exe (85 KB in size). That’s all you need to do, you can now observe your laptop’s LCD screen being turned off. Just hover the mouse or press any key to turn on the LCD screen again. If you have liked this, then you might want to add similar shutdown shortcut to your notebook also.

Download Turn Off LCD (v1.01, 68.5 KB)

Photo credit

Detect And Download Missing And Outdated Drivers Automatically With Driver Easy

Back in April, we had posted about a software called “Device Doctor” which automatically searches your PC for outdated drivers and downloads them automatically. But it can’t find the missing drivers in your system automatically.

It is very essential to install all the drivers from the resource CD that you have got from your PC manufacturer to make your system run smoothly without problems. But in case you loose the CD, it’s going to be very difficult to search and find each and every driver from the “Device Manager” in Control panel and download the corresponding drivers. In such situations, here is the software called “DriverEasy” that comes to rescue for us.

Just download (yeah, it’s free) the DriverEasy software from the link given below this post, install and run it on your system. It then performs the driver search on your PC and shows you the number of outdated drivers and the number of missing drivers found.

Driver Easy scan summary

Driver easy software download driver

You can now either choose to download each of the missing or outdated drivers or you may also download all the drivers at once click.

Download DriverEasy (1.20 MB)

Counter Strike Source For Mac Coming This Week

Counter-Strike source mac download

The Mac OS X version of popular FPS Counter-Strike: Source is set to be available this week according to the developer Valve.

The Mac version of the Counter Strike should be identical to the Windows version. Like Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike will also allow Mac and Windows users to play on the same servers.

The company has missed out a new Mac game release last week due to their representation at E3, otherwise the company has committed to a new Mac game release each week.

Tip: Install the Steam for Mac client and head over to the Mac Beta page to start playing the game right away even if you don’t have access to the closed beta.

WordPress 3.0 Available For Free Download

WordPress developers has today officially released the latest version of their popular Blogging and CMS(Content Management System) platform WordPress 3.0 (code name ‘Thelonious’).

WordPress 3.0 is the thirteenth major release of WordPress software and and is also the first major release of WordPress since the version 2.9.

The following are the major updates in WordPress 3.0.

1. Admin Username during the installation:

WordPress 3.0 allows you to give your own Username instead of default “admin” during the installation of WordPress.

Admin_username_wordpress_3
2. New look:

The Dashboard has been made a little lighter in color for better appearance.

WordPress_3_new_screenshot
3. Bulk Updates:

You can now upgrade multiple WordPress plugins simultaneously.

plugins_bulk_update_wordpress_3
4. Twenty Ten Theme:

A new sexy Twenty Ten theme replaces the classical Kubric theme which WordPress had for years

Twenty_ten_theme_WordPress_3
5. Custom Backgrounds:

change background in WordPress 3.0

Change the background color or upload a new image for background
6. Custom Headers:

You  customize the header by uploading your own images
7. Custom Menus:

You can now add menus to your blog..as easy as 1 2 3..You can choose the order/hierarchy in which they should appear. This is very good for SEO prospective.

Create_menu_WordPress_3

Custom_menus_Wordpress_3
8. Custom Post Types:

You can now choose custom post types for your blog like if you manage a big organization, you can have custom post types like “Products”, “Contacts”, “Employees”, “Newsletters” etc.

Post_types_Wordpress_3
9. Shortlink Support (Built-in):

WordPress now supports a default in-built URL shortener (shortlink generator) right from the post editor itself.

Shortlink WordPress 3 post

10. MU + WP = 3.0:

Now you can run a millions (virtually !) of blogs with a single WordPress installation.

Installing WordPress 3.0 In Your Blog:

You can either download WordPress 3.0 Zip file or you can use the Upgrade from your dashboard to upgrade the WordPress automatically to  WordPress 3.0.

Microsoft Update For Silverlight June 2010 KB982926

Windows update

A new update KB982926 is available for Microsoft Silverlight. This new update is actually a new build of the new version that is an upgrade to the earlier version of Silverlight offering fixing many issues identified the earlier versions (as many as 7 issues have been fixed in this update). This update has been categorised as “important” by Microsoft.

Update for Microsoft Silverlight (KB982926)

This update to Silverlight improves security and reliability, and adds a variety of performance and functional enhancements including support for web-conferencing, printing support and improved support for video, networking and rich internet applications. This update is backward compatible with web applications built using previous versions of Silverlight.

Download file size: 6 MB

Direct download link: Microsoft Silverlight

How To Download Google Chrome Standalone Offline Installer

Google Chrome Offline Installer

Google Chrome, the lightweight browser from Google has become very good alternative for browsers like Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox and its market share is continuously increasing booting other less popular browsers.

The problem that many users raise against Google Chrome is regarding the installation of the browser. When you want to download Google Chrome, all that Google gives you is a small file called “Google Chrome Installer” which then connects to internet and downloads the installer package online and automatically installs the stable version of the Google Chrome on your computer.

Google_Chrome_Installer

But do you guys know that Google offers a standalone offline installer which you can download and install on any computer that has no internet connection ?

Tip #1 :

If you want to download the standalone installer for the official Google Chrome stable version,

Download Google Chrome Standalone Offline Installer

Tip #2:

If you want the standalone offline installer for the latest Dev version of Google Chrome, follow these steps:

1. Find the latest dev version of the latest release from official Google Chrome Releases blog, find the latest version number mentioned there (in the screenshot, it is 5.0.375.55).

Note down the last 5 digits of the version number (xxx.xx format). In this case, it is 375.55

Chrome latest dev stable release version
2. Paste the above 5 digit number that you copied in the above step in place of “xxx.xx” in the following link:

http://dl.google.com/chrome/install/xxx.xx/chrome_installer.exe

[ In the above case, the link will be http://dl.google.com/chrome/install/375.55/chrome_installer.exe ]

3. Type the link in the address bar and press enter. You can now download the standalone offline installer of the latest Dev channel release version of Google Chrome.

ATI Catalyst 10.5 WHQL Display Driver [Downloads]

AMD logo

ati

AMD has recently released monthly release of ATI catalyst for the month of May 2010. ATI Catalyst provides drivers and other essential system software for ATI products such as ATI Radeon graphics processors, AMD chipsets, and other multimedia products.

The new version (Windows® Hardware Quality Labs, WHQL-signed) 10.5 hosts many feature enhancements, along with routine important bug fixes.

New In ATI Catalyst 10.5 Versions:

1. Added support for 120 Hz displays for the ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series and ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series.

2. Enhancement to ATI Overdrive: Overdrive now offers full support for over-clocking functionality on ATI Radeon HD graphics accelerators connected to multiple display configurations.

Resolved Issues for Windows OS:

1. “Battlefield 2: Bad Company” maps will no longer take longer times to load
2. Fixed text and on-screen menu corruption if hardware shaders is enabled while loading missions in “IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946” game.
3.Fixed the warning message “Catalyst Control Center is not supported…” that arises when you try to re-login to a system after a Remote Desktop connection.
4. HDTV resolutions are now being reported properly by the tooltip.

Official Download Page Link:

Download ATI Catalyst 10.5 WHQL Radeon display drivers for Windows 7 , Windows Vista & Windows XP (32-bit & 64-bit) from the following link.

ATI Catalyst 10.5 WHQL Display Driver

Realtek High Definition Audio Driver R2.48

Realtek audio driver logo

Realtek has released update to the High Definition Audio Driver, the new version of driver package is R2.48.

Realtek HD audio codec contains ALC882 series 7.1+2 Channel HD audio codec with UAA and DACs for ensuring high performance.

Additional Features In  Driver R2.48:

1. HDMI device WHQL Support: ATI HDMI devices

2. Operating Systems supported: Microsoft Windows XP / 2000 / Windows Server 2003 / Vista / Windows Server 2008 / Windows 7 (x86 & x64)

3. Package coming with Microsoft High Definition Audio UAAV1.0a(5013)

Download


File Size:

Windows 7/ Vista (32 or 64 bits) ZIP file – 60.33 MB

Windows 2000/ XP/ 2003 (32 or 64 bits) ZIP file – 30.08 MB

Download Realtek HD Audio Driver R2.48


Microsoft Download Manager [Downloads]

Microsoft logo

There are enough number of download managers available already. But I have a reason to checkout this one, it is that this one is coming from Microsoft. Microsoft Download Manager does what it’s supposed to do: download files, managing multiple downloads etc.

This download manager has been specifically built to manage file downloads from Microsoft websites in a more reliable way.

You need to add the URL of the file to start the download:

Add a download in Microsoft Download ManagerMicrosoft Download manager completed download

Sometimes you may get errors like these while downloading files from non-Microsoft websites:

Microsoft Download Manager error

Overall, you may just use it if you are one of those who download a lot from Microsoft websites.Also note that download man

Download Microsoft Download Manager (MSDownloadManager.msi, 1.1 MB, direct link)

Compatibility View List Update For Internet Explorer 8 – KB982632

Internet explorer logo

A new update KB982632 available for download for systems running Windows operating system.

This new update targets Internet Explorer 8 compatibility view list.Compatibility View List update helps the browser to load the websites designed for older browsers better in the Internet Explorer 8.To use this update effectively, you should select “Include updated website lists from Microsoft” option under Compatibility View Settings in Internet Explorer.

Windows Update

Download KB982632:

The update KB982632  was released on May 25, 2010 for systems running Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Windows 7 – Windows6.1-KB982632-x86.msu

Windows Vista – IE8-Windows6.0-KB982632-x86.msu

Windows XP – IE8-WindowsXP-KB982632-x86-ENU.exe

Also read about the latest update KB981793