Free up some more hard drive space on your Windows 8 installation

I've been using Windows on my mac quite often recently, and although I had budgeted 65 GB of my precious SSD space to windows, it seems like Windows has already managed to consume 90% of that space! So, I wanted to figure out a way to reduce the hard drive space without deleting too much of my personal "my documents" content. Naturally, a good way of doing this was to delete unused system files. Although this installation is fairly new (about 5 months or so) there will still some old files remaining on the hard drive.

Here's how I went about gaining some more space:

Step 1: Run Disk Cleanup - the usual place you should start for reclaiming some hard drive space (you'll need admin access for this of course)

1. From the Start screen type in "Control Panel" and go to the control panel

2. Type in disk clean up in the "Search" bar at the top right hand corner

3. Click on "Free up disk space by deleting unused files"

4. Select your hard drive and click OK

4.5 If you feel like your system has been running fine for the past few weeks, you can also delete back up "system restore" files by clicking on "Clean up  system files button", then clicking on the More options tab that appears and clicking "Clean up" under System Restore and Shadow Copies, then go back to the disk cleanup tab

5. Check all the files that you think you don't need and click OK

Step 2: Run Windirstat to check for large files that you can delete

Step 3: I noticed a folder called WinSxS that was really large (about 12 GB), 

and looked it up to see if I could delete it. As expected, it was back up copies of all the updates that were installed, and links to other files so it would be catastrophic if anyone were to delete the installation. However, I found a little tip online that you can try to remove system files that have been superseeded if you had installed the latest service pack.

From the start screen type "Command Prompt", right click on the app, and click "Run as Administrator" on the bar that pops-up below. Then copy and paste the following into the window and hit enter:

DISM /online /cleanup-Image /spsuperseded

This will remove any old and unused files from the previous service pack and hopefully save some space on your hard drive.

How to dim your monitor brightness more than what your monitor allows

So I recently got a new monitor (will post a review about it later) but I found that the LED monitor was a bit too bright for my eyes, especially when I'm reading a white page in a dark room. I tried using the monitor hardware to turn down the brightness, but it was still too bright.

Enter Dimmer! Dimmer is a light weight free windows application that adds another layer of "darkness" on top of all the windows on your screen and makes all the white pages less brighter.

Try it out, and I'm sure it should help make your monitor less bright!

Choosing between Android, iPhone, Windows Phone and Blackberry

One of the things that I tend to use most everyday is my smartphone. I almost always carry it with me everywhere I go, and also have it close by when I'm at home. Needless to say, if there was one piece of technology I wouldn't give up it would probably be my smartphone. However, with so many different types of phones and smartphone operating systems out there, it can be somewhat of a hassle to determine the right type of smartphone for your needs. As such, I have put together here a little guide that may help you select the right type of phone. Most of what I have mentioned here comes from my own personal experience, with all these operating systems.


Top 3 reasons for choosing an Android Phone:

1. Price: A quick comparison between android phones and other smartphones will quickly reveal that android phones are in general a little less expensive than other varieties. This may be either due to lower specs, lower build quality or less features so always be sure to check some reviews online before going for an android phone that looks too good to be true. The top tier android phones, however, may be just as pricey as other competitors though, depending on how the smartphone market is when the phones are launched.
2. Freedom: One good thing about the android OS is that most manufacturers give you the option of installing any application that you want on your phone. It doesn't necessarily have to be downloaded from Google play (Android's app store). Often times, you can download it from the creators website (or forums such as XDA developers) and install it directly. Also, if you're even just a bit tech savvy, you can download custom roms and with technical some know-how "flash" it to your phones. Also, did I mention that you can play flash videos/games on android (you'll have to download a custom APK, but it's possible)?
3. Features: Big screen, small screen, high res, loud speakers, keyboards... there are all sorts of hardware features that you can find in android phones. If you're looking for an AWS spectrum phone (some providers like Wind/Mobility in Canada, and T-mobile in the US us the AWS spectrum for their services) then you can find plenty of android phones that may meet your needs

Top 3 reasons for choosing iPhone
1. Top of the line hardware: Apart from minor antenna problems with the iPhone 4, the latest lines of iPhones  have every piece of great hardware you'd want in a phone: 8MP camera, thin and light, high res display, adequate hardware noise cancelling and most of all a hardware silent/vibrate button (which is indispensable if you go to a lot of meetings and only realize that you forgot to turn off your phone after someone else's phone rings, and you don't really want to remove your phone out of your pocket)! One thing that I would have liked to see was some kind of a notification light, so I don't have to repeatedly turn the phone on to see if I have a message or email.
2. A wide selection of apps: iPhone still has more apps by number. Also, since Apple has been around the smartphone market for a while and the App store gets higher revenue than Android/Windows Phone/Blackberry stores many developers usually chose to release their apps for the iPhone first.
3. Reliability: iPhones on average have less software/hardware problems than Android phones. I've usually never had my iPhone never refuse to connect to the network after coming out of the subway for example, where as other platforms have sometimes given me some trouble.

Top 3 reasons for choosing Windows Phone
1. Fresh: Windows phones arguably have one of the funkiest looking hardware around. This is pretty cool when you want to differentiate yourself from the other iPhone users out there. Also, the Windows phone UI is pretty fun to use  and Microsoft has done a good job of showing the most critical information to the user upfront without having them jump to apps and screens.
2. Nice hardware: Many windows phone hardware partners (Nokia, HTC in particular) are putting out some of the best camera phones and high res displays out there.
3. Sufficient apps: While the Windows phone app store may not be as big as iPhone or Android, it does have a large variety of apps (especially those built using the "Metro" design platform) that will most likely take care of most things you would want to do with your phone.

Top 3 reasons for choosing Blackberry
1. Reliability: Blackberries have some of the best reception and voice quality (along with a few Nokias and Motorolas) that you can possibly find in a smart phone.
2. Keyboard: The Bold 9000/Bold 9900 probably has the best keyboard my thumbs have ever typed on. However, unlike touch screen based phones, there's no way to switch to a "number only" key pad when you want to make calls for example. Other Blackberries also have formidable keyboards that make it easier to type out those quick emails and texts.
3. Business features/BBM: Blackberry Enterprise Services/Blackberry Internet Service ensure that you get your emails in a secure and timely manner. Also, I've found BBM to be more reliable and faster than Apple's iMessage and even text messaging at times. It is also more secure.

Top 6 Gmail Tips

Gmail is probably one of the best free webmail services out there given the enormous number of features it has. Plus, chances are good that if you're reading this blog, you're a gmail user! As such, I've put together a short list of my top 6 tips that I use all the time on Gmail's web interface. Although I do use Apple Mail quite a bit, I've been drawn to the web interface more so than a desktop email reader because it's easier to use from any computer, and works great without any setting up or delays thanks to Gmail's speedy interface.

My Top 6 Tips for Gmail:

1. Use keyboard shortcuts to quickly process your emails. This is especially handy when you have a lot of mail to process. Simply hit:
• N to move to newer conversation
• P to more to previous conversation
• C to compose
• ! to report spam
• F to move forward
• R to reply
• And there's more.. you can find the whole list of shortcuts here
• To enable this feature head over to the settings page by clicking the "Gear" button on the top right hand side of your gmail window, and pick "Settings" from the menu. The keyboard shortcuts option should be under the General tab.
2. Undo send - Have you ever been in the situation where you clicked send and only after you clicked it did you realize that you had made a mistake. Well worry no more, because Gmail's undo send feature "fakes" the process of sending out emails by giving you a 5 seconds to cancel sending your email once you click send. You can turn this feature on from the settings page under the general tab.
3. Automatically process your emails by using filters (on top of Priority Inbox): With the filters feature you can set rules for incoming mail such as newsletters or notifications and sort them, mark them as read, delete them and so on. The easiest way to set this up is to click on the "More" button at the top of an email when you are viewing an email and click "Filter messages like this". Gmail will then ask you a bunch of questions and you can have your filter set up in no time.
4. Read email from other email accounts through your Gmail Account. If you have multiple email accounts like I do, then it may be best to use the multiple sign on feature that google has started offering recently. If you click on your username on the top right hand side of the page, you can click the "Add account" button to link to or more accounts to one account so that you can easily switch back and forth between these accounts. Just one thing you may want to remembers is being in the correct email account before sending out emails.
5. Allow others to send email from your account: A recently added feature in Gmail is the ability to grant access to others so that they can send emails on your behalf! You can find this option in the "Accounts and Import" field on the Gmail settings page.
6. Multiple Inboxes: A great labs feature that I like is to have folders or labels displayed on the main page so that you can quickly see what's up. This is great if you set up Gmail to fetch email from several accounts, as you can have several different inboxes on the main page to browse through. You can find the multiple inboxes lab in "Settings", under the "Labs" tab (just search for multiple inboxes). Once you enable this lab, you'll have a multiple inboxes tab where you can configure additional options.

Bonus: Get yourself a Gmail pet hamster!

The best ways to increase iPhone Battery Life

One thing that Apple has always paid attention to is the battery life in their devices. Most of them, particularly their laptops, far surpass the industry average when it comes to giving you lots of juice. In this post, I will mention some of the ways I, and many others, have managed to get more life out of their iPhones devices.

If you've used your iPhone for a few days, you may have noticed that the battery life is not as good as it was when you first got it. There are many reasons for this and the main culprits include:

1. Misbehaving apps that keep turning location services on or waking up your phone, trying to tell you something
2. Changed screen brightness and email sync settings - a brighter screen and syncing more often
3. Your phone trying Low reception areas
4. Syncing of large files (pictures, books, data etc.) from your phone to the "cloud"

All of these things use battery life. All of these things are also what makes your smartphone "smart". 

If you feel that your battery life is more important to you, then the best way you can get it back is by effectively disabling all the syncing, brightnesses changes and bad settings that have been pushed onto your phone by rogue apps.

Doing so is simple (although perhaps tedious):

1. Uninstall any apps you may have recently installed. In particular you can save a lot of juice by uninstalling data hungry apps that you don't really need/use such as:
1. VOIP Apps (Viber, Dell Voice etc.)
2. Apps that upload your pics to the internet (this include iCloud syncing, calendar syncing etc.)
2. Disable "notification" settings for apps that you don't really need notifications from using: SETTINGS > NOTIFICATIONS
3. Make your phone dumber: Turn off services that you don't need. Things that you can turn off from SETTINGS include: Location services (no GPS if you do this!), Siri (if you happen to have it, I don't use this much anyway)
4. Prevent uploading of "Documents and Data" to iCloud when you're using cellular data: Do so from SETTINGS > ICLOUD > DOCUMENTS & DATA > turn off USE CELLULAR
5. Prevent applications like Skype from signing you automatically from SETTINGS > SKYPE > SIGN IN AUTOMATICALLY

If you want to do all of the above, then you can try resetting all your settings from: SETTINGS > GENERAL > RESET ALL SETTINGS and this will maintain all you apps, but delete all the settings for the apps (this includes Mail, Google Calendar/Contact Syncing etc.). So next time you open an app it'll ask you if you wan't to use location services, notifications etc., and you can only allow a select few to access things like location services.

As far as I know, disabling things and resetting are the only ways of improving battery life on the iPhones (apart from draining the battery fully and recharging it again). Let me know of any other methods you come up with.