Firefox 3 has been our browser of choice since its June 2008 launch. In this article, I will share with you a list of useful extensions each beginner should install & use. As you will see for yourself, they will greatly improve your browsing experience by providing additional features which cannot be found in Internet Explorer.

In this article I will talk again about Windows Speech Recognition and how you can enhance its functionality by using macros. I will show you how to create macros which do things such as: insert specific blocks of text, run programs with specific parameters and send keystrokes to any application. You will also learn how to create aliases for existing Windows Speech Recognition commands which are are hard to remember and replace them with more meaningful voice commands. At the end I will detail how to create macros which execute more advanced commands such as searching weather information for a given location.

This year we continue our series of interviews with a very special guest: Vishal Gupta, the man behind AskVG.com. Vishal is one of the most well known Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals on the internet, author of great themes for Windows Vista and writer of countless tutorials about Windows. His site won last year the "The Best Windows Vista Website 2008" competition, a competion where our site won third place. If you want to know more about him on a more personal level, check out our interview.

In previous articles I talked about how to use Windows Speech Recognition and how to take advantage of its advanced configuration options so that you can have a great experience. In this article I will talk about Windows Speech Recognition Profiles and how to easily backup and restore them any time you need to. As you will see for yourself, the procedure is very simple and involves using a small tool.

In this article I will talk once more about Windows Speech Recognition and how to benefit from all its advanced configuration options. I will show you how to create new speech profiles and how to manage them, how to add vocabularies or change the existing ones used by the tool. Other topics that will be covered include: how to change the language used by Windows Speech Recognition, how to work with speech dictionaries, audible cues, and how to dictate in other applications.

Since I saw my first Sci-Fi movie flicks, I wanted to have the technology they were using. I still haven’t touched or seen flying spaceships at that scale, teleporting devices, robots that can dance or other similar gadgets. However, I have found a piece of that dream incorporated in Windows Vista's Windows Speech Recognition application. This tool tries to understand what you are saying and converts spoken words to machine-readable input such as key presses or Windows commands, thus limiting the need for using the mouse and keyboard. In this tutorial I will show you how to set up Windows Speech Recognition, learn how to use it and give you some information about common issues with this application.

I always wanted to hear my voice. I tried recording on an old cassette but didn't like the results and it was hard to rewind exactly at the point at which my voice was heard. Thankfully the technology evolved and now, with the help of microphones and computers, I can hear my voice crystal clear. However, to make a microphone work in Windows Vista, sometimes you need to do a few little extra steps than the regular plug and play. So, with that said, in this article we will show you how to quickly make your microphone work in Windows Vista.

Lots of people are having problems with their computers and many of them are caused by the applications they have installed. Some hate the fact that, all of a sudden, their documents are opened with another application instead of Word, or their movies are opened by some other application instead of the one they are used to. Others have problems with their browser not working properly due to some strange toolbars. Others receive lots of annoying messages at startup. All these kinds of problems are caused by the fact that, when installing applications, many people blindly click on the Next button until the installation ends. In this article I will give you five reasons why doing this is a very bad practice which leads to countless problems. Hopefully, I will manage to convince you to stop for a few seconds and read the windows & messages you receive during the installation of any application.

Services in Windows are quite a controversial topic for various reasons. In this article I will try to clarify them as much as possible. Therefore, I will describe what services are, how they work and where to find the list of services installed in Windows Vista. At the end, I will show you how to change their status (start, stop, etc.), their type (automatic, manual, etc.) and give you my perspective regarding which services can be safely disabled in order to improve performance.