Nowadays, we are confused and boring to install commonly-used software one after another, this gets even worse on a fresh OS. Anyway, no matter on work or home computer, we need a program to help us when reformatting and backing up program installers.

Hereafter, that's what Smart Install Pack works. Smart Install Pack in fact incorporates a handful of software usually installed on new computers or reinstalled operating systems, etc. Meanwhile, SIP is also available to eliminate all the searching around for nothing, waiting, downloading and only then installing.

Presently, SIP is a pre-packed set of popular applications, including Firefox, Chrome, Avira Antivirus, Winamp, Skype, Gimp, Picasa, Thunderbird, Adobe Reader, WinRAR, Yahoo Messenger, CCleaner, and more. Everything downloads in a single file, so you won't be cluttering up your drive with a bunch of separate installers.

What's more, SIP supports an easy but intuitive user's interface design. Packing a set of ordinary but necessary software, SIP greatly improves the time and you don't need to install them one by one. Upon to the users' demand, any software could be decided whether you want to install or not. Still, don't worry about the package. It really works as small as possible with so many useful programs. Even some users suggest SIP should be improved without any manual click, but please put the shortcomings aside. Smart Install Pack is really a handy way to get a system up running quickly with a solid group of commonly-used programs. Let's use SIP to make new configuration faster and enjoy all the useful software in a few minutes and free!

Previously, we told about the interface and highlight features of 3 pop browsers by rendering engine. We will test the speed and performance in this article. Who is the final winner? We will wait and see.

1. Testing items and results
Startup Speed
We tested the startup speed to see how much time takes when a browser start to work. No plug-ins will be available except standard testing installation. Blank page is the startup page. We count an average time in three tests.

Seen from the above table, Opera is the fastest one, Firefox takes No.2 and IE is the last one. For another word, respective resource occupation would be resulted in its own score. Opera certainly runs fast and simple. Fortunately, IE8 didn't solve its huge resource share problem.

Page open speed
We this time again test the loading speed when opening different pages. Three websites with abundant contents are selected here. We took the time until all the contents are finally loaded.

3 groups in three times is the test standard. Average time is available. The second test will start when the history is empty and browser is closed. Results are as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

With the development of internet technology, a browser currently is not only a simple tool for browsing but finally a personal media terminal tool. Here they are after quite, after the storm, browser marketing shown us a contention war of eye balls. Since Internet Explorer and NetScape "fight" each other, IE periodically was the flagship of browsing industry but was later taken away by Firefox one after another. Then, with Safari for Win and Google Chrome, we see plenty of up-and-coming products and competitions starts. One fails, another rises. We witted such an exciting web war. Naturally, each of them open up special abilities and look forward to earn a place in IT industry.

At the moment, browsers based on 3 popular and major rendering engines, Internet Explorer based on Trident, ever perfect compatibility to Windows operation system and browser from the third-party developers based on IE, all along firmly takes up nearly 50% of the browsing industry. While Firefox based on Gecko with free source code is in possession of advantages IE doesn't, the third-part y plug-ins constantly updates and all are well strengthened. Besides, excellent safety and stability inside, Firefox still obtains a majority of skillers with professional computer technology. Similarly, Opera based on Presto with a long developing history could be survived in such a fierce competition, majorly attribute to its unfailing speediness, efficiency and stability.

Meantime, the statistical data from 2008 annual statistical data from Net Applications concluded, Internet Explorer even occupied total 70% of browsing market (including IE6, IE7, IE8 and browsers from the third-party developers based on IE). Firefox follows as the second one with 19% marketing occupation. Safari from Apple ranks No.3 and Opera is the fourth one with 0.70% market data.

On account of Safari based on WebKit monopoly position in Mac, BrotherSoft now select IE, Firefox and Opera, to put up detailed and in-depth transversal evaluations on these top 3 market shares based on pop rendering engines. Several importances would be laid on as follows.

- User interface, including standard interface, enabled browsing skin and other humanity design.
- Running speed: startup and page load speed.
- Resource occupation: memory and CPU share condition in different applications.

We will analyze them good and bad in an all-sided manner. Read the rest of this entry »

We've all been experiencing, no matter how advanced your computer configuration is, your PC just isn't running like it did the day you purchased it. Every day you open it, a long-time waiting even drives you crazy. Most of programs and systems could not be run at a normal speed. You're at the same time experiencing unusual and unexplainable phenomenon after some "uncertain" software.

Hereafter, weak Windows system once comes again on the disaster edge. The thorough solution is, back up related information and break out your installation disk, then wait for a long Windows installation process.

About nearly one hour later, well you get a clear Windows system back. With sweet start music, you are ready come a total empty system. But don't be too early to happy, here comes troubles. What can you do with such empty equipment? Want to listen to music? Initial Window Media Player has to be updated. Check your information on Facebook? Try to accept an even simple interface of Internet Explorer. You have to do nothing with it.

Well then, you need to build a seemingly impenetrable force armed for your computer. Here we pick up a wide array of necessary applications for a fresh PC, and most of the first choices are freeware. With these software, you will build up a fast and stable Windows platform after your reading.

Once we all wish PC will work on a stable and long-term sate. Let’s start first with Anti-Virus software for safety is of significant importance.

1. Anti Virus
First Choice: AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
Alternative: avast! Home Edition / Bit Defender

Anti-Virus software couldn’t do anything to your almost corrupted system. But it does work as the most effective safety protection tool. An advanced Anti-Virus is indispensable to operation system for it would effectively defense attacks from various virus.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is the free Anti-Virus software particularly developed for individual users from AVG. With a measure of internet defensive capability, AVG availably resist virus and spyware. Presently the newest version is 8.5, in which contains supervisory control towards Trojan. Monitor and defense activity to IM tools, such as MSN and Skype, are also specifically in that Anti-Virus.

avast! Home Edition
Differently, avast! home edition is free defensive software aiming at stand-along users and non-commercial home ones. Eight scanning programs make up monitor activities available from time to time, which are standard scanner, script blocker, Web shield, E-mail scanner, instant messaging scanner, P2P protection and Outlook/Exchange scanner. The eight components provide a full scale of protection for your computers. Users can optionally set respective starting or closing activities. In addition, avast! Home Edition performed excellently on system resource occupation. 30 MB space for eight modules, PC runs smoothly as usual.

BitDefender
BitDefender is an old but famous brand from Romania, which was the only one highly reviewed as the top 1 Anti-Virus all over the world for three consecutive years since 2006. BitDefender got striking achievements in authoritative industry awards. Various sizes of enterprises and personal users choose Bit fender for its advanced information safety protection. Other than strong defensive capability, BitDefender keeps himself ahead of other software with constant virus response in less than four hours. Read the rest of this entry »

If like me, you like to try newer versions or beta versions of Mozilla Firefox, you must have had the same problem I always have… add-ons (extensions) deny to work and tell you that "This add-on is for older versions of Firefox" even in the Mozilla Firefox add-ons site.

You know, I really love Firefox, and I also love to be up-to-date and the best for me is to try the latest version and take a look at what novelties it brings in the form of features, functionalities and improvements, even under the threat of being unstable. However, I also like that while I'm testing it I can continue using Firefox right in the way I'm used to. Here is where the first obstacle arises, older add-ons wont work. It mostly occurs because developers haven't updated the add-ons or failed to make the code compatible for the newer version accurately. Fortunately Firefox has a few options to get all those lazy extensions to work.

In the following paragraphs I'm going to share with you the way of doing that.

Lazy add-ons? Nightly Tester Tools will help you to wake them up
Nightly Tester Tools is a handy Firefox add-on that will help you to install and run an incompatible extension, it will also turn disabled extension into enabled. Read the rest of this entry »

These are the programs which features, capabilities, performance, improvements and popularity made them last in time, being nowadays as up-to-date as the first day they were released. Thanks to that characteristics, these pieces of software have become a part of computer science history and present.


The award-winning Firefox Web browser has security, speed and new features that will change the way you use the Web.

User Interface
It has a very interesting and eye-catching interface which is also highly customizable through the use of themes, most of them are developed by users.
Highlight Features
This is an amazing, highly popular free browser, its revolutionary capabilities and characteristics include tabbed browsing, spell checker, bookmarks management, popup blocker, keyboard shortcuts, support for search engines and a very practical download manager. It also presents a high security protection (phishing, malware, viruses etc.). And above all a constantly improved performance.
Use and Help
Users are allowed to add Website addresses to their bookmarks directly from the address bar, manage plug-ins and add-ons in a very easy way, configure programs associated with file types and get information about the visited websites. It is also very customizable with thousands of available plugins and add-ons.
Price/Value
Best - Free


Google Talk adds internet calls, file sharing, notifications and other features for a richer instant communications experience that is more than just instant messenger or online chat.

User Interface
Its interface is clean, unadorned and functional, simple yet useful.
Highlight Features
This is a agile, elegant and functional utility that provides various communication channels, including PC VoIP calls and Jabber protocol instant messaging with automatic integration with GMail email account. It's quick and easy to use, with all the necessary options, and very well done. The sound quality is very good, to call a contact is easy and the connection is very fast. The instant messaging system is also very good with comfortable buttons, just elegant.
Use and Help
Users can automatically add their Gmail contacts, adjust the microphone sensitivity, transfer, voice mail and see message status with the music being heard at the time. They are also allowed to communicate with any other IM protocol through the use of extensions, include avatars in the conversations and fully customize the appearance of the chat windows, send offline messages.
Price/Value
Best - Free


7-Zip is a file archiver with the high compression ratio. The program supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, LZH, CHM, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO, ISO, MSI, WIM, NSIS, RPM and DEB formats.

User Interface
Its interface is very simple, with a dual-pane file browser and some basic configuration options. It integrates smoothly into Windows context menu.
Highlight Features
This is a versatile file compression manager. This program uses a new format, .7z, which compression rate is up to 50% better than the ZIP standard, without losing quality or speed. Besides its innovative format, 7-Zip supports different formats as ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, TAR and others. Moreover, it offers: a powerful File Manager, a powerful command line version and FAR Manager through a plugin.
Use and Help
It can be used with virtually any existing compressed file and can decompress ZIP files encrypted using AES-PKWare. 7-Zip can be automatically associated with any of the formats supported. Users can adjust the compression rates an many other parameters.
Price/Value
Best – Free Read the rest of this entry »

Google has released a developer-oriented update to its Chrome browser on Wednesday, which fixes some crashes and video playback issues. Google Chrome is now in version 0.3.154.3 and still in beta testing.

The following is mainly a bug and security fix update.
Crash Fixes
Release 154.0 had a few browser crashes, including a crash on startup on tablet PCs running Windows Vista. Google fixed the new crashes and 154.3 should be much more stable.
Plugin Performance Fixes
There are more plug-ins performance updates in this release, including fixing some videos that halt after 1 second and plug-ins causing the browser to become unresponsive.
Safer Downloads
The new version changes the download behavior for files that could execute code (exe, dll, bat, etc.). These files are now downloaded to unconfirmed_*.download files. In the browser, you’re asked if you want to accept the download. Only after you click Save is the unconfirmed_*.download file converted to the real file name. Unconfirmed downloads are deleted when Google Chrome exits.

Google Chrome was launched last month in a blaze of publicity, but seems to have attracted little support. We hope that after a series of updates, Google Chrome can catch up with IE and Firefox.

You can download Google Chrome 0.3.154.3 HERE.

It is an exciting news that Google announced their browser Google Chrome to be available on Tuesday. Google has joined the family of browsers finally. Although the download of Google Chrome did not officially start yet, their download page and tour was briefly live at gears.google.com/chrome/ just now. Unfortunately, it did not work when I tried. However, it doesn't matter and we can enjoy some screenshots and comic book explaining Google Chrome.

This is just the beginning - Google Chrome is far from done. Google released this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from users as quickly as possible. The developers of Google Chrome are hard working at building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.

So far, Google has not disclosed the details of Google Chrome. The following is the comic book explaining Google Chrome and we can learn some features from it.

More stories, you can visit HERE.

Imagine you have invited a friend to the place that neither of you has ever been to. You may want to write an email including a map, so you search the address on a search engine, map it on a map site, and finally copy all links into the email being composed. It's a very simple Web task, but you find it cockamamie to carry out. And actually, you haven't sent a map or any useful information to your friend - only links. A new product of Mozilla Labs - Ubiquity can help us make Web surfing easier.

What is Ubiquity
Ubiquity dedicates to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily.

The overall goals of Ubiquity are to explore how best to:

- Empower users to control the Web browser with language-based instructions. (With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.)
- Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone–not just Web developers–to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.)
- Use Trust networks and social constructs to balance security with ease of extensibility.
- Extend the browser functionality easily.

With Ubiquity, a user can, for example, type a restaurant name in an email, select the name, option-click to bring up the Ubiquity command line, type "map" to generate a Google Map centered on the selected restaurant, and then drag that map to embed it into the email so it can be shared.

Initial Ubiquity Released
Mozilla Labs has released an early experimental prototype - Ubiquity 0.1, which is to demonstrate some of the concepts of Ubiquity and the possibilities that it opens up. This release is meant as a illustration of a concept and mainly focuses on the platform. The next release will explore interfaces that are closer to features that might make it into Firefox.

Features of Ubiquity 0.1
- Lets you map and insert maps anywhere; translate on-page; search Amazon, Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Youtube, etc.; digg and twitter; lookup and insert yelp review; get the weather; syntax highlight any code you find; and a lot more. Ubiquity "command list" to see them all.
- Find and install new commands to extend your browser's vocabulary through a simple subscription mechanism

All of the code underlying the Ubiquity experiment is being released as open source software to appeal more developers into the development. The image below is image is the goal of what kinds of language-based services Ubiquity hopes to inspire people to create.

If you want to know details about features of Ubiquity, the video below will give you a reference. You can download Ubiquity HERE.

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As the strongest competitor to Internet Explorer produced by Microsoft, Firefox has always been loved by Internet users. One of the reasons is that there are so many Add-ons for Firefox. Firefox 3 released on June 17 gives us much new experience. And in order to attract more developers to develop better Add-ons, Mozilla Labs held the Extend Firefox 3 Contest. Here is the list of winners of Extend Firefox 3 Contest. Let’s share the best partners of Firefox 3.

Best New Add-on

Pencil
The Pencil's unique mission is to build a free and opensource tool for making diagrams and GUI prototyping that everyone can use. With the power of the underlying Mozilla Gecko engine, Pencil turns your Firefox 3 browser into a sketching tool with just a 400-kilobyte installation package.

Key Features
-Built-in stencils for diagraming and prototyping
-Multi-page document with background page
-On-screen text editing with rich-text supports
-PNG rasterizing
-Undo/redo supports
-Installing user-defined stencils
-Standard drawing operations: aligning, z-ordering, scaling, rotating…
-Cross-platforms
-Adding external objects

Tagmarks
The Tagmarks extension brings together the fast one-click bookmarking in Firefox 3 and the power of using Tags to organize your bookmarks. With Tagmarks, you have a lot of different options of icons to click when adding a site to your bookmarks, instead of just the Bookmark Star. When you click in each icon, it will add the page to the bookmarks and associate that icon with that page, through the use of tags.

HandyTag
Handy tags simply provides a set of the most relevant keywords in the bookmark’s edition panel. These keywords are retrieved from many different sources :

-first, the tags you already gave to one of your actual bookmarks.
-then, the keywords the webmaster gave to his webpage.
-the tags given by del.icio.us users for the same page.
-and, finally, the tags that our keyword extractor found (using KGen).

Best Updated Add-on

Read it Later
Read it Later allows you to save pages of interest to read later. It eliminates cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest.

The newest version of Read It Later, exclusive to Firefox 3 has been improved across all levels. Using Firefox 3's new Places architecture, the extension can now fully perform the way it was meant to be.

TagSifter
Firefox 3 lets you tag your bookmarks, but it doesn't give you a great way to browse your bookmarks by their tags. TagSifter tries to. Select a group of tags in the sidebar or menu, and TagSifter shows you all the related tags and bookmarks. Or search your bookmarks with set operators, like "tag1 - (tag2 + !tag3) ?bookmark search". Comes with a tool to help tag your existing bookmarks as you move to Firefox 3.

Bookmark Previews
Bookmark Previews adds an album view (like cover flow) and a thumbnail view (with drag and drop), this extension also adds previews to the tooltips in the bookmarks sidebar. Just hover over a bookmark in the sidebar to see the previews.

In Firefox 3 you can access the two new views by opening the Library. This extension will take previews of your pages whenever you visit or add a bookmarked page. When you first start you will be able to have the extension create previews for you in the background.

Best Music Add-on

Fire.fm
Fire.fm is your direct access to the extensive music library on Last.fm. Listen to music related to your favorite artist, and discover new artists and music in the process. Listen to your friends' favorite music. Find Last.fm users with musical taste similar to your own. Quickly access your favorite stations by just typing a few letters into the location bar. This is the ultimate add-on for the music junkie.