Author Archives: GEEK!

Fix iTunes automatically reopening itself in Windows

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This is an issue that seriously irritated me for some time. I could run iTunes absolutely fine on both my Desktop PC and my netbook, but on both, as soon as I closed iTunes it would automatically reopen itself again.

It might repeat this process three or four times before it actually stopped reopening. I was beginning to think it was Apple ignoring a bug in the software, but I think I’ve found the problem.

If you regularly use Windows Live Messenger on your desktop machine, try this solution.

Go to Windows Live Messenger, click your profile name (below your display picture), and then click “More options”. Then untick the checkbox “Show information about the song I’m listening to”.

This will, of course, stop WLM from showing any song you are playing as your personal message. However, I’m not hugely fussed as I just use last.fm to note all the music I listen to.

That fix seemed to work for me. iTunes doesn’t seem to automatically reopen any more. Let me know if this fix works for you.

PS – sorry I haven’t posted in ages. I took a bit of a break in April!

Fix USB devices not charging on laptops/netbooks (Windows 7)

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Last night, I came across a minor issue on my netbook. I want to be able to charge some of my many USB devices (such as my phone, iPod, mifi) while on the go, but I couldn’t get them to charge properly.

For example, I tried to plug in my mifi to charge it up on my long trip home – the computer recognised it fine and it charged for a few seconds – but after a little while the device reported it wasn’t charging.

I’ve discovered the problem is caused by a little power saving feature in Windows 7. It has a feature built-in that automatically reduces the power supplied to a USB device if it is not in use. Whilst this is a handy idea, it’s pretty annoying when I want to charge gadgets.

If you’re having the same issue, here’s the fix.

Go to Control Panel (make sure you’re viewing all options – by selecting Large/Small Icons in the “View by” menu), click Power Options and then choose the power plan that you’re using most (in time you might want to go through all of them). For the power plan you’ve selected click “Change Plan Settings” and then “Change advanced power settings”.

Now you’ll need to navigate to the “USB settings” plus button. Click it, then the plus button of “USB selective suspend setting” and you should see the following.

image

They’re probably set to Enabled. If they are, here’s your problem. Set it to Disabled for both On Battery and Plugged In, click Apply, and that should solve your problem.

If you can’t modify the settings because the options are all greyed out, it’s because your computer’s manufacturer is using some form of power management software that doesn’t want you to change the settings. In the case of my Samsung netbook, it was “Fast Start”. Disable whatever crud it is that’s greying out the options and you’ll be able to modify the settings. 

GEEK!’s getting some changes this Summer

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In the first "site updates" post I’ve done in several months, I’m today announcing a number of site changes and updates that will take place this Summer.

After nearly two-and-a-half years of running GEEK!, I’ve had the chance to share my technological point of view as a teenager in full-time education. I’ve also had the chance to write some useful guides and share some useful downloads that have proven popular to many.

I’ve now come to the decision that, over the course of the next few months, I’m going to make a few significant changes to GEEK!.

In basic terms, I’m going to make a little more personal. My main issue with the current site is that it relies to heavily on “tech” news and I don’t want the site to reach a point where GEEK! is simply repeating the news – that was never the idea of the site.

So, in the not-too-distant future, GEEK! will get a new design, logo and “branding” (as loosely as the term fits what I’m trying to say!). I’m also going to start writing posts that are more general rather than just about technology.

This doesn’t mean that I’ll stop writing about tech, though. Hell no. I’ll still be reviewing tech when I can and posting about important tech news events as they happen. I’m still a GEEK!, after all.

Oh, and on that note, I am keeping the name!

Thanks for being a part of GEEK! since the launch in 2008. Hopefully, it’ll still be here for years to come. Smile

Internet Explorer 9 goes live – nothing that much new…

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Internet Explorer 9 went live in the early hours of today after a year of development. You can grab the new version from http://www.microsoft.com/ie9.

After a relatively quick installation, you are presented with the new interface (see below).

Google - Windows Internet Explorer

There are several issues with IE9 that I haven’t really liked since the Platform Preview. For example, I’m really not sure why Microsoft bothered to make it so that tabs appear on the same row as the web address. On a low resolution display such as a netbook, this becomes extremely frustrating when you can’t see the titles of your open tabs. This can be fixed by right clicking on the title bar and selecting ‘Show tabs on a separate row’ but I’d rather it did this by default.

On the plus side, launch time definitely seems to have improved and seems to be relatively comparable to Google Chrome.

Doing an acid3 test on IE9 will give you a result of 93/100, which isn’t perfect – but isn’t awful. The latest version of Chrome will give an acid3 result of 100/100.

Whilst it still is no comparison to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox (and probably won’t ever be), it has to be said that there have been several improvements. Sadly, Internet Explorer’s rendering system has always been a let-down to me as it just isn’t half as good as Webkit or Gecko.

Skype’s RAM usage is dreadful!

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I’ve been a fan of Skype for many years now – as it seems to be the most reliable and practical way to keep in touch with friends on the phone for free. I was a user of the Skype “subscriptions” for many months and was very impressed with the value for money and quality of the service.

However, it has come to my attention that the newer versions of Skype seem to be using extortionate amounts of RAM – even when the client is in idle mode.

Windows Task Manager (3)

Above is a screenshot of my Task Manager in Windows 7 32-bit on my netbook. As you can see, it’s using well over 80MB of RAM in idle mode. If you go into a call, this will trickle up to over 100MB.

I find this a little excessive – especially since the program is only trying to keep a login alive whilst in idle mode. Do something about it, Skype!