#powertoy

[techdirectarchive]

How to Edit Windows Hosts File via PowerToy Editor Utility

The host file is a configuration file that tells a machine the appropriate host IP it should route a request to, it maps a particular hostname to an IP address, this mapping has a significant effect on the bypassing of DNS Servers outside the machine and navigating a request directly to the mapped IP address. The Windows Hosts file can provide you with instant results anytime you are migrating…

How to Edit Windows Hosts File via PowerToy Editor Utility

[techkabbomoy-blog]

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Are you looking for buy a best power wheels for your kids? Find more info:

[vishers]

SyncToy

If you're like me, you're stuck on Windows at your day job.

I know, I know. But it's reality. No point in getting all upset about it.

On my mac, if I need to sync a large number of files between me and a remote disk, I have trusty rsync.

There are a number of utilities that offer support for rsync in Windows, but they aren't that good. Cygwin runs like a dog on my work box and it's really not an option. I did the whole Cygwin thing at my previous day job and since moving to my current one, I find that I'm much happier just using native tools. Besides, the only tool that matters has native Windows support so life is good.

I ran into the situation recently working remotely, though, where I had to copy a large number of files over and over again, after changing only a few of them, to a remote server. The copy would take about 2 or 3 minutes every time to copy the entire tree. At any given point, I may have only edited 2 or 3 files but the work involved with diffing the two directories or keeping track of edited files so that I could copy only the changes was outweighed by simply copying the tree over again.

More than that, I would delete files every now and again, and my method would break. In that event, I just deleted the whole remote tree and copied my entire tree into it again.

2 or 3 minutes, every 2 or 3 minutes, is a bit of an overhead.

What I wanted was rsync for Windows. I didn't get that, but I got something that fit my needs just as well.

SyncToy is a little utility written by Microsoft and published as a PowerToy. An aside: PowerToys are programs that should really be included in Windows but aren't for some reason. You really should install many of them. That's another post.

SyncToy sports the ability to set up a group of Folder Pairs and run them as needed. A Folder Pair can be set up several ways:

Synchronize: Watches both folders and makes them look the same if you change either end.

Echo: Only watches the left side. Renames, updates and deletes are all done on the right.

Contribute: New and updated files, with renames, are updated from left to right. Deletions, however, are not.

The way it works is by adding a little file on either end that contains metadata about your tree. The file can be easily ignored if your using something like git. When you run a sync, it just compares metadata in your files and only copies changes which ends up being nice and fast.

There is a GUI, but you definitely want a CLI for quickly syncing up your directories directly from Emacs. To do that, you just add /path/to/install/directory to your PATH variable and run SyncToyCmd -R to run all your Folder Pairs. If you have too many Folder Pairs, there is a variant that accepts a Folder Pair name which only syncs that. The command line output is nicely descriptive and you can run the entire thing from the command line.

Not the most ground breaking discovery in the world, but hopefully it's useful to others.

[vishers]

I'm a big fan of wallpaper on my boxen. That might not make much sense, considering that I almost always run my software full-screen, but it's become one of my unusual ticks that every now and again I sneak a peak at the desktop to see something visually pleasing. I also obsessively hide or minimize apps that I'm no longer using so I see my desktop enough that having nice wallpaper is worth it.

Mac desktop preferences are really nice. You can choose from any of their defaults which are mostly nice and range from busy to minimalistic, you can rotate your wallpaper on a preset schedule, and you can add custom directories to rotate from. One of the best features is the Mac's ability to remember what your desktop preferences were for any display you've connected to. That lets you set up wallpapers that are at the right resolution for any display you connect to and then never have to do that again. While I strain at the outer limits of these configuration knobs, for the average customer they're great.

In contrast, Windows display preferences are terrible. You can basically choose a single wallpaper, you can't rotate the wallpaper, and your box doesn't remember preferences per display.

In answer to this, Microsoft did what it seems to do quite a bit when a core feature of it's operating system is missing: release a powertoy!

If you've never heard of PowerToys, a PowerToy is "an additional program that adds fun and functionality to your amazing Windows experience". Boy, that marketing speak sure adds some spin. Basically, it's a patch in the hole of their user experience that they don't feel like patching themselves. Things like, oh, I don't know, ClearType aliasing…

The imaginatively named Wallpaper Changer introduces most of the features that I miss so much when on Windows, albeit in a terrible UI. You can select arbitrary directories, modify how often you rotate your wallpaper, and turn rotation off from the notification area. It even adds a nice feature for manually advancing the rotation. About the only thing it can't do is remember per-display preferences. But we can't have everything, now can we?

Overall, it's an ok product that makes me a bit happier on my work box. Hurray!

[silseed]

"XP Taskbar flashing is driving me insane"

Download MS Powertoys:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Run TweakUI,

"General" tab,

check the box, "Prevent applications from stealing focus",

uncheck "Flash taskbar button until I click on it",

"Apply",

"OK"