Windows 7 TalkZ

I’ve just stumbled across this great little program called “Piles”. What it does is places recently created or altered files in a Windows 7 jump list on the Windows Taskbar so you can quickly access them.

How many times have you downloaded a program or just finished working on a document and then you need to open it up again. You then have to go and navigate through all the directories until you find that file, but with “Piles” it automatically adds the most recent files to a jump list on your taskbar so you can access them in seconds.

After installing Piles for the first time you will get a new icon in your taskbar which is by default linked to your “MyDocuments” folder, so any changes that you make to files in the folder will automatically be added to the jump list.

You can make your own custom target directory by right clicking on the icon and point it to a new directory. Say for instance you point it to the “Download” directory, every time you download a new file it will automatically be added to that jump list for super quick access, saving you from rummaging around your computers hard drive until you find it.

It’s a great little program, and best of all it’s completely free! You can download it here

Ubuntu, is already a serious challenger to Windows because it’s extremely user-friendly, simple and very quick to install, will dual-boot with Windows 7 and has excellent program support.  In this month’s PC Pro magazine there’s a direct comparison between both Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7 and the magazine finds that there’s not much in it… except for £100 for the copy of Windows that is!

Now you can get a full Windows 7 skin for Linux to give that OS a better glass look and, to all intents and purposes, make it look almost exactly like Windows 7. It works in any version of Linux, but works best with Ubuntu for which it was designed.

The skin, which can be downloaded here does prove to be a very convincing alternative to Windows 7, albeit without the aero glass effects, and could be used as an excellent way to introduce some users to the free Linux OS.

Full instructions on how to install the skin are available at the download site and there are versions for either the GNOME or KDE desktops.

It’s a little fiddly to install but for anyone already using Linux that would probably not be a problem. The only problem is that there’s currently no way to uninstall the theme should you want to, so you should make a back-up of your copy of Linux first.

Via : LifeHacker