The gadget buying plan with Windows 8 in the horizon

Almost every day I glance through the PC hardware stores hoping to find an amazing deal that I cannot resist. But ever since I bought the GTX670, it seems that there aren't any upgrade paths left for this PC. Sure, I can replace the CPU with a 3930K or a 3770K, get a x79 or Z77 based motherboard, get a better cooler for the CPU, ditch the current hard drives and buy couple of 4TB drives, get a second monitor, get a second SSD etc. etc. but all of them seem like waste of money. (I'm not saying that I haven't wasted money before for a small performance improvement, but these options are not only small upgrades, but very expensive upgrades.)

So I have decided not to add anything new to this PC this year. But that does not mean that I will not buy any new gadgets this year. There is one gadget that I want and that is the Microsoft Surface tablet. All this time I wanted to buy a new tablet because of the coolness factor, not because they are any useful – they are not useful at all – but Surface opens up a new path. I can use it as a PC – that means, I will have all the software that I need. Any other tablet is feature wise identical to my phone (and even lacks ability to make calls). Just a bigger screen. Nothing special. But I already have a phone. I need more functionality.

All this points towards the Windows RT Pro tablet, because I believe the Windows RT tablet, the Arm based one, will again be feature restricted because it won't have the raw power an Intel CPU delivers.

Save precious SSD storage by moving the Windows Installer files

One thing I hate about the Windows Installer is that it leaves the installer files behind, even after you have installed the the application. The reason for that is the *modify* and *reinstall* features that Windows Installer provides. (E.g.: Microsoft Office. You can add/remove different portions of the applications without doing a full uninstall first.) These installer files keep gathering up with each application that you install. Some times, you might not even uninstall the app ever again. These installers can sometimes become a real pain too, especially when updating an application. Sometimes, when you update an application, the old installer will be left in the drive and it won’t have any use again. Such a waste. Small applications should never use Windows Installer. There are much better alternative.

 

The space consumed by these installer files can be reasonably large, depending on the applications that you have installed in your PC – especially if you have many number of suites like Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, Visual Studio, MSDN etc. etc. In my case, the installer folder is consuming about 5GB.

 

Wanna know where the installer files are located at? Type this in Run dialog and hit enter.

%windir%\installer

You might not be able see the “installer” folder from within your Windows folder because it is a hidden, system folder. You have to change a couple of settings in Folder Options to make it visible.

 

OK. Did you check the size of your installer folder? Now you must be thinking, “I won’t ever use modify or reinstall feature; I can simply delete these files, right?” Wrong. If you do this, you will break the uninstaller. You will not be able to uninstall your software.

 

But never fear. If there is a will, there is a way. You can move those files to a hard drive without disrupting their purpose. For that, use the symbolic links.

Answer to low resolution photos of Google Contacts is ... iCloud?

Recently I started using SmartSync on the iPhone. It syncs the contact information from Facebook with the contacts on the phone. One of the features of it is ability to sync the photo of the contacts. I tried that, but straight away met with a problem. The contact photos were of very low quality. Even though they have shown a screenshot of it showing a high quality full screen contact photo on the call screen, I was getting the small thumbnail on the top right hand corner.

People say that if you set the contact photo from within the phone, you get the full screen caller photo, and if you use a desktop app, you get the thumbnail. I tried assigning a photo to my Wife from within the phone, and asked her to call me. But I did not get the full screen caller photo. But then I checked the size of the contact photo, and found out that it has become a smaller low quality version.