Windows 7 on MacBook Pro: Nice, but still has poor battery life

I have had Windows 7 Ultimate RTM (release to manufacturer) for a few days. This is, of course, a legitimate copy, not the leaked copy that you can download from the Internet. That's the good news.

The bad news is I have to test it, which has been lot of work. We tested the new operating system against Windows Vista SP2 and Windows XP SP3. Overall, Windows 7 offers a much more pleasant experience than Windows Vista. Everything works more smoothly. The new OS takes less time to launch applications, and it's nice just to browse around its functions and features--it's also very pretty. However, it is slower than Windows XP, except for the boot and shutdown times, where XP has always been a drag.

Version 2.0 of Boot Camp (included on the Mac OS X Leopard DVD) wouldn't run unless you make it run in Windows Vista/XP compatibility mode.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

You can read a lot more about the new operating system via our official review done by my colleague Seth Rosenblatt. I want address something here that's not very mainstream (yet): running Windows 7 on Intel-based Mac hardware, specifically on a unibody 15" MacBook Pro.

Setting up Windows 7 on a Mac is easy, just as it is with Windows XP or Vista. First, you use the Boot Camp Assistant (which is found in the Applications\Utilities folder). The application helps you resize the hard drive to create a new partition for Windows. (Pick the size carefully, as you can't resize this partition again without having to reinstall Windows from scratch). After that, the installation starts and goes on just as it would on a PC.

(If you have been using Windows XP or Vista on your Mac, you can just start the installation of Windows 7 from within the existing OS. You will have the option to do either an upgrade or a clean installation on the same partition).

It took about 30 minutes for me to get Windows 7 Ultimate RTM installed on the second partition (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions took about the same amount of time). Now the trick is to install Boot Camp, which includes all the drivers and the Boot Camp control panel, and lets you control other functions of the laptop such as mouse, shortcut key, and the multitouch trackpad.

Apple includes Boot Camp on the OS X Leopard DVD; however, I ran into an error stating that it required Windows XP or Windows Vista to run. This could be fixed simply by changing the properties of the installer file to make it run in Windows XP or Vista compatibility mode.

Once Boot Camp has installed, you will need to update it to the 2.1 version that can be downloaded here for Windows 32-bit and here for Windows 64-bit.

Boot Camp 2.1, despite the message, works fine with Windows 7; just make sure you run Windows Update after installing it.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

When I ran Boot Camp 2.1's installer, a message appeared, saying that there were known compatibility issues, but I decided to install it anyway. After the installation, when the computer restarted, Windows 7's Action Center appeared and pointed me to download the update for Nvidia chipset. (Alternatively, if you run Windows Update, that would have downloaded from there, too). The update seemed to fix the incompatibility, and the Action Center was happy at the next boot.

But I wasn't very happy yet, though, as the right-click function, which is one of the most important features when using Windows, didn't work with the laptop's muiltitouch trackpad (it worked fine with a USB mouse). After doing more research, I found a multitouch trackpad update that solved it. The right-click function was now the two-finger tab on the pad. And that was it; I now have myself a Windows 7 machine running on a nice piece of Mac hardware, and everything seemed perfect.

The two-finger tab right-click takes some getting used to but works great.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

It was almost perfect, that is. What's missing has been a known issue with Mac laptop running Boot Camp: the battery life. According to Apple, the MacBook Pro offers about eight hours of battery life (in my experience it's more like about five hours, which is still very impressive). However, when running Windows XP and Vista, this reduces the life to just merely an hour and a half. And you guessed it: it's the same with Windows 7. The battery somehow drains really fast, even when the screen brightness turned down, I couldn't get two hours out of a full charge, even when just doing regular work on the machine.

While I don't know the exact reason, my best guess is this is because the Mac hardware is not optimized for Windows drivers. I hope that Apple (or Microsoft or hardware vendors) would look into this and make the MacBook, or any other Mac laptop, a truly great platform for Windows 7.

Other than that, Windows 7 has been working great on my MacBook Pro. After some anecdotal testing, it felt faster than the machine's original operating system. It looks good, too, even prettier than when it is installed on PC hardware.

I believe that Windows 7 will work fine on other Intel-based Macs, too, though some tweaking might be necessary. My colleague Ina Fried tried the release candidate of the OS on the Mac Mini and it worked fine. Considering the fact that the OS is not even out to the public, this level of support is really encouraging.

When the battery life issue is resolved, if ever, I cannot see myself having a computer that can only run just either Windows or Mac. Windows 7 on a Mac might be the solution that unites both schools of fanboys.

Resources: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10301015-1.html

wordpress blog seo tips and avoid

Recently I have visited the blogs and found some mistakes by the blogs owner. SOme mistakes are serious and search engines can penalize for these careless jobs. Few things are important and it helps you to get more traffic and get benefits. Some of the important points and steps are mentioned below :

Remove the hyperlink of Title from the single post:
Its common mistakes I have seen in the blogs. If a visitor in the single post then the title must not be hyperlinked. It is very easy to remove the hyperlink from the post title. Just go to Presentation > Theme Editor > and open singlepost.php and replace the following line "> with .

Use Wordpress Plugins:
Many plugins available free that helps you to make your website more seo-friendly. Some of the plugins are :
Google Sitemap Generator : Sitemap makes search engine easy to crawl all the pages. With the help of this, you can create the sitemap for your blog and submit it in google webmaster tools.

Optimize your Meta Description Tag : Meta descriptions are not very important, but still helpful in yahoo and other search engines. With the help of this plugin, you can manually insert the meta description for each post separately.

Title Tags Generator : Titles are still important. Install this plugin and insert title tags for each post.

Optimize Images :
Image optimization is the basic on-page seo. The visitors enters the website with the help of images also. So must include alt tags in the images.

Change the default Wordpress Theme:
The default wordpress theme is not very impressive. Lots of free attractive themes available. Download the theme and replace it with default. This makes your wordpress blog more professional.

Add noindex and nofollow to Category and Archieves:
Add noindex to categories, archieves, tags to avoid duplicate content issue. To insert noindex in the archieve, goto Theme Editor>header.php and replace with "meta name="robots" content="noindex"

Essential Tricks for a Website

So for newbies and those others who may not yet know, you can obtain essential information For website just about anywhere in the Internet. However, very few sites will really show you how to resolve an affordable search engine optimization plan. There are some tricks which may help you for your site presentation.

1) Meta Tag - As long as SEO experts have been publishing advice about things like meta tags, it was interesting to see perceptions of proper meta tag use were as varied as the respondents.For meta keywords google and msn don’t seem to use it however yahoo does

The title tag, ALT tagsand some other useful Tags are the most powerful on-site SEO technique you have, so use it creatively! What you place in the title tag should only be one thing, the exact keyword you used for the web page that you are trying to optimize. Every single web page should have it’s own title tag.

2) Link Popularity - Link Popularity is simply a way to measure the total number of links that a search engine has found for your website. Link Popularity is getting more important all the time.It means when a 3rd party site links to your site. If abc.com linked to your site, this is considered a link. When you receive requests for a link exchange, check the site out before linking with them, check for spam (Repeat keywords, hidden text, etc.).

3) Keyword Density - The number of times a keyword is used on a web page divided by the total number of words on the page.It is called “Keyowrd Density”. This is also vital and should be used with research. You should use the keyword(s) once in the title tag , heading tag,bold text, and get the density between 5% to 20% (Don’t over do it!). Also use your keyword(s) both low and high on the web page, keyword(s) should be in the first sentence and in the last one.

4) Page Size - Your web page’s speed is important to your visitors and the search engines. Why? Because the robots will be able to spider your web page faster and easier. Try your best to keep your web page over 5k and under 15k in size.

5) Rich Theme - Search engines are looking at themes more and more. Build content (Articles, FAQ, tips, etc.) much as possible and keep the web pages around 200 to 500 words. Create content that’s related to your market and link them out to other related content on your site. Try to get 200 web pages or more.

6) Web Site Design - This is also important, if you want to get indexed! Text content should out weigh the HTML content. The pages should validate and be usable in all of today’s leading edge browsers. Stay away from flash and Java Script, search engines dislike them both a lot.

7) Insite Cross Linking - This will help you get all of your web pages indexed by the search engines. Your web pages should be no more than three clicks away from the home page. Link to topic related quality content across your site. This will also help build you a better theme through out your web site. On every page you should link back to your home page and your main service(s).

Internet Business Opportunity

Many people join internet business opportunities online blindly. By this I mean they join everything that promises them fast bucks and then one to two years later are dejected and unhappy at their dismal returns online with regards to their capital outlay in terms of time and money. Thus the most important thing you need to do today is to get a proper education in internet marketing. The co-relation is clear the internet is all about information and by learning how to package information online you will make more profits from your internet business no matter what you are promoting.

Now before you start running of to purchase a course online from any of the internet marketing gurus you need to know what kind of knowledge you need to pick up. Ask an internet marketer and many answers will come out. This article will highlight some of the more important skills that you can start reading up on. Always figure out first what area of marketing you want to do and focus on that area. Learn how to succeed in one area then proceed to another area to diversify your internet income.

Search Engine Optimization (”SEO”)

Once you have a website that has good ad copy, you want to learn how to drive good quality and targeted website traffic to your website. A good website that any aspiring internet marketer can spend time learning and reading from good grasp of SEO can boost your online profits many fold.

Spend time learning the difference between single links and reciprocal links. It may be actually worthwhile sometimes to pay for someone from India to do SEO work for you so that you can spend your time doing other things. Someone recently gave me a quote for US$400 per month to do link exchanges for several websites at a time. This SEO actually could do 500 links in day as he heads a team of workers who live and breathe SEO work in India. Outsourcing can reduce your bills and give you better value if you find the right SEO to work for you.

Niche Adsense Portal Building

Some people conclude that they do not want to molly cuddle downlines and do not want to write sales letters. They then start purchasing software which allows you to build keyword specific websites. Satya’s program like Niche Portal Builder and Arnand Morin’s directory Generator are such programs. Google and the other search engines started delisting these websites after a while because of repetitive content. So the solution is to mix rss feeds with these websites. All this is very high level marketing and the best way to figure all of these things out is to go to the various internet marketing forums to read all you can and ask questions.

Internet Business Opportunity

The reason why I put this here in the list of things you would want to learn about is that internet business opportunities like internet mlms are good in that they provide you with the sales letters and followup systems. Your focus in these programs to make money therefore is to work on generating good amounts of website traffic to the company given websites. Such income is residual so that is why internet marketers like Stone Evans promotes his website so that he gets more and more money each month from his online business. Total automation is what you are looking for and website promotion is what you have to learn.

In conclusion, internet marketing is a very wide area, by spending one weekend per topic mention above, you will be able to get a good overview of what area of internet marketing you want to venture into and start making money from that particular area. No one is a generalist, always be a specialist in one area and you will see your internet marketing income skyrocket.

source: http://www.article-buzz.com/Article/Internet-Business-Opportunity/295793

Three Simple Ways To Make Money Online In Less Than Seven Days

Thousands of people are heading online every single day right now battling to keep their heads above the proverbial water and desperate to make a living online. But for most the thought of developing a long term business plan is hardly even a passing consideration as the single question asked of google most often is “How do I make money fast?”.

The good news is that there are several ways to make money online fast. The bad news? Thousands of pitfalls along the way which will cost you a small fortune if you fail to see them coming. So, before heading off and throwing your hard earned cash into a black hole take a quick look at this short article to safeguard your internet marketing profits.

Here are my three ways to make money online in less than seven days. Take a look at these three websites below and see which one suits you.

1. Associated Content.
2. Cash Crate.
3. Forum booster.

Writing for Associated Content requires you to write content, or words (for those unfamiliar with online language), for submission online. Content means articles and if you want to make money fast online and can produce good content you will make money on the internet in days.

You can earn anything from $3 to $30 per article and the more you write the more you can earn. This is a simple way to make money online and has the lowest risk if you’re uncertain about jumping straight into internet marketing.

You may be surprised to see how easy it has become to earn a part time income through writing for Associated Content so take a look.

Cash Crate is a site that pays you to take surveys online. You may have seen a few links to Crash Crate splattered across social media sites by college students who have found a way to make something of all that spare time they have available and wondered if it was genuine or not. Well, it is. Crash Crate pay anywhere from a dollar to possibly a hundred dollars dependent upon the survey so are well worth a look.
They even have a daily survey on the homepage that is guaranteed to make you some extra income; the guaranteed survey on the homepage pays $0.80. Okay, this won’t break the bank but get the calculator out, over a year that is almost $300 extra dollars just for taking a short survey. That’s the price of a great weekend in New York.

Are you still asking yourself the question, how do I make money online fast? Okay, if writing hundreds of articles and taking dozens of surveys doesn’t really sound like your bag of kaboodle, there is always Forum Booster.

Forum Booster is a website that pays you $0.10 for each post you make on a forum. Crazy but true. This is great for those of us that would be searching and posting on forums either way, why not get paid for it? If you can post one hundred posts in 1 hour, you can make $10, which is not that bad for earning money online from the comfort of your own home.
You can be sat in your underpants drinking coffee and eating chocolate cake while posting on forums for extra cash.

The truth is there are thousands of ways to make money quickly online but these are just the tried and tested.

Get Personal With Your Email Marketing

The facts are plain and simple. Personalized emails are more likely to be opened and responded to than a generic, blanket email. Think about it - out of all the emails hitting your inbox, you’re more likely to open the one with your name on it, right?

By personalizing your email marketing efforts, you have a good chance at making your customers feel exclusive - not part of the masses. Use your data to its full advantage by making your next email campaign stand out from the rest - get personal.

Follow these three tips to see for yourself just how effective email personalization can be:

1. Know your target

Know your target audience, and determine what the best message would be to convey to them. In your next email campaign, think about mentioning a customer’s previous purchases or reference information you have handy about their history with a service you provided. Comment that you hope they are happy with the recent sale or service, and make them aware of an upcoming promotion that offers a special discount or limited sale information. For example: “We hope you are enjoying your (insert item) and were happy with the service you received. Since you are such a loyal customer, we’d like to invite you to save 20% on your next purchase”. Give it a try - your customers will feel like you actually know them and in return, they might treat you as a new friend.

Always remember, your initial greeting has a big impact on how the recipient will react to your message. By personalizing your email, you make people want to read what you have to say. Generic emails will make them want to jettison your valiant efforts into the trash bin. Whenever possible, use personalization for your loyal customers.

2. Have a clean, accurate list

Is your email list clean? Is it Fred or Frank? Not sure? Figure it out. It’s super important to make sure your data is correct. Errors will highlight for your recipient exactly how well you don’t know them. If you are missing names for folks, and you aren’t going to get them in time for your scheduled email campaign, you can still work in a bit of personalization. Try putting something like, “A special offer for our very best customers” in the subject line. You still single them out and make them feel a little bit special. Before your next email campaign, think about going after all the data you need to be even more effective at personalization.

Try running a promotion for a drawing where you collect first and last name along with their email, or try a survey where you will not only get their contact information, you’ll also be gathering some valuable feedback on your products or services.

3. Build a relationship, but don’t over do it

Like that friend that manages to never call before they stop by, don’t abuse your familiar friend status. Keep your existing customers, and help convert your prospects into customers by creating the right kind of relationship with them. I’m not saying have them over for dinner, or take them out on a date, just always remember that emails are permission based - make sure they are expected or relevant to the reader. Don’t send unnecessary information, and always follow up with info you promised to send.

Even if you know a recipient well, overly personalized messages are likely to make the recipient feel ill-at-ease rather than important. Here’s an example of going a little too far: “Dear Joan - don’t you just love that blue tank top size large you got for a steal last month?” Be sure to balance personalization with a good measure of concern and respect for the reader.

Follow these tips and sit back and watch the results. Prospects turn into customers and existing customers are happy enough to keep coming back for more.

If properly handled, personalization can be just the ticket to establishing and strengthening the bond between you and your customer, garnering the brand recognition you are looking for, and generating a little something you need most of all, sales.

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