Ever since the release of the Apple iPhone and BlackBerry, and having these two products take over the smartphone world, Microsoft has been a little behind with its smartphones. However, with the new release of the upcoming version of “Mango,” this will hopefully bring Microsoft into the forefront with its two main competitors. This new release plans to be unveiled before the 2011 Christmas season, which will help boost the advertising of the various devices it will be released with.

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Windows XP is a great and classic operating system; however, through the years with its heavy usage, the performance of the operating system may seem to be somewhat sluggish due to the many files and technologies we install as software progresses. If you have a lot of files on your computer, and constantly perform searches to look for your files (whether they are Microsoft Office documents, MP3s, or even small text files), you may be slowing down your Windows XP operating system without knowing it. With this in mind, I would like to bring your attention to a simple housekeeping step that you can use to speed up your OS.

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I ripped a bunch of audio CDs in Windows Media Player and now want to convert them from “.wma” format to “.mp3″ format so they’re more compatible with my various audio players and devices. Is there an easy way to convert wma to mp3 in Windows?
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Every time I double-click on a .JPG image in Windows 7, I find that it opens up the wrong program. I don’t want Photoshop, I want MS Paint to open because I almost always just want to scale or trim the photo. How can I change the default program?

Dave’s Answer:
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When you are performing maintenance on a Windows-based PC, you always want to have a set of tools that will help you acheive the goal that you have in mind; however, sometimes the case may be that prior to diagnosing the Windows PC you are about to work on, you do not know what tools you will need to fix the obstacle course in front of you. With this in mind, I would like to bring your attention to a software CD that has always helped me in times of trial, and it has acted as a Swiss army knife-like tool for the computing world. This CD that I am referring to is called Hiren’s Boot CD.

This quality CD (available from Hiren & Pankaj’s website) offers many tools for any troubleshooting scenario that you can think of. For this edition of WindowsDailyNews, I would like to bring your attention to some of the most commonly used tools that I employ when I need to utilize Hiren’s Boot CD, and I have provided a list of these tools below so that you can get a snapshot of how useful this CD is.

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Have you ever upgraded your operating system or computer before and had to perform the cumbersome task of re-entering ALL of the passwords to your favorite websites? If so, and if you are a Mozilla Firefox user, you do not have to go through this dawnting task anymore!

To avoid having to re-enter all of your passwords after your upgrade, I would like to bring your attention to a Mozilla Firefox addon called Password Exporter. This handy addon easily installs into your Firefox addon list by clicking on the green “Add to Firefox” link located on its listing page via Mozilla.org.

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Microsoft is today showing off pieces of the next version of Windows (we’re all calling it Windows 8 ) but I’m wondering if anyone cares anymore about Windows in the tech enthusiast space.

Why do I say that?

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On your computer, you always use the power button to turn the computer on, but not that many people use the power button to turn the computer off anymore. This is because recent Microsoft Windows operating systems, such as Windows 98, 2000, and XP, have trained the computing population to shut down via Start > Shut down menu.

Back in the day when personal computers were starting to emerge in people’s home, and back when the only operating system that computers had was MS-DOS, the user had to always manually “park” the hard drive by running an executable command that prepared the hard drive to power down. This is now an unnoticed automatic feature that is integrated into Windows so that you do not have to worry about this extra step.

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Windows XP is a classic and robust operating system from Microsoft that runs great and speedy on recently built computers; however, on some older computers, Windows XP runs slower due to the fact that many current programs that you can buy or download require more processing power. With this in mind, I would like to focus this publication on an easy-to-follow method that you can perform to help speed your Windows XP machine up without having to purchase any additional hardware that can be cumbersome to install.

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Earlier this week, Microsoft publicly released the first service pack for Windows 7. Maybe it’s a sign of the times that such a software release didn’t capture much attention outside the tech community, unlike the huge attention Microsoft used to get with its software releases and announcements.

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