Recovering XP & Windows.Old After a Vista Installation

So you just installed a shiny, new, & legal, copy of Windows Vista. Somewhere along the way, you realized that your XP Partition wasn’t there anymore, and that you’ve lost every single program you’d installed over the past 6 years – gone! All just because you didn’t realize that you were installing Windows Vista to the XP partition.

Don’t worry, NeoSmart is here with the answer yet again. Don’t despair just yet! There’s much in terms of hope, and with this guide, you can get your XP back, with all it’s programs, registry, settings, and more – as if Vista was never there, and no one (*cough* the wife *cough*) needs to know you overwrote your XP – ever!

Continue reading

New NeoSmart Project – Unavailable for a While

What do you get when you add Linux to Vista, throw in some .NET, and try to save the world?

NST’s newest project of course! Our launch of VistaBootPRO didn’t go exactly as anticipated (legal issues pertaining to the ownership of the program), but that doesn’t mean we’re gone!
Lo and Behold, NST is back with more!

Continue reading

VistaBootPRO 1.1

VistaBootPRO is now deprecated. NeoSmart Technologies’ EasyBCD utility has replaced it.

Many of our members at NeoSmart Technologies and friends on and offline have been bombarding us with inquiries regarding the development line of VistaBootPRO, the hot-hit release that saved a lot of people a lot of headaches.

When I wrote this program I had no idea it would have such an impact, but either way, I’m glad I did, and no, it’s not going to stop there.

VistaBootPRO is not just a bootloader modification tool: it’s a utility that opens the gates to many hidden and inaccessible features in Vista, and it’s here to stay. As many of you know, VistaBootPRO was a fairly well kept secret, and the veil of secrecy never lifted, it just moved around a bit and became thinner in parts. In our opinion, a good program is one where new features come by the dozen, and the end-user is always (pleasantly) surprised, so we’re not going to spoil the secret by spilling the means… but we’re willing to whet your appetite and quench your curiosity for now, so long as you’ll be back later for more :)

Continue reading

Atlassian Software

Atlassian Software is an amazing Aussie-based company that makes two wonderful scripts: Confluence, a full-featured and very eye-easy wiki, and JIRA, the very best bug-tracking and issue-management script out there.

When we set out last month to look for ways to improve our software, we knew we needed a bug tracking script to keep things in check and let our members know what was going on. What we didn’t expect was to get the very best for free. Or, as a matter of fact, to find a better wiki at the same site..

Continue reading

Windows Vista Beta 2 Has Gone Public!

Windows Vista Beta 2 is now available for download for anyone that wants it.

It’s the same build we got two weeks ago, not a new one, but you can grab it with your very own unique and un-activated key, and enjoy legal-Vista goodiness!

Download Beta 2!

A Comprehensive Look at the New Microsoft (Vista) Fonts

With every new version of Windows or Office, Microsoft Corporation seems to generally like to package a couple of small freebies that make it a sweeter deal, after all, as they say: it’s the little things that count. Windows Vista and Office 2007 are no exception: not only is Microsoft apparently trying to make up for lost years (almost 6 for Vista, and four for Office), and it is doing a great job! At NeoSmart we’ve only had praise for the Office team, and we feel that the Microsoft Typography team is at the very least on-par with them, if not even higher… Once you’ve read this review, we’re sure you’ll agree.

Continue reading

Firefox 1.5.0.4 Fixes the Copy & Paste Bug at Last!

Today Mozilla has celebrated the release of Firefox 1.5.0.4, right after the release of Bon Echo Alpha 3.

While everyone is talking about the new in-your-face Google Anti-Phishing Features bundled with Firefox (perhaps more on that later), we’re far more excited about one tiny bug fix: the infamous copy and paste bug that has haunted Firefox since before it was born (present in the Mozilla line)!

Continue reading

10 Great New & Undiscovered IE7 Keyboard Shortcuts

With a new version of Internet Explorer 7 come quite a few new nifty shortcuts that can make your web-surfing experience a lot more enjoyable. Some of these tips also apply to previous versions of Internet Explorer, and some to other browsers as well. Items denoted with a ‘%’ work on IE6, and those marked with a ‘*’ may work in other browsers.

Continue reading

Antivirus Software for Vista

It seems that the latest batch of AV software is quite inconsistent when it comes to Vista, but it is especially important to secure Vitsa and tie it down in order to take full advantage of all the other high-tech security features built right into Vista.

The only real options for Vista AV are eTrust EZ Antivirus, Trend Micro PC-cillan, and ESET NOD32.

It seems that eTrust and Trend Micro are the only companies taking Vista seriously. Both have offered free trials of their subsribtion, but eTrust gives you a better deal:

Continue reading

Word 2007’s Blogging Issues

Following our article about Word 2007 introducing a fairly powerful desktop blogging client that actually produces clean code, it turned out most bloggers didn’t care so much for the client part as much as they did about whether or not it was 100% XHTML compliant.

From what we’ve been able to piece together, the Word 2007 blogging tool outputs XHTML 1.1 compliant code almost all of the time (we have yet to see it break, but nothing is bulletproof), with one (rather important) exception: it doesn’t know encoding!

Continue reading