Most of the free themes are from WordPress.org (actually all except one). Installing free themes from other websites is not recommended, most of them contain hidden links, spam your visitors etc. Read why! Still if you decide to do so, install Theme Authenticity checker plugin. I divided the themes into categories, every category featuring ten or five themes. Also next to demo I added “free” to those themes you don’t have to pay for. Enjoy!

Blog

WordPress has always been all about blogging. It started as blogging platform and still is a blogging platform. Yes you can use it for creating websites with lots of different purposes, but the core of WordPress is blogging. And in order to have a successful blog, it should look astonishing.

01. Blogster – Responsive Blog WordPress Theme (demo)

02. Streak – Responsive WordPress Blog / Portfolio (demo)

03. Bloggap - Responsive Blog WordPress Theme (demo)

04. TrulyMinimal – Highly customizable minimalistic theme (demo, free)

05. Blogdrops – Infinite Blogging Theme (demo)

06. Lolly – A Sweet little theme (demo)

07. Simple Style – A modern, simplistic WordPress theme (demo, free)

08. MobileFirst – WP Theme for Future-Proof Bloggers (demo)

09. Retro-fitted – Where WordPress theme magic happens (demo, free)

10. Supreme – Retina Responsive Magazine/Blog WP Theme (demo)

Magazine

Magazine themes are great if you want to run news portal, online magazine or blog with multiple authors. Choosing the right theme is really important if you want to keep your readers.

11. NewsTrick – Super-duper flexible and responsive WordPress theme (demo)

 12. AlYoum - Retina Magazine & Blog WordPress Theme (demo)

 13. Magzimize - Bold News & Magazine WordPress Theme (demo)

 14.Max Magazine - Super-awesome responsive WordPress theme (demo, free)

15. StyleMag – Super clean Magazine template (demo)

16. Bulteno – Responsive News/Magazine Theme (demo)

17. Oxygen - professional magazine theme with responsive layout (demo, free)

18. MetroMAG - Clean and powerful metro inspired theme (demo)

19. PressGrid – Frontend publishing & Multimedia Theme (demo)

20. Noteworthy - A magazine theme with heavy focus on featured images (demo, free)

Personal

If you want more than blog, search for Personal themes. With them you can not just make a blog, you can showcase your portfolio, link you social network profiles and much more.

21. Centre - A great blog WP theme with a metro design (demo)

22. Personal – WordPress Blogging Theme (demo)

23. Simplo – Responsive WordPress Blog / Personal theme (demo)

24. Alkane – Free and creative WordPress theme (demo, free)

25. Website – responsive WordPress theme (demo)

26. Premium Pixels – Fancy pants personal theme (demo)

27. Infoist – Yet another nice and simple blog theme (demo, free)

28. Fast blog – Easiest blogging ever (demo)

29. Retro Portfolio – One page vintage WordPress theme (demo)

30. Delicacy -  Personal WordPress theme created with food blogs in mind (demo, free)

Portfolio

Presenting your work online is sometimes a tricky process. Portfolio themes let you do just that, and a little more. They look great and work great. Also most of them offer pages for blogging, still keeping the focus on your portfolio.

31. Sokar – Responsive Fullscreen Portfolio WP Theme (demo)

32. Super Agency – Responsive WordPress Single Page (demo)

33. Pinboard – Crafty and elegant theme (free)

34. Kronos – One Page Responsive WordPress Theme (demo)

35. Dano – Multi-purpose & Responsive WordPress Theme (demo)

36. Creolio WP – Personal portfolio and microblog (demo)

37. Polaroid - ideal for both personal blogs and showcasing your portfolio (free)

38. Panels: One-Page Responsive WP Theme (demo)

39. vCard - Simplistic WordPress portfolio theme (demo, free)

40. Chamfer - One Page Responsive Theme (demo)

Photography

Photography themes are great for showcasing your beautiful photographs (please no duck faces). Choose the theme you and your fans like. Lots of themes support full screen home page, you might like those.

41. Verticality – One page photography theme (demo)

42. Source – Responsive Photography WordPress Theme (demo)

43. Photojax - Minimalist AJAX photography portfolio (demo)

 44. Landscape - A simple, responsive WordPress theme (demo, free)

45. Snapshot - A theme that’s all about your photos (demo, free)

46. SmartScreen - Fullscreen responsive WordPress theme (demo)

47. Minimatica - A stylish and modern minimalist theme (demo, free)

48. Valerie – Photography WordPress Theme (demo)

49. Photolistic - A Simple And Clean WordPress Theme (demo, free)

50. Kaleido – Responsive Fullscreen Studio for WordPress (demo)

Business / Corporate

Running a start-up or a successful bushiness but still don’t have a website? Making one has never been easier. Install WordPress and choose one of the themes below.

51. Ultimate - Multi purpose responsive WP theme (demo)

52. Quare – A responsive WP Theme suited for business websites (demo)

53. Skybox – A responsive with two layout options (demo)

54. Corporate - A corporate WordPress theme with 9 color schemes (demo, free)

55.  Simplify – A CSS3 powered theme for business companies (demo, free)

Creative

Themes that offer more than others. They look gorgeous and can do right what you need them to.

56. Noel – Slick and Stylish WordPress theme for creative people (demo)

57. Fact - A bold WordPress theme for creatives (demo)

58. Laguna – Muti-purpose responsive WordPress theme (demo)

59. Smashing Theme - An extremely flexible and good looking theme (demo)

60. Arch - Responsive architect WordPress theme (demo)

Retail

If you own a Restaurant, Travel agency or a Gym you can have a great looking website with awesome features really easy. All the themes provide you the thing you need, whether it is booking, pricing table or a time-table.

61. Midway – Responsive travel WP theme (demo)

62. FIT – Fitness/Gym responsive WordPress theme (demo)

63. HEAL – Responsive medical WordPress theme (demo)

64. The Beauty Salon (demo)

65. Nice Hotel – A WordPress theme designed for hotels, hostels, resorts and spas (demo)

BuddyPress

BuddyPress is Social Networking, the WordPress way. Easily create a fully featured social network inside your WordPress powered site.

66. GrandMag – BuddyPress magazine/review theme (demo)

67. Buddy: Multi-purpose WordPress & BuddyPress theme (demo)

68. Fanwood – An all-purpose, responsive theme with 12 optional layouts (demo, free)

69. Bounce – Professional WordPress & BuddyPress theme (demo)

70. Frisco – A BuddyPress child theme for BuddyPress (demo, free)

1. Jump straight to the info you need

Mostly when you search for a phrase and you click on a search result, the thing you’ve been looking for isn’t there. I mean you have to scroll or use the find tool to find what you looked for. Google quick scroll for Chrome lets you do just that, it jumps straight to the relevant content.

It works by displaying a pop-up windows in the bottom right corner of your browser, that contains snippets of text from page that matches your query. Just click one of these snippets to read full section. And probably most important, quick scroll is very unobtrusive appearing only when you need it, and it’s really useful for pages with lots of text.

2. Get endless-scrolling search results

Is this a viable thing? I mean how often we go on 2nd or 3rd page of Google search? Rarely, at least me. Nevertheless if you are usually going down deeper making the search results go to infinity is a good idea. If you are using Chrome check for Fastest Chrome, or its sister add on if you use Firefox, FastestFox.

3. Remove redirects from search results

If you already haven’t noticed, Google redirects you after clicking on a link in search results to track your clicks in order to analyse your browser habits and later personalize your search results. Try copying a link from search results. It won’t be the link of the page you’ll get to after you click the link, it will be a long Google link. Anyway to remove this on Chrome, install Remove Google Redirects. It works for nearly all Google’s services, like Google Play, Google Plus, Google Maps etc. If you’re using Firefox, use Remove google search redirects.

Basically this speeds up your searches and protects your privacy, because you’re always taken straight to the desired page.

4. Add favicons to your search results

Probably the best way to make results from trusted websites stand out from dodgy blogs and content farms is to display a favicons. Favicons are tiny logos that are displayed in your and bookmarks menu – next to them (usually on the left).
Faviconize Google let’s you do just that, making your Google search safer and faster. The sites you visit often are easier to spot.

If you are using Firefox and have Greasemonkey add on, install this to get similar Favicons,

5. Stop spam clogging up your results

Even though Google is working hard to remove all irrelevant and spam pages from search results, containing no useful information for you and have been set up only to earn money through page views and advertising. You can easily stop these worthless sites appearing in your results by installing the Chrome add on Personal Blocklist.

And no need to block mattcutts.com ,as it’s a blog of a really cool person!

Personal Blocklist automatically detects worthless pages and content farms, removing them from your search results. Also you can block sites manually by clicking on Block (shown on the image above) below the site’s address. If you want to unblock a domain, just click the Personal Blocklist toolbar icon and remove it from the blocked list.

6. Combine Google with Bing

Are two heads always better than one? I wouldn’t be so sure, but at least in this case it should be true. You can boost your searches by running Google alongside it’s main rival, Bing. Lots of websites provide this, inluding Qrobe which combines results from Google and Bing in a single, endless-scrolling page.

Then there’s Askboth which displays results side by side and also finds matches for your query on Twitter. If you are not satisfied with Google and Bing “only”, Specra uses both of these and Yahoo to get the best possible results. You can use Specra’s slider bars to decide which search engine is given greatest and least priority in combined results.

7. Add DuckDuckGo to Google

Is Google itself the best search engine possible? Well depends, for most of the internet users I’d say yes. But you can always make it better, cooler. If you still haven’t give DuckDuckGo a try, you definitely should. Install DuckDuckGo extension on Chrome, or add on for Firefox and when you run a Google search, you’ll see a zero-click info from DuckDuckGo at the top of the page.

This provides instant answers to search queries, such as definitions of words; images; and top results from different categories your search term is related to – for example people, places and products. Click on “See DuckDuckGo results” to switch from Google to Duck.

8. Search Google by highlighting text

Most of the browsers now let you look up for words and phrases on websites just by highlighting them. All you have to do is highlight the word or phrase, right click it and choose “Search Google for [highlighted word or phrase]“. But this can be done much faster, by installing the Chrome extension Highlight to Search, on Firefox install Search Highlight add-on.

Just highlight a word, click on the search button and choose on of the options from the drop-down menu. The options are the same as auto-complete suggestions that appear when you start typing into Google’s main search box. Don’t worry, search results open in a new tab so you don’t lose your place.

At first glance using a password manager seems like a very stupid idea. Cause from a breach perspective, it requires a breach of only single password to have a domino effect on every other online service you use.

Actually the risk of compromise is far less than if you reuse a same password across multiple sites. In this scenario, you’re relying on dozens of websites keeping your data safe. And if only one of them suffers a breach all of your other passwords will be compromised. Most of tech gurus know how many popular websites have suffered breaches over the last couple of years, with password databases being high on the list, while the major players in password security haven’t suffered any breach – with one notable exception. But certainly there’s been no successful compromise of encrypted password hashes.

Also a huge benefit of password managers is that your password is stored in the cloud, meaning that if you switch operating systems and devices quite often, it will help you access your passwords from any device, anywhere, at any time.

Two most important features that make a strong password protection – ability to generate random complex passwords (really complex) and the ability to automatically log on users on websites or services using those passwords. Basically if you don’t have to remember the password, you can make it as complex as you want.

Only password that has to be long, strong and complex but also much known to you, is the master password; it acts as the key to all other passwords. A password manager is only as secure as the master password, so be sure to put a good one.

Having to memorize a password with at least 12 characters, containing both cases, numbers and special keyboard characters sounds really hard, but in reality isn’t that bad. The best approach to this is not go for fully random password, try to use all these things but making a password that means something – at least to you. The password has to be complex enough preventing human to make a guess and a machine to brute force it.  Let’s say you like cats, you could put your password as: “1R3allyL1keWh1teCat$”. Just an example that has come to my mind while writing this.

On top of that if you still feel insecure RoboForm and LastPass premium allow two-factor authentication tokens. In a simple word, with a cheap piece of hardware (YubiKey token) that provide a time-variant secure login code when the button on the token is pressed. Adding a requirement for something you physically have considerably strengthens your security online.

There are four major passwords mangers:

LastPass

LastPass is a password manager that makes web browsing easier and more secure. At least that’s what they say. Personally I use LastPass cause I came across it long ago and I’m stuck, it works just as it should do. It doesn’t adopt the local client approach, as it relies on access-anywhere, server-based storage. So you can use LastPass everywhere, as LastPass premium allows you to sync all the passwords across so many devices like Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Symbian and Windows phone for $1 per month. Also as mentioned before LastPass premium offers two-factor authentication system.

If you don’t want to pay, the free version offers basic functionality you’d expect from a password manager, including one-click login, auto form-filling, multi-browser sync, secure importing and exporting, secure password generation etc.

KeePass

At first look KeePass look’s awful. Just open their website, I’d say it’s from nineties. KeePass is a free, open source, light-weight and easy-to-use password manager. As it takes open source approach, its often touted  as the vault of choice for advanced users and system admins. Not only for being open source, it has huge number of advanced tweaking options. Still if you don’t mind the 10 year old user interface, it can suite you really well.

It stores password locally, but since it supports Dropbox you can go for a cloud synchronization too. Also a good thing is that it supports two-factor authentication with YubiKey like LastPass, but entirely for free. As it is open source, there are third-party plugins available to extend KeePass’s functionality.

RoboForm

RoboForm is probably the oldest password manager out there, protecting passwords since 1999. It’s available for free, but storing only up to ten-logins and an auto-fill function. If you want something more secure, you’ll have to pay $30 for Desktop 7 licence. RoboForm everywhere will provide you a more secure environment not just on your desktop, but also on your iOS or Android phones and tablets. It costs $20 per year, but currently discounted to $10.

Also the Desktop 7 version allows unlimited logins, multiple profiles and two-factor authentication.

 1Password

One password started as a password manager for Mac, but later on expended to all platforms, including Windows, iOS and Android. It’s another cloud based password manager – offering a client installed on each device along with an encrypted password database with option to synchronize these via Dropbox. The biggest drawback of 1Password is the price, only the Android version is free. Basically if you want it on all platforms, you’ll have to play around $130 for a single user license. Cause the competitors offer same or even better features for free, I don’t see a reason to use 1Password.

1Passowrd can store not only Passowrds (logins), such as software license keys, credit cards and notes.

In the end I can truly recommend LastPass since I’m using the free version, and it’s more than enough for probably 99% of internet users.

Whether you are a tech-freak, or just someone that uses internet to check his email, you probably came across one of file sharing websites. The most famous one was MegaUpload, I guess. Although for long time I used only RapidShare, even bought premium few times. You couldn’t download two files at same time, actually you had to wait for an hour to download second file. And it’s still like that. The maximum speed on most of these is limited, etc.

Lots of extensions and add-ons are able to do this, and to be honest I found a great one that led me to writing this article, and while writing I totally forgot the extension name. Silly me. If I find it again, I’ll definitely review it, but for now I found others that claim to do same thing. One of them is Auto Download for file sharing websites.

That’s a strange image representing that extension.

What this extension does is that it automatically clicks the buttons and alerts you if Captcha entry is needed. If you have to download multiple files, it can queue them. ICreates a queue for each site and will download files one at a time for a given upload site. Downloads from different sites will work in parallel.

Auto Downloader works on a number of file uploading sites (see list below):

- 4Shared
- DepositFiles
- Easy-Share
- FileServe
- FileSonic
- HotFile
- HulkShare
- MediaFire
- MegaShares
- MegaUpload
- NetLoad
- Oron (partial support)
- RapidShare
- TurboBit
- Uploaded.to
- Uploading
- WUpload
- ZippyShare

Keep in mind that you could have issue if downloading from these websites, but other domains (like national domains).

Using default theme on Windows 7 is just meh. There are so many teams out there that provide greater look along with better functionality. And installing them ain’t that hard.

To use a custom theme on Windows 7 you will need to install  Universal Theme Patcher.

Run in it Administrative mode (right-click > “Run as administrator”).

UAC must be turned off. After patch, restart the computer to take effect. Now you can use the themes posted here

Before checking Best 2013 Windows7 themes, you might want to check these too:

Best 2012 Windows 7 themes

25 amazing Windows 7 themes

30 good looking Windows XP themes

1. Toybox – a colorful, multi-styled theme that might work well for kids

Read full documentation

2. Lucido – a theme that reminds me on Lucid dreaming. Probably has something related with that cause of the colors.

Read full documentation

3. +1 – a very short and strange name for an amazing looking theme. The taskbar and buttons are just gorgeous.

Read full documentation

4. Racy – a minimalistic dark theme packed with blue buttons

Read full documentation

5. Base – light, minimalistic Windows7 theme with really great looking buttons. Comes with two styles.

Read full documentation

6. Puro – simplistic Windows 7 theme with bright colors and square buttons

Read full documentation

7. Snowneue – theme inspired by snow that suits well for these cold days on the northern hemisphere

Read full documentation

8. Adobulated – dark, default-like Windows 7 theme for those that don’t like making huge changes

Read full documentation

9. Radiance – Colorful, minimalistic theme with lots of different styles

Read full documentation

10. Noche – a brownish, minimalistic Windows 7 theme

Read full documentation

11. Sereno – relaxing Windows 7 theme with dream-like colors

Read full documentation

12. Luto - a simplistic, dark theme with really, really small buttons

Read full documentation

13. Leve – simplistic grey and white theme featuring LED-like buttons

Read full documentation

14. Memento – a retro styled Windows 7 theme containing brown and white styles

Read full documentation

15. Elemental – colorful, minimalistic theme based on Windows Aero

Read full documentation

16. Uniko – Default like theme with a different color – grey

Read full documentation

17. Amana - Whether you like light or dark themes, this one will suit you

Read full documentation.

18. Amana2 – minimalistic Windows 7 theme with ridiculously small buttons

Read full documentation

19. CLRS – A new Mercedes? No. Clean white theme that works well with Rainmeter widgets

Read full documentation

20. Min’em all – a dark, default-like theme including few different styles

Read full documentation

21. bAero – A basic Aero theme that is aesthetically pleasing, minimal & usable

Read full documentation

22. iBaked – Clean and minimalistic theme featuring five styles and three font choices.

Read full documentation

23. Kombo – great looking minimalistic theme with dark and light preset

Read full documentation

24. Windows Metro – Easiest way to get a Windows8 look on your Windows7

Read full documentation

Are these the Best Windows 7 themes for 2013? If yes, which one you liked and installed? If not, what do you think what are the Best 2013 Windows 7 themes?

I would be very pleased to hear from you in the comments, giving thoughts and suggesting even better themes.

Everyone owning a computer is using .pdf files, I mean the thing is standardized. And I’m quite happy about it, it’s a great format. But I’m not that much happy for Adobe Reader being as ubiquitous as  the files it’s opening. It’s quite slow and bulky compared to other readers, memory usage is way much higher, can’t work in tabs (unless you install an additional program) and level of customizing is very low. And I don’t want to mention the updating part!

There are so many readers out there that perform so much better than Adobe reader but still aren’t as popular because Adobe’ reader comes pre-installed on most computers, tablets or smartphones.

1. Foxit Reader – The fast, Small, Feature-Rich and Secure PDF Reader

I’m a huge fan of Foxit Reader and I’m using it ever since I heard for it. It’s really fast, has tabbed views, automatically opens all files that were opened before you exited it, allows you to annotate documents and much, much more.

Also it’s a lightweight app, Foxit’s installation files are only 12MB compared to Adobe’s 40MB. It doesn’t have all those annoying splash-up screens, endless credits lists and plugins.

The best part of Foxit Reader is the ease of use. You have only one main toolbar (that you can easily hide to get more screen space) with all the important functions like zooming, text selection, image snapshot, search tool, rotation or full screen view, among others.

Only thing I don’t like about Foxit Reader is that it asks you whether you want to install a toolbar for your browser, and whether you want to set a certain website as your homepage. Yes you can untick both options, but still for users that just click next it might be a bit annoying. Other than that it’s flawless.

Foxit also offers paid versions, so if you are some sort of pro user or need to edit your pdf files with easy, check out their store.

2. Nitro Reader – The only free PDF reader and creator

The Nitro PDF Reader is a great product that offers so much functionality in a free reader and far exceeds the functionality offered by other competing products, incorporating so much functionality you would typically find only in a PRO product. It offers an ability to quick sign a document, mark-up text, add notes, create pdfs from other formats and many other features in a really tiny package, “weighting” only 1.22MB.

The toolbar looks really like Microsoft’s Ribbon, and Nitro PDF reader has tabbed view too, just as Foxit Reader. It lets you convert almost any file format to .pdf too.

Although Nitro Reader offers so many features for free that it’s really comparable to other paid readers, you can get Nitro Reader PRO which offers way much more than the free version. But unless you own a company and need great pdf editing tools, you won’t need the pro version.

 3. Sumatra PDF – the most lightweight PDF reader available

Sumatra PDF is probably the ugliest looking PDF reader. It’s totally unbranded (as you can see on the picture above) the UI looks like we’re still in 90s and there is no support for tabbed view. But there is one thing Sumatra PDF is good at, and it’s probably the best in that field. Speed. It’s blazing fast.

Because it has no extra tools inside it works so fast. It has all the basics tools you need, like zooming ,searching, rotating and full screen, and none of the fluff that you don’t. If you’re frustrated by the slowness of some of the big-name PDF viewers, this could be exactly what you’ve been looking for.

4. PDF-XChange Viewer – faster and lighter on your PC’s resources

The biggest PDF reader of all presented (although still smaller in size compared to Adobe Reader) is PDF-XChange Viewer. The toolbars of PDF-XChange Viewer look really similar to those of Adobe Reader, although with a few additional command icons.Keep in mind that after installation PDF-Cchange Viewer activates all toolbars so it will be really cluttered. You’ll have to hide the toolbars you don’t use to get that space back.

PDF-XChange Viewer not only has a document search box but also a web search toolbar that’s set first on Ask.com (more engines can be added from Preferences). Also it’s the only PDF reader presented here that has OCR. Basically that allows you to turn a scanned image into an editable text.

But heavy editing in the free version isn’t possible, so you’ll either have to purchase the PRO version or use Nitro reader for that.

So, what PDF reader are you currently using? Try these out, all of them are great and possibly better than Adobe Reader. Which when have you installed? Let me know in comments.

I’ve been using a sort of keyboard encryption ever since I opened a PayPal account. Since certain keyloggers track only keyboard activity, I would first enter last few letters of the password, then put the cursor back with my mouse and type the beginning of the password. Basically if the password is inttips, I would first write tips then move the cursor back to beginning (but only with mouse, remember keyboard is being tracked) and type int. And I still do that.

But to secure yourselves from all the keyloggers except those top notch, you don’t have to type your passwords like that. There are free tools encrypting your keyboard, so even if your computer has a keylogger sending your keyboard actions to “hacker”, it would send random encrypted data.

One of such apps is Zemana AntiLogger free, a free keystroke encryption for everyone.

It’s a very simple app doing just the thing. Lots of free keyboard encryption tool offer just encryption in browser, or are very confusing to use. But not Zemana’s Antilogger free, which has following features in the free plan:

After installing it Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel will get tabbed view inside, instead of old multiple windows.

You don’t have to close a certain document (or minimize it) to open another. All you’ll have to do is click on a tab you want to open or learn shortcuts (which are similar to browser’s shortcuts) and do it even faster.

The program is really customizable, it lets you change various things like tab size, color, style, shortcuts and many more. Simply open Office Tabs Center and change what you want.

There are two version of Office Tabs, free and enterprise. Office Tabs is free and supports Word, Power Point and Excel, while Office Tabs Enterprise supports all office programs.

Recycle Bin, a friend that takes all our trash inside him and keeps it inside for as long as we need him to. But Recycle Bin doesn’t have to be on the desktop to do all his dirty work, you can remove it from there and still have it keeping your computer clean.
If you are using Windows Vista 7 there are two ways (well probably more, but these are the easiest) to accomplish this:

1. Right-click on the desktop, choose Personalize, then choose Desktop Icon settings on the left-hand side.

And now simply remove the check box from Recycle Bin:

2. Open Start menu, Control Panel and select Appearance and Personalization, then click Personalization. In the left panel click Change desktop icons and then uncheck the box from Recycle Bin.

If you are using Windows Vista simply right click Recycle Bin and press delete. Yes, as simple as that.

And if you are using Windows XP, just like me, click on start, run then inside type “regedit.” In Registry Editor, navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace

Find the following key:

{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}

And simply delete it. Recycle Bin will be gone from your desktop.

Now since we removed the Recycle Bin from the desktop we want in in the system tray, right? Program MiniBin will allow us to do just the thing.

MiniBin is the free recycle bin for your Microsoft Windows system tray area; the area next to the clock in the taskbar.

MiniBin comes handy when you decide to remove Recycle Bin from the desktop and leave in system tray. Despite being a really tiny program it allows you to do various things with it.

For example you can change the configuration, translate the text in the menu or use your own icons to make MiniBin just the way you want it to be.

You can easily empty Recycle Bin by right clicking the system tray icon and clicking empty, or even easier, double click on the icon.

MiniBin can show either two-state icon display, displaying full and empty Recycle Bin or use the default multi-state icon display which uses all five icons to also display intermediate fill levels.

And if MiniBin is overwhelming or if you want something more minimal than MiniBin, try MicroBin. It is the most minimal (10kb) RecycleBin for you system tray. Its based on MiniBin, but without all the extras.

Download MiniBin directly from here, and MicroBin from here.

Using computer faster can be divided in three sections, at least according to me. So that’s how I will write this post. Firstly I’ll mention things you can improve on yourself to use the computer faster, like learning shortcuts and typing faster. Then I’ll suggest you what software you should use to do certain things faster. Lastly you’ll have to optimize your PC to make your computer faster by either using some software, editing certain properties or your registry. The text in blue represents the impact of a tip, whether it will really speed up your PC usage or it’s neglectable change.

1. Learn to type faster: [very high]

I believe this effects the computer speed usage the most. It won’t make your computer faster, but you will surely use it faster if you learn to type faster. For example if you type twice as fast compared to how fast you type now, you can do lots of tasks twice the speed.  According to Wikipedia ”an average professional typist types usually in speeds of 50 to 80 wpm. Two-finger typists commonly reach sustained speeds of about 37 and the fastest typing speed ever, is 216 words in one minute.” Even though I’m a two-finger typist, in a burst I do 100 wpm on standard qwerty keyboard. I believe I do type fast, but I could improve a lot if I started writing with all my fingers instead of just using four or five.

You can check how fast you type here. Although it’s not relative because it’s burst typing, meaning that you probably can’t hold that much for a longer time period, it should give you a hint how fast you type.

To learn to type faster I used TypingMaster as a kid, you can try it out too. Although there are many new ways to learn typing faster, and most of them are online courses such as TypingWeb or TypingStudy.

2. Use Windows keyboard shortcuts [high]

I see many people around not using the most basic shortcuts, like copy/cut and paste. They save plenty of time no matter what you do and can be learned pretty quickly, depending on how often you use a certain app. And although there are many shortcuts available in the Windows, you can get even more by using shortcut programs. But if you don’t know the most basic shortcuts, you probably won’t need the more advanced either.

CTRL+C: Copy

CTRL+X: Cut

CTRL+V: Paste

CTRL+Z: Undo CTRL+A: Select All

ALT+TAB: Switch between open programs

ALT+F4: Quit program

SHIFT+DELETE: Delete item permanently

F2: Rename object

Windows Logo: Start menu

Windows Logo+R: Run dialog box

Windows Logo+E: Windows Explorer

Windows Logo+TAB: Cycle through taskbar buttons (Windows 7 only)

Windows Logo+D: Minimizes all open windows and displays the desktop

Also you’d like to learn keyboard shortcuts for your browser. If you use Chrome check this out, or this one for Firefox.

3. Trim your start-up [moderate]

One of the biggest reasons for PC starting slow is that too many programs are competing to start when the machine boots. Skype, Messenger, Antivirus, you name it are all trying to start-up at the same time. And these programs are common, there are many more that you probably never heard of before and yet they’re starting as soon as you turn your machine on. There are many ways you can check out what’s starting up on Windows boot, but the simplest one is System Configuration Utility. In order to open it, open run (windows logo + r as explained above, or through start menu) and type msconfig. Open Startup tab, and something similar to the picture below will appear.

Now depending if you are a tech-savy or not you can see what things you can turn off and what you shouldn’t change. If you are not able to determine what to turn off or on I believe there are programs dedicated for this. I use TuneUp and even it’s not only meant for start-up programs, it has a great tool just for that.

From here you can clearly distinguish between necessary and optional programs.

4. Clean up your hard drive: [moderate]

Over time your computer will become full of unwanted files, and this makes the computer turn slow. These files aren’t viruses, just junk temporary files left by certain programs that we don’t need or want on our computer. The first thing you can do is run Disk Cleanup (start>accessories>system tools) which will check your computer for temporary files. It will show an estimated value of how much junk you can eliminate. Just hit OK and run the cleanup.

Truth to be told it isn’t a powerful tool, but if you’re looking for such program CCleaner is the right thing for you, and it’s free.

After installing the program, enable smartly detection of cookies and hit run. But you might want to analyze your PC to see how much junk files can be cleaned by hitting analyze. Be sure to run the program often, like once a month to keep your computer clean from all the junk files.

5. Get quicker access to system features: [low-moderate]

Windows 8 introduced a new keyboard shortcut, the Windows logo + X combination. By holding these two keys together, a quick access menu appears that lets you open system features faster like power options, device manager, command prompt and more.

This app is called WinPlus X (win + x) let’s you even create shortcuts on your own. To add your own shortcut, go to WinPlus X options, and select add shortcut then choose the shortcut you’d like to add.

6. Uninstall programs that you don’t use [low-moderate]

If you are one of those that install software very often, you’d probably like to delete it too if you are not using it often as it’s a quick and easy fix that will make your computer faster. To start with you can open uninstall a program (start>control panel) and try to analyze what software you don’t use often. If you are using Windows Vista or 7, right click the Name Column (or sort by on Windows XP), click more and choose the details you’d like to see about each program. Be sure to check “last used”, and uninstall things you don’t use at all.

If you haven’t used a certain program for a month, try getting rid of it. If you are not going to use it, it’s not supposed to be on your hard drive. Nowadays you can turn to clouds, cause many programs that are on your hard drive can be found there without a need to take your precious space on your computer. There are cloud versions if Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Photoshop which offer stripped-down functionality.

7. Uninstall programs faster [low-moderate]

Depending of how often you install and uninstall programs on your Windows, this can be a time-saving thing or the most unnecessary feature – ever. If you like the idea of uninstalling faster, you’ll probably like this program too.

Menu uninstaller lets you do right that, right now. It allows you to uninstall software by just right clicking it’s shortcut wherever you found it.You can download menu uninstaller directly, or visit their website to check the premium plans

8. Manage your services [low-moderate]

Services are programs that are designed to run silently in the background by both Windows related programs and third-party applications. Services are responsible for wide range of uses, and depending on your needs you might need them – or not. For example there is a Windows Update service that monitors, guess what, Windows updates. It’s kinda essential, even though you can turn it off. Also there is a service for your Bluetooth adapter, and if you are not going to use it – remove it.

Services are usually draining your PC’s performance quite much. The safest and easiest way to remove those you don’t need is by using Smart.

It automatically disables the services according to your needs. In the bottom right corner you choose service tweaks, either safety or performance level (three of them are available). It then disables those that you don’t need for common usage. If you set for highest performance it will probably disable your sound services. The good thing is that it will automatically create a restore point before applying changes, so if something me

9. Tab to applications faster: [low, win7 only]

If you know Windows shortcuts, you are probably using alt + tab (or win logo + tab on windows 7). But for this one I never heard before writing this article.

Hold down your Windows key (the one with Windows logo) and press numbers, one to ten, depending on what you would like to use. If the third icon on your taskbar is Google Chrome and you’d like to use it, hit win logo and 3. The zero represents number ten, so it will open the tenth icon.

10. Tab to applications easier: [low, win7 only]

The previous shortcut requires you to know the position on taskbar of a certain app you are running, or you have to count. Both of these tend to be boring.

Hold windows logo and press T. It selects the taskbar, and you can navigate through it by pressing arrow keys.

11. Find programs and files faster: [low-moderate]

The new search tool introduced in Windows 8 lets you search for your favorite programs or files right from your desktop. It might come really handy if your files are deep down in some folder or you just want to open that program faster.  To use this on your current Windows, use Launchy. It’s a tiny application that allows you to run things – faster.

12. Delete things to recycle bin faster: [low]

To delete files faster on Windows, right-click the Recycle Bin, choose Properties and, on the Global tab, deselect the option ‘Display delete confirmation dialog’. Click OK and any files you delete will be sent straight to the Recycle Bin.

13. Add file hosting services to explorer menu: [low]

If you are type of person that uses Dropbox or SkyDrive quite often, adding them to Windows Explorer menu would be a really good idea so you no longer need to open their folders or even browser.

To integrate SkyDrive with Windows explorer, download the official SkyDrive app This adds a SkyDrive option to Windows Explorer so you can drag and drop photos, documents and other files to and
from your online account with 7GB of space for new users.This works on Windows 7 only.

To integrate Dropbox,in Windows 7 and Vista, click Start, type %APPDATA%\ Microsoft\Windows\SendTo and press Enter. Hold down Ctrl and drag the Dropbox option from your Favorites list to the SendTo folder to create a shortcut. Now, when you right-click a file or folder, you’ll be able to send it directly to your Dropbox account.

In Windows XP, first go into the Control Panel, choose Folder Options (in the Appearance and Themes category) and click View. Select the option ‘Show hidden files and folders’ and click OK. Open the folder C:\Documents and Settings\
[User Name]\SendTo, right-click and choose New, Shortcut. Select your Dropbox folder to add a shortcut to your ‘Send to’ menu.

14. Stop programs slowing your system [moderate]:

Usually when your computer starts being slow just at once it’s a program slowing it down that you can easily turn off. Open task manager (ctrl + alt + del or right click on taskbar), click on CPU tab and notice which one is using your processor the most. But sometimes this can be tricky, you can’t know exactly what eats up your computer performance and you are unsure whether you can turn certain process off.

Therefore using another programs for this is a great idea. One of them is Process Explorer, a program that looks similar to Windows 8 task manager.

Process explorer lets you really see what is hogging your system, by either analytically or graphically. Yes, it’s even drawing graphs of processor usage. The best part is that it lets you know what is safe to terminate and what service you shouldn’t touch which will make your computer faster.

15. Use the High-Performance mode: [medium]

Changing the Windows 7 power options can make a real difference to your system speed. Open Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power options and ensure you have High-Performance selected. If you can’t find it there go to “make new power option” and select High-Performance mode.

But if you are using laptop and running low on battery you might consider changing the power options to low power mode, although it will slow down your system speed.

16. Run your apps from cloud: [low]

Turning to clouds is being popularized last few years. Windows 8 prioritizes apps over programs, and you can do that too with a free tool called Spoon. Yes, there is no spoon?

Sign up for an account and you can choose from a selection of apps including Chrome, Firefox, VLC Media Player, LibreOffice and Skype. Click Run to launch a program from the cloud without needing to download it first. It saves the space on your hard drive and lets you start these programs faster. Also additional programs are available on paid plan.

17. Delete duplicate files: [low]

Did you know that you have lots, lots of duplicate files on your computer? Yes, you certainly do. Today I checked only my documents folder, which isn’t that big after all, and I found 3.68GB of duplicate files. Imagine how much I would find if I scanned my whole hard drive. Deleting these is a quite good idea.

Lots of programs are offering this, but I’m using Bytessence Duplicate Finder due to it’s simplicity and swiftness. You don’t even have to install it to find duplicate files.

If you don’t want to install it, just download the portable version. choose the folder you want to scan and hit next. When scanning completes it will show every duplicate file in a drop down list and how much you can save by deleting those.

18. Turn of Windows features you don’t use [moderate]:

Did you see Windows 8 boot time? It blows off every other Windows OS booting time. One of the reasons Windows 8 boots faster than Windows 7 is because it has fewer extras enabled by default. These include elements such as Remote
Differential Compression, XPS Services, Windows Gadget Platform and other tools you’ll probably never use or even never heard of.

To disable these unnecessary features in Windows 7, go to Start, Control Panel, Programs and click ‘Turn Windows features on or off’. Untick the boxes next to the options you don’t want and click OK. You can turn them on again later if you change your mind.

19. Improve your menu speed: [low]

The pause between sizing menus is located in registry and is by default 400 (0.4 seconds). So when you press maximize it will take Windows at least 0.4 seconds to do the task. A simple registry edit can speed this up.

Open run and inside the box type regedit, then hit enter. Inside navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ CONTROL PANEL \ DESKTOP, double click MenuShowDelay and change the default value from 400 to anything you like, I chose 200 or 0.2 seconds. You will surely notice this and you’ll be able to work faster for 0.2 sec every time you open or re-size a window.

20. Scale back visual effects: [medium]

Newer windows tend to look better, which is a good thing. But looking better has one drawback – system performance. On a really fast computer you probably won’t even notice this, but on a slower one scaling back your visual effects is a good idea if you want to make it faster.

To change your visual settings right click on My Computer and select properties. Select “Advanced system settings” (Advanced tab in Windows XP) and under the performance click settings. Now click on the “Adjust for best performance”, apply the changes and give yourself a speed boost.

21. Defrag your disk: [medium]

One of the oldest tricks for speeding up a PC’s performance is the defregmantation of hard drive. Defragmantation works only on mechanical drives (or hard disk drives) so if you own an SSD (solid state drive) it won’t speed up your PC.

Defragmantation takes all the various fragments of data that get scattered across the hard disk and puts them in nice order

If you are using Windows 7 or Vista, de-frags should occur automatically. To ensure defragmantation is enabled on your hard-drive open My Computer, right click the drive, select Properties then Tools and click the defragment now button. Besides running a defragmantation you can schedule it or make it repetitive, lets say every Thursday at 17:00. Another way to open Disk Defragmenter is by finding it in System Tools. There are many programs that are able to defragment your disk faster and probably better, but Windows Disk Defragmenter will get it’s job done.

22. Change your DNS server to a public one: [low-medium]

By changing your DNS server to a free, public one you’ll be able to browse the internet faster, and safer if it means anything to you.

One of the websites offering this is Open DNS, simply sign up for their free plan and enjoy safer and faster internet.

23. Clean up broken shortcuts: [low]

Some programs tend to leave shortcuts at various places even if you uninstall them. They don’t actually point to anything so they’re just cluttering your space and produce annoying error messages. You can get rid of them one by one, which is of course slow, or use a tool designed just for this, Broken Shortcut Fixer. What a name!

Scan your hard drive for broken shortcuts and simply click delete. Done, they are gone. Also a program that I highly recommend is Tune-Up utilities, it does this for me (and many more) automatically, I don’t have to do anything at all.

24. Remove phantom hardware: [low-medium]

Every time you install a new piece of hardware, Windows creates a reference to it in your Registry. Sometimes the reference remains even if you have disconnected the device from your PC which slows it down. You can manually remove this hardware by opening Device manager, choosing to view hidden devices and uninstalling from there, but of course its much easier to use a program to do it automatically. A program like GhostBuster.

This free tool lets you know which of your devices are ghosted (not connected at the moment) and lets you get rid of them with a single click. But since the program makes changes to the registry, be sure to tick the option create System restore point before deleting anything.

25. Remove empty folders: [low]

Over time you will certainly get hundreds of empty folders on your computer. Even though they take up little space and don’t really pose a threat to your system, these vacant directories have no reason to stay there.

Remove Empty Directories will find and delete those empty directories in a second. You can review the result before purging the folders, exempt important directories and ignore system folders. These folders are sent to recycle bin instead of deleted so if you want you can easily get them back.

I’d like to hear from you whether any of these tips actually made your computer faster or you started using it that way. Also if you have great tips for hastening a PC, feel free to share it by commenting below.