Opening An Elevated Command Prompt Window

There are many parts of Windows that are useful for the power user, but none so useful and important as opening an elevated privilege command prompt window!

Windows, by default, does not run programs as administrator in Vista and 7. This is for the user's protection, and is controlled by User Account Control. You can, fortunately, bypass these restrictions via several different methods:

Method 1

1. Click on Vista Start button.
2. Locate the Command Prompt menu item (buried deep inside Accessories under All Programs or appear on program access history).
3. Right click on Command Prompt.
4. On the pop-up right click context menu, select “Run as Administrator”.

Method 2

1. Click on Vista Start button.
2. Click on Run.
3. Type in “Cmd” (without quotes) in the Open textbox.
4. You should see “This task will be created with administrative privileges”.
5. Click on OK or press Enter.

Method 3

1. Press the Win keyboard key or click on Vista Start button.
2. Type cmd into the Start Search textbox.
3. Press Ctrl+Shift+Enter keyboard shortcut. Ctrl-Shift-Enter is the general keyboard shortcut that triggers elevation to “Run as Administrator”.
4. Press Alt+C or press Continue to confirm the UAC elevation warning prompt.

[via mydigitallife.info]

Use Trillian Astra to Simplify Messaging

Oh, Trillian. I remember when you were just a wee toddler, now you're all big and grown up now! Trillian has always been one of the popular choices for instant messaging clients, however with the advent of Trillian Astra in late 2009, Cerulean Studios has nearly reinvented the game once more and provided a better client that we all needed.

Supporting a metric character-map ton of protocols (Astra, AIM, Yahoo!, ICQ, Windows Live (MSN), MySpaceIM, GoogleTalk, Jabber/XMPP, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Bonjour, IRC, POP/IMAP, etc,) Trillian is no little client. This newer version offers better looks, better reliability, and a host of features that would take forever to list.

If you are currently using multiple clients to connect to your various messaging networks, Trillian just might convince you to consolidate into one, simple client.

Oh, and did I mention Trillian supports Web and iPhone? Windows client is default, and Mac OS X is on the way.

Check out Trillian.

Save Power with Windows 7 Power Management Diagnostics

Have you been wondering if your laptop or desktop uses more power than it needs to? Well, wonder no more! Windows 7 includes a utility for generating a report of potential energy hogging systems within your computer.

Simply open a Command Prompt window as Administrator, and enter the following command:

powercfg -energy

Windows 7 will take about a minute and a half to analyze power usage and provide an HTML report of possible issues that could be drawing more power than necessary. By default, the report is placed in C:\Windows\System32\energy-report.html, however you can change the output location with the flag -output on the command above, no carats.