Edit the Windows 7 "Send To" Menu

If you just want to add and remove basic shortcuts to your "send to" right-click context menu, skip apps like Send To Toys and edit the menu by opening a simple system folder.

I highlight how easy it is to edit the Windows 7 "send to" menu contents.

There is no magic formula or trick. To remove or add your own items (shortcuts) easily, simply navigate to the following directory to find all Send To items.

C:\Users\{YourUsername}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

Navigating to this directory can be a headache for some, this is why we will use a quicker method.

Type "shell:sendto" in Start Search without the quotes and hit Enter.

Have a tip or trick for tweaking Windows without installing extra applications? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

Game Booster Optimizes Your PC for Gaming in One Click

Windows only: If you find it troubling to stop running applications, clear out RAM, update drivers, and otherwise get your system ready for a gaming session, free app Game Booster will do it all for you, according to your preferences.

Game Booster gives you a number of preferences for when you’re running a game, from which background applications can quit to small tweaks to optimize processor performance and clean RAM. After specifying your preferences, you can go into "Gaming mode" with the flip of a switch. Then, when you’re done playing, you can just switch gaming mode back off and go back to your regular desktop experience.

It also has a few other features, like checking for important driver updates, downloading popular game add-ons, and defragmenting your game folders. If you find that your desktop setup isn’t optimal for gaming, it’s a nice tool to let you spend more time gaming and less time tweaking your computer before every session. And, of course, don’t forget to overclock your graphics card with previously mentioned EVGA Precision for an even bigger performance boost.

Game Booster 2 Beta is a free download, Windows only.

Game Booster v2 Beta [via Life Rocks 2.0]

Windows Live Essentials 2011 Leaves Beta, Available for Download Now

Windows: Microsoft today released Windows Live Essentials 2011, a free suite of solid desktop applications ranging from Messenger and Photo Gallery to Movie Maker and Mail.

In all, Windows Live Essentials is one big, sometimes incomprehensible bucket that contains a lot of different applications of varying degrees of usefulness.
Windows Live Essentials includes:

• Messenger: Microsoft’s same ol’ instant messaging app, but with added support for social networks like Facebook.
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• Photo Gallery: A photo management app that supports uploading to photo-sharing services like Facebook, Flickr, and SkyDrive.
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• Movie Maker: Windows’ free movie editing and publishing tool. It’s actually pretty nice (especially for a free offering), and supports publishing videos to the likes of SkyDrive, YouTube, or Facebook.
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• Windows Live Mesh: A file-syncing utility along the lines of Dropbox (that also integrates with SkyDrive for web-based access); also supports syncing supported program settings.
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• Mail: A desktop email client that handles email, calendars, and contacts, without the extra bells and whistles of, say, Outlook.
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• Writer: Powerful desktop blogging software that supports publishing to services like WordPress, Blogger, and LiveJournal. I’ve known bloggers who swear by it.
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• Family Safety: An app that monitors your kids’ web activity, lets you create whitelists for family-friendly sites.
• 

The entire suite is available for download now from the link below. When you’re installing, I’d recommend clicking the Choose the programs you want to install option so you can avoid installing, at the very least, the Bing Bar.

Windows Live Essentials 2011 is a free download for Windows only.

Windows Live Essentials 2011 [via Windows Team Blog]

Re-Enable Hibernate Option in Win Vista

If you’ve found that your Hibernate option is missing from Windows Vista, it might be from running the disk cleanup wizard and removing the hibernate files. This is due to a known bug in Vista that might not have been hotfixed already.

Turning it back on is very simple, however.

Type cmd into the start menu search box, and use Ctrl+Shift+Enter to open in administrator mode. You can also right-click the item in the menu and choose Run as Administrator.

From the command prompt, type in the following command:

powercfg /hibernate on

You’ll have to restart your computer before it will take effect.

Update: Alternative Method

An alternative method with more steps was suggested by Shane in the comments. If the above doesn’t fix your problem, you can use these steps.

• Go to the command prompt icon in the Start menu under Accessories and right click the icon: click “Run as administrator”.
• Paste: “powercfg.exe /hibernate on” and hit Enter and also paste “powercfg -h on” and hit enter just to be safe.
• Open Control Panel and type in “Hibernate” in the Search.
• Click “Turn hibernation on or off”
• Click “Change advance power settings”
• Scroll to and expand the “Sleep” option.
• Select “Off” to the “Allow hybrid sleep” option.
• Scroll to and expand the “Power buttons and lid” option.
• Select “Hibernate” for the “Sleep button action” option. 10. Select “Hibernate” for the “Start menu power button” option.

Hopefully one of these methods will solve your problem!

Save 1-4% More Battery Life – Windows Vista

Quite a few people have written in asking me if it’s possible to turn off Aero when on battery power to save a few precious minutes of battery life. While I dispute the claim that Aero drains the battery life, there is now a utility that will automatically turn off Aero when in battery mode so you can test it for yourself.

The Windows Vista Battery Saver utility will turn off Aero and/or the Windows Sidebar when on battery, or only when battery life is low. The author claims it saves 30% of your battery life, but the Windows Vista Blog says only 1-4%, so your mileage may vary.

Once installed, there’s a small icon in the system tray that will bring up the following settings dialog:

If you are wondering why the screenshot is so blurry, it’s because the fonts on the dialog were actually blurry on my screen for some reason. (no idea why).

Personally, this utility seems like it would be useful only for using the “Deactivate when battery level is less then …”  Once your battery life is down to critical levels, it’s probably helpful to turn off anything that could cause extra processor cycles, and the sidebar is a good candidate for that.