Full version of Skype

For quite a while Skype has been shipping with a small-size Web installer. Since it is a programme which relies on the Net to do its job, I can understand the concept of these installers.
The problem is that I tend to burn all necessary applications on a CD and use it to equip a newly installed Windows with all the stuff needed for everyday use. This way I save myself from waiting a dozen of applications to be downloaded before the system is usable. That's why I needed the full version of Skype downloaded once and for all.
And here it is - the full-installer version of Skype (always the most recent one):

www.skype.com/go/getskype-full

It's about 21 MB and is downloaded from the Skype servers. I hope the link would help you and will save you from downloading questionable Skype installations from 3rd party installers.

Remove IE8 'Install Windows Search' Teaser

Just today I installed the all new Windows Internet Explorer 8 final version. I've been using it since the early betas at work and had no problems with it (except some beta-period error messages). I can say that I got used to surfing with IE8.

But at home things went the annoying way. IE8 installed just fine. I set it up and started using it. But - to my surprise - every time I started entering any URL in the address bar, I got a teaser line:

Download Windows Search to improve history and favorites results

advertising Windows Search on the top of the URL dropdown list.

Turned out that IE8 will show the line whenever Windows Search 4 is not installed on the system. Should I mention how MAD and IRRITATED I got!!! My home computer is a 3-years old Celeron 2.4 GHz, 1.25 GB RAM machine and I had no intention to slow it further down by burdening it with some 'witty' indexing searching engine.

So, with just a few clicks (using Google - sorry, Microsoft and Windows Live), I managed to find the solution:

1. Open Start Menu-> Run


2. Paste the following line:
   
   
   REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search" /v CurrentVersion /t REG_SZ /d 99 /f
   
   
   and hit OK (or Enter)


3. Restart IE8 and voilà - the advertisement is gone

Many, many thanks to steppres for this solution!

Of course Microsoft had cleverly foreseen that quite a lot of users will start searching for a "solution" of the problem and had conveniently proposed such "solution" suggesting the user to... install Windows Search 4.0. OK, I do use Search 4.0 at work and on my laptop, but these are capable machines. I would recommend Search 4.0 to anyone who's got processor with 2 cores or more - it really finds things fast, though it lacks some guru search techniques (search by date, size, etc.) - these are well hidden and almost undiscoverable. So, if you need simply to search by file name and content - get Windows Search 4.0 anyway.