1) Start Microsoft Outlook. If you have not configured any Email account, then you will be presented with an wizard. If not, then go to Tools-> Account Settings. Now click on “New“. Now select “Microsoft Exchange, POP3, IMAP or HTTP” and click on “Next“.

2) Now in the next step, add your information like “Name“, Email address” and “Password“. And then click on “Next“.

3) Now you will see the below screen.

See if this auto account settings work for you or not. If not then in step 2, click on “Manually configure server settings or additional server types” and click on Next.

4) Now select “Internet Email” and click on Next. You will be able to see the below screen. Enter the information as you see in the below image.

Manual settings for Hotmail:

Account type: POP3

Incoming mail server: pop3.live.com

Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.live.com

Username: This would be your full Email ID e.g. someone@hotmail.com

Password: Password of your Email ID.

Click on “Remember password”.

Advanced Settings: Click on “More Settings”. Verify that in the “Outgoing Server” tab, “My outgoing server requires authentication” is checked. Now click on “Advanced” tab. Incoming mail server should be using 995 port and Outgoing server should be using 587 port.

After entering all these settings manually, you can also click on “Test Account Settings”. This will test if Outlook can send and receive the mails. So that’s it, after all these settings, Outlook will download all your Mails from the server.

Note: You can also try Thunderbird (from Mozilla), setting up Hotmail and Gmail account in Thunderbird is a breeze. It’s just too easy. Future post will be a tutorial to configure/setup Hotmail and Gmail in Thunderbird.

Good news for gamers. Portal is now a free game. For those who don’t know, Portal is a puzzle and first person action game. Its developed by Valve Corporation. Portal is one of the most innovative games developed and challenges your brain. So those who like puzzle games should definitely try out this.

Portal was released in a bundled package which is known as “Orange Box”, and its out there for XBOX 360, PS3 and Windows. But now its also for Mac, so those who have Mac can also download this and enjoy this game. The standalone version of this game was released on April 9, 2008 through Stream. Portal has then been much liked by gamers and players for its new and innovative type of gameplay. Also Portal has won many awards.

So to download the game, just visit the Portal storefront and click on “Install game” button. Users will then need login to Steam account or they can also sign up for a Steam account. Once the Portal is added to the Steam account, it will appear on Steam’s library, so that you can install the game on a PC or a Mac.

The download size of the game is 1.4 GB. And yes, don’t forget to get your free license before May 24, 2010. So act now and download this puzzle game, you’ll enjoy.

CDBurnerXP:

This free software supports burning any Data on CD-R/CD-RW/DVD+R/DVD-R/DVD+RW/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM/BD/HD-DVD. Yes, this is a vast list. But you can think, some of even paid softwares don’t support burning to HD-DVD and BD. It can also burn ISO to CDs and DVDs.

This is an real alternative to most popular commercial burning application, which is Nero. So if you don’t want to dig a hole in your pocket, use this freeware to write CDs and DVDs.

[Download CDBurnerXP]

Foxit Reader:

This one is an alternative to Adobe Reader. Have you seen the size of Adobe Reader ? Its just too large to download and resource heavy software, so PCs which have low configuration face problem and sluggishness while running this application. Therefore use Foxit Reader. Firstly, its free, secondly its very light on system resources, fourthly, it opens PDF documents very fast and fifthly, its just 5.11 MB in size. I have dumped Adobe Reader from a long time and started using this Foxit Reader and I am fully satisfied with it.

Yes, it does opens PDF files blazingly fast and you don’t have to wait for opening of files, like in Adobe Reader. So try this alternative to Adobe Reader and be satisfied.

[Download Foxit Reader]

FileZilla:

FileZilla needs no introduction and is the best free FTP client out there. Using it is very simple and its no need to learn how to connect. The GUI is self explanatory.

One feature I like the most of this application is that you can Bookmark the location of your files/folders. Yes its a freeware. And is just 3.97 MB. So download it now if you are still using the traditional method to upload/download files from your server.

[Download FileZilla]

K-Lite Codec Pack

Want an all in one player ? So this one is for you. Instead of having many different applications for each purposes, like Quicktime for .MOV files, Real player for .RM format, etc why not have an all in one player which can play all the files. So this player can play and supports a vast variety of codecs and is also light on using system resources. After installing this, your videos will even start running in Windows Media Player. So try it, for its the one solution, you have. Also VLC player is good, but I sometimes have problem in that, so I would suggest you K-Lite Codec pack.

[Download K-Lite Codec Pack]

Defraggler

As I have said in my previous posts also, that Defragging your hard disk is also a very important step in maintaining the speed of your PC. So for that you can use the inbuilt utility also which comes with Windows or can try out this free software. But as per my observation, the inbuilt utility works slow compared to this software. If you are in a hurry, then you can also do a quick defrag. It will show you the graph with details that how much is the used space and free space, and also how much is defragmented and how much not.

So don’t think, download this little nifty utility and maintain the speed of your Computer.

[Download Defraggler]

Also you can take a look at “Best free antivirus softwares” article, which I previously wrote.

Windows Server 2008 is used in many types of businesses and is is used for a variety of purposes. I have seen many offices still running Windows Server 2003, but they are not keen to try out this new operating system. To those organizations/companies, I would like to tell them that they really should try out Windows Server 2008. If they don’t want to buy it then could try out trial of 180 Days of Windows Server 2008 R2.

So if you are an IT enthusiast, try out this new trial of 180 days of Windows server operating system.

[Download Windows Server 2008 R2]

A quote from Microsoft’s website

Windows Server 2008 R2 offers new virtualization tools, web resources, management enhancements, and exciting Windows 7 integration help save time, reduce costs, and provide a platform for a dynamic and efficiently managed data center.

If you are MSDN Developer, then click on MSDN Developers Start Here Image, otherwise click on Microsoft Technet. You’ll need to sign in first by using your Windows Live ID or Hotmail ID. You may wish to fill up the form or you can also click on Cancel. After that the process is self explanatory.

Be sure to check out the Windows Server 2008 R2 System Requirements also.

So now lets start.

1) Download Photo to Sketch from here. Its only 1.06 MB. Did I forgot to mention its free.

2) Install it and start the application.

3) Click on “Open” to open your favorite photo which you want to convert to sketch.

4) After opening, you can do some experiment with precision and line.

5) Now click on “Convert”. Now you could see the preview of the converted image. You can now also experiment with the precision, line, pencil sketch, pen sketch  or pastel sketch.

Thats it, this is the screenshot of the image which I converted into sketch.

Enjoy converting photos into sketches and show them to your friends. Do some showoff stuff. Go ahead experiment, its very easy to use this software.

This post will tell you how you can get a 6 months genuine license key for Kaspersky Antivirus.

Follow these steps:

1. Go to this promotions page and click on the orange colored button. (Its in Chinese)

2.   After this, you’ll need to sign in with the help of your Windows Live ID. Now you’ll get the License Key in the Email.

3.  Thats it, now you just need to download the Simplified Chinese Version of Kaspersky Antivirus 2010 from here and after installing just copy and paste that license key.

I know that its in Chinese language, you just need to change the language to English. To do that:

1. Open Kaspersky Antivirus, go to Settings > Options and remove ‘Enable self defense’. Then click on ok and exit.
2. Open C:\Program Files\Kaspersky Lab\Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010\Skin\loc
3. Now just rename en to sch & sch to en and restart the PC.
4. Done. Now you’ll just see the English language.

So basically, we just converted a Chinese version to English version and remember one thing. You will need to apply the license key to Chinese version only & then after you can just change the language by following the above steps.

Cheers :)

Defragmentation of your PC is very important. I have previously also mentioned in my Blog posts to keep on defragmenting your hard drives atleast once in 2 weeks. This helps your Computer to retain its speed and it will also not become slow, no matter how much your disk is full.

So a defragmentation software helps in arranging the data & repacking them so that your Computer’s speed increases. Windows also has an inbuilt Defragmentation utility. You can run it by right clicking your drive and clicking on “Properties”. Then on “Tools” click on “Defragment now”.

Now you can get O & O Defrag 10 Professional Edition’s license for free. The main quality of this software is that it has very simple & easy to use interface. It also has some advanced options.

To get your free license of this software, click on this link and just fill out the form. Also you can just enter Salutation, First name, Last name, Email & Country, for they are compulsory. Leave all the other fields blank. Don’t forget to give a valid Email ID. Your license key will be sent to you in the Email.

So you have all must have mastered Microsoft Office 2007, right. So now its again time for you to try a new version. The new version of softwares keep on releasing and we all keep on installing the new versions. And this time, its the Beta of Microsoft Office 2010. So we ought to try it.

So try this Beta of MS Office 2010 and see for yourself, is it worth or not. Do note that this is just a Beta and there would be some bugs. But then also, do try it out. Download it by clicking on the link below.

[Download Microsoft Office 2010 Beta]