Tweak your Windows | Bangkok Post: tech

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Do you really want Windows Media Player to call Microsoft over and over just in case there's an update of some sort? Would you like the new Windows, but with a classic look? Would you like a more convenient way to get to Control Panel settings?

This standable utility has some amazingly useful ideas that will help you make your computer even more personal.

A new program from a German teenager lets you do this, plus dozens and dozens of useful tricks, many of which are obscure to most Windows owners.

Microsoft isn't much help at letting you know how to stop anyone but the administrator from getting to System Restore. How do you turn off - really, finally turn off the blasted pop-up window every time you put a CD or DVD in the tray?

With Tweak Me, these and other such tricks are just the tick of a box away.

The program is simplicity itself, and frankly I'd recommend this software over any of the other available tweaking tools.

You download it, click on it, and run it. That's it. There is no installation. And every tweak is clearly explained.

Tweak Me, which works on XP, Vista and Windows 7, is a two-panel window, with a list of the possible actions and tick boxes on the left, and a brief, clear explanation of the action on the right.

The program assumes that your machine is a personal computer and you should be deciding how it looks, feels and runs.

I went through the long list of tweaks as best I could, and there are few that would do do you any damage if you accidentally ticked the wrong box. Of course all tweaks are reversible the next time you run the program.

There is nothing "illegal" here. Geeks know or can easily find out how to do every trick that Tweak Me does. But many of the actions are opaque to say the least, when you call up Windows Help. (And you can turn off Windows Help with Tweak Me by the way.)

The ingenious 18-year-old German programmer "DiSTANTX" keeps Tweak Me at his busy and interesting website http://www.wecode.biz.