This article will teach you how to make the best use of your Broadband plans which offer unlimited Downloads at insane times of the day.

UPDATE:Also Read the article on an extremely simple method to automatically turn on and off your PC without any of the following fuss.

Some of the major Broadband providers (e.g BSNL in India) offer cheap plans wherein you have a data limited internet usage during the day but you get unlimited downloads during your sleeping hours (e.g 2.00 AM to 8.00 AM in case of BSNL in India). So, if you have to download stuff off the web you have to wake up at this time of the night and then lose sleep for an hour trying to figure out the links and then wake up again in 5hrs to switch off your internet connection.

The best way to use these plans would be to automate the whole process of switching on the PC. beginning the downloads and then turning it off by itself. I will show you exactly how to do this using resources available on a Windows XP PC and few free softwares.


1. How to Automatically turn on your PC at an assigned time

We will use the task schedulder of windows to automatically wake up your PC from 'Hibernation' or 'Stand-by' (You cannot turn-on your computer automatically after it is turned off) .

i.Go to 'All programs' --> Accesories-->System tools-->Scheduled tasks

You will find the following screen:


ii.Click on 'Add Scheduled Task'


iii.Choose the Torrent program or any other program that you wish to start at a predefined time.


iv. Choose a time when your have free usage of the web and click on next

v. For the task scheduler to work properly you must create a password for your user account. ( if you haven't yet created one, click here to guide you through the process)

vi. Make sure you checked the 'open advanced properties tab'. This is critical to wake up your PC. (tip: you can also access the following screen by right clicking on a task under scheduled tasks and then clicking on properties)

Select the option 'Wake the computer to run this task'. This will automatically turn on your PC from hibernation or stand-by and then run the task. ( how to enable hibernation in Windows XP)


Click on 'apply' and 'OK', that's it ! your PC will now wake up by itself every night at 2:05A.m and will turn on utorrent. and utorrent will begin downloading stuff off the web without any intervention from you.

Kougon Tip: Since you can schedule any file to run by itself at a prescribed time. You can have our torrents begin by themselves. Save the torrent file onto your computer. And then make sure your Bit Torrent client will save data to a default location. Have the scheduler to run the torrent and lo! your torrents will begin to download by themselves without you having to put them inside a client!



2. How to turn-off your computer automatically

Even though this sounds like the harder task, it is actually quite easy to turn off your PC automatically. I prefer using a freeware called 'Shutdown After' to do the same.

The software is a 3.2MB download and is worth every byte of it.

Click here to download Shutdown After v2.2

The software is self explanatory in nature and has very few options. You can either set your computer to turn off after a prescribed amount of time has elapsed or at a particular time.

Set the time at which you want your PC to sleep, Hibernate, stand-by, Shut down or even Restart! and it will happen.



Using these two tricks you can have your PC waking up and shutting down all-by-itself without you having to intervene at all!!!





UPDATE 1: Some people have reported that their internet connection does not resume automatically when their PC's come out of standby. Here is a work-around for this problem.

In-order to address this problem what you need is a software to automatically configure your internet connection. One of the best softwares out there is Toshiba's ConfigFree. Using a small hack you can use this software on any computer.

The following lines were taken from a forum of PC WORLD.

"


Configfree will run every time you turn on your PC and will automatically configure the web for you.You will not be without the web whenever you recover from standby or even after a shutdown.

Bluetooth is a wireless technology that lets you connect two bluetooth enabled devices wirelessly. This ubiquitous technology is present in most of the cellphones,laptops and notepad computers. It is also the technology that connects your headsets to your Mobile phone.It is also used in the wireless Keyboard and mice that let you operate a computer from large distances.

A bluetooth monitor is a software that provides the drivers that are essential to connect the bluetooth device to your computer.

Most of the modern laptops(>2004) have a built-in bluetooth chip which helps transmit data wirelessly. But most of the desktops and the older laptops do not have this component. You can add a Bluetooth functionality by connecting a device called the Bluetooth dongle. (The Dongle looks like the one below)

When you add a Bluetooth dongle to a Toshiba laptop and if it is not something that has not been built by toshiba then you can't use it properly for long periods. You would have to download a set of softwares called the bluetooth stack from toshiba's website . This will allow you to operate the bluetooth dongle but for a period of 30 days.

This is because toshiba assumes that you are a a developer trying to use their tools and expects you to obtain a license from them. After the end of 30 days, the Bluetooth software/stack will stop working and the following message is displayed "Please obtain a license for this version of Bluetooth Stack for Windows by Toshiba."
But then there is no way to get such a license as toshiba does not sell such licenses !

So what to do when you get this ?

Here is a simple workaround, which I believe, will work for all laptops and PC's.

Install a different Bluetooth Monitor software such as Bluesoleil .This software is very similar to Toshiba's Bluetooth stack and Bluetooth Monitor softwares. It has more features and supports a very large number of Bluetooth Dongles.

Bluesoleil is one of those popular softwares on file sharing sites. You can download Bluesoleil from The Pirate Bay or Mininova or Torrentz using the following links. Just Click on the thumbnails to go to the relevant sites. But be warned that you could get infected with a few malicious viruses and Trojans transmitted through the torrents. You have been warned.



If you have a clean mind that is against piracy, you can download an original version of the software from the official website. The catch is that it is a shareware.


Bluesoleil is a shareware and used in the free mode it allows you to transfer a max of 5 MB of data at a time. Once you buy the license, you can use it with no limitations.

This should solve all your bluetooth manager problems on a Windows PC /laptop no matter when the laptop was manufactured.

I had a Toshiba laptop with a 3.0 GHz hyperthreaded processor and 1.2 Gb of RAM but with no Bluetooth. I faced all the above problems and whatever is written above is the solution that i managed to find. The bluetooth now works great with abssolutely no problems. Blesoleil seems to be a tad better than Toshiba's original software.



Linux users need to download a package called "bluetooth-gnome" OR "bluetooth-kde" using a suitable package manager depending on the windows environoment you use. These packages will add an application to transfer files that will work as a breeze and moreover it is legally free too! By default Ubuntu does not have a bluetooth data transfer program. Even though it is a small file of size < 1MB , It is not included. it's like the mp3 issue. You cannot play music unless you install gstreamer and gstreamer for mp3 is such a small download! Strange are the ways of opensource.