Reviewing www.askvg.com

I will continue our Genuine Help For Windows 7 series with www.askvg.com. The site's name is Tweaking with Vishal and many of you might have heard of it already. As usual, I browsed through lots of articles on this site, tested some of the tutorials and wrote down all my remarks and opinions.

Ease of use - Poor

The theme of the site is very simple and gets the job done without impressing from a design perspective. When accessing a content category, all you see is a big list of titles. Also, the categories are very broad and the Windows 7 category includes everything: from news, articles, to tips, tutorials and cool tools for Windows 7. If you want to find something you must use the search box. Otherwise you can spend quite some time finding your way.

When it comes to ads, Tweaking with Vishal is quite annoying. It has seven blocks of ads on the homepage, four of them about the "sexy stomach rule: obey". Personally I do not see the relevance of these ads. It would be nice if Vishal would spend some time tweaking what kind of ads show up on his site. Unfortunately, when you open an article, you get to see up to eight blocks of ads. And that is even more annoying than the homepage. The biggest problem is the fact that, when opening an article, you see a browser screen filled with ads and you need to scroll-down quite a bit until you see the actual content. When you get to the content you will also encounter some in-text advertising as well. Some words will be highlighted as if they are useful links but they are ads. That is not friendly, especially for a first-time visitor. It leaves a bad impression. Even leaving a comment is a bit difficult as you need to browse through huge lists of links to other articles and blocks of ads.

If you browse through the site, you keep getting the impression that the owner is way too interested in squeezing every bit of money from this site. I believe that optimizing the number of ads and their placement can help increase the number of visitors while keeping the revenue stream pretty similar to the present one.

Ease of understanding - Mediocre

Unless you are looking on a tutorial about a complex topic, you won't have issues understanding Vishal's tutorials. However, when following more complex tutorials, such as Hacking “Screen Resolution”, “Gadgets” and “Personalize” Options in Windows 7 Desktop Context Menu, if you are a beginner, you might have a hard time following everything. Unfortunately Vishal doesn't provide links towards Wikipedia articles or other sources which explain some of the most complex terms. However, he does his best to automate some things and provides already made hack files when possible. These are easy to use, even for beginners.

An improvement area I noticed is providing more screenshots. Images can help a lot, especially the people who are not exactly power users with technical backgrounds. It would be great if Vishal would use more screenshots in his upcoming articles.

To summarize, if you have some technical background you won't have issues following and understanding Vishal's articles. If you are a beginner, then there are some tutorials which will be a bit hard to understand and follow. However, if you don't mind searching for more information on the stuff you don't know, you will be fine.

Completeness of tutorials - Good

One of the things I appreciate about Vishal's work, is the fact that he does his best to explain all the steps you need to go through, without leaving out anything important. For example, if you look on his article called How to Disable Aero Peek in Windows 7?, you can see that he provides two solutions which work. His readers can choose the one which seems simpler and more familiar. Another good habit of Vishal is offering downloadable registry tweaks, whenever possible. This greatly simplifies things, especially for the less technical users. Instead of getting your hands dirty, it is simpler to run a file and click on a button. A good example of this, is his article called How to Remove "Next Desktop Background" Option from Windows 7 Desktop Context Menu?.

Original articles - Great

The best thing about Vishal's work is the fact that he manages to come up with original content on a regular basis. You will see his work being featured plenty of times on other important sites. One very recent example is a tip he published about How to Get the Good Old “Show Desktop” Feature Back in Windows 7?, which was quickly shared by LifeHacker and other important websites.

The area were he is very strong is visual customization of your Windows installation. In other areas, you will see articles similar to ones encountered in other sites. However, they never leave you the feeling that he just copied the same stuff and rephrased things. His tutorials seem like they are properly tested and all steps are included.

askvg.com - Genuine Help for Windows 7

I'm very happy to give the first blue badge to Tweaking with Vishal. This site shines when it comes to original content and it is a good destination for all Windows 7 users. The only big downside is the fact that you would need an ad blocker to have a good browsing experience on this site. If Vishal manages to improve the areas which are not exactly great, I'm sure he will turn his site into an even more popular destination for Windows 7 users.

If you have other useful feedback about Tweaking with Vishal, don't hesitate to leave a comment. Both myself and Vishal would be happy to get your opinion.

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