Impulse Tips and Tricks #2
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 by Island Dog | Discussion: Personal Computing
I was happy to see so many people found the first edition of Impulse ‘Tips and Tricks’ so helpful, so I was anxious to be able to write the next one. In the first article we covered the 'Blue Orb’, and some of it’s basic functions like pre-release versions, log-in’s, etc. I wanted to expand more on the Orb as it holds much more than what we first discussed.
Download Impulse from www.impulsedriven.com.
The Orb….continued
As mentioned, we will continue on with our journey with the ‘Orb’ in the upper left-hand corner of Impulse.
Reset Data
Clicking the ‘Preferences’ text will open a new settings Window that holds more settings, including some advanced ones. Lets start with the ‘Reset Data’ button as seen in the screenshot below.
Pushing this button will redownload the XML data, and can be used when you are encountering some problems. Those would include having trouble updating or installing applications or games.
Folders
Choosing the ‘Folders’ link under the advanced settings option, will give you access to install, archive, and temporary files locations.
This area is pretty self-explanatory, and if you need to change the location of any of these directories, then just click the ‘change’ button and select the new location.
That covers a majority of the settings found in the Orb, and should be enough information for most users to know their way around preferences now. Next up, we’ll talk about organizing and customizing Impulse to your liking.
Reply #2 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 7:51 PM
mine does not have a blue orb, just a lightening bolt there 
Reply #3 Wednesday, March 18, 2009 7:01 AM
The newest versions of Impulse now have the Impulse icon instead of the Stardock blue orb. It's a new change, but the orb still works the same.
Reply #4 Wednesday, March 18, 2009 8:59 AM
Yes, the Orb changed colors on me, I have to update the screenshots now. 
Reply #6 Thursday, March 19, 2009 2:26 PM
Is there any chance to have a future version of Impulse start up if it can't write to the temporary (download) directory?
I had the temp directory set to an external hard drive on my laptop so that I could download and install a game (hard drive was too small to download both the installer and install the game). Unfortunately I closed impulse with it in this state and now I can't start Impulse unless I both plug in the external hard drive and change the drive to match.
Reply #7 Thursday, March 19, 2009 3:01 PM
Strange, I still have the Blue Orb. Reset Data to see if I was missing something, no change. I do have the box check to use beta versions of Impulse. 
Reply #8 Thursday, March 19, 2009 3:51 PM
We didn't want you to have the new one. You have to use everyone else's old blue orb. SD has a warehouse full of them.
Almost a million of them, I hear. 
Please login to comment and/or vote for this skin.
Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
- Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums and downloading skins.
- Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
- Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
- It's simple, and FREE!
Reply #1 Tuesday, March 17, 2009 7:46 PM
Timely article,ID.
Now that the 1,000,000th Impulse customer is almost here,there should be at least one million less confused users.