If you are a user of Internet Explorer, on thing you must be constantly aware of are ActiveX controls. While they have the ability to provide great functionality, they are also a great way for malware to exploit your system. To help protect against known ActiveX threats, you can use AxBan. AxBan is a free tool which will prevent known malicious ActiveX...

If you have some sensitive information on your computer which are ‘for your eyes only’, it is important to make sure they are adequately protected. While you can apply broad security such as Windows permissions or through drive encryption (TrueCrypt, etc.), a simple and effective method is to compress them in a password protected zip file. Any zip...

It has been reported that Windows 7 will run on a box with a single core 1GHz processor. Should you run the upcoming OS on something that slow? No. Heck, even people with XP wouldn’t want that. Many of you out there will be upgrading to Windows 7 once released and I will be one of them. You may be wondering if you have to upgrade your hardware. Basically...

A topic that’s remained hot ever since people started sending emails is the question of who owns what. Some questions about content ownership can be definitively answers while others are still unanswerable. Here’s some of the more hotter questions and their answers. Q: If my mail is stored on a third-party server (i.e. the internet), do I still own...

You have probably seen several posts on this site from Dave and Rich praising Windows Live Writer’s capability, so on that note it might be prudent to check out some of the other ‘Windows Live’ branded products, namely Windows Live Photo Gallery. Because there are tons of other personal photo managers out there, it is somewhat difficult for any...

I am a fairly heavy user of Craigslist as are many of you out there. And most of you have the same complaint I do about the service, that being it can be a little difficult to get around and there’s more or less no way to search multiple areas at the same time. Well, now you can. CraigsList Reader is a free app that makes it a whole lot easier to find...

Just about every week on the PCMech LIVE show I am asked (more or less), "Where do I go to get a list of Linux distros that people actually use?" The answer I always give is DistroWatch. Is that place the be-all/end-all for all things Linux? No (because there are many), but it’s a darn good start to get the news on what’s going on with...

Those of you who are fans of FPS (first person shooter) games, single or multi-player, should take a look at the open source project Blood Frontier. Some of the highlights from their website include:Unique, original, and fun gameplay, storyline, theme, artwork, and content. Pushing the boundaries of open source first person gaming. Play plain ol’...

For those of you out there who choose to use a traditional email client with IMAP to connect to Gmail (of which there are many of you), you may have noticed that checking your Gmail can at times be a bit on the slow side. A reason for this may be because you’re subscribed to all IMAP folders in "full download" mode. If you unsubscribe from...

With many online retailers (like NewEgg, Dell, Dotster, etc.) there is an option at checkout to enter in a coupon code to take some money off the final purchase price, be it a straight value (ex: $25) or a percentage (ex: 15% off). If you do a search for coupon codes, unfortunately you are usually shoved towards affiliate links. This can get frustrating quickly...

A strange problem that I ran into recently on a couple of our machines was what appeared to be a brokent recycle bin. Basically, you delete files to the recycle bin, but if you open it there are no files listed. When you try empty the recycle bin, it tells you that X number of files will be deleted so it knows files are there. The fix I found was to create...

Yes, this is a netbook 9-inch screen model that I’m talking about. The computer industry is hurting right now so most of the larger OEMs are slashing prices left and right and Dell is no exception. The Inspiron Mini 9 is selling well, but evidently not well enough so the price has been dropped significantly. With Ubuntu Linux installed, the price is $249....

The phrase traffic shaping is a polite term for bandwidth throttling. It’s when an ISP purposely slows download speeds during peak usage hours of the day. This includes weekends. And if you hadn’t heard, traffic shaping is most likely going mobile. If it happens industry wide, it’ll be a joke to label 3G as fast after that. The people who get...

Carpal tunnel syndrome is a nerve disorder in the hand that causes pain, numbness and tingling. It is caused by repetitive motion of the hands, such as computer use. Needless to say, this is something those of us who work at a computer for a signficant portion of the day need to be aware of. The good news is there are very simple exercises and practices you can...

From the Engineering Windows 7 blog from the post Engineering the Windows 7 Boot Animation: From a design perspective, we know that the visual presentation of a feature plays a key role in the user’s perception of performance and quality.  Our objective was to make Windows boot beautiful and was inspired by our Windows 7 personality of light and energy;...

Years ago when I first started examining if you could in fact run an entire OS off a single USB stick (meaning not external hard drive), you could with “biz card” sized Linux distributions such as Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux. These distros are still available today and still actively developed. The reason people chose these over full-sized...

When you open Windows Task Manager and go to the Processes tab, you see a lots of good information such as the actual process executable name and current memory/processor usage. Did you know you can customize the columns shown to include a lot more information? Just go to the View tab in Task Manager and click on Select Columns. In this list you will find lots...

If you look at your Windows Task Manager Processes tab, you will probably see several copies of ‘svchost.exe’ running. This is normal and is the process name that your background services run as. If you ever are curious what each one is actually ‘hosting’, here is an easy way to find out.Download and run Process Explorer. Double-click...

One thing which really annoys me on websites is when they ‘redefine’ (hijack) the right click context menu. I’m not really sure what people are trying to accomplish with this unless it is just a half-hearted attempt to prevent you from viewing the source or downloading your cached images. Regardless, there is an easy way to prevent this in...

The days of linear format camcorders are dying. Linear as it relates to camcorders is anything using slack that requires rewinding or fast-forwarding. And to be honest I’m not sorry to see them go. This is more or less the last in line of tech products to get "off the slack", so to speak. There are many of you out there who still have MiniDV...