This may offer a bit of comfort to some with slower broadband connections. For US internet users, your tax dollars have now proven that the speed of broadband is 50% slower than what it’s claimed to be. For those that would say, "Did we need to spend a bunch of tax money to figure something out everybody already knew?" In fact, yes. The problem...

In the past, I have written about how the copy-paste function works in a lot of places even though it may not be ‘advertised’ as a function. The same can be said about the undo function (Ctrl + Z). For example, you can use this function:in just about any application text box in browser text boxes in find and replace dialogs lots of other...

Firmware, in generic terms, is "fixed software" in an electronic device. Your CD/DVD drive for example, has firmware. Your digital camera has firmware. Portable navigation devices (PND for short) has firmware. Even remote controls for televisions have firmware. I’m the type of person that likes having the latest up-to-date firmware for whatever...

If you have a damaged CD or DVD which you need to recover data on and trying to copy data from Windows Explorer is not yielding successful results, a tool you might want to try is IsoPuzzle. Short Description: The goal of this program is to recover as much as possible data of damaged, bad burned or scratched CDs or DVDs. This version supports only data CDs and...

A long while ago, I ran a tip which basically said putting a candy dish near your computer is a bad idea because you will end up munching on it without thinking. So as an alternative to the candy dish, here are some ideas of some stuff you might want to have instead:Nothing Low Salt Nuts (cashews for me) Raisins / Dried Fruit Bananas Peppermints (if you must...

For those that use an @aol.com email address, you might have noticed an email that appeared to be spam, but it wasn’t. It came from the sender "FooterSettlement" with subject line "OFFICIAL NOTICE OF PENDENCY OF CLASS ACTION AND PROPSED SETTLEMENT", and looked like this:   This is not spam. In short, what it means is that you now...

Have you ever changed the priority of a process in the Task Manager? Do you have to do it often? Do you want your database server or media player to know the priority it should work with? If so, you have two choices: do it manually every time or automate/manage the process. If you prefer the latter then a tool you should check out is Prio Process Priority...

For some reason the hibernate function is not enabled in either Windows Vista or Windows 7 by default (even if your BIOS supports it). On top this, enabling this power saving feature isn’t as simple as marking a check box. If you want to make use of this rather nice function then here is how to do it in Windows Vista and Windows 7. I find this feature...

Personally, I am a big fan of the command line. From it I can get to just about everything I need pretty fast and I have an extensive set of utilities available at my disposal. One of the things, however, that isn’t so quick is navigating to different directories. If they have long names you have to type them exactly or they won’t take. If this...

People save web pages to ensure they can retrieve information later without having to load it on the internet. It also is a way of retrieving a web page just in case the original web site has an outage or goes offline for whatever reason. There are two basic ways of saving web pages, that being via the browser or "printing it" to a PDF. Via the...

Whenever you do browsing to sites you are not familiar with, you always run some risk of the site not being “on the level”. If you do not go the route of script blockers, it is a good idea to have something watching your back. Web of Trust (WOT) is a tool that can fit this bill. WOT is a free Internet security addon for your browser. It will keep you...

This guide is for anybody that has a whole bunch of files, be they photos, MP3s, documents or any other type of file you have that needs quick-sorting by date at a glance. There is only one right way to put the date in a file name. When I say "date in a file name" I mean that the actual title of the file has the date in it. The format you must use for...

Flash memory on a USB stick is easy enough to understand concerning the way it works. The memory is a type of EEPROM and non-volatile, which is the reason it doesn’t require a battery or external power source to retain the information stored on it. But if you ever asked the question, "Is there a difference between brands?", the answer is yes and...

Have you ever had an image in a standard format (PNG, JPG, etc.) which you wanted to convert to an icon? If so, the freeware program, SimplyIcon is for you. Simply create windows icon files (.ICO format) by drag-and-drop images on to this program. [...] This program generates down-sampled 32×32, 24×24 and 16×16 levels automatically. It will also...

With word processing applications there are two types. Those that are too big and full of stuff you’ll never use, and those that are so minimal that most people can’t work with them. In the “too much” department, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice and Lotus Symphony come to mind. These are all full suites. In the “not enough”...

In recent years web browsing has become a rather CPU intensive task. The javascript used for scrolling menus, Flash based ads and other (usually) unnecessary junk running behind the scenes on certain websites, can put your CPU to the test. Of course, whenever your CPU spikes it has to pull more energy which produces more heat which, for laptop users, can drain...

In the past, I have written about the value of purchasing a professionally created website template, however if free is the way you want to go then I can certainly understand. That said, a site you might want to look at is TemplateMo. TemplateMo offers a variety of free templates ranging from pure HTML/CSS, Flash and WordPress. There are lots to choose from so...

Optical media for computers is a form of technology that everybody uses at the present time, be it for storing data, playing games and so on. Data on optical media can be a pain to work with at times, especially if the disc starts to wear down with age, or gets accidentally pitted or scratched. That being said, here are 5 utilities you should have. 1....

Firefox 3 stores pretty much all user data in an internal SQLite database. This database includes, but is not limited to, bookmarks, history, passwords and add-on data. Of course, over time this can eventually require maintenance: As any other database, SQLite databases become fragmented over time and empty spaces appear all around. But, since there are no...

Alliteration aside, the most popular firewall program I see recommended on this site, outside of the one built into Windows, is Comodo Firewall. While there is certainly nothing at all wrong with it, if you are looking to explore alternatives then PC Tools Firewall Plus is worth a look. PC Tools Firewall Plus is advanced technology designed especially for...