ADVICE: Take Your Lips Off The Information Firehose

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In the digital lives we live in today, a message that’s constantly thrown at us by pretty much everything is “GET UPDATED IMMEDIATELY!” This happens with OS updates, software updates, email updates, messaging updates, text updates, in-game updates (whether you’re in the game or not) and so on. These updates are commonly referred to as [...]

Wireless 802.11AC Exists, But Don’t Buy It (Yet). Here’s Why…

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Arguably, the only thing that’s really changed in wireless router technology since October 2009 (when Wireless N finally left draft status and was published) is the introduction of 802.11ac. 802.11ac is, simply put, high-throughput on the 5GHz band. And yes, it is backwards-compatible to the N 2.4 GHz band if need be. Official publication of [...]

Should You Buy That On-Site Warranty For Your New Laptop?

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I think it’s safe to say that, for the most part, laptops are built the best they’ve ever been. I mean, I was quite surprised at how well my Dell Inspiron mini 10v laptop refurb was made when I bought it back in 2009. In fact, I still own it. So if the big laptop [...]

Private Browsing vs. Dump-Cookies-On-Exit In Firefox

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The private browsing feature (available in all major web browsers) is something most people don’t use simply for the reason it can prove to be inconvenient. For the most part, people use the private browsing feature so the browser doesn’t retain any cookies. Well, you don’t need to use private browsing to get that feature [...]

Trouble Viewing The Online Presidential Debates? Then You Need To Read This

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I’m going to be brutally honest here: The YouTube Politics site just plain sucks. Some of you may have tried to view online live video there only to deal with choppy video that barely runs at 3 frames a second (no joke). It’s almost as if you need a quad-core CPU with 1GB of video [...]

AT&T Gets Go-Ahead From FCC To Use Unused Airwaves For Mobile Internet

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Ultimately, it’s the FCC that has the final say-so on what parts of the spectrum band a wireless carrier can use. Obviously, wireless carriers want as much as they can get to serve as many customers as posisble. The FCC has officially allowed AT&T to use a portion of the 2.3GHz spectrum. Some of you [...]

The Darker Side Of RFID-Monitored Students

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In the State of Texas, certain schools are requiring students to carry ID cards that have RFID chips embedded in them so there whereabouts can be monitored. Note on linked article above: The title of it is totally misleading, as the students are not being “micro-chipped”; it’s just a card and not an implant. As [...]

Reality Check: A Smartphone Is Not A Camera

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I’ll totally admit that having a smartphone with the ability to snap photos (and shoot video) is mighty convenient. However that doesn’t mean the phone can actually take good pictures. As anyone learned in digital cameras is aware, more megapixels does not equal better quality photos, and even if a modern smartphone matches what your [...]

How To “Go Mac” On The Cheap

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So… you want to go Mac, but you don’t want the high price tag that goes along with it, and decide to go used. Where do you go to find good used Macs? Personally, I find the best destination to be Apple Authorized Reseller shops. These are guys and gals that refit/rebuild/refurbish Macs to as-good-as-new [...]

How To Choose The Right SDHC Card For Your Portable Apps And Storage

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If you have a laptop made within the last 3 years, chances are very good it has a card reader slot. Chances are also very good your desktop computer also has a card reader (or one attached via USB). Using portable apps when bouncing between your laptop and desktop is convenient because those little cards [...]

Tips On How To Work With Smooth Scrolling In A Web Browser

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There are some people who really like smooth scrolling when using a web browser on the desktop. In fact, the latest Firefox 16 installs with it enabled by default and has since version 15. Is smooth scrolling any good? I don’t define smooth scrolling as outright “good” or “bad”, because it all comes down to [...]

Low-Tech: What’s A Good Portable AM/FM/WX Radio?

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For those not in the know, “WX” when referred to as a band means “weather”, so I’m talking about portable radios that can receive the AM, FM and WX bands. The deal when it comes to a portable radio is that everyone should own one for the simple reason that when the power is out, [...]

Retro Friday: Microsoft Office 2000

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Microsoft Office 2000 is, as far as I’m concerned, the best release of MSO ever to exist. Why? It’s lightning fast, has unbelievably good backward compatibility, and as you’ll see in the above video, it’s actually fun.

How To Clean Individual Sections Of Windows With CCleaner

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A relatively unknown feature of CCleaner that most people aren’t aware of is the ability to right-click on any section or group inside the application to clean parts of the Windows OS individually instead of all at once. Sometimes when running the CCleaner software you just want to clean specific parts instead of the entire [...]

Top 5 PC Improvements Since Windows 95

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The initial release of 1995 happened on Thursday, 24 August 1995, which at the time of this writing was exactly 17 years, 1 month, 2 weeks, and 3 days ago. I can do this math easily because of Windows 7 Calculator, by the way: Gotta love Windows 7 Calculator. Anyway, I remember when Microsoft Windows [...]

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