I’ve talked about search engines before and how at this point I’m so unbelievably disenchanted with the major players out there. For me (and yes this is my opinion), using google.com directly to search with is a chore at best because the site keeps throwing crap at me that I simply don’t care about, nor wanted to see. And, of course,...

The first question most of you would have after reading the title of this article is, "Why would I even want a used cell phone when new ones are cheap or free (with certain wireless post-paid contracts)?" That’s a good question, and I have a good answer in two parts. 1. Battery life has not improved, and in fact has become worse with many newer...

Continuing on with their rapid-fire release schedule, version 10 of the Mozilla Firefox browser is now available for download. Although there’s a bunch of stuff that’s cool about Fx 10, there are 3 in particular that I feel stand out above the rest. First is actually the release notes page itself. I’ve been waiting for Mozilla to do this a long...

When I say "most-talked-about" I’m referring to "most-reviewed", as in the optical media most people were willing to write reviews about on popular tech-shopping web sites. The results I found were interesting, because the top 5 may not be what you thought would show up in this list. 1. Verbatim 8.5GB 2.4x DVD+R DL 95310...

I’m pretty sure this is the granddaddy winner (at least on the internet) for “the ends did not justify the means”. Okay, so there’s this post on Facebook that officially broke over 1 million comments. It’s right here. Is the conversation interesting? Of course not, because this is Facebook we’re talking about. Now in case you...

Although I’m primarily going to concentrate on the Windows environment, the guidelines below apply to any operating system. After all, clutter is clutter no matter which OS the clutter is in. Most modern web browsers will dump all your downloads, as in the files you click to download (meaning not the cache) to a specific folder titled Downloads. Windows...

DuckDuckGo is a popular alternative search engine with privacy in mind for those who want simple, easy search that works. In the Google Chrome browser, you can use DuckDuckGo as either a keyword-invoked search, or just simply set it as the default search engine in the browser. The video below shows you how to do both, plus some other...

No matter how much a computer geek would prefer otherwise, we still have to use the US Postal Mail service to get things done for certain things, particularly when it comes to signed documents, physical receipt of delivery and so on. As good as email is, its status as far as "being an official document" is concerned still doesn’t hold the same...

Back when MySpace was the big deal in social networking, there were tons of major businesses that decided to get a page there. Were any of them worth anything? No, and for the most part they were largely ignored by the internet populous. Unfortunately it’s getting to the same point like before where businesses are getting social profile pages left and...

Victor Writes: Is there a way I could access a webcam that is hooked up to a desktop computer in my home network with a different desktop computer in the same home network? I would like to monitor what is going on downstairs from the computer that is upstairs! I would think this should be similar to accessing a printer that is hooked up to a different computer...

Our illustrious leader Dave puts a good amount of effort into making pcmech.com look the way it does. A nice easy-to-recognize logo at top, a proper layout so you can easily tell where you are at any given time on the site, thumbnail images on home page articles to more easily separate one article from the other (which is totally for your benefit), and so...

It is highly unlikely that anyone that is 30 years of age or younger now as I write this in 2012 has ever seen much less actually used Microsoft Word 6.0. Word 6 was the last version that worked in the Microsoft Windows 3.1 environment; it was released in 1993, and this is the version that really put Word "on the map", so to speak. Said another way,...

Once again, Google is making news again because effective 1 March 2012 they’re migrate/merge/whatever Google products to center personal data around Google+ accounts primarily. It is really easy to read that and think, "not good". My personal opinion? What Google does with your data is nothing compared to the real threats to your privacy. The two...

Sometimes it’s the simple things that make our digital lives a whole lot easier, and the Mailto: extension for Google Chrome is definitely one of them. Situation: You go to a web site where there’s a clickable email address. You click it, and what happens is that a mail program (Windows Live Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, etc.)...

“Cord Cutting” defined in plain English simply means that you don’t have a paid subscription to any traditional television entertainment. In other words, no cable subscription. Personally, I’ve been a cord-cutter for 6 years. My means of entertainment on the television come from Netflix and freely available antenna-fed DTV. This works...