It has been a long time coming, but OpenOffice version 3 has officially been released to public beta. The current stable version of OpenOffice is pretty good, but as a Mac user, I have been waiting for a native Mac version of OpenOffice. I am currently running NeoOffice for the Mac, which is good but [...]

I recently ran into a problem on my machine where my installation of Office 2007 became corrupted. As a result, I was not able to repair or uninstall it from the Add/Remove programs menu. Instead of giving up and going through the major hassle of reinstalling everything, I came across a more elegant (and much [...]

Do you want to change the icon, graphics, dialog or sounds used in a particular program? If so, this is typically not possible unless you have access to the source files, but through the magic of Resource Hacker, you now have the ability.
This free utility is more for power users as it allows you to [...]

Keeping with the recent theme of Windows Task Manager, an idea I got from an article I read a while back (sorry, I can’t find the article), suggested setting Windows Task Manager as an item in your start up folder as a way to easily keep tabs on system resources. I started doing this about [...]

Windows Task Manager, as you probably know, allows you to view all the active applications and processes currently running on your computer. This is a very handy tool when troubleshooting or just getting an overall view of your computer.
One tool I have found better than Task Manager is Process Explorer. This free tool allows you [...]

Ubuntu users (or perspective users) take note 8.04 was just released. This release is named ‘Hardy Heron’ has long term support (LTS), meaning this desktop release will be supported for 3 years. Ubuntu 8.04 offers many attractive features, including (the somehow “important”) eye candy enhancements.
Having used the first LTS release of Ubuntu myself (6.06) exclusively [...]

Have you ever wanted Firefox to act as a functional file manager (much like the way Internet Explorer acts in Windows)? With the Firefly Firefox extension, you can have this functionality.
This free extension features (among others):

Support for Windows and Linux (possibly Mac).
View splitting.
Auto-preview of files as long as appropriate readers are installed.
Search features.
“Send To” and [...]

… bad.
… good.
… safe to use.

This tip is just a simple reminder that free software is not always best or worst choice when trying to figure out the best tool for the job.
An import thing to remember is just because it is free, does not mean it is free of malware. Think about it for [...]

First of all I want to say it’s very cool of FOSSwire to have posted an Ubuntu “Cheat Sheet” listing in a very easy-to-read rundown of terminal commands.
But in all seriousness, just looking at this sheet just gives you an itty-bitty glimpse into all the command line crap you have to learn with Ubuntu (and [...]

Would you believe me if I told you that 70% of Linux kernel development is performed by PAID employees in commercial enterprise? It’s true.
If you’re a Linux user, does that make you mad? Does that make you hang your head in shame?
It shouldn’t.
Personally speaking I was really happy to discover this. It means that big-biz [...]

As you probably know, Task Manager is what you use in Windows to view (and kill) currently active processes. There are several ways you can easily open Task Manager so I thought I would list four easy ones here:

Ctrl + Alt + Del > Click Task Manager. This is the most commonly used method.
Right click [...]

I ran across a very interesting read today, an article titled “The Case of the System Process CPU Spikes“. What made this an interesting read was not so much the article content (although I thought it was very informative), rather the methodology used by the author.
In a nutshell, the article walks through the problem (a [...]

In order to remote connect to a Windows 2000 machine I have, I use TightVNC. While this works great, it is very inefficient in terms of CPU and bandwidth usage as it continually broadcasts the entire screen back to the connected client which in turns sucks up about 40% of my Celeron 1.3 (since each [...]

One thing I have noticed is a lot of people like to treat their Desktop as a “dumping ground” for all their personal files, folders and shortcuts. Yes, it is very convenient, but quickly gets overwhelming and hard to navigate. If you are one of these people, a handy shortcut is to add a menu [...]

If you are looking to get a new machine and are still wanting to use Windows XP instead of Vista, make a note on your calendar that June 30th is the last day major manufacturers will be able to sell machines loaded with Windows XP. Whether or not you like Windows Vista, it is the [...]

I do use Google Earth from time to time (which by the way they’re supposed to release v4.3 today with more Mac support and Street Views included), and find that memorizing the keystrokes in the software does make it faster to use. I mention this because said honestly, the interface is a bit clunky at [...]

One problem I ran into recently required me to uninstall my existing .NET Framework and reinstall. No big deal, so I thought. When I went to uninstall .NET, it immediately errors out. I restart the computer, same problem.
Well, this frustrating problem was easily solved with the .NET Cleanup Utility. Simply put, this utility forcefully removes [...]

Jane: Hey, I heard about this thing called “Linux”, do you know anything about it?
Jack: Sure! I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Ask away.
Jane: It’s free, right?
Jack: Yes, absolutely!
Jane: Cool! So they give it away for free at the computer store?
Jack: Well, no..
Jane: How do you get it then?
Jack: You have to download [...]

If you are looking for a way to pass some time and are a fan of the Street Fighter or Double Dragon style games, give a look to Little Fighter 2.
Little Fighter 2 is a fighting game where you can battle against human or computer opponents. In addition to traditionally punching and kicking, there are [...]

If you share a computer with others, you probably have several files which you don’t want anyone else to see. While you could make the folder hidden, it will be displayed as long as the Windows Explorer preferences are set to display them. Instead, to completely hide the folder, try Free Hide Folder.
Basically, Free Hide [...]