Anti-Aliasing Tuner (Revisited) For Firefox 15

video

I mentioned the Anti-Aliasing Tuner for Firefox a while back, but being I just switched (mostly) over to Firefox 15, does this add-on still work? Yes, it does, thankfully. You can easily turn off that blurry-font nonsense easily and go back to a thicker, easier-read font rendering style with no problem by using this add-on. [...]

A Windows Copy Tool You Didn’t Know Existed: Robocopy

robocopy.png

ROBOCOPY, as in “Robust File Copy for Windows”, is something that’s been a standard feature of the Windows environment since Windows Vista. Prior to that it was available in Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 or Windows XP via the “Windows Resource Kit” as a separately installed utility. What does ROBOCOPY do that regular COPY or [...]

Setting up a Ledger System In Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel Logo

Keeping track of your finances is especially important if you’re a freelancer- after all, you don’t tend to receive paychecks in the same way you would in a more structured setting. The job of tracking your finances- ensuring you’ve been paid your due in a timely fashion- is entirely on you. No one’s going to [...]

The History of DRM, Part One

drm-locked-cd

Digital Rights Management. Few things raise the hackles of PC gamers more than those three words. Granted, it’s not always terrible. DRM can, when done right, protect the intellectual property of a developer without making legitimate customers feel like criminals. The trouble is, it’s almost never done right anymore. Virtually the only example I can [...]

Retro Friday: Using Outlook Express 6 In 2012 And Beyond

video

As far as I know, there is no recent statistical information on what people are using these days for email clients. Sure, you’ll find user stats for webmail like Hotmail, Y! Mail, Gmail and so on, but as for mail clients, not really. My guess – and yes, this is only a guess – is [...]

Using The Unity Feature in VMware 5

video

Whenever taking screencasts of an OS that isn’t Windows 7, I’m using VMware Player to do it with. I’ve been holding out with version 3 for the longest time, but I finally decided to upgrade to 5 and there’s a feature called Unity. No, it’s not like Ubuntu’s Unity at all. What Unity in VMware [...]

It’s Time To Uninstall Java

No Java

Back in the early-early days of the internet, I used to play games in the browser that were Java based like Yahoo! Pool (which amazingly still runs off Java). Back then there was this thing in Windows called Microsoft Java Virtual Machine. The Sun company evidently got all in a twist about that because of [...]

Windows 7 Tip: Enabling Checkboxes For Easier File/Folder Selection In Explorer

win7_flag.jpg

Windows 7 does in fact include a way to have checkboxes next to files and folders for easier selection for those that use the mouse often. It looks like this: …and also works for saving files, selecting folders and basically anywhere else you would use Windows Explorer. Click the Windows logo and type “folder options”: [...]

How To Size Down MP4 Video Files Using Handbrake

handbrake.png

Handbrake is free software for Windows (including 64-bit), Mac or Linux that anyone who makes video (for hobby or for pro) should use because it’s just so damned good at what it does. The purpose of Handbrake is to plop a video file in there (such as a WMV, AVI or MOV) and then convert [...]

Cool Stuff You Can Do In Google Earth

video

While there have been many improvement in Google Maps and Bing Maps over the years, there’s still nothing that beats Google Earth as far as what you can do with it. Some of the features you’ll see below are in Google/Bing Maps, but done done in a way where the functions are separated and/or cumbersome [...]

Retro Friday: Love Your Software? Start Hoarding It Now

video

The term “hoarding” is generally considered to be a bad thing, but when it comes to the software you love that you can’t live without, I cannot stress this enough: SAVE THOSE INSTALLERS. This is especially true for Windows XP users. The software you love right now will not be on the internet forever where [...]

A (Very) Old-School Firefox Keystroke That’s Good To Know

firefox-400

For some of you, this will probably make your whole week knowing this feature exists in Firefox and has more or less ever since the browser came into existence. Here’s an animated GIF of an ant: Press ESC and the animation plus any other animated GIFs will stop animating. Flash will continue to animate, but [...]

Firefox 15 FINALLY Fixes Memory Leak Issues

fx15.jpg

Firefox 15 has just been released, and it’s noted on this Mozilla blog that Fx 15 “prevents most memory leaks” caused by add-ons. I wasn’t so much interested in that, but rather if Fx actually releases memory properly when a tab is closed. From my cursory examination of the browser, yes it does. FINALLY. The [...]

How To Reset A GPS Before Selling It

lf-lg.jpg

System resets of GPS devices I know for a fact do not clear the data in the unit as I’ve owned enough Garmin GPS devices to figure that out. What I’m going to tell you below specifically applies to Garmin devices, although it can be applied to any GPS device as the data I’ll mention [...]

Is A Cluttered Computer Desktop A Sign Of Bad Computing Habits?

recycle-bin.jpg

What I’m talking about here isn’t the physical desk your computer sits on but rather the files and shortcuts on your computer operating environment’s desktop. It is easy (almost too easy) to plop things on the desktop and simply not care about it. However over time it can turn into an organizational nightmare. Now I [...]

PCMech Insider Cover Images - Subscribe To Get Your Copies!
Learn More
Tech Information you can use, sent to your inbox each and every week. Check out PCMech's digital e-zine...