Although I should have done this last month when it was released, I finally got around to downloading Ubuntu 9.04 to see what was new. What I found that the most significant upgrades to the OS had almost nothing to do with the interface itself. From what I understand the Ubuntu team was going to revamp the UI in 9, but it couldn’t be completed in time so...

When it comes to keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys, virtually everyone knows about the Copy-Paste combination of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. However, there are lots of other universal keyboard shortcuts common across applications in various operating systems. For the most part the shortcuts on this list work across the board, but the functionality, of course, depends on the...

Do I have to say it? Spam. Or at least that’s what Symantec says, so you can take that for what it’s worth. Spam is one of those things that’s constantly changing to bust the roadblocks we put up against it. However we as email users are smarter now and we also have better tools to fight the junk. What’s the best way to filter spam...

Linux people in particular like the Telnet protocol because it allows easy command line interface access to PCs on a home network or small-biz setup. However if you have a Win 7 PC on your network, go to a prompt and type "telnet", the infamous "telnet is not recognized as an internal or external command.." shows up. Is the telnet.exe program...

Said honestly, Windows Live Movie Maker Beta, in a word, sucks. It lost so many features compared to the old Windows Movie Maker that it’s just not worth using. Are you stuck without a free video editor in Windows 7 at this point? No. You can install the old – and far superior – Windows Movie Maker in Windows 7. All you have to do is download...

I have posted many tips in the past on system utilities available from both Sysinternals and Nirsoft. While these programs are excellent, on drawback is they lack any kind of auto-update functionality meaning you have to check for updates manually. To always make sure you have the latest version and are notified of new releases, check out Windows System Control...

Tiny applications run faster because they require far less computing power. They’re useful for several types of computer users. If you run a slower computer box, the less resource an app uses, the better. If you have a slower internet connection, smaller apps that access the internet typically make far less demands on bandwidth. If you’re a gamer,...

On the PCMech LIVE show last night a question came in that asked where the setting is to adjust the space System Restore uses in Windows 7. This actually took quite a bit of digging to find it. And to note, this is different compared to Vista’s location. Step 1. Start "ball", Control Panel Step 2. System and Security (left side green link) ...

Beta, to the best of my understanding, is a level of completion concerning software development. There’s the alpha stage, which loosely translates to "this is the very early stage; it’s very rough around the edges". Then comes the beta stage which usually means "almost everything works but its still somewhat buggy". After that...

Users of Microsoft Office 2007 should really take a look at some of the improvements made in SP2. While there are lots of improvements, the most notable include:Support for Open Document Format (ODF). This is OpenOffice’s native format and you can now read and write using Office. Native support for exporting to PDF and XPS. Previously this required an...