So, you’re playing an older game and all of a sudden it effectively borks itself. “Okay, no big deal” you tell yourself. “It’s a pretty old piece of software and it’s probably not designed to be used with modern hardware.”  You figure you can just take a look at some of the solutions online, check a few knowledge bases,...

So, you’ve got yourself a brand new, shiny computer. Trouble is, your whole desktop looks a little…impersonal. You’re sitting there thinking to yourself, “high time I changed this.” Trouble is, you’re not sure how to go about doing so. Have no fear- it’s actually an incredibly simple process. Step 1- Access the...

Now that you’re all settled in at your new place (and in possession of the hard-earned knowledge that metal and microwaves don’t mix), it’s time to get your internet up and running. The process of getting the internet set up and running is fairly straightforward (just make sure you do a bit of research on all the possible providers before...

It’s a fact of life that the more you use your PC the more bloated and inefficient it becomes until eventually it gets to the point where you just can’t put up with it any longer. Sure there are lots of things you can do to hold back the eventual slowing up and general sluggishness of your trusty PC. Obviously you should have a good anti-virus program...

Chances are, you’d want to game with your Xbox controller instead of the archaic mouse-and-keyboard setup. Maybe you’re frustrated with the traditional controls and want to try something different. Could be you’re playing a game that originated on a console, and you want to capture that authentic feel. Hell, maybe you just bloody well feel like...

Any of you reading this have been here before: You’re in the middle of an important project whether it be personal or business, and you encounter an error or an unexpected problem getting something done on your computer. Murphy’s Law seems to dictate that the more important the project is to you, the more complex or trying the problem seems to be. If...

A few weeks ago, Google began rolling out a feature which allows you to be logged into more than one Google account at the same time without using any incognito browser hanky-panky. As a person who has more than one Google account, this is pretty handy. I used to, instead, just use different browsers when I wanted to check another account. For example, I’d...

The idea of using a centralized group to communicate with many people is definitely not new, but these days you have several more options compared to years ago. Why use a group? A group is useful for a centralized means of communication in a way that can have threaded conversations, and has the bonus of not being mistakenly flagged as spam. With email, any mail...

It’s nice to have an auto-reload/refresh feature in your browser, particularly for sites that have their content change often (or even your webmail if it has issues auto-updating itself). Here are 3 ways to do it: Mozilla Firefox Add-on: ReloadEveryAfter installation of this add-on, right-click any loaded web page, choose Reload Every from the context...

Sometimes the simplest tools are the best kind. Web developers/designers absolutely require a utility to resize a browser window so they can see what their projects look like under certain resolutions. The best utility for this, which unfortunately does not work in any version after Windows XP, is Sizer. But what if you’re running Windows 7? Or a Mac? Or...

In Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome you can use keywords to activate any web site that supports custom input (like google.com for example). Mapping sites are easy to set up for keyword shortcut searches as long as you know how to configure them. The way to use the keyword search once configured is to go to your address bar, type the word MAP followed by...

Something Gmail just introduced is the ability to add a rich text signature to your outgoing emails.. even though every other email on the planet has had this feature forever. Better late than never, I suppose.If you use Gfail Gmail, try it out for yourself by going to Settings then choose the General tab; your signature options will be...

OpenID is something most of you have seen, but have no idea what it is or why you would bother using it in the first place. Before continuing, if you want to test out OpenID for yourself, a place to do it is right here. PCMech uses the Disqus commenting system which has the option of using it. OpenID – What is it? A decentralized authentication system, or...

“Screen saver” style imagery is nothing new on television sets as the sets and console DVD players themselves have had them for years. However they’re all boring. The most you’ll see is the logo of the company who made the DVD player or television and not much else, if anything. Using Windows Live Movie Maker Beta, it’s easy to...

Optical Character Recognition, a.k.a. OCR, is a technology that converts an image of text into editable text. This is a technology that has been around for quite some time and was first used by most people in office-places as far back as the Windows 3.1 days. As far as where it was used, OCR was usually included as part of a fax software bundle. The fax machine,...

Users of the Google Chrome web browser use the address bar itself instead of an additional search bar to perform a search. Firefox can be modified to act exactly the same with a configuration tweak. Type about:config in Firefox’s address bar. Next to Filter type keyword. You will see this:The keyword.URL Preference is the one you want to modify, but...

Art is obviously subjective and open to interpretation, however if you want the absolute fastest (other than creating a free 30-second video from Animoto) way to create an artistic or at least art-like video, you only need three things:CreativeCommons Windows Movie Maker YouTube with AudioSwapHere’s how it’s done and you will be amazed at the...

One of the more annoying aspects of the internet is that it’s tough to check web sites to see if the username you want is taken unless you go to each web site individually, right? Wrong. There is CheckUserNames; this site will check the username you want on 160 different web sites. Absolutely no registration is required to use CheckUserNames. All you have...

A dingbat when referenced to fonts is a symbol for decorative purposes only, i.e. an ornament. In the Windows environment, most people first encountered the use of dingbats with the Wingdings font, which at the time of this writing is 20 years old. Yes, that does mean it’s been around and in use since Windows 3.1. Today you don’t have to use...

When you go to download/upgrade your Adobe Flash Player, which you would ordinarily download from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/, this installs a download manager which some of you (myself included) find quite irritating to deal with. There is a way to download a standalone installer that does not use the download manager. It is available...