As some have noticed, there isn’t a specific offering of Windows 7 Media Center Edition. This is because it’s not necessary being that the Windows Media Center software is already bundled into Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate editions. Many of you – including yours truly – remember when the Windows Media Player went from...

Yes, I know that DVDs are already digital. What I’m referring to here is the question of whether it’s worth it to rip the disc to a file and use a media center for playback instead of a DVD player. The answer is yes, it is worth it – but only if you can afford the hardware and are willing to deal with a media center PC’s way of doing...

There are many "elite" bloggers that state that the future of everything concerning internet communications is in the browser. I’ve heard "in the browser" so much in the course of 2009 that it now annoys me to even hear it. Why? Because as far as usability is concerned, doing everything in the browser is a step backwards. All-in-browser...

A filename extension is a suffix to a filename. There’s the name of the file itself, then a period, then the extension. When you see Document.pdf, the ".pdf" is the extension. The filename extension is one of those things that’s a necessary evil in computing to differentiate one type of file from another. Some UNIX/Linux environments...

I am not a journalist. Or am I? Keep that question in mind as you read through this. Dave attended BlogWorld Expo this year, and one of the things he noted is that Leo Laporte stated in so many words that new media will be the new standard in journalism soon enough. "New Media" is a very overhyped term, but is the only one that accurately defines the...

If you haven’t heard, everybody (like here, here and here in addition to a ton of other places) is talking how a Hotmail phishing attack happened and somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000+ account passwords were leaked. Use Hotmail and think your account is compromised? Well, if you happen to be in European user and your account name started with an A or...

An interesting little program I came across which allows you to view just about any information on your media files is MediaInfo. From their description: MediaInfo supplies technical and tag information about a video or audio file. Simply put, that is what it does. You can extract just about any information you can think of from vitually any audio or video file...

In a few short months it’s going to be 2009, and a ton of stuff has changed in the world of computing over the past almost-ten years. Some of the modern advancements have proven to be a notable improvement while others still produce the same crapola they did nearly ten years ago. In this installment we’ll be taking a look at portable media. Portable...

There are a few keyboard and mouse shortcuts in Windows Media Player 11 that are handy to know just in case you ever need to use them. Switching between skinned and non-skinned mode Non-skinned: CTRL+1 Skinned: CTRL+2 If you have a kid that sometimes "messes with" the media player and it has this weird skin on it (such as the way it looks at the top...

Situation: You’ve carefully backed up some sensitive data to CD or DVD. Afterwards you took the extra step of placing the disc in a standard jewel case instead of a fold-out case. You even took the extra precaution of putting the disc in that case in a room where the ambient temperature is never too cold or too hot. Less than one year later you open that...

PCMech readers and PCMech Live viewers have heard me wax on about how SSD is going to be the next big thing with computers. Why? One reason: Speed. And lots of it. Solid State Drives are where computers are going. If you wanted any indicator as to when to upgrade, SSD is it – no question. And Samsung appears to be the company that’s going to bring it...

The only thing you need to pay attention to as far as memory cards for digital cameras are concerned is whether it will physically fit in your camera or not. There is absolutely no significant advantage from one card format to the next. All that matters is that it can physically be connected to the camera you have. [hidepost=1] Question: Why have a memory card...