I recently came across a thread on a random forum where it called out to the members to post a screenshot of their desktop to show off their wallpaper graphics. What was interesting wasn’t the graphics per sé but rather the screen resolution for most of the screen shots shown, which happened to be 1024×768. It showed up so much that a few commented...

LCD monitors are great. No question. They’re thin, can be moved around easily, don’t use much electricity, don’t produce static when turned on or off, have a crisp picture that stays crisp, and so on. However there is one failing of LCD monitors and a big one at that. It’s a lack of vertical resolution. I’ll explain. Let’s say...

In the beginning (more or less).. ..there was 320×200 resolution with the Commodore 64. Then came MS-DOS and VGA with 640×480 resolution. It was good and there was much rejoicing. Then came Super VGA (800×600). And it was better. And there was more rejoicing. Fast-forward to present. You can now easily acquire LCD monitors with very high native...

A common issue many have when installing Ubuntu in Virtualbox is that the default virtual resolution is limited to a maxium of 800×600. By installing the Guest Additions that come with Virtualbox, you can easily get any screen res you want. See video for details.THIS VIDEO IS AVAILABLE IN HD RESOLUTION. Click here to go to the YouTube page and click the...

Happy ’09, everyone. Hope yours is a good one. It is tradition in the United States that people make what’s called their "New Year’s Resolutions", i.e. a  to-do list of things they want to get done. This can be things such as losing a few pounds, paying off a few debts, getting some housework done, etc. These are my tech...

The Microsoft Windows operating environment introduced something called "font smoothing" right around the time Internet Explorer 4.0 was released in 1997. Even way back then (this is before the release of Windows 98) Microsoft understood that type on screen must be as legible as possible. ClearType, another Microsoft way of making fonts look better,...

Every now and then, I find it interesting to delve into the server logs for PCMech and find out what you guys are using in your system. The PCMech audience is pretty representative of the “normal” computer-using audience. We don’t have an uber-geeky crowd here. We have what I think is a normal cross-section of the computer using public. So,...

I’m currently working on a digital photography course for PCMU, so this week’s wallpapers are all real-life photos I’ve taken using a very inexpensive digital camera. In the course materials you will find out how to take photos like the ones shown below. In addition, all the photos below will be available as super-size wallpaper. One will be...