A Jump List in Windows 7 is one of the best and most underrated features of the Windows 7 desktop experience. They’re ridiculously easy to use and all you have to do is make use of your right mouse button for app buttons in the taskbar area. Check out the video below to see how it...

AVI, WMV, MOV and MP4 are video formats. Okay, technically MP4 can be audio-only, but most people consider MP4 to be primarily for video use. Both AVI and WMV are Microsoft formats. MOV is Apple QuickTime and MP4 is by ISO. When it comes to video formats, oftentimes you simply don’t have a choice of which video format to use – but you do always have...

Important note before you watch the instructional video below: As I found out after I recorded this video, it is possible to play a playlist directly from a YouTube channel. Click the playlist, then click the first video and once finished, the next video in the list will start – however this is listed absolutely nowhere in YouTube’s help...

One of the lesser-known features of viewing videos on YouTube is that you can in fact use number keys as pre-programmed time markers. Here’s how it’s done: 1. Load up any YouTube video. You have a wide selection to choose from at our YouTube channel, pcmedianet. 2. Start video playback by specifically pressing the play button at lower left:What...

Something that’s still relatively new is the option of using a "fanless" dedicated graphics card. Fanless literally means the graphics card has a heat sink but no fan whatsoever. Sometimes you will also see fanless referred to as passive cooling. At the time I write this, Newegg carries 113 fanless cards, so you do have good choice when it comes...

YouTube-style online video at this point is just shy of six years old, so you would think that it would be easy to make a playlist of your favorite videos. Wrong. Not a single video hosting service makes it easy. In fact they all make it exceedingly difficult. And forget it if you want to create a playlist that spans multiple video hosting sites… …or...

This is a full recording of PCMech’s first ever LIVE, INTERACTIVE workshop. This is the first of many such workshops we will be holding inside of our PCMech Premium program. All of our workshops will be either instructional, interviews, or open Q&A where you can talk to us and we’ll discuss your matters of interest and answer your questions. To...

Over the course of the weekend the not-so sweet smell of a burning circuit board started coming out of my PC, so I did what anybody else would do, I mashed the power button and shut the computer off immediately. When the choice comes between having your PC become a literal fiery mess or have a corrupted OS from an improper shutdown, which to go with is fairly...

If you like to have granular control over all aspects of your system graphics, a tool you need to look at is PowerStrip. This tool works with just about any graphics card out there and can typically provide many more options than the manufacturer’s control panel. [PowerStrip is] a simple menu that pops up from the system tray provides...

Some things are just so well done that you have to take your hat off and bow to the almighty comedy writers. In this case, The Simpsons took their usual sarcasm and targeted Apple. They pretty much took on every stereotype you’ve ever seen as regards Apple fans. They made fun of the prices. They made fun of Steve Jobs. The store designs....

You may have a disc, be it music or data, that is scratched and will not read in your optical disc drive no matter what you do to it. Can it be saved? Possibly. There are a few things you can try to save that disc. Hardware method: It could be just the drive you’re using If the disc won’t read in your optical drive, try another one that’s...

Yesterday, VMware officially released the final version of VMware Fusion 2.0. This is a major upgrade to the VMware Fusion software that lets Intel-based Macs run Windows, Linux or any other operating system without the need to reboot. I had been holding off on upgrading because 2.0 was in beta. But, now that it has reached final, it was time for me to give it...

Since the release of Mozilla Firefox 3 there have been issues with the Adobe Flash player (currently at release 9), particularly with Flash video. What happens is that you’ll attempt to watch a video (say on YouTube) and the first 2 seconds will play and then stop. And you’re left with no choice but to restart the browser and sometimes that...

Google Chrome is a web browser very recently released by Google. While Dave concentrated more on the “guts” of the browser, I concentrated more on its usability. What I discovered is that while Gmail and Yahoo! Mail work, the full version of Hotmail does not. The bookmark import from Firefox on initial install didn’t work. There’s also...

A freeware utility called Rename Master is all you need to mass-rename any type of file you want to in Windows XP or Vista. While it’s true you can mass-rename file extensions from the command line in Windows, it’s not so easy to touch a specific part of a filename. But with Rename Master you can do this easily. See video below for...

When the first consumer-grade portable video recording systems were introduced they were humongous and had extremely poor battery life. In addition to that they were heavy and gave you "camcorder shoulder" in short order. As camcorders progressed in technology they started to become smaller but suffered from the same fate as their predecessors –...

This chapter is a video presentation. [hidepost=1] [flv:http://pcmech.s3.amazonaws.com/BYOPC/16_configuring_the_hard_drive.flv 610 458] [/hidepost] [hidepost=2] Download video (MOV) [/hidepost]

This chapter is a video presentation. [hidepost=1] [flv:http://pcmech.s3.amazonaws.com/BYOPC/23_setting_up_microsoft_windows.flv 610 458] [/hidepost] [hidepost=2] Download video (MOV) [/hidepost]

This chapter is a video presentation. [hidepost=1] [flv:http://pcmech.s3.amazonaws.com/BYOPC/22_configuring_bios_options.flv 610 458] [/hidepost] [hidepost=2] Download video (MOV) [/hidepost]

This chapter is a video presentation. [hidepost=1] [flv:http://pcmech.s3.amazonaws.com/BYOPC/21_powering_up_the_computer.flv 610 458] [/hidepost] [hidepost=2] Download video (MOV) [/hidepost]