Tough times call for tough decisions, and you’ve probably been looking for ways to cut down on electric consumption around the house. Have you ever looked at your desktop PC? With the right configuration, you can cut down the power usage of your computer by as much as 60%. Considering that the average computer can use up to 250 Watts per hour, chopping off some of that electrical load should be a priority for you, even if you end up shaving just 10 Watts.
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Saving Power on Windows
By | December 2, 2011 | 2 Comments
4 Reasons Why Windows UAC Is Useless
By | November 28, 2011 | 13 Comments
If you use Windows Vista or 7, you know how annoying it is to have to approve everything every application does on your computer. This feature, known as User Account Control (UAC), gives you all those dialogs that spring up whenever you open something. Microsoft created UAC with the intention of making computing safer for end users and technicians alike. If you’re a “victim” of this “security measure,” you know why it’s a massive failure on the part of MS. It turns out that UAC might even hinder the security of home and office systems. Ouch!
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XAMPP: Easily Install A Web Server In Your Windows
By | November 25, 2011 | 4 Comments
Whether you’re someone running a corporate server, a hobbyist who wants to make a simple web presence, or a freelancer trying to make a website to market yourself, you shouldn’t overlook the advantages Apache Friends’ XAMPP package has to offer. This application has everything you need to get your site started without a messy installation process – PHP, Apache, MySQL, and FileZilla. It’s not just a bundled package. XAMPP offers you an installer much like the installer for any other normal Windows application all within the reach of a beginner.
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How-to Spice Up Your Windows Login Page
By | November 20, 2011 | 2 Comments
Many families or companies have public computer. These computers may have several accounts on them for different users. Possibly even different setups for personal and work. Just because you have to share the computer doesn’t mean you can’t add a little flair to it. Awesome Logon Changer is well, an awesome way to spice up this screen a little.
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Free Download Manager Boosts Your Download Speed, Makes Your Downloads A Breeze
By | November 19, 2011 | 2 Comments
Many of us have fast internet connections as measured by overall total capacity, but rarely see maximum throughput. For example, I have a 100 megabit cable connection, but when I download a file via HTTP, I’m lucky to see more than 500KB/sec for that single file. Thankfully, there are ways to max out your connection.
Download managers open multiple streams to download the same file, and in doing so, get around limitations placed on the download speed. My favourite application to that end is Free Download Manager. There are two versions available on the website – a full featured version that offers a built-in bittorent client, video conversion and upload manager, and a “lite” version, that just has the download manager component. I only use the lite version, as I use µTorrent for my torrenting needs and have little use for an upload manager.
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4 Tips to Strengthen Your Windows Network
By | November 14, 2011 | 6 Comments
You’ve probably heard of how hackers easily infiltrate Windows networks of unsuspecting people. If you stick your head out of the water frequently and interact with other people on the Internet, you might also run the risk of being attacked at some point in time or another. By following a couple of tips, you can hold your own against those who want to harm you.
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Winyl Is The Ideal Music Player Alternative
By | November 13, 2011 | 5 Comments
There are a lot of options out there for music players. We have talked about a few music players for your computer and music players for your mobile devices. Winyl is a great replacement for a desktop music player.
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How to Move a Steam Game to Another Location
By | November 12, 2011 | 5 Comments
If you’ve just bought a fancy new solid state drive, you might want to move a select few games across for improved performance and loading times. You may also just be running out of space on your main drive and feel like relocating a game to a secondary hard drive. Unfortunately the guys at Valve Software have not been kind enough to let you move or install your games in different locations. Thankfully, there is a workaround for this dilemma. Basically we can move a game folder and then create a virtual link to it from its original location. That way we essentially “fool” Steam into thinking it hasn’t moved. Clever eh?
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4 Tips to Make Windows 7 Boot Faster
By | November 11, 2011 | 10 Comments
If you’re a hobbyist that runs a home server, or even a regular computer user that wants to get things done quickly, you will know how important it is to start Windows quickly. There’s nothing worse than having to restart a server and have your visitors tolerate 3 minutes of downtime. Add another 5 minutes of slow loading times until the computer’s fully loaded. When time is money, you really can’t be wasting any of it waiting for a computer to load.
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How to Fix An Upside Down Monitor Display [Windows]
By | November 7, 2011 | 3 Comments
You wake up in the morning, have a good long yawn, get out of bed, and check your email before going to work. You instinctively move your mouse down to the task bar only to find out that the mouse is moving up to an upside down task bar and your whole display turned over 180 degrees. Save yourself the neck pain of turning your head sideways. There’s a solution to this that’s much easier than bolting your desk to the ceiling.
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