How to Find Out What's Keeping Your Computer from Going to Sleep. Top 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Computer's Boot Time. Battery Life News, Videos, Reviews and Gossip - Gizmodo. These days, you can purchase a passable laptop for little more than the cost of an iPad. As of February, the average Windows notebook cost just $513 and, for less than that, you can find a strong system that comes with modern specs like a Core i3 CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. But just because you can grab a low-rent laptop for $399 at Best Buy doesn’t mean you should. Whether you’re buying a notebook that’s made to order or choosing between different ready-made models, you need to pay a little extra to be happier and more productive. Here are five laptop features worth the splurge: 1. High-Resolution Screens You can never be too rich, too thin or have too many pixels, but unfortunately most notebooks today come with lame 1366 x 768 screens that show even less of your favorite Web pages above the fold than their 1280 x 800 counterparts from 2007.
More: Why 1366 Resolution is a Joke 2. What can you do with the extra 17.5 seconds you won’t be waiting for Photoshop to open? 3. 4. 5. UsbFlashSpeed.com: We know everything about USB Flash speed! Why Printers Suck (And What You Can Do About It) | Gizmodo UK. Software | LoJack for Laptops. Weekendhacker News, Videos, Reviews and Gossip - Lifehacker. Top 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Computer's Boot Time. Top 10 Ways to Turn Your Retired Gadgetry into the Technology of the Future.
Top 10 News, Videos, Reviews and Gossip - Lifehacker. Despite everyone's assumptions, we geeks are not always privy to the latest and greatest technology. If you're stuck with an old, slow, crappy computer, there are a few things you can do to make the best of a bad situation. Here are our top 10 favorites. 10. Upgrade Your Hardware (If You Can) Obviously, the best way to speed up an old, slow computer is to upgrade the hardware. 9. Your processor and video card aren't always upgradable (whether because of physical limitations or financial). 8. Before you do anything drastic, you'll want to troubleshot your machine and make sure it isn't being slowed down by something. 7. If you're still using bloated behemoths like Adobe Reader, Norton Antivirus, or (shudder) iTunes, switch to something less crappy and you'll notice a world of difference in how your computer runs. 6.
Sometimes, the good programs just aren't optimized to run their fastest. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. Do you have a crappy computer you've been forced to live with?
Gadget Insurance from InsureandGo.com. How to Send Self-Destructing Sensitive Information to Someone via Email. Have you ever sent private information to someone, maybe a family member needed your credit card number, and then regretted that you had ever done it. This can all be solved with a self-destructing link. Note: We are not advising that you send private information via email or necessarily endorsing this service as a safe way to transfer any information. It’s a novelty and a fun geeky trick. Creating The Self-Destructing Link To get started head over to this website and click on the Create One Now button. This will take you to a text box where you can enter the information you want to e-mail to someone. You can go ahead and click on the Create Link button when you ready. This will give you a link that you can either manually copy to the clipboard, or you can click the link which will automatically copy it to the clipboard. Now you can draft your email as you normally would.
When the person received the email they can click on it to see the message you generated earlier. How to Use Bing’s Advanced Search Operators: 8 Tips for Better Searches. Google may still be the top search engine, but Bing is starting to stand on its own. Bing has many of the same search operators offered by Google, but it has a few tricks you won’t find elsewhere.
Master these search operators and you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for, and do it faster. These search operators will also work in Yahoo, which is now powered by Bing. The Basics Bing’s basic search operators work similarly to Google’s. “find this exact phrase” Omit words with the NOT or minus sign operators. Smartphones NOT iphone smartphones -iphone Use the OR or | operator to find pages that contain one word or another. Android OR iphone android | iphone Site Search Use the site: operator to search within a specific website, just like on Google. Site:howtogeek.com bing File Type Bing can search for files of a specific type using the filetype: operator, just like Google. Filetype:pdf bing Pages Containing a Link to a File Type Bing doesn’t index all file types. Filetype:mp3 public domain Feeds. 10 Amazing Uses for Wolfram Alpha. You may have heard of Wolfram Alpha, which is a “computational knowledge engine.”
That makes it sound a bit scary, but it’s a great tool once you can wrap your head around it. Apple’s Siri uses Wolfram Alpha for 25% of its searches. You can leverage that magic and put Wolfram Alpha to work for you — the empty search box on its homepage holds endless possibilities. Comparisons Enter two terms with a vs in between them and you’ll get a comparison. You can compare cities, books, foods and almost anything else you can think of. Nutrition Information Enter a type of food and Wolfram Alpha will provide you with its nutrition information.
Complicated Math Wolfram Alpha is ideal for the sort of math that Google’s calculator and most other calculator websites will choke on. Where Am I? Ask where you are and Wolfram will use your IP address to track you down. Days Until Something Want to know how many days are left until your birthday, favorite holiday or any other date? Generate a Password Am I Drunk?
Windows Forensics: Have I been Hacked? Table of Contents Introduction One of the top questions I see on forums is "How do I know if I have been hacked? ". When something strange occurs on a computer such as programs shutting down on their own, your mouse moving by itself, or your CD constantly opening and closing on its own, the first thing that people think is that they have been hacked. In the vast majority of cases there is a non-malicious explanation for these problems such as faulty hardware or problematic software, but it is better to be safe than sorry for not investigating deeper. Unfortunately, the vast majority of computer users have no idea how to go about determining if their computer is hacked. It is for these people, that I am writing this tutorial. Before we continue, it is important to go over some basic information. It should also be noted that in many of the cases that people think they are hacked, they are instead infected with malware such as Spyware, Scareware, or Trojans.
Why would someone want to hack me? Tracing a hacker. Table of Contents Introduction Have you ever been connected to your computer when something strange happens? A CD drive opens on its own, your mouse moves by itself, programs close without any errors, or your printer starts printing out of nowhere? When this happens, one of the first thoughts that may pop into your head is that someone has hacked your computer and is playing around with you.
When your computer is hacked, a hacker will typically install a Remote Access Trojan, or RAT, that will allow them to gain access to it again in the future. While the hacker is connected, though, they are vulnerable because we can use programs that allow us to see the IP address that the user is connected from. Using TCPView in Windows to see who is connected to your computer TCPView is a powerful tool for Windows that allows you to see all of the current TCP/IP network connections on your computer. TCPView Download Link Can you spot the strange connection in the screen above? Conclusion. How to install and use the Windows XP Recovery Console. Table of Contents What is the Recovery Console? The Recovery Console is a special boot up method that can be used to help fix problems that are preventing your Windows installation from properly booting up into Windows.
This method allows you to access the files, format drives, disable and enable services, and other tasks from a console prompt while the operating system is not loaded. It is suggested that the Recovery Console is to only be used only after Safe mode and the other standard startup options do not work. This tutorial will guide you through the installation of the Recovery Console and how to use it. Introduction to the Windows Command Prompt How to install the Recovery Console to your hard drive I recommend that you install the Recovery Console directly onto your computer so that if you need it in the future, it is readily available. To install the Recovery Console on your hard drive, follow these steps: Insert the Windows XP CD into your CD-ROM drive.
An Explanation of Oem, Upgrade, Academic, And Full Versions of software. Many times you will see software for sale that is listed as OEM , Academic, Upgrades, or Full Versions, all at different prices. This may lead to some confusion making you think that they are all different products. In reality they are all the same products, but are priced differently. OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer. Oem software is generally only sold by hardware manufacturers who include the OEM software as part of the total product.
For example, when you purchase a new computer and it comes with Windows, it is the OEM version of Windows. Academic and Not For Profit versions of software are software that is priced for a specific type of institution. Upgrade Versions is a way software companies have you continue to use their software or to switch to their software. Full Version software is exactly as you would think it would be. Hope this clears up the different versions of software that you can find available. How to Backup and Restore your hard drive with DriveImage XML. Table of Contents: Introduction DriveImage XML is my program of choice for backing up and protecting my data. When I first began using this application, though, I had some difficulties restoring my backup image on my test boxes using the instructions found in other tutorials.
Due to this, I pooled info from a variety of available tutorials, and with some work, I was able to figure out how to restore my data. With this in mind, I have put all of the information I researched into one guide so that others can properly restore their data without running into the problems that I encountered. With this tutorial you will be able to accomplish the following tasks: Create a complete cloned image of your entire computer.
In order to follow the steps in this tutorial, you will need an external hard drive or other removable media, CD-ROM burner, and a blank writeable CD. Create a clone of your hard disk The first step is to download DriveImage XML to the desktop of the computer that you wish to backup.