20 Windows Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know !!

Mastering the keyboard will not only increase your navigation speed but it can also help with wrist fatigue. Here are some lesser known Windows shortcuts to help you become a keyboard ninja


Global Windows Shortcuts:
Win+1, 2, 3, 4, etc. will launch each program in your taskbar. It is helpful then to keep your most used programs at the beginning of your task bar so you can open them one right after another. This also works in Windows Vista for the quick launch icons.

Win+Alt+1, 2, 3, etc. will open the jump list for each program in the taskbar. You can then use your arrows to select which jump list option you want to open.

Win+T will cycle through taskbar programs. This is similar to just hovering over the item with your mouse but you can launch the program with Space or Enter.

Win+Home minimizes all programs except current the window. 


Win+B selects the system tray which isn’t always useful but can come in very handy if your mouse stops working.

Win+Up/Down maximizes and restores down the current window so long as that window has the option to be maximized. It is exactly the same as clicking on the middle button on your windows.


Alt+Esc is like Alt+Tab but switches windows in the order they were opened and does not have the fancy window preview overlay.


Win+Pause/Break will open your system properties window. This can be helpful if you need to see the name of a computer or simple system statistics.

Ctrl+Esc can be used to open the start menu but will not work as a Windows key replacement for other shortcuts.


Ctrl+Shift+Esc will open the task manager without needing to hit Ctrl+Alt+Del first.

Alt+Space will open the window system menu which can be used to maximize (x), minimize (n), close (c), or move (m) the window which can be especially helpful if your window is somehow off-screen. This shortcut can also be helpful with windows that don’t close with the Alt+F4 shortcut such as the command window.

Windows Explorer Shortcuts:

Here are handy shortcuts built into Windows Explorer which may have similar features in other programs too.

Alt+Up will navigate up one folder level since the up arrow on the menu bar was removed in Windows Vista. 

Shift+F10 opens the contextual or “right click” menu for a file/folder. This can be very handy for speed especially if you know which option you want to select. Look for an underlined letter in each option to know which letter you can press for faster access.

Shift+Del deletes a file without sending it to the recycle bin because who wants to empty their recycle bin anyway?

Ctrl+Shift+N creates a new folder in your current directory.

Alt+Enter opens the file properties so you can view file size, sharing settings, and creation date.

F2 renames a file or folder.

F3 will open explorer and select the search bar. If you already have an explorer window open it will highlight the search bar. In some programs it will also open the search dialog to search within that program.

F6 cycles objects in the current window. In explorer this will cycle between the location bar, options bar, left pane, and right pane. It also works with varying success in other programs.

F10 toggles the file menu in explorer.

Intel Core i7 CPU Review

The Intel core i7 cpu's are some of the strongest chips that have already come down the pipe thus far. These are chips for the serious multi-tasker. These are CPU's for the hardcore gamer, the video editor, the music producer and anybody else that wants a lot of power going to numerous distinctive processes.

You might be gaming in vast 3D land scapes or making use of Maya to sculpt your own, it doesn't matter, the i7 can deal with it. I have a pair of core i7 personal computers  I use. I game with one, and do my video and audio work on the other. So I can say with some certainty that these processors can deal with pretty significantly anything that's thrown at them.

Here are some impressive specs:

Processor Number Cache clock speed Bus Speed Number of Cores

i7-970 12 MB SmartCache 3.2 GHz 4.8 GT/s QPI 6
i7-960 8 MB SmartCache 3.2 GHz 4.8 GT/s QPI 4
i7-950 8 MB SmartCache 3.06 GHz 4.8 GT/s QPI 4
i7-860 8 MB SmartCache 2.8 GHz 2.5 GT/s DMI 4

I have a system with core i7 cpu's now, and I have to say they are brilliant. I used to run on duel cores, and I thought they were fantastic, but the i7 just knocked them flat. I wont try and say it cut my waiting time in half, but I certain noticed the difference in a large way. Actually the biggest difference you'll notice whenever you upgrade is the difference whenever you are running quite a few tasks at once.
I keep in mind the first time I tried to lagg it on purpose. I ran my video editing software, audio editing software and a video converter all at once. Normally I would get noticable lagg, and perhaps even have to shut some thing down. Not anymore. The i7 was able to maintain up with every thing quite well.

As for gaming I tend to run WoW, along with a few other games, mainly 1 I definitely enjoy called 9Dragons. I wasn't able to set lots of of my games past medium, or even low, on a number of of the a lot more intense choices. With my core i7 computers, along with a graphics card update, I can run every thing at top performance levels and not worry at all about lagg. Too sweet for words.

If a new personal pc is inside the cards for you, and you aren't certain yet what to look for, I would suggest a new core i7 computer. Anybody who plans to do any sort of intenst activity with their new system will need to seriously take into account the i7, particularly if you are going to be using numerous programs at once. When you need power, you would like the top, and at the moment the extremely most effective CPU you can get is an intel core i7.

Effectively retrieve RAR data with Easy RAR Recovery

A lot of problems can arise during work with archives. One of the largest is damaging or deleting these archives. In this case you will need to restore them. One of the best tools in this field is Easy RAR Recovery. This program was made specially to solve issues like this.

Comparing to recovery integrated in RAR tools, recovering results in Easy RAR Recovery is much more reliable. This is because of the unique algorithms which are used in this program. These algorithms can get back archives with all types of damage. It can work not only with solid archives, but with any other RAR archives as well.

This program was made for restoration of all types of RAR archives, created by any RAR archiver. The power of Easy RAR Recovery is enough to get back files where the size is higher than 4 Gb. So no matter what was in the archive: documents, mails, songs, Photos or even movies, it will be returned. Easy RAR Recovery was designed to retrieve RAR archives, but it also works with self-extracting SFX files, which can be also retrieved. After recovery, these files can be used with no troubles.

Another welcome function of this program is the supporting of Unicode. It means that all archives will be retrieved successfully and you will be able to read your files with no complications. The language of files in the archive is not a problem and you will be able to work with them as though they were not damaged at all.

Easy RAR Recovery will function on windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008 and 7. It is very user-friendly in use and you can constantly check your data before restoration. If you have a lot of lost files this function is particularly useful, because you always can take a look at the file before restoring it. Besides, you can see how much of the data is damaged and be restored whether either the entire File or just some sections of it if file is damaged very badly. The last case is highly uncommon.

Easy RAR Recovery is very user-friendly in use. To recover some documents, you just have to run the program and take a few easy steps, which does not require any special knowledge or skills. You just need to select files which you are wanting to restore and then retrieve them. After finishing work, the program will show you results. This way, you can see which data can be restored and which are not possible to restore.

As you can deduce, Easy RAR Recovery is one of the most powerful solutions for RAR recovery. Competitors to this program are not so functional or cost a lot more money. This makes Easy RAR Recovery an excellent choice for any user who want to keep his RAR archives safe.

To test the software, you can first try trial edition and than if you will like this program, you can purchase it. Do not waste your time and money for useless programs and instead buy Easy RAR Recovery and you will never have troubles with RAR files being damaged.

Benefits Of Online Shooting Games and pc games

It might sound unbelievable, but several studies have shown that there are many benefits connected with shooting games. A vast majority of people who do not understand this genre often assume that these kinds of games encourage violence in society.

It might sound unbelievable, but several studies have shown that there are many benefits connected with Shooting games. A vast majority of people who do not understand this genre often assume that these kinds of games encourage violence in society. It is believed that such games influence people to act poorly and provoke criminal activity. As a matter of fact, thousands of people play these games and most of them also regularly visit the Church and are great philanthropists. They do several things that most people would regard as wholesome and positive. In fact, several experts believe that people who blow some steam off by playing online shooting games are less likely to indulge in violence in reality. Among numerous benefits linked with these games is the fact that the player develops a variety of important thinking skills while playing these games. This happens unconsciously and most players don't understand the effect at first. If you observe someone playing a sniper game, you'll see that it's not just about shooting a large number of bullets hoping to hit the target. Instead, this kind of game requires the player to apply calculated and strategic thinking. The player has to come up with unique tactics to win a game and will be compelled to spend time thinking whether a particular shot has the capability to hit the target, and that is intended to hit it or not. Besides, another benefit of playing shooting games is that it improves the players' hand-eye coordination considerably. A lot of experts have repeatedly argued in favor of this benefit. To know better, one can try playing these games rather than despising them. People need to see with their own eyes what these games are really about and the ways these can help enhance their abilities. It might sound unbelievable, but several studies have shown that there are many benefits connected with shooting games. A vast majority of people who do not understand this genre often assume that these kinds of games encourage violence in society. It is believed that such games influence people to act poorly and provoke criminal activity. As a matter of fact, thousands of people play these games and most of them also regularly visit the Church and are great philanthropists. They do several things that most people would regard as wholesome and positive. In fact, several experts believe that people who blow some steam off by playing online shooting games are less likely to indulge in violence in reality. Among numerous benefits linked with these games is the fact that the player develops a variety of important thinking skills while playing these games. This happens unconsciously and most players don't understand the effect at first. If you observe someone playing a sniper game, you'll see that it's not just about shooting a large number of bullets hoping to hit the target. Instead, this kind of game requires the player to apply calculated and strategic thinking. The player has to come up with unique tactics to win a game and will be compelled to spend time thinking whether a particular shot has the capability to hit the target, and that is intended to hit it or not. Besides, another benefit of playing shooting games is that it improves the players' hand-eye coordination considerably. A lot of experts have repeatedly argued in favor of this benefit. To know better, one can try playing these games rather than despising them. People need to see with their own eyes what these games are really about and the ways these can help enhance their abilities.

Online shooting games are a great way to unwind and the steam off. They also help improve one's hand-eye coordination and many other skills.

Save time and money by printing your own photos at home

Considering how widespread the use of digital cameras is today, and how affordable the average model is, it's hard to believe that even 10 years ago people were still using old-fashioned film cameras on a regular basis. Indeed, the digital camera revolution has meant that a whole new generation of photographers has emerged, with the art of good photography no longer confined to those who are able to afford the best equipment or easily navigate their way around a dark room.

For most ordinary people, the biggest benefit delivered by the modern wave of digital cameras has been the ability to print out photographs at home. In the early days of digital photography, it was possible for people to print colour photographs but lower ink and paper quality meant that the result was often grainy, giving poor representation to what may have been excellent photographs. The development of affordable home photo printers since the mid-2000s has changed this. Essentially, ink used in photo printers is able to emulate the resolution and range of colours available on traditional photographic prints, delivering end results of much higher quality than those seen on older printers.

The benefits of photo printers are clear. For starters, they save a considerable amount of time. Photo sharing and printing websites, for example, can be very handy. But depending on your computer's capabilities and your internet speed, it can take over an hour or longer to upload photos to these sites and request print outs. Thereafter, these print outs may take several days to arrive in the post or, if your postal system is unreliable, never arrive at all. With a photo printer at home, printing out photos may take just minutes and you'll have them in your hands immediately.

What's more, purchasing a photo printer is likely to save you money in the long-term. It's true that the act of buying a photo printer may put a temporary dent in your finances. You'll also need to add various peripherals to this cost, like ink cartridges, toner and special photo printing paper. These supplies however will last a considerable length of time and the overall savings you make could be significant.

In addition, photo printers allow you to print photos one at a time, rather than in bulk. As a result, it's much easier to print the photographs you want as and when you want to see them, or when you want to send a single snapshot to family or friends. This not only saves you money but it's also a much more environmentally friendly way of printing photographs, since you ultimately generate less waste by only printing the photos you want to keep.

The magic of Xbox 360 Kinect..

It has been some time when game consoles first hit the market. They had become an instant rage in the market and thanks to the manufacturers of these gaming cosoles there is no let up in their popularity. Now console gaming has reached new heights due to a fantastic innovation that has hit the market. You can now play games as you would play an actual game. Xbox 360 Kinect is one such console. You can enjoy with your entire family when you buy Kinect and enjoy games on this console.




It has been some time when game consoles first hit the market. They had become an instant rage in the market and thanks to the manufacturers of these gaming consoles there is no let up in their popularity. Now console gaming has reached new heights due to a fantastic innovation that has hit the market. You can now play games as you would play an actual game. Xbox360 Kinect is one such console. You can enjoy with your entire family when you buy Kinect and enjoy games on this console.
    
Think of a situation where your entire family, your wife, two kids and you decide to play a tennis doubles match on your Xbox360 Kinect. Now, instead of sitting down in front of your gaming console, all of you stand next to each other with the gaming joysticks in your hand. The living room turns into a lawn tennis court and you are ready to play as if you would in an actual game. You play the game in a virtual atmosphere that resembles an actual tennis court. It is as if you are actually playing the game against your opponents. This great experience is possible when you buy Kinect.


The magic of Xbox360 Kinect is that it allows you to convert your living room into a gaming arena. You can play games like soccer, table tennis, volleyball, boxing and others in a real atmosphere. Believe it or not, there is really no difference between an actual game and these virtual games. From the time the Kinect hit the market it has captured the imagination of millions of people worldwide. And this is all because of the fact that it offers a real gaming environment. It is no wonder that avid gamers from all over the globe are queuing up to buy Kinect and enjoy the games available on the console.


To buy your Xbox360 Kinect all you need to do is connect to the Internet. Go to any reputed online shopping website and you will surely be able to get your hands on this wonderful gaming console. If you are already aware of online shopping then I don’t need to tell you how easy it is to make an online purchase. You just need to go through the online catalog and pick your Kinect. After you pay online the product is delivered to your shipping address. All you need to do to buy Kinect is to click your computer mouse a few times.


When you buy Kinect you will actually look forward to coming back home early from work. The Xbox360 Kinect is such an addiction that your entire family will soon get hooked to it. Playing on the Kinect is much better than watching TV. You will compete with each other and also have laughter to share. It will bring the entire family together. You can even arrange a competition among friends and enjoy the games. If you want to enhance your social network then this is one way that you will be able to.


The Xbox360 Kinect gives you a fantastic real life gaming experience. To enjoy with your whole family buy Kinect online.

What kinds of laptop batteries do you need...!!

Simple as it may sound, batteries are the biggest difference maker between laptops and desktops. Unplug a desktop from the wall, and it shuts down; do the same with a notebook, and it might last a day.Or, more realistically, anywhere from 90 minutes to 9 hours.

Regardless of capacity, all new notebook batteries are made up of lithium-ion cells and are rechargeable via A/C adapters. While some manufacturers make it more difficult than others to remove the laptop battery, most make it simple to pop them in and out. This opens up the possibility for mobile professionals to tote a spare battery (sold separately). However, you are better off getting one battery that lasts a long time than lugging a spare; extra batteries are bulky, and you need to shut down your computer before inserting them.

In choosing or configuring a notebook, you may be presented with different laptop batteriessizes and capacities. We can help you decide which one is right for you.

How Much Battery Life Do You Need?

If you plan to use your notebook away from your desk, you will want a bare minimum of three hours of endurance (with four to five hours being preferable), because even when carrying a notebook around the home or office, being chained to an outlet is extremely inconvenient. If you use your notebook in public places (coffee shops, outdoors, planes, etc), you want a minimum of four and a half hours of endurance (with six or more hours preferred).

Choosing the Right Number of Cells

While there are batteries with two, four, or eight cells, most come in three-, six-, or nine-cell packs. If long battery life is important to you, always choose the the largest number of cells available. Whatever you do, don't settle for a three-cell laptop battery; notebooks and netbooks with three-cell batteries tend to get less than three hours of battery life. Batteries larger than six cells—often referred to as "extended batteries"—may add some extra bulk to your notebook, sticking out the back and adding a few tenths of a pound to the weight. However, if you need long endurance, this extra weight is worth it.

Measuring Battery Capacity

While battery capacity is the most important factor affecting battery life, you can't tell just from the battery specs how long a notebook will last. Some notebooks are more power efficient than others and, even with the same notebook, users themselves can have a big impact on battery life based on the power settings they use and the tasks they perform. For example, a quad-core gaming notebook may get less than two hours of endurance out of high-capacity battery, while a netbook with a lower-capacity battery can last more than nine hours.

At LAPTOP, we test notebook battery life by running a custom script that surfs the Web continuously via Wi-Fi. See our "How We Test" section for more details.

However, it's clear that the more wattage a battery provides (usually measured in either milliamps or killowatt hours), the better. Most vendors do not advertise the amount of wattage a battery provides, but rather the number of cells inside the battery. And more cells almost always equals more juice.

Long-Life/Prismatic Batteries

Over time, a typical notebook battery tends to lose its ability to retain a charge. After a year of use, the typical battery has lost 15 percent of capacity, and it quickly declines from there. A handful of new batteries, such as HP's Enviro batteries (made by battery manufacturer Boston Power), use oval-shaped prismatic cells to maintain their ability to hold a charge over time. The Enviro batteries, for example, are guaranteed to last at least three years. While this new kind of battery is a rare option, it is definitely preferable when available.

Secondary Batteries

Many business notebooks also provide the option to purchase a secondary battery, which kicks in when the main battery runs out of power. Secondary batteries typically slide into the optical drive bay (replacing the optical drive), or attach to the bottom as a battery slice. These secondary batteries add to the cost and sometimes the weight, and slices in particular can make a notebook less comfortable on your lap. However, they can add anywhere from two to six hours of endurance.

Some Useful Tips to Get Rid of Spam

In under some important circumstances when we open the inbox and found it's flooded with unwanted junk mails and we delete all those mails one by one then found our expected mail. It is quite annoying and almost all of us get this type of emails regularly. But the most irritating thing is that deleting these mails doesn't mean that the problem has been resolved. You will get these types of spam next day as well. Do you want to get rid of spam permanently and prevent it from coming to your email inbox? To learn this, go through this article.

Before jumping into the solution, let's discuss what is spam? This is referred as unwanted commercial mail addressed to the receiver without their knowledge. To get rid of spam, you need to remember some simple things. You can also consult an email support provider. There are many such service providers who offer tech support to the PC users.

Internet Explorer is the most popular Internet browser but it is not so much effective to block spam. Instead of IE, you should use some alternate browsers like Mozilla Firefox or Apple's Safari. These browses come with built-in spam filtering tools that is stronger than Internet Explorer.

Using an anti-spam warfare is a very wise decision in this context. Do you shop online? If yes, it is suggested to use an alternate email account for account registrations. Those who are enthusiastically committed to an online forum, they should keep their email private. Change the settings and only allow moderators to view your email id.

In some spam mails you will find an unsubscribe link inside that email. It is suggested not to click it. You may get the spam emails even more than before after clicking. This is because once you click on this link, one email will be sent to the sender by which they will understand that it is an active id.

While forwarding mails, be careful. Sometimes, we get good emails which we want to share with our friends or beloved ones. Every time the mail is forwarded, it includes the sender's email id. Gradually the list of ids becomes heavier and the spammers take those ids to send spam mails. So, when you are forwarding an email, delete all the existing email ids and then send the email. Sometime, spammers also send catchy message and ask to share it with friends. So, if you get any message from unknown sender, don't open it, just click on the delete button.

By following the above mentioned steps you can protect your inbox from unwanted junk emails.

Computer Viruses,Trojans and Worms - What Are They and What Do They Do?

A virus is known to many as an agent that causes different diseases. They have many modes of infecting all of the members of the animal kingdom. Although there are different types of viruses, they have one commonality; they are all harmful. Nowadays, the term virus has taken a different turn when it comes to the meaning. Now, it is more commonly associated with anything that brings a computer to its demise or to something close to that. 

Computer virus has to be the most popular phrase when the thought of internet comes to the minds of most people. The reason is that they remember the destruction it brings. Computers have changed the way all people live. It has become important in all aspects of living may it be politics, religion or business. Just when we thought it could not get better, the Internet came along. Among all of the benefits of the internet, the one that people are most happy about is how it made communication much easier. In the old days, the only connection you have to your loved ones in other countries is through mail or telephone. Now, there are more efficient and faster ways of communicating. You can send an e-mail or a private message which will only take a few seconds and your message will be received immediately. 

This advancement took a tragic turn when someone smart enough decided to make a computer virus. A computer virus, sticking to the true meaning of the word virus, is something that infects a computer, jams its programs and causes many problems to the user. It can bring any time of destruction from a small computer glitch to making your whole computer system crash. 

Sadly, there are many ways that a virus is transferred from one computer to another. Storage devices such as USB can be a medium to transfer a virus. If two or more computers are connected via a network connection, a virus can be transferred. The most devastating news is that not only can it be transferred offline; it can be transferred online too. The internet became the most notorious aspect of the computer when it comes to getting it infected. 

This is why the whole world, or the people who uses computers, rejoiced at the birth of antiviruses. These are the programs that are designed to track down and get rid of computer viruses from its system. Now, there are many ways on how to protect your computer using antiviruses. Although there are many antivirus programs out in the market today, they have one common factor: they prioritize prevention. They gave importance of detecting a virus that is threatening to invade a computer so that they can block it before it can cause any harm. Now, antiviruses are also wise enough to detect viruses that are already in the computer before they were installed and delete or clean it. 

Aside from antiviruses, the users can also follow guidelines to prevent their computer from getting infected such as don't access sites that are about hacking since most viruses are found here.

Modifying Windows Firewall Through Command Prompt

Windows is all GUI now and very little command line any more, well believe it or not command line is still a very powerful tool that can change a lot of items within Windows. Here we will talk about changing Windows Firewall through a command line. The Windows XP firewall is a very basic firewall that protects users from some of the attacks that come across the Internet.

The netshcommand is a free program that comes with Windows XP and is what we will be using to make specific changes to the Windows firewall in this article. The netsh command alone will put you at a netsh> prompt which is ready for more commands. Because netsh can be used to modify other items beside the firewall we need to tell it that we will be configuring the firewall so we give the netsh> prompt the firewall command. Now we are sitting at netsh firewall> prompt. Like any other command line program we can give it a ? to display all the available commands.

netsh firewall>?
  Commands in this context:
    ?                -Displays a list of commands.
    add          -Adds firewall configuration.
    delete     -Deletes firewall configuration.
    dump      -Displays a configuration script.
    help         -Displays a list of commands.
    reset        -Resets firewall configuration to default
    set            -Sets firewall configuration
    show        -Shows firewall configuration

So lets now do an example of a configuration we can do with netsh and allow Incoming ICMP ECHO Requests

netsh firewall>set icmpsetting 8 ENABLE
Ok.

To disable ICMP ECHO Requests

netsh firewall>set icmpsetting 8 DISABLE
Ok.

Enable Fire and Printer sharing

netsh firewall>set service FILEANDPRINT ENABLE
Ok.

Now as you can see we have done some very broad configurations that either allow everyone or no one to connect or ping our computer. Lets say we want just a specific network access our computer. Then we will have to use the CUSTOM command within netsh firewall>

netsh firewall>set service FILEANDPRINT ENABLE CUSTOME 192.168.1.0/24
Ok.

So the above statement is only going to allow computers on the 192.168.1.0 network to connect to my computer for file and printer sharing. For those of you who might not be very network familiar the /24 at the end of the network address is the subnet mask. Not to get off on to far of a tangent the /24 means a 24 bit mask which is 255.255.255.0.

Now lets say we are testing something and want to just turn the firewall off completely, well we can do this very easily from command prompt.

netsh firewall>set opmode disable
Ok.

Now obviously if we turned the firewall of we just might need to turn it back on so.

netsh firewall>set opmode enable
Ok.

So with all this changing we have done something has gone terribly wrong and we cannot get the right traffic in and out of our computer that we want. So the best thing to do is reset out firewall back to defaults and this can be done by a very simple and obvious command.

netsh firewall>reset
Ok.

After executing this command all of our modifications will be lost and the firewall will go back to all of its default settings.

8 Tips for Securing Your Home Computer

Security is something that everyone has to stay up with nowadays with all the credit card fraud and identity fraud in the news. There are many things that you can do to help keep your computer and your self safe. Follow these 8 steps and you will be better protected against security threats.

1. Turn off unnessecary processes
   • There are alot of programs that run in the background of your computer and some of those programs open up ports that can allow a hacker into your computer. By shutting down these programs that are most of the time unnessecary we can eliminate the amount of ports we have open on a computer.
2. Install Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware
   • This one is an absolute nessecity for anyone who has a computer that is connected to the internet. An up to date anti-virus anti-malware prorgram can be bought just about anywhere including online. One popular option is Symantec which has a full featured program to cover everything. Some other third party software also works well. Adware Botand Spy No More – Anti Spyware
3. Turn on Windows Firewall or install a personal firewall
   • As was mentioned in tip number 1 we have ports open on our computer that can possibly allow a hacker in. Windows firewall (which comes free with windows) can block these types of ports. You can also purchase a thrid party firewall program that will help block these ports. There are many third party companies that provide excellent firewall programs.Firewall Gold
4. Have a router between you and the internet
   • Some ISP (internet service providers) such as cable allow you to plug into their modem and it gives your computer a public IP address. By installing a router between your ISP modem and your computer you can not only share your internet connection but you are also protecting yourself by not publishing your IP address to the internet.
   • A simple router is pretty inexpensive depending on the freatures that you get with it like wireless. NewEgg is a great place to find routers and many more computer items.
5. Disable the computer guest account
   • The guest account for windows XP professional is disabled by default but it is always a good idea to check and make sure.
6. Keep computer up to date with the latest Windows updates and anti-virus definition updates.
   • Windows workstations need to be constantly update in order to keep them secure. You can go to Windows Updates and get free Microsoft Windows updates.
   • Virus definition updates need to be purchased from the company
7. Backup important data
   • Backuping up data is not really a security item to keep your computer secure but more to keep you secure. Should your computer happen to be hacked or just crash if your data is backed up you will not lose your data.
8. Only download and install trusted software
   • One of the most common ways computers get viruses and malware is from software downloaded off of the internet. Certain programs downloaded from unknown sources contain viruses embedded within the program.
   • The best way to protect yourself against this is to not download software unless it is from a site that is totally trusted.

By following these eight steps you can significantly decrease your risk at being hacked or infected by a virus. The most important thing is to use common sense and you will stay protected.

Defragging and the benefits of defragging your pc

Defragging your hard drive will speed up your computer if you have a lot of fragmented files. Now let me try and explain fragmented files a little be before I continue.

First think of your hard drive as a book where the writer does not leave any room for addition in chapters. As soon as he finishes writing a chapter he picks up on the next chapter on the next line. So if he needs to make additions to a chapter that he has already written he will have to add it to the very end and update his table of contents so you know where to get for the rest of the chapter. Hope the made since!

Now you start a word document and you write about half of it and then close it and start an excel document, you save that and then modify your word document again. The physical storage locations on your hard drive are going to be word->excel->word and our table of contents is going to tell use where to find the entire word document which is around the excel document.

Now that you hopfully understand that think of the reader or eye trying to read a document that the spread across then entire physical drive and you can imagine how it could take longer.

Defragging takes these files that are split up across the entire hard drive and organizes them next to each other so the eye doesn’t have to travel all over the place to access a file.

Phew! with all that being said you should only need to defrag your hard drive if you do a lot of program installs and unintalls or if it has been a year since you defragged before. Defragging never hurts your computer but be prepared to have it spend a good 4 hours defragging a large hard drive.

Now how do you defrag your hard drive, well that part is easy:

1. Open My Computer
2. Right Click on the drive you want to defrag, usually C:
3. Click Properties
4. Click the Tools tab
5. Click “Defragment Now…”
6. New program will  open
7. Select your hard drive, usually C:
8. Click the “Defragment” button

Your computer will now begin to defragment your hard drive, during this time you should not use your computer because it will be running very slow and you could cause the defragmenting process to run slower.

Well I hope this post will answer your question about deframentation..

Now Its Easier to Build your Own PC...

Most people have thought a one point or another that they want to build their own computer so that they can get a good computer for less expensive and get everything they want in a desktop computer. Building your own computer is not as hard or imtimidating and some people might think. You can purchase everything you from a single website and have it delivered to your home. In this article we will discuss bare bone kits.

If you have never built a computer before I would recommend doing a bare bones kit because most of the components that can conflict with each other are supplied for you. A bare bones kit is a cheap kit you can buy that will normally provide you with a case, motherboard, processor and power supply. If you get a kit like the Foxconn R10-S4 you receive a small case, power supply, processor and motherboard. The motherboard includes onboard video, onboard Network Card, USB connections, and PS2 connections. The best thing to look at in this kit is that you do not have to purchase a video card for the computer. After purchasing this bare bones kit all you have to do is purchase memory, and a hard drive and you are pretty much set.

Foxconn R10-S4: $119.99
WD 180 SATA HD: $39.49
Kingston ValueRAM 1GB: $20.99
LG DVD Burner: $28.99

o to build the above computer we will spend just over $200 and we can get a decent family computer that can be used for general purpose computing. You can already see that even using a bare bones kit you can build a computer pretty inexpensive just by ordering the parts online.

Once you receive all of your components for your bare bones kit you will open the kit and insert the hard drive into the supplied bay and connect the power cable and the supplied SATA to the 0 SATA port on your motherboard.  Next you will insert your Memory into the supplied slots on the motherboard to give you a 1 gig of RAM. Lastly you will place your DVD Burner into the slot on the case and attach the power and supplied IDE cable to the motherboard.

You now have a fully function computer with no Operating System on it.

Restoring Word files using Easy Word Recovery

Have you ever thought about restoring your lost files? With Easy Word Recovery this dream will come true. In a few quick steps you can retrieve any of your documents. It does not matter by which version of Microsoft Word they were saved in: Microsoft Word 6.0, 95, 97, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007 or 2010. This program can function with all of them, and not just work but fully retrieve them.


Results of work are almost better than manual restoration by a qualified engineer. One of the biggest advantages of Easy Word Recovery is that this program can retrieve files even on broken USB-drives and hard discs, which even Windows cannot recognize. The program can also recover documents from physically damaged discs.


The program has a simple and pleasant interface, what greatly simplifies working with it. Before data restoration you can look over the current document and decide whether you will retrieve it or not. After this task, restoration can be carried out. You can also compare results between files viewed earlier and the retrieved file so you can analyze completed work
Easy Word Recovery will retrieve not only the text data of file, but also all of tables or pictures that were in the file. This is very useful, when you are restoring some research or science work.


Another useful function of this programis the chance to retrieve not only damaged documents, but also the deleted ones. Reliability of recovering documents like these is very high.


Easy Word Recovery is a specialized solution for retrieving documents. That’s why the results work far better than any included recovery tool in Micrsoft word. This occurs because unique algorithms are implemented in this program. These algorithms are better optimized for data restoration than the ones which are used in integrated recovery tools.
Thanks to Unicode, Easy Word Recovery supports all world languages. This means that regardless of what language the file was created in, it will still be available after restoration. You can also modify, rename, or perform other actions with this file as though it were never damaged at all.


This program can be run on all releases of Windows: 2000, XP, Server 2003,vista, Server 2008 and 7. You can be certain of success regardless of your operation system. This program can work on all of them.


Easy Word Recovery has a very small size and does not demand a great deal of system resources. You can run this program on almost every machine and be sure that everything will function smoothly. The price for Easy Word Recovery is very reasonable. Comparing the program to competitors, the price is smaller, but this program has much more useful functions and functions much more effectively.


If you still have some concerns about purchasing Easy Word Recovery, you should go to our site and read reviews or consider downloading a trial version to make sure that Easy Word Recovery is the best recovery application for your documents. With this program, you can be relaxed about the retrieval of all of your documents and be sure that all of them are safe.

Some of the MS powerpoint mistakes that we often commit and tips to avoid that

A lot of times when you want to present, powerpoint presentation is used to help deliver your point across the audience. The audience will see your pictures and point over the screen as you talk.
As easy as it is to make a presentation for your speeches, it is also quite easy to make mistakes. What more you won't notice these mistakes because you think it is the right way to do it. In the end, these mistakes will just bore your audience and your presentation have failed.


If presenter are writing everything inside one slide, then that is a mistake itself. The reader is going to know everything just by reading the slides.If you want to do that then why not just make a video with word.That's the same as just writing the entire speech down on a blackboard and not saying a word.


Use as little words as you can or even just place one picture in one slide. This might seem weird but simplicity works. Then explain to them the meaning of the slides on your own.


Being consistent is also important in your presentation. You use Times New Roman in one slide, the next slide contains Calibri and the next is Verdana.
Who would love looking at that mess? Stick to one fonts only when you are presenting your slides. The size of the font should be large enough to the audience sitting far away can read your slides.
Keep to the same theme throughout your presentation. Don't confuse the audience by using different slides themes inside your presentation.
The developers put the transition animation there for a good reason. You can hide different points in a slide and reveal them slowly.
Sometimes, people forget to limit their animation usage. There isn't a single slide or points that have not been animated by them. Eventually the audience will get bored with it.
Use the transition animation sparingly. You can put a few in different slides and make sure it is quick and not flashy.


A lot of times after people finish their presentation, they do not spell check. This simple feature will save you a lot of embarrassment moment where you get corrected from your reader. Using spell checker is not 100% fool proof as you still need to run through your presentation again.
This makes sure your slides are in order and you know the flow of the presentation.
Hope you got benefited from this..

Setting up dual monitors for your pc

Setting dual montiors or even three monitors if very easy and doesn`t require much knowledge of computers.

 Setting up dual monitors only requires that you have a computer, two monitors, and two video cards (or a video card with two inputs). For the purposes of this article we are going to be using a PC with windows XP SP2 on it. The first thing we obviously want to do is me sure both video cards are installed in the computer and the drivers are installed. This is the most technical part of installing dual monitors on a computer. You will need to open the case up and install a second video card. Most video cards are either built into the motherboard or they are installed into an AGP slot on the motherboard. So your best bet is going to be to get a PCIe card because that is most likely the open port you will have.

 Now that you have both video cards installed, plug both of your monitors into the computer and boot it up. You should see the same screen on both monitors or one should be blank. Once windows boots up and you are at our desktop simple right click on an empty part of your desktop and choose “Properties”. Next you will choose the tab that says “Settings” and you should see both of your monitors represented there on the screen. Click the square that is suppose to represent the second monitor. Now you should have two options below that say, “Use this device as the primary monitor” and “Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor”. You are going to want to make sure that the first option is deselected and the second option is selected. Then click the apply button to make the settings take effect.

 Now move your mouse from left to right and see if it goes properly to the other monitor. If it doesn`t your probably have your monitors in the wrong positions. No problem, just go back to the two boxes and click on the box that is listed as 2 and drag it to the left of the box that says 1 and your monitors should be aligned correctly now. As you can see there is much more functionality here if you want to do more than 2 monitors. You can position them pretty much were ever you want.

Easily Shutdown a local or remote computer with Shutdown.exe

Shutdown.exe is included in pretty much any recent version of the Windows OS including Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008 and 7. Shuftdown.exe is a great program that can be used by system administrators to shutdown local computers through a batch file or even shutdown remote machines or servers using different switches.The shutdown command it typically stored in the c:\windows\system32\ folder as shutdown.exe.

Syntax:
Shutdown.exe [logoff_option] [/m \\computername ] [option]

logoff option:

• /i
  • Display the GUI (must be the first option)
• /l
  • Log Off. This cannot be used with /m or /d option
• /s
  • Shutdown
• /r
  • Shutdown and Restart
• /a
  • Abort a system shutdown (only during the time-out period)
• /p
  • Turn off the local computer with no time-out or warning (only with /d)
• /h
  • Hibernate the local computer (only with /f)
• /e
  • Document the reason for an unexpected shutdown of a computer

Options:

• /m \\computername
  • A remote computer to shutdown
• /t:(0-600)
  • Time until system shuts down in seconds. 0-600 (default=30)
• /c “Message”
  • An optional shutdown message with a max of 127 characters
• /f
  • Force all running applications to close. This will result in lost of unsaved data
• /d u:xx:yy
  • List a USER reason code for the shutdown
• /d P:xx:yy
  • List a PLANNED reason code for the shutdown

Top 10 Proven Ways To Protect Yourself From Computer Viruses

As more and more people are becoming comfortable using their computers at school, home or in the office it’s only a matter of time before they encounter a computer virus. Here are my top 10 steps to protect you from computer viruses.
Use a high quality anti-virus program. There are many different anti-virus computers programs on the market some of them are better than others. Look to reputable computer magazines or websites for ratings to help you find the one that matches your needs.
Always use your anti-virus software. Make sure your anti-virus software is always turned on and scanning, incoming and outgoing email messages, and any software programs you run.
Keep your antivirus programs up to date. Most programs come with a yearly subscription make sure you take advantage of the updates. More advanced programs allow you to schedule updates or full system scans for “off hours” like 2AM when you aren’t likely to be using your computer.
Keep your computer up to date. From time to time operating systems fall victim to security holes or issue updates. Make sure you check periodically to make sure you are running stable up to date versions of your software.
Backup your data regularly. Most windows computer users keep their documents in the “My documents” folder. This makes it easy to back up all of your important documents. Make weekly or monthly copies to CD or USB drives.
If you use floppy disks or USB drives on public computers like your school computer lab, Kinko’s, or even digital photo printing store make sure you scan them for viruses. Public computers are notorious for not being up to date and properly protected.
Be wary of email attachments. Treat any email attachment as potentially dangerous. Never open attachments from people you weren’t expecting. Also be careful of attachments from people you know but weren’t expecting. Many computer viruses replicate themselves by reading the contacts from an infected computer.
Use text email if possible. While HTML email is prettier and allows you more control over formatting it also can carry computer viruses. If you use text based email the only way to get a virus is by opening an attachment.
Use downloaded freeware and shareware files or software with caution. Try to download them from popular reputable sources that scan the programs before they are uploaded. To make sure you are safe scan the program before you install it on your computer.Always update your antivirus software to get updated with the most recent virus definition.
Be wary of links in IM or instant messaging software. Don’t accept invitations from people you don’t know and never click a link from someone you don’t trust, they can easily redirect you to another website that will try to install a virus on your computer system.