Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
That old computer has made it’s final stand. You’ve tried everything to speed it up and exhausted yourself in the process. The day has come to upgrade to a shiny, new PC with all of the bells-n-whistles that will (hopefully) keep you chugging along the information super highway for the next few years. When you get that new desktop/laptop computer up and running and transfer all of your data over, you’ll have another big decision to make… What do you do with your old computer?
A quick search of the internet will provide you with tens, maybe even hundreds, of ideas for re-purposing an old PC, but time, space and/or a limited budget will lead most to the final decision of trashing that old PC. If you’ve come to this decision, then you have most likely asked yourself (and others) “what should I do with the hard drive?” No doubt you have heard the horror stories and rumors of information stolen from discarded drives and are aware of the potential dangers of simply tossing that hard drive out on the curb. Just in case you haven’t, you should know that throwing an old drive out is the equivalent of tossing out your wallet, with all of your credit cards and ID still in it.
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Tags: destroy, discard, disk, Hard Drive, information, personal, secure, Storage, wipe, wiping, zero-fill
Posted in PC Support, Security, Tips and Tricks | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
Several days ago, while reading random articles on Switched.com, I came across a post about a company by the name of fiverr. I only read the first few lines of the article before heading on to the next, but for some reason I couldn’t shake the idea. “The place for people to share things they’re willing to do for $5. Buy. Sell. Have fun.” This is the tag line that graces the home page of fiverr.com.
I found myself hunting for that same article again today and then heading over to fiverr to see what all of this was about. Honestly, what kind of craziness was going to be posted on such a site? Would people really use this? Could there be any value in buying or selling services for a mere $5? After 10 minutes on the site, I am still undecided, but intrigued by this concept and willing to give it a shot. I have decided to start a five dollar experiment, but first let’s look at what I am getting myself into.
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Tags: $5, buy, fiverr, sell, Service, web site
Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »
Monday, March 15th, 2010
Spring is here. It was a beautiful weekend here in Texas and I’m sure many of you spent time outside enjoying the sun, cleaning the yard, etc. While prepping your yard for the spring and summer is important, don’t forget that your PC needs some attention too.
In the rest of today’s article, we’ve posted links to the tools you need and a simple “5-Point Maintenance Plan” that you can follow to keep your PC running like new (or better). The average user can perform these tasks in 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the size (hard drive) and speed (RAM and processor) of the computer.
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Tags: cleaning, defrag, Maintenance, PC, registry, scan, Update
Posted in Free Programs, Tips and Tricks | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
Printing information from web pages has always been a hassle. You find a web page with some information you want to print out so you click on the printer icon in your browser. Instead of the page or two that you expected to come out of the printer, you get 14 pages of complete randomness with your information sprinkled in. 12 pages go in the trash, your wallet gets a little lighter from the paper and toner that just went down the drain, and a few trees scream somewhere off in the distance. If you are like me, you avoid printing from the web so you can escape this hassle and waste. That was, until the introduction of PrintWhatYouLike.com!
PrintWhatYouLike.com was created by two developers who shared our frustrations with printing from the web and decided to do something about it. The PrintWhatYouLike tool comes in several forms (listed below) and provides users the ability to choose what elements of a web page they want to print before the information is transmitted to their printer. Print a single paragraph, an article, an image or several pages of information. It is entirely up to you. This truly amazing service is provided to you for FREE, so there is no reason not to start using it today.
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Tags: Add-on, bookmark, bookmarklet, environment, Firefox, green, ink, papaer, PDF, print, printer, PrintWhatYouLike
Posted in Firefox, Free Programs, Tips and Tricks | No Comments »
