Use Firefox to Fix the Web's Biggest Annoyances

Friendly Computers found an excellent article about some small and simple tweaks you can do in Mozilla Firefox to fix some common annoyances on the Web. Read more below…

If you've spent more than 5 minutes browsing around the web lately, you've no doubt dealt with greedy webmasters assaulting their readers with awful ads and more—but Firefox makes it easy to take back control.

Blocking Unnecessarily Obnoxious Ads

Without question, obnoxious ads are out of control on the web these days—you can barely move your mouse across a page without ads moving around, popping up, taking over the screen or pretending to be a dialog window indicating impending doom if you don't pay for a system scan NOW. These ads can be put in their place easily, using everybody's favorite Adblock Plus extension. Lifehacker is, of course, an advertising-supported site—so we'd be grateful if you'd keep us on the whitelist—but it'll do a charm for those flashing, pop-up-ing, overlaying, obtrusive ads all around the web.

Turn Off Auto-Playing Sounds

As annoying as advertisements and blinking text might be, nothing is more embarrassing than heading to a web page only to have everybody around you hear donkey noises emanating from your speakers at some ridiculous volume. Thankfully Firefox makes this problem easy to solve—though you probably should still think about headphones if you are in an office (even if they're not connected to anything). You can block most auto-playing music and/or sounds with the Flashblock extension, but since people can still embed media directly in the page, you'll want to take a look at the Stop Autoplay extension for a tool that can address both issues.

Prevent Sites from Resizing Windows and Disabling Menus

How many times have you clicked a link only to have your browser window resized and moved to the corner of the screen, or right-clicked on a page only to see a message saying that the clueless webmaster disabled the context menu on the page? Thankfully Firefox makes all of this easy to disable—just head into the Options panel and head for Content -> Javascript -> Advanced and remove the checkboxes.

Disable the Blink Tag

One can only assume that the <blink> tag is the result of some practical joke by the nerds that created HTML in the first place, and Firefox makes it easy to disable. Just enter about:config into your address bar, filter for browser.blink_allowed, and double-click it to set the value to false. Once you've made the change you won't have to deal with annoying commenters that think they are funny, causing seizures across the web.

Disable Blinking Text in Firefox

Block Animated FavIcons

This is one of the annoyances that isn't terribly prevalent (yet), but if you frequently need to use a site with an animated icon in the address bar, it can become irritating very quickly. Unfortunately there's no quick config setting to disable the animation, but you can use Adblock to disable the specific FavIcon or use the FavIcon Picker extension to choose a new, friendlier icon for that site with the clueless webmaster.

How to Block Distracting Animated Favicons

Stop Pages From Auto-Refreshing

Whenever a web site wants to artificially increase their pageview numbers, all they need to do is set a meta tag in the page that makes your browser reload the page every x number of minutes. Sure, there are some legitimate reasons for automatic page refreshing, but if this one is driving you crazy you can simply head into about:config and set the accessibility.blockautorefresh value to true. You'll end up with a message in the page window saying that Firefox blocked the page from refreshing, but it's better than wasting your bandwidth.

Disable Automatic Web Page Refreshing

Click, Click, Clicking Through Multiple Pages

One of my personal pet peeves are those web sites that split up every article with a single paragraph on each ad-ridden page, and 437 Next links to click through before you can read the whole thing. The sad thing is that I'm only slightly exaggerating—it's a serious problem, but there's also a plethora of extensions that can help you deal with it. You can take your choice between AutoPager, Skipscreen, repagination, PageZipper, Unlinker, and even the Antipagination bookmarklet to load the next page inline without having to reload. Each of the extensions works a little differently, and none of them work as well as boycotting sites that are particularly hostile to their readers.

Greasemonkey and Stylish Can Handle the Rest

If you've got a specific pet peeve that isn't solved already, you can simply install the Greasemonkey or Stylish extensions and get to work customizing your favorite pages to work just the way you want them to. If you don't have the skills to create your own scripts, you can head to userscripts.org or userstyles.org for customizations created by the community—or take a look through our top 10 Greasemonkey scripts, 2009 edition.

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5349446/use-firefox-to-fix-the-webs-biggest-annoyances

Ten Ways to Upgrade Your Netbook

The small size of netbooks is both a blessing and a curse. It makes them extremely portable but they are also difficult to upgrade and you are limited to what you can do with them. Friendly Computers found a great article describing ten ways to upgrade a netbook, ranging from easy to expert. Read more below…

Netbooks are universally regarded for their portability, but no two netbook models are exactly alike, and each seems to come with different trade-offs. A netbook with a superior battery might have a horrible keyboard arrangement; a netbook with a solid-state drive might slip out of your price range; a netbook with a killer list of specs might be missing 802.11n connectivity. These are all common problems--and you won't find common solutions.

Due to their diversity, netbooks don't share common upgrade paths as typical desktop PCs do. Each model is unique in what you can do to it, and the exact procedures for modifying your device are as varied as the netbooks themselves. If you want to upgrade your machine, we recommend that you hunt down the instruction manual or, in the case of trickier upgrades, a community of users who can walk you through the process of modifying and hacking new functionality into your extremely portable PC.

That said, you can make a wealth of netbook customizations, and they range in difficulty from 5-minute routines to soldering-gun-based surgeries. We'll take you through some customizations for a Dell Mini 9, as it's one of the more tweakable netbooks we've come across. While your mileage (and procedures) will vary with your own netbook model, this guide will give you a good idea of the kinds of upgrades that could be possible for your machine and skill level.

Easy Upgrades

Insert a Better Battery

In our testing the Dell Mini 9's battery lasted around 3 hours, 34 minutes. That's not too shabby for a four-cell battery, but you can do better. Though you may find a few guides online that teach you how to create a laptop battery using a number of aftermarket batteries all wired together, that's a recipe for disaster. Instead, look to eBay: There you can pick up a 77-watt-hour, eight-cell battery that's entirely compatible with the existing connections (and size) of your Dell Mini 9. You'll double the longevity of your netbook--provided you aren't bothered by the unruly mass sticking out from underneath your system. To replace the battery, flip your netbook upside-down and move the two switches from the locked icon to the unlocked icon, and push up on the battery tray.

Upgrade the Operating System

If you want to install a new operating system onto your netbook, you certainly can: Just pop the CD in any external USB optical drive and install away.

Want to dual-boot your netbook? Grab the GParted utility, by downloading the .iso file for its LiveCD and burning the file onto a disc. Insert that disc into the external optical drive, restart your netbook, and jump into the BIOS to change the boot settings for your machine. Boot off of the optical drive first, and GParted will load. Right-click on the primary partition and select Resize/Move. Microsoft recommends at least 16GB of space for Windows 7; if you were hoping to use that OS but your netbook doesn't have that much room, your experiment ends here. For any OS, if your netbook does have space for it, enter a new partition size of your choosing. Click Resize, and you'll see the newly unallocated space sitting to the right of your primary partition in GParted's graphic. Right-click on this area and select New. Enter zeros for the 'Free Space Proceeding' and 'Following' selections, select Primary Partition under 'Create as', and click the add button.

If you prefer not to use an external optical drive, you can follow these steps for using GParted and installing the new OS with a simple USB thumb drive.

Rearrange the Keyboard

Is the default layout of your netbook's keyboard conflicting with the muscle memory you've built for desktop keyboard layouts? Pop an offending key off of your netbook by wedging a tiny screwdriver under the key and gently applying upward pressure. As long as the keys you're swapping around are of the same size, you'll be able to interchange them as you please. Once you've made the physical transformations, use the Sharp Keys utility to reassign how your operating system interprets the keystrokes. If you don't mind a bit of visual confusion, you could leave the physical keys exactly where they are and simply redefine their purpose with this helpful application.

Intermediate Upgrades

Upgrade the Hard Drive

What's worse: the underwhelming capacity of the typical solid-state drive that comes with a brand-new netbook, or the price difference you'd have to pay just to get a larger drive in your preconfigured netbook build? Here's a way around both of those nightmares. First, pick the lowest-capacity drive you can purchase when you're building your netbook on the manufacturer's Web site (or, if you have no configuration options, just buy the netbook as it is). Next, consult the appropriate user forums to get a sense of which aftermarket solid-state or magnetic hard drives are compatible with your machine. Finally, grab your screwdriver.

On the Dell Mini 9, flip the netbook over and remove the two screws that secure the larger back panel into place (since it's in the center of the netbook, it's hard to miss). Pry off the panel with your finger or with the tip of a screwdriver. With the Dell Mini 9's battery facing north, you'll see a set of four large electronic pieces inside the machine; those are the hard drive, the memory, the network card, and a blank space for a nonexistent 3G card. You'll see two screws securing the tiny flash-memory circuit board into place in the upper-left quadrant. Unscrew them, and the SSD should lift up a little. Pull it out, insert its replacement, tighten the screws, and your upgrade is done!

Upgrade the RAM

Did you know that memory is one of the main areas of a netbook where system manufacturers can jack up the price? It's true. Don't let a netbook maker empty your wallet by selling you RAM that you can find on the aftermarket for a lot less. In the case of the Dell Mini 9, we purchased the bare minimum of RAM necessary to complete the configuration: 512MB. To upgrade your machine's RAM, first open the back of the netbook and look for the memory. On the Mini 9, it's in the upper-right quadrant (with the battery facing north). On the RAM you should see its specifications. Either you can purchase the same type of RAM in a larger size (in our case, that came out to a 2GB stick of DDR-2 SODIMM running at 533MHz), or you can check the manufacturer specifications for your netbook to discover the maximum supported speed. You'd barely notice the speed difference between DDR2-4200 memory and DDR2-5300 memory, but there's no sense in maxing out with DDR2-6400 if your machine can't support its full speed.

To replace the memory, simply push outward on the two clips holding the memory in place near the notched groove on each side. The RAM will pop upward toward you for easy removal. Insert your newly purchased memory, push it into place, and you're set. When you start up the machine, quickly press the appropriate key to pull up the system BIOS (for the Dell Mini 9, it's the 2 key). Head to the main tab and confirm that the system recognizes the new memory. If it does, your upgrade is a success.

Upgrade the Wi-Fi

Upgrading the internal Wi-Fi capabilities of a netbook from 802.11g to 802.11n sounds like an easy task at first. In theory, it should be. In theory, you should be able to purchase any old miniature wireless card, pop off the back of the netbook, do a quick shuffle of components, and enjoy the increased functionality and speed of the new card.

Alas, in reality it isn't that easy.

For starters, just because a Wi-Fi card looks like it will fit in your netbook, that doesn't mean the card is compatible with the operating system/motherboard combination. But before we even get to that, there's the issue of sizing. When purchasing a replacement Wi-Fi card, you need to know whether your netbook can support a full-height or half-height card. To verify this, remove the back of the netbook and look for the existing Wi-Fi card. A full-height card is long and rectangular, almost like the shape of an SD Card for a camera. In contrast, a half-height card is stubbier--it resembles the shape of a CompactFlash card (or, for that matter, a full-height Wi-Fi card cut in half vertically).

Once you've figured out the available space for a new card, you'll know what kind of card to get. As for the specific brand of Wi-Fi card, there is no hard-and-fast rule to determine what will be compatible with your particular netbook model. What looks perfect on paper might not work at all with your system's configuration. Instead of using trial and error, take the time to run an Internet search for other people's successful Wi-Fi upgrades of the same netbook model. It's the only way you'll be able to know, with 100 percent certainty, that the card you pick up will actually work.

Once you've cleared that hurdle, installing the card is an easy task. On the Dell Mini 9, for example, first remove the netbook's rear covering. The Wi-Fi card is located in the center-right of the system; it's the card with white and black wires (the antenna) running into it. Gently disconnect those wires, undo the screws holding the card in place, and remove the card from the slot. Insert the new card, reinsert the screws to tighten it into position, and reconnect the two antenna wires--note, however, that the specific card you buy will dictate whether you should reverse the wires as compared with their positions on the original card. Depending on the size of the card and the configuration of your netbook's motherboard, you might have to remove a motherboard standoff to make for a solid fit.

If the operating system can't find the new card on the next system boot, be sure to install the drivers for the particular Wi-Fi adapter you purchased. You should be able to find the drivers on the company's Web site; if not, you might have to install drivers from a third-party netbook manufacturer whose product happens to use the same network card.

Overclock the Processor

Overclocking represents the pinnacle of system upgrades that an average user can perform without physically deconstructing the netbook. It's also one of the more dangerous upgrades for netbooks, given that these miniature systems don't come with the best cooling. In the case of the Dell Mini 9, the passive cooler protecting the CPU from thermal overload is no match for frequency tweaking, and it's probably for the best that we were unable to find a way to overclock this tiny PC.

Other netbooks are a bit more flexible in this regard. Owners of Dell Mini 10 netbooks can rev up their CPU through the SetFSB utility. Users of earlier Asus Eee PC models can pick up the Eeectl utility, which permits them to alter the frontside bus within Windows and, consequently, up the speed of the processor. If you have an MSI Wind netbook and you want to update the BIOS, you'll find that that company officially supports your overclocking habit. Still, these are waters best navigated carefully--or not at all, lest you turn your netbook into a doorstop.

Extreme Upgrades

Some of the crazier upgrades you can perform on netbooks, including the Dell Mini 9, are detailed enough to warrant their own multipage articles. While we can't list every step along the way, we can at least show you the possibilities that await should you choose to pick up a soldering iron and venture into the world of electronic mischief.

Add a Touchscreen

First up is the process of replacing your netbook's ordinary screen with a touchscreen. Prior to the invention of handy, all-in-one, no-soldering-required kits, this process used to require extreme care, patience, and the cash to repurchase a machine should your connections not be as precise as they needed to be. Thankfully, online you can now find a variety of kits for a wide range of netbooks that give you the parts--and, more important, the step-by-step walkthroughs--for this complicated procedure. While it still isn't an upgrade for novices, adding a touchscreen to a netbook has come a long way from the solder-filled days of yore.

Add a GPS Receiver

Inserting a brand-new GPS receiver into a Mini 9 sounds like an easy task, given the size of the device in question. Since it's no larger than a tiny flash drive, you would think that sticking this device into a netbook and finding a place to connect it would be as simple as plugging in a USB thumb drive. And you'd be right--but only about the first half of that process. The Dell Mini 9 certainly has plenty of room inside for an integrated GPS receiver, but unlike an average motherboard, the Mini 9's doesn't have any open USB connectors to simplify the powering of the receiver. Super Moderator Acabtp of the MyDellMini forum ran wires all around his Dell Mini 9 in search of power for the device, eventually finding success in connecting the GPS unit to the unused mini-PCI Express connector of the Mini 9's WWAN port. This is a tricky upgrade that requires some additional hardware hacking in order for you to turn the device on and off at a whim, but it's a small price to pay to have a hybrid netbook/GPS device.

Add a Drive-Activity Light

Everyone loves hacks that add a little more aesthetics to an otherwise drab machine. In the case of the Dell Mini 9, the netbook lacks a hard-drive-activity light on its front to let you know when your magnetic (or solid-state) drive is in use. Super Moderator UnaClocker of the MyDellMini forum went through the painstaking process of detailing exactly how to add an activity light to a Dell Mini 9 that has been upgraded previously with a RunCore solid-state drive. The procedure requires you to identify the exact pin on the SSD's controller that's responsible for the activity reading, solder a wire to the resistor, and then solder the other end of the wire to a resistor that's attached to an LED. You then have to find a way to install the LED into the Dell--UnaClocker put it in the battery-notification area--in order to achieve the blinking effect.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/170695-3/ten_ways_to_upgrade_your_netbook.html

Clean Your Vista Drive in Four Easy Steps

Are you running out of space on your hard drive? Friendly Computers found some handy tips for cleaning up your hard drive and freeing up space. Read more below…

Check Folders Manually

The best way to find and purge large files is to search for them. A good place to start is a manual search through your most commonly used folders: The Documents, Music, and Photos folders usually house most of the bigger files on your computer. The default view in Windows does not include a Size header, however, so right-click on the headers (Name, Date Modified, etc.) and select Size. Now, click the Size header to sort by file size. Use CTRL-click to select multiple files that you want to delete, and press Delete. (And remember to empty the recycle bin to remove them completely.)

Use Advanced Search
A better way to find disk-hogging files is Click Start | Computer, then press CTRL-F to perform an automatic search. Click the down arrow next to Advanced Search on the top right, then select the "is greater than" option next to the Size field.

Type a large number in the field. For example, if you type 1,000,000 (that's about 1MB) you will only see files bigger than that, and can delete them right from the search window. Type a larger number to see fewer files should your results come back overly cluttered, and then remove the big culprits. Again, note that when you delete files they go to the Recycle Bin, which you then have to empty to get rid of the files forever.

Also, be sure to use the Search Tools button (it shows up in the results pane, right below the search pane), then click Search options, and check the options to include system files and ZIP/compressed files in the results. Click OK.

Find and Remove Pesky Temp Files
In Vista, there's a quick way to find the Temp folder and remove the files. Just go to Start, type Temp, and press Enter. Normally, you can just select all (CTRL-A) and delete these files. If you are concerned about keeping any temp files, you can make a backup by copying them to a USB drive first, then deleting. Temp files are the remains of partially downloaded files, detritus from installing software, or leftovers from a Web browser.

Move Your Files
One last option for the files you really do need—but don't necessarily need to keep on your local C: drive—is to move them to a network drive or a USB key. This is a great way to de-clutter, because you can be a little more aggressive about removing files you think you may need, with the assurance that you are still retaining them.

Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2350362,00.asp

Check If Your Must-Have Applications Are Snow Leopard-Compatible

With the upcoming release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, it can be expected that some applications may not work properly. Friendly Computers advises you to make a backup before installing the upgrade, as well as checking out this application compatibility list to see which apps will and will not work with Snow Leopard. Read more below…

Apple's latest $29 update to OS X Snow Leopard ships this Friday—but will all of your essential applications run when you install it? This application compatibility list is a good place to find out.

I've been running various builds of the Snow Leopard preview for months now, and every single one of my most important applications (with the exception of one*) is working just fine.

* I happen to use an abandoned beta of Synergy KM to share my mouse and keyboard between my PC and Mac, and its System Preferences pane requires a restart every once in awhile to get it to connect. Overall, a minor annoyance for other worthy updates.

Notable non-compatible apps to look out for from the list: Adobe CS2 Suite, Adobe Photoshop Elements, CoverSutra, Cyberduck, (maybe) Disk Inventory X, Disk Warrior, and (maybe) Google Gears. (Google Gears occasionally does this weird thing where it launches a virtual disk and then closes it again; otherwise it has worked for me. Disk Inventory X also works for me, albeit slowly, in build 10A421a of Snow Leopard.)

Source: http://lifehacker.com/5345306/check-if-your-must+have-applications-are-snow-leopard+compatible

How to Buy a Back-to-School PC

With the new school year just around the corner, it may be time to invest in a new computer. Friendly Computers found a guide to finding the perfect back-to-school PC for your child (or yourself, for the college students out there). Read more below…

So your favorite student is going back to school in a few weeks, and the PC that he or she have been using is either ready for the scrap heap or is being passed down to younger siblings. What should you look for in a new desktop PC? It depends partly on the price and partly on the form factor, but these days you can get the kids outfitted for way below the $2,500 that used to be the norm for desktops just a few years ago.

Mac or PC?
Some schools require their students to have Windows-based systems, so their IT staff doesn't have to support other operating systems, but in general you can use Mac OS X or Windows (Vista or XP) on your computer. Linux is always an option, particularly in the geek quarters and the sciences, but be prepared to do your own tech support if you follow the penguin. Check Web sites like www.apple.com/education/shop or www.delluniversity.com for school-specific deals online, or check your school's Web site for the computer store.

But what about Windows 7, slated to be released in October? The majority of Windows-based PC makers should have an upgrade coupon in the package or on their Web site by the time you read this. If it does, I would hold off on the upgrade. Unless you school upgrades their PCs en masse over this school year, your school will be unlikely to use Windows 7 (if at all) before the 2010-2011 school year. The majority of your students' classmates will still be using Mac OS, Windows Vista or XP.

Check Your Curriculum: Needs and Wants
High school and college students will need to consider their curriculum needs when they make their computing choices. For example, the Liberal Arts student concentrating in Creative Writing will need a simpler PC than the one a potential J.J. Abrams successor would need in a Graduate Film program.

In a nutshell, consider the following when choosing a desktop for school:

1. Does your school mandate Windows XP, Vista or Mac? Buy with the herd if you need to; otherwise go with what you like.

2. Netbooks and nettops are fine for simple writing and researching.

3. The majority of "full blown" desktops are perfect for most students' needs. Find a dual core-powered system for the best balance between power and price.

4. Students in the Sciences and the Arts will want a quad-core system, for added computing power. High powered quad-core multimedia PCs are perfect for students that need to crunch a lot of numbers before their next study session.

5. Integrated graphics will be fine, unless your curriculum mandates a certain graphics card. For example, a card capable of running CAD/CAM for engineering or a high –powered graphics card for work in Adobe CS4. Your pre-term information sheets should point out the cards that your school recommends.

6. All-in-one PCs fit great on tiny dorm desks, can be used to watch movies during downtime, and have larger screens than almost any laptop.

7. Though it may be tempting, don't buy the cheapest PC available. Remember that "cheaper" PCs will feel "slower" before you know it.

Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2351372,00.asp

5 Surprising Green Uses for Cell Phones

With the growing popularity of apps, cell phones are becoming useful for much more than calling, texting, and sending emails. Friendly Computers found some marvelous “green” ways to use your cell phone that you may have never thought of. You can read more below…

Let's face it - it's a rare person these days who doesn't have a mobile phone as a constant companion. And while we talk often about cool green apps and ways you can use your cell phone for activism, there are a growing number of surprising new ways you can use your cell phone to be a little greener. Here are five off-the-wall things you can or will soon be able to do with your cell phone that'll make your life just that much more simple and green.

Deposit Your Checks
USAA is a bank for military service personnel and their families. Their Deposit@Home program lets customers deposit checks via images sent through their mobile service platform. Even though it feels a little sketchy in terms of security, it makes sense. Customers simply take pictures of both sides of their checks with the cell phone camera, upload the images into the electronic check deposit system at USAA, and then void the paper check after the deposit clears. It'll be interesting to see if other banks catch on to the system, decreasing the number of trips customers need to make to the bank. While it's ideal to participate in direct deposit in the first place for pay checks, this works well for the random instances where Aunt Maude sends a $15 check as a birthday gift.

Get Green Coupons
There's a growing number of ways to skip the clipping and get coupons directly on your cell phone, eliminating the need for paper and/or getting coupons specifically for green stores and products. Green Perks from T-Mobile will get you coupons for eco-friendlier products and services, and an app from Coupon Sherpa lets you search for coupons right in the store, letting you save paper and money.

Show Your Boarding Pass for Planes
Over the last couple years, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has been working on a way to let people use their cell phones to show their boarding passes at airlines. It's likely you're already familiar with the fact that on most airlines, we can check in early, print our boarding passes and skip the lines at check-in at the airport. Well, we are now able to skip the lines and the paper by showing our cell phones with the bar code displayed when we get to the security line. American Airlines has already extended the capabilities to several of its airport terminals, and it is becoming an increasingly popular practice, with Delta, Continental and others also taking part. Check with your airline next time you fly to see if you can get a 2D barcode pass sent to your cell phone, and eliminate the need for paper.

Take a Tour
Skip hopping on a bus or wandering along with a crowd during your next museum trip. More and more, tourist spots are providing tours via cell phone. You can often find tours online for city walking tours, historic sites, museums, and we recently saw the New England Aquarium launch a cell phone tour based around carbon footprint information. The organization murmur provides oral histories of different areas in Canada, based on calling a number posted on a sign in that area. Getting the interesting information you're seeking via cell phone decreases the demand not only for things like tour buses, but also for electronic devices that you can rent in order to listen to audio tours.

Eat
From choosing sustainable seafood to finding locally grown foods to choosing products while in the supermarket, cell phones are our friends for eco-friendly and healthier food shopping. We'll see more and more apps come out that will help us choose restaurants that use sustainable, organic foods; help us find farmers' markets with local seasonal produce; help us check out the farms nearby so we can see where our food is coming from. Cell phones will play an ever bigger role in how we eat.

Source: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/08/5-surprising-green-uses-for-cell-phones.php

Three ways to get more out of Google Chrome

Friendly Computers found some useful tips to get a better experience from Google’s Chrome browser. Read more below…

The browser wars are heating up again. Microsoft's touting the improved performance and security of Internet Explorer 8, dozens of new Firefox extensions are released every day, and, according to Apple, Safari 4 will be even faster than its speedy predecessor. Meanwhile, Opera just keeps chugging along at version 9.64, with version 10 beta 3 now available.

Just a few weeks ago, Google announced its plans to create an operating system based on Chrome. Considering that the browser itself is barely a year old, such plans may be premature. Then again, maybe not. But for right now, I'll keep looking for ways to make the Chrome browser more useful.

Last June, I described ways to change Chrome's default settings. Here's a look at ways to revamp the browser's interface and access some of its useful hidden features.

Themes perk up Chrome's drab interface
Google is famous for its no-frills look, which describes the default Chrome interface as well. You can spiff the browser up a bit by adding one of the 30-or-so themes available for the version 3 beta.

To add a theme, click the options button in the top-right corner (the wrench icon) and choose Options. Under the Personal Stuff tab, click Get themes, or just browse to the Themes Gallery.

Add a theme to Google Chrome 3 (the Glow theme is shown).

(Credit: Google)

If you get tired of a theme, either select a new one or reopen the Personal Stuff tab in the Options dialog and choose Reset to default theme.

Make the most of Chrome's context-menu options
At first glance, Chrome lacks some of Firefox's most useful options. For example, Firefox lets you view your recently visited pages by clicking the down arrow next to the Back and Forward buttons. You can get the same information in Chrome by right-clicking either button to see a list of the sites you've been to most recently.

Another handy right-click option is to copy a URL and then right-click in the address bar and choose Paste and go. You can also open a link in a new incognito window by right-clicking it and selecting Open link in a new incognito window. And like Firefox's Undo Closed Tab right-click option, if you inadvertently close a tab, just right-click another tab and choose Reopen closed tab. (You can do the same by pressing Ctrl-Shift-Tab.)

Useful Chrome keyboard shortcuts
I'm a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, and Chrome's got several handy ones (note that some of these shortcuts also work in Firefox and other browsers):

• Shift-Escape opens Chrome's Task Manager, where you can view the amount of memory and CPU cycles used by each open tab.

Pressing Shift-Escape opens Chrome's Task Manager.

(Credit: Google)

• Ctrl-Shift-N opens a new incognito window.
• Ctrl-B toggles the bookmarks bar off and on.
• Ctrl-Shift-B opens the Bookmark Manager.
• Shift-Alt-T moves the focus to the toolbar. Switch buttons by using the left and right arrow keys.
• Alt-H opens your home page.
• Alt-F4 closes the current window.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13880_3-10310703-68.html

How to Shut Down Your PC Automatically

Friendly Computers found an ingenious method of making sure your computer is shut off at the end of the day, which can save energy and money. Read more below…

It's very simple to make a convenient shortcut to shut down your PC, rather than having to press Start | Shut down, and depending on your version of Windows, Shut down again. But consider this: If you combine such a shortcut with the Windows Task Scheduler, you'll never have to worry about forgetting to shut down your work PC at the end of the day. This should be especially welcome news to IT staff managing an office full of PCs that may be wasting big bucks, not to mention the equivalent of millions of tons of carbon dioxide by sitting at the ready all night while the office is closed.

I'll walk you through Windows XP's Task Scheduler first. To get started, open Scheduled Tasks from the Control Panel, then double-click on Add Scheduled Task. Using the Scheduled Task Wizard, pass over the list of applications, click on the Browse button, and navigate to Windows\system32\shutdown.exe. Name the task and choose the Daily option. Choose a time of day you want the system to shut down (don't worry if you occasionally have to stay late; you'll set a warning and a fail-safe before we're done). The wizard will then ask for your username and password; you can fill this in or skip it—it's just there to ensure the process can run even if no user is logged on.

Before pressing Finish to save the task, check the box marked Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish. There's a tricky bit of business about Shutdown.exe—it will work only if you give it parameters. If you double-click on the program itself, nothing will happen. So, in the advanced properties dialog, in the Run box, append a space plus at least one item below from Menu A and any or no items from Menu B to the end of the shortcut.

Menu A

-s
shut down

-l
log off

-r
reboot

Menu B

-t xx
delay shutdown for xx seconds (Windows will display a warning box)

-c "Your text"
add "Your text" to the warning box

Before clicking OK to close the box, mouse over to the Settings tab and check the box Only start the task if the computer has been idle for at least:, and set a comfortable amount of time. Don't bother with the box about stopping the task if the computer ceases to be idle; it won't work in this case.

To set up a scheduled shutdown in Windows Vista, the process is very much the same. Instead of starting in the Control Panel, simply invoke the Task Scheduler from the Start menu (taskschd.msc). Then, in the right-hand pane, click Create Task…. In the resulting dialog, name the task in the General tab. In the Triggers tab, create a New trigger. Choose On a schedule, and determine the schedule; confirm the Enabled box at the bottom is checked. From the Actions tab, choose Start a program, point to C:\Windows\system32\Shutdown.exe, and add switches as you would for Windows XP (-s to start, and any others you want). Finally, in the Conditions tab, check the box marked Start the task only if the computer is idle for:, and choose a comfortable amount of time.

Note: Whether you're using XP or Vista, once the shutdown sequence is activated, there's only one way to stop it: You will need to launch Shutdown.exe with the switch -a (for abort). So as a failsafe, create a desktop or Quick Launch icon called something like "Cancel shutdown" with the target C:\Windows\system32\shutdown.exe -a.

Advanced Tip: Use Shutdown.exe over the Network
Finally, for network administrators, you can make a neat batch file to set up shutdowns for all the PCs you have access to. We're assuming you don't have Active Directory; if you do, you can use the graphical interface to accomplish the same. You'll need either the IP address or the computer name of each machine. (I wouldn't recommend using IP addresses if you're using DHCP instead of static IP addresses; with dynamic addresses you'll have to chase down the PCs on the network.) A firewall will foil the process, so uncheck "Enable NetBIOS" in the firewall's config screens or open TCP port 139 to allow yourself access.

You need two lines in the Command Prompt to shut down a remote machine. The first gains access to the PC:

net use \\ip address or name of remote machine /user:username password

If the username contains spaces, it needs quotation marks, for example /user:"Neil J. Rubenking". The second line is

shutdown -m\\ipaddress –s

Note: You can add other switches, as above. For a full list, type shutdown /?. You might want to add a comment along the lines of "Warning: System shutdown in 2 minutes. Save all open work now."

To shut down a group of PCs, create a batch file. You'll need a net use and then a shutdown line for each PC. Now you can use Task Scheduler to shut down the group at the same time every day.

Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2344002,00.asp

32- Vs. 64-bit: What's the Bottom Line?

Windows Vista (and soon to be Windows 7) come in quite a few different editions, and to make matters even more confusing, most of them have both a 32-bit and 64-bit version. What is the difference between these two versions? Friendly Computers found an article that outlines the pros and cons of running a 64-bit operating system. Read more below…

Ever since the first Athlon 64 processor shipped, buyers and builders of 64-bit desktop systems have waited for a mainstream 64-bit operating system. While they waited, Apple shipped partially 64-bit versions of Mac OS X, but of course only Mac owners could enjoy those. Meanwhile, Linux users could happily install any of several 64-bit distros on their systems. Finally, Windows XP Professional x64 arrived, and now Vista comes out of the box with 64-bit install discs. But should you use them? Good question.

The pros of 64-bit:
• Much larger address space. Add 4 gigabytes, 6GB, 8GB, whatever, and it's all available for applications.
• Most 32-bit apps run well—sometimes better, because each 32-bit app gets its own 2GB of protected memory space.
• Compatibility with existing and future 64-bit applications.

The cons:
• Driver support may not exist for some older or obscure peripherals.
• Older 32-bit apps may not work.
• You will need more memory, because of something known as "code expansion." The programming needed for 64-bit apps and the OS results in more memory being used by the OS and 64-bit apps.

Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2327903,00.asp

Prevent USB Drives from Spreading Viruses

If you have a USB drive that you use with multiple computers, it could be used to spread viruses and malware from one PC to another. Friendly Computers advises you to change your AutoPlay settings to prevent this from happening, and you can read how to do it below…

When you stick a thumb drive infected with a worm like Conficker/Downadup into a clean system, the normally handy AutoPlay feature launches the worm and spreads the infection. So, what are you waiting for? Turn off AutoPlay! Panda Security offers a free "vaccine" program that will turn it off. But you can actually flip the master switch without any utilities. Here's how:

On non-Home versions of Windows (for example, Windows XP Professional, Vista Ultimate):
1. Click Start, click Run, enter gpedit.msc (launch Group Policy Editor);
2. XP users: Open Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | System,
Vista users: Open Computer Configuration | Windows Components | AutoPlay Policies;
3. Find Turn Off AutoPlay in the right-hand pane and double-click it;
4. Choose Enabled and set it for All drives.

Or, in any Windows version:
1. Launch the Registry editor (Start | Run | regedit);
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer;
3. Double-click NoDriveTypeAutoRun in the right-hand pane and set its value to hexadecimal FF.

Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2343838,00.asp

10 cool things you can do with a USB flash drive

USB drives are mainly used for transporting data, but did you know that you can use them for much more than that? Friendly Computers found 10 other uses for your pocket-sized drives…

1: Run portable applications

In addition to storing your data, you can run portable applications from a USB flash drive. For example, OpenOffice, which is a complete office suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package, and database, is available as a portable application. Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are also available as portable applications. When you combine the office suite with the ability to surf the Web and check email, you’ll be able to take your most vital computing applications with you wherever you go — right in your pocket.

If that’s not enough, you can choose other applications to install on your USB flash drive from PortableApps.com. You can even install an entire prepackaged suite of applications that includes such things as an audio player, games, an antivirus utility, and a handy menu system.

2: Boot an operating system

If you want to do more than just run your own applications, you might want to consider booting an entire operating system from your USB flash drive. You can boot either Windows or Linux from a USB flash drive; however, the process is not an exact science and you may be in for a technical adventure.

Fortunately, there are some guides you can follow. To learn how to boot Windows XP from a USB flash drive, see the article Creating a bootable USB flash drive for Windows XP. To learn how to boot a version of Linux from a USB flash drive, see the article Puppy Linux teaches an old dog new tricks.

3: Connect to a wireless network

If you have a wireless network, you can use the Wireless Network Setup Wizard in Windows XP or the Windows Connect Now (WCN) feature built into Vista to save wireless network configuration information to a USB flash drive. You can then use your drive to quickly and easily connect another computer or a WCN-compatible device, such as a router or printer, to your wireless network. To learn more about using the Wireless Network Setup Wizard, see the Help And Support Center, which is accessible from Windows XP’s Start menu. To learn more about using the Windows Connect Now feature, see Windows Help And Support, which is accessible from Windows Vista’s Start menu.

4: Create a password reset disk

A password reset disk can really come in handy if you forget the password to your user account on a Windows system that is not a part of a domain. If you find yourself in that situation, you can use the password reset disk to reset your password and quickly get back into your user account. In Windows Vista, you can use USB flash drive rather than a floppy disk as a password reset disk. For details on how to do so, see the article Create a Vista password reset disk using a USB flash drive.

5: Boost performance

If you’re running Windows Vista, you can use a USB flash drive to speed up your system with the ReadyBoost technology. ReadyBoost can use the storage space on a USB Flash drive as an additional memory cache to aid the memory cache on your hard disk. And because flash memory is more responsive than a hard disk, with its physical moving parts, the memory cache provided by ReadyBoost can significantly improve system responsiveness.

Using ReadyBoost is easy. You just insert your USB flash drive into your Vista system and follow the onscreen prompts to configure and use ReadyBoost. If you want more details, check out the article How SuperFetch and ReadyBoost work together.

6: Manage it

If all you really want to do with your USB flash drive is transport data, and you’re running Windows XP, you can do so more efficiently with the Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager. Once you have installed this manager, you can easily copy files to and from your drive, back up and restore the entire flash drive to and from your hard disk, change the drive label, and even create an autorun.inf file to launch Drive Manager automatically when you plug in the drive. To learn more about and download the USB Flash Drive Manager visit the Microsoft TechNet Magazine site.

7: Use it as an MP3 player

Would you like to be listening to music when you’re using a computer at the office, but you don’t have an MP3 player? If so, you can use a USB flash drive as an MP3 player along with Windows Media Player and a set of headphones. Just copy your MP3 files to your USB flash drive, plug it into your computer, and direct Windows Media Player to build a library of the songs on your drive. You can use all of Windows Media Player’s playback features, such as playlists and favorites, to easily customize your music listening experience. And best of all, you won’t have to worry about running low on battery power.

8: Password-protect it

If you use a USB flash drive to transport sensitive data that you would prefer to protect from prying eyes, should you lose the drive, Rohos Mini Drive can safeguard that data. This security tool allows you to create a secret partition on the drive and then password-protect/encrypt that partition, thus protecting any documents you copy to that partition via the utility’s file manager. You can download (and read a review of) Rohos Mini Drive at Download.com.

9: Run a Web site from it

If you are a Web developer, you may be interested to know that with Server2Go, you can easily run a Web server that supports Apache, PHP, MySQL, and Perl right from a USB flash drive. You can use Server2Go right out of the box without any installation. It runs on all versions of Windows, supports most common browsers, and is completely free. To a developer, the benefits of having a portable Web server on a USB drive are numerous. For example, imagine being able to carry a live Web site demo into a sales pitch meeting. For more information about this package, visit the Server2Go site.

10: Lock your PC

Have you ever seen a movie in which a person in some secret government installation simply inserts and removes a card to log in and log out of a PC? If you thought that idea was cool, you’ll definitely want to investigate Predator (Figure E). Once installed and configured, this little freeware utility will allow you to turn a USB flash drive into a key you can use to lock and unlock your computer.

While the USB flash drive is connected to your computer, everything works as it normally would. Once you remove the USB flash drive, your computer is locked down — the keyboard and mouse are disabled and the screen darkens. To unlock your computer, you just plug in the USB flash drive and the computer will be unlocked and you can begin using it. To learn more about Predator, and/or to download it, visit the developer’s Web site.

Source: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=931

Solve Start-up Error Messages

Have you ever had those mysterious error messages that pop up when you turn on your computer? Friendly Computers found one useful trick to try and eliminate them. Read more below…

Reader Randy is suffering from a vexing problem. Each time he boots his PC, he gets a pop-up Internet Explorer window with this message:

"Cannot find 'File:///'. Make sure the path or internet address is correct."

I feel you, Randy. Stuff like this can be seriously annoying. My guess is that you recently installed or uninstalled a program that Windows is looking for--but can't find--during startup.

What you need is some kind of startup monitor that will show you everything that's trying to run during the boot process, so you can determine which Internet Explorer-related item is the offender--and then disable it.

If you're reasonably tech-savvy, I recommend Autoruns, a free utility hosted on Microsoft's TechNet site.

After running it, click the Logon tab and look for any entries that point to iexplore.exe. If you find one, clear its checkbox and reboot. Obviously this may involve a little trial and error, but it should ultimately solve the problem.

A similar, but simpler, approach is to run Windows' msconfig utility, click the Startup tab, and then peruse the Command column (which you may have to enlarge for full visibility) for entries containing iexplore.exe. If you find one, clear its checkbox, click OK, and then reboot.

Hope that does the trick!

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/168210/solve_startup_error_messages.html