Luckily there is a short list of simple steps you can take to significantly lengthen your computer’s practical lifespan.

01. Check what Programs are Running in Memory.
You can see a list of what processes are running on your system by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the Close Program dialog box. If you check your processes while all the other programs are closed, the explorer, system tray, and your antivirus program are all that should be running. If anything else is running, such as an antivirus sheduler, RealPlayer, or WinAmp, move on to step two, pruning your startup processes. If you don’t recognize a process, check Google. For a more in-depth analysis of running processes, try TaskInfo. TaskInfo is a supped-up version of Window’s own task manager.

02. Prune your the Startup processes.
This can be accomplished using the built-in MSConfig utility. Press the Start button, select Run, and type “msconfig” into the dialog box. Once the System Configuration Utility pops up, go to the Startup tab and unselect superfluous processes. If you aren’t certain what processes are necessary and which and aren’t, just remember that Google is your friend. If you want to simplify this step, if you’re working with a large number of computer, or if you’re a real novice, I suggest you download StartupList. StartupList gives you a much deeper look into Window’s processes, which also makes it useful in finding and removing spyware and viruses.

03. Deactivated your Active Desktop.
Unless you have a vital reason for running an active desktop, such as needing a stock ticker, it’s just eating up memory. To disable the active desktop, right-click on the desktop, right click Properties, click the Desktop tab, click the Customize Desktop button, click the Web tab, and make sure all of the check boxes in the window are un-checked. If you’re running an active desktop just to display .gif or .jpg files, you might want to try Panorama 32, a very simple utility for displaying and rotating desktops.

04. Clean up your Desktop.
Every time you boot your computer, the computer checks the contents of every drive you’re created a shortcut to, whether it’s on your desktop or quick launch bar. Removing these short cuts will shave whole seconds off your boot time.

05. Increase the Priority of Important Programs.
If there is one particular program that you’re attempting to optimize your system for, such as a video game of particularly intense bit of processing, such as a password brute forcer, set that program’s priority to either High or Realtime in your Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del while the program is running, selecting the Processes tab, and right-clicking on the process associated with the desired program. Use this care, prioritizing too many programs will severely slow your system down.

06. Deactivate Sound Effects.
To do so, go to the Control Panel, select Sounds and Multimedia, select Schemes, and choose No Sounds. Doing so may help increase the response time between clicking an icon and its associated program’s launch.

07. Remove Window’s Backdoor Communications.
Use Xpy to disable Window’s native ability to covertly connect the internet through Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and Windows Messenger. It prevents background processes from cutting into your Internet connection and processing speed when you need them the most.

Steps one through seven are all one-shot fixes for speeding up you system’s performance. The following steps are all regular maintenance that should be performed on a regular basis. Depending on how heavily you use your system, consider doing the following on at least a monthly basis:

08. Regularly clear temporary files.
Ccleaner is a great utility for getting this job done.

09. Regularly compress infrequently used files.
Do this by running your Clean Manager, either by hitting the Start button, selecting Accessories, selecting “System Tools”, then selecting “Disk Cleanup”.

10. Regularly Defragment your Hard Drive.
Leave your hard drive to defragment over night on a regular basis. If your hard drive is nearly full, you may need to run the utility from the command line by hitting the Start button, selecting Run, and typing, “defrag C: /f “.

11. Regularly clean your Registry.
The older your computer is the more necessary this becomes. Frequently installing programs for short term use - even spyware, then uninstalling them, can take a serious toll on your system’s performance. Create a store point before working with the registry, and utilities such as Free Registry Defrag and Registry Fix.

12. Regularly clear your Browser’s Cache.
In Firefox, select Tools from the menu bar, select Options, select the Privacy tab, and click Clear Now. If you’re still using Internet Explorer (you poor sap), you’ll want to use Ccleaner to get rid of all of those temporary files.

No single step here is going to magically turn back the clock on your system, but when performed regularly, these twelve easy step can drastically prolong your computer’s life span. If you’re still looking for more ways to pep up your computer, especially following a sudden slow-down, you may also want to try scanning it for keyloggers, spyware, viruses, and worms. But that’s an entirely different post.

It’s irritating to have to clear your browser’s entire history. Over time, you come to rely on the address bar’s auto-complete feature, but eventually, everyone gets a mistyped address lodged in their history. It pops up every time you go to enter the correct address, and it can become a real pain.

Unfortunately, unlike Firefox, Internet Explorer doesn’t offer an easy way to remove just one entry from the address bar’s history. Luckily, there is a workaround.

1. Begin by closing all your open Windows and programs, including Internet Explorer.

2. Click the Start button and select Run.

3. Open the Registry by typing “regedit” and hitting enter.

4. In the Registry, navigate to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Typed URLs” by clicking on the small plus signs next to the appropriate files.

5. Simply select the URLx in the right pane of the registry that represents the address you want to remove, such as “URL1″, then hit the delete button on your keyboard or select delete from the Registry’s Edit drop down menu.

6. You’re done! Open Internet Explorer and check to see it if worked.

Remember that anytime you work inside the Windows registry, you’re taking your system’s life in your own hands. If you’re a novice, you may want avoid tampering with this particularly sensitive area of your operating system. If you’re an advanced user, you may want to make a back-up before beginning your editing.

Of course, all of this hassle could be avoided by simply using FireFox. With FireFox, all you need to do is pull down the address bar, highlight the entry you want to delete (being careful not to click it), and hitting the delete button on your keyboard.

Artigo has just recently released an ultra compact computer kit about the size of your external run-of-the-mill USB hard drive, based on the credit card sized Pico-ITX motherboard. It features a 1GHz processor, support for 1GB of memory, four USB ports, audio ports, a LAN port, and a VGA port. You provide your own hard drive, keyboard, mouse, and RAM, along with all assembly. The entire kit cost only US$300, meaning that it offers the prudent shopper the opportunity to assemble a fairly decent machine for well under US$500.

The machine is so small that PC World author Tom Mainelli notes it’s potential to fit in the 5.25-inch drive bay of traditional computers, which is, in itself, an exciting possibility. The ability to run one computer within another with the two linked via ethernet or USB is certain to lead a wide range of hacks.

Check the kit out for yourself at the Via website.

1. Sunshine is not your friend.

Don’t bother trying to dial from that sunny beach. It’ll be a wash out. Of course you can always turn the screen brightness up full and watch your battery life plummet.

2. Grease is your enemy.

 Get yourself a good cleaning cloth immediately because you’ll need it. How do the the words ‘smear & smudge’ sound? I recommend Calotherm (www.calotherm.co.uk/branded/index.htm).

3. Fat fingers fumble.

 Get used to mis-hitting keys if you’ve got stubby fingers. It’s fair to say that touchscreens don’t like chubby people.

4. Pockets get picky.

 From now on your pocket holds one device only. Forget about throwing your keys, coins and assorted knick-knacks in with your new touchscreen gizmo, because that’s a recipe for disaster. Scratch, crack or worse.

 5. Resolution, what resolution?

 Prepare yourself for lots of repeated key presses. Stylii or fingertips will both need lots of work to select the thing you want first time. Patience is a virtue eh?

 6. Forget about one hand SMS texting.

 Your new screen needs two handed love for any form of complex text input, stylus or no. Live with it.

 7. Screen protectors have a price.

 Remember that glare washout and grease smear? Add on a screen protector sheet and watch the problems triple in intensity. Safety costs, people.

8. Trapped dirt hurts.

 Bad luck if you get dirt or dust trapped underneath the screen surround. You’ll recognise the symptoms of ‘touchscreen trauma’ when it starts selecting items for you by itself.

9. It’s complex baby.

 Touchscreens are very complex items. Unlike keypads there’s a lot of things that can go wrong. Deteriorating response, unruly calibration, lock outs. Be prepared for some interesting and annoying problems.

10. The eyes have it.

 Touchscreens give no tactile feedback, so you’ll have to look at the screen constantly to operate your device. No fast SMS texting on the move, no quick call from a single press of the green button, no dial by touch operations at all. Enjoy.

Bonus point:

Speedy it ain’t. All that eye candy comes with a speed penalty, folks. Clicking through a keypad sequence is always going to be at least twice as fast as via a touchscreen interface. Learn to slow down and smell the icons, why doncha?

Source: RedFerret

I stumbled across an example just this weekend, while watching old reruns of Blake’s 7 - the wrist communicator.

Here’s the Science Fiction, screenshots from the Blake’s 7 episode “Assassin”. In the screenshots give you a good look at the second version of the Blake’s 7 wrist communicator.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, Samsung has released a concept PC based on Orko’s hat, or more likely, given that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows is slated for release this summer, The Sorting Hat. There are no specs or details as of yet, but it sure is fun to look at the pictures and wonder what the hell Samsung is thinking.

Source: Akihabara News

AltaVista provides a simple demonstration of how much information about your system can be collected by a single webpage.

BrowserSpy can tell you all kinds of detailed information about you and your browser, such as the version of your browser and which formats it supports and doesn’t. Furthermore it can provide you detailed information about JavaScript, Java, Plug-ins, Components, Bandwidth, Language, Screen, Hardware, IP, Cookies, Web Server, and much more….

Privacy Analysis of Your Internet Connection gathers and displays basic information about your system, what operating system you’re running, your screen resolution, what sites you’ve visited, your general system setup, etc

Use Proxies
There are a lot of sites out there that list pages and pages of free public proxy servers. Here are a few of them:

Anonymity Checker

Atom Intersoft

Proxies4Free

Public Proxy Servers

Check your Proxy
Once you’ve chosen a proxy, your first stop should be at a Proxy checker, double checking that your connection really is anonymous. There are three types of proxies: Transparent proxies, from which the host is able to figure out your IP-address through the internet, Anonymous proxies, which do not send the HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR-variable to the host, thereby greatly increasing your anonymity, and High anonymity, which do not send HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR, HTTP_VIA, or HTTP_PROXY_CONNECTION variable to a host. Transparent proxies are by far the most prevalent of free proxies available. They are very useful for circumventing firewalls, but practically useless for hiding your real identity.

AltaVista Proxy Checker

Lagado

It should be noted that there are additional dangers that come with using proxies. The foremost of those dangers is that a hacker might be set up expressly for the purpose of harvesting the passwords you use on the sites you visit. Before using a proxy server, you might also want Google its name and address to see if there are any reports of hackers using it. It’s also a good idea to only use a server that’s been around awhile, because hackers are not likely to keep a server long without being caught or shut down.

Other Software
The Cloak - The Cloak is an advanced proxy that allows you to store your cookies remotely, so that you don’t loose any site functionality.

Hide IP Platinum - If you’re willing to pay (or download via bittorrent) for software, Hide IP is a convenient tool of automatically finding and rotating IP addresses as you surf.

Tor - Is not software to be used lightly. While it is free, it has been designed and maintained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to address serious social issues, such as maintaining the anonymity of rape victims in peer chat rooms. It isn’t simple proxy software, either, but rather, a robust solution for maintaining your anonymity in all internet communications.

Don’t log into search engines
If you log into a search engine, you make it easy for that search engine to compile a comprehensive profile about you. Make certain that you aren’t logged into any Google or Yahoo software, including IM’s or toolbars while you’re searching.

Block Search Engine Cookies
Even if you’re not logged in, most search engines can still track your search history and associate it with your IP address. You can prevent his by simply blocking cookies from the major search engines, such as (and especially) Google. Do this in Internet Explorer 7 by choosing Tools, then Internet Options, clicking the Privacy tab, clicking on the Sites button, entering Google’s address in the box, and clicking Block. In Firefox, you block cookies by choosing Tools, then Options, clicking on the Privacy tab, clicking on the Exceptions button, entering Google’s address, and clicking Block.

Change your IP address regularly
Search engines can correlate all your searches simply by keeping an internal log of your IP address. This can be prevented by simply disconnecting your cable modem for a few moments before re-connecting to the Internet. Your ISP will automatically re-assign your address.

Use Search Engines that don’t keep Logs
The easiest way to prevent Search engines from compiling a log of your wanderings is to use search engines that doesn’t retain a history of your searches. The idea here is that if the government subpoenas your data, there’s nothing left for them to get at.

IXQuick

Send E-mail through Temporary Accounts
See my enormous list of free disposable e-mail accounts.

In the last three news, MIT’s One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative has topped the headlines. Since the possibility of the public actually being able to buy one of the little beauties arose, people have been salivating. Two hundred dollars doesn’t seem like much for such a nifty piece of hardware, but can you realistically match that value at home? Tom’s Hardware Guide (a fantastic tech site) has come close. This week, they’ve featured an article walking you through building a $300 desktop, step by step.

The resulting desktop runs at 3.2 GHz, which beats my old laptop (which I still use to tinker with programming projects). I hope that they revisit the topic in six months. I would be interested in seeing the improvement in performance six months would yield.

The article is definitely worth checking out, and the site is worth a bookmark.

Fanboy FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt), it comes from all sides of the computing landscape. The three most well known operating systems, Microsoft Windows, Apple’s OSX and the open source Linux have been called everything and accused of almost anything you can imagine in one press outlet or another. Linux is lousy for games, Windows is a memory hog, OSX will force you get a Liberal Arts degree and recycle… but, I digress. We’re here to dispel the myths, not spread them.

Linux is great, too bad there aren’t any good applications
-or-
On Linux, you can’t open files other people send

False. Linux applications are plentiful, well written and widely compatible with their OSX or Windows counterparts. Microsoft Office files are easily opened by Open Office. Photoshop’s functionality can be found in The Gimp, or better yet with GimpShop. Audio editing, maintaining your mp3 library, file management, databases, instant messaging, personal information management, etc… They’re all available and, in the vast majority of situations they’re free.

Linux won’t allow you to watch your favorite video files.

False. Out of the box many Linux distributions have so-so support for common video formats but, did you know there are open source players which can handle almost anything you can throw at them? It’s true. Due to patent restrictions you may have to install them yourself but, fear not, there are great forums for popular Linux distributions and, installing an application under Linux is usually a snap. For Ubuntu or Debian users, check out Automatix, which will help you install a whole host of useful but patent restricted applictions and add-ons which make Linux a force to reckon with.

Linux doesn’t have a modern 3d desktop like Vista’s Aero or OSX’s Aqua

False. Beryl has emerged as a strong contender for taking the Linux desktop to the next generation. Check out this video to see exactly how cool your Linux desktop can be.

But, if I use Linux I won’t be able to run Word/Photoshop/Internet Explorer/____.

False. Crossover Linux (formerly Crossover Office) allows even the most neophyte of users to install their favorite Windows Applications and run them at full speed, right in Linux. That one application you need for work, school or, just as a matter of preference can be easily installed and working in minutes. For less than half the cost of a Windows license, you can have Corssover Office with a year of helpful support. Just check out the list of applications Crossover fully supports.

I can’t play Half Life 2, Prey, or World of Warcraft on Linux

False. Recent updates to Crossover Linux allow you to play your favorite Steam engine based games on Linux. So, fire up HL2, WoW or Prey and try to forget that you ever used Windows.

Source: DownloadSquad

There are any number of things that irritate me about IE7, but the most urgent complaint I have is the extremely inconvenient location of the address bar. In IE7, the address bar is at the very top of the browser, just beneath the title bar, making me feel as if I should be saying “excuse me” to the menu bar each time I reach up to type in an address, like I’m grabbing the butter at an over-crowded dinner table.

Luckily, while Microsoft software, like the Borg, may be ugly, aggressive, and utterly devoid of human sentiment, it is also adaptable. With a simple tweak to the registry, the address and menu bars can be returned to their proper order. Here’s how it’s done:

• If you have all the technical aptitude of Dr. Smith, you may want to backup your registry before trying this. As a matter of fact, if you’re old enough to have caught that allusion without checking the link, you may want to stop now…
• If IE7 is running, close it before continuing.

• Open the registry editor by hitting Start, choosing Run, typing “regedit,” and clicking “OK”
• Navigate the registry editor by clicking on the following folders on the right hand side of the editor: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ InternetExplorer \ Toolbar \ WebBrowser

• Make certain that the WebBrowser file is selected on the left-hand side of the registry editor.
• Right-click in the right-hand side of the registry editor and click New and DWORD Value

• Rename the new Value “ITBar7Position” by right clicking on the value that you’ve just created and selecting Rename.

• Double click “ITBar7Position”
• Enter “1″ under Value Data
• Select “Decimal” under Base

• Once you’ve reopened IE7 your menu bar should be back at the top of the browser, with the address bar beneath.

Warning: Serious problems can arise when Window’s registry is modified. When possible, back up your registry before making any changes, and be prepared to consult with an IT professional if you experience difficulty. Try this at your own risk!