National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation reminded us that it's not a good idea to let your pets hang around dangling cords, especially those carrying an electric current. Cats and dogs tend to chew on such things and, well, the results aren't pretty. Here's another tip: keep your pets away from power strips.

I had to learn this one the freakishly hard way when, earlier this morning, my cat Shizzle, who I may rename to Chev Chelios, decided to lay down next to my Belkin power strip. That usually wouldn't be cause for concern, except that he used it as a… [Read More...]

When I had Windows 7 installed, I noticed that the standard network icon in the task bar area doesn’t “light-up” when there is data throughput as I have been used to ever-since Windows 98. I suppose some people might argue that we have been spoiled a bit, but actually it gives you a sense of security when you’re busy working and you can see there is activity on the network when you expect it to be. Also, that is the quickest way you can see when something isn’t working correctly.

I did some searching on… [Read More...]

According to a memo received by Kotaku, the decision to pull the game was made “out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform.”

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Getting in shape is way easier with a personal trainer. Can't afford one with your financial aid package? No problem. A fitness app is a good stand-in, cataloging your calorie intake, monitoring exercise output, and setting you on the road for squeezing into some seriously skinny jeans.

1. GymGoal

WIRED Body map allows you to target and call up exercises for specific muscle groups and/or parts of the body, and see how many days where you worked those areas. Go deep (if you want): Log specific single exercises, or pre-programmed and custom workouts; track

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Manufacturer: SonyWired Rating: 6

For every one person looking for a crazy, pimped out big-screen, there are four others looking for a no-frills boob tube. Sony straddled that line with the KDL-40EX500. This 1080p powerhouse has all the motion-smoothing tech of its pricey brethren, but delivers it in a basic, financial-aid friendly package.

The EX500 offers few surprises in the looks department (See: black monolith), but still has quite a few highlights. An impressive four HDMI inputs make cameos on this bargain display, as well as a healthy helping of composite, component, digital and RCA A/V inputs. At

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Manufacturer: MicrosoftWired Rating: 8

When the Xbox 360 hit in 2005 it promised to revolutionize gaming. Microsoft got most of the way there (conceptually), but the original 360 hardware wasn't without its ... quirks.

Enter Microsoft's upgrade/redo, the Xbox 360 S. Not only is the chassis slimmer (hence that weird, floating "S"), but it's packed with a lot of the extras that used to be sold separately. The most dramatic change takes place under the hood. Redmond swapped out the 360's power-hungry setup with a much more economical (e.g. smaller) motherboard and an integrated CPU/GPU/eDRAM chip. On

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Come November, Hannspree promises to launch a 10.1-inch multi-touch slate with a capacitive screen sporting a 1024x600 resolution. It will come armed with Nvidia's Tegra 2 SoC with a pair of ARM Cortex-A9 cores clocked at 1GHz.

Like so many other upcoming tablets, this particularly one will run on Google's Android 2.2 platform with native… [Read More...]

Windows Forums member, shoby, asked the following question in our suggestion box:

I would like to see a review about Ready Boost in Windows 7.
Does it really help you out when you need some extra performance or does it just look like it helps you out ?

It surely can’t be like you actually went out and bought some RAM, but how good is Ready Boost actually.
Is it gonna help me out with the my daily tasks/multitasking.
TIA.

This guide answers these questions and offer suggestions to help you get the most out or ReadyBoost or the most… [Read More...]

"I can guarantee you people are going to be surprised at stuff we do. That isn't going to stop any time soon. I'm just laughing because... people will be shocked again," Valve boss Gabe Newell told PC Gamer.

"We have three pretty big surprises in the next 12 months at least."

Shocked, sure, but will we also… [Read More...]

The Radeon 5000-series has another major advantage over Fermi cards: They’re capable of streaming uncompressed high-definition audio from Blu-ray discs (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master… [Read More...]