ComputerDumb.com

Posts Tagged ‘life’

This is the next in the series of “PC Snapshots” – short 2-3 minute overview of PCs that Ryan and I think are awesome. If there’s a PC that you’d like to see us cover, hit me on Twitter, send me mail, or leave a comment. We’ll try to get to it ASAP!

Today’s PC is the Sony VAIO SB.  I’ve been using one as my daily laptop for the last few weeks and have been really impressed – it’s a nice blend of style and performance, and on top of that, it gets upwards for 15 hours of battery … [Read More...]

You know that stereotype of the total loser from high school – busted glasses, craggy acne canyon of a face, every spoken word followed by a refreshing mist of saliva – who goes on to become rich and successful beyond your wildest dreams? Well, that’s the gaming industry’s past ten years in a nutshell. No longer is gaming that shameful hobby you mumble in between “hanging out” and “…uh, other stuff.” Now, it’s just something everyone does. With the exception of a few stragglers and the occasional re-emergence of Jack Thompson, gaming has finally arrived.  

In that spirit, we … [Read More...]

Previously, we showed you how to restrict logon hours, programs, and games with Windows Vista or Windows 7 Parental Controls. In this guide, we’ll show you how to do the following with Windows Live Family Safety:

• Download Windows Life Family Safety.
• Set up a Windows account for your child.
• Set up Windows Life Family Safety.
• Customize Windows Live Family Safety settings:
  • Restrict specific websites with web filtering.
  • Monitor online usage with activity reporting.
  • Manage contact lists to restrict/allow communication with contact management.
  • Approve/deny requests from users.
  • Set time limits for computer access.
  • Set Game restrictions by game/content.
  • Set program restrictions.

… [Read More...]

Download Windows

There are more and more people joining the ranks of FarmVille on Facebook every day. No one can get enough of this game and there are plenty of reasons why. In FarmVille, you can get away from the noise and stress of everyday life. Just relax, plant some seeds, harvest some crops – not a bad way to spend an evening. And as you do this, you’ll naturally advance in levels over time.

There may come a time, though, when you want to get a little more out of the game. Every time you move up a level, you unlock … [Read More...]

Now with fins!

Evaluating successive generations of HP’s TouchSmart series reminds us of shopping for a new car. If you fall in love and buy this year’s model, you must never, ever visit the showroom to look at next year’s model or you’ll be hit with a bout of buyer’s remorse faster than you can say “planned obsolescence.”

We’re not suggesting that HP is intentionally designing these machines to have a shorter-than-normal useful life or that it’s been adding frivolous features to new models; it’s just that the company’s engineers keep making design improvements that are significant enough for us … [Read More...]

Why Wipe Data Securely?

Whether you are preparing to reuse a hard disk for another operating system, clear off your junk shelves by passing along outdated drives to a friend or relative, donate an old PC to a charity or school, discard a too-small USB drive or flash memory card, or repurpose an SSD, you don’t want to leave any information on the storage device. With stories abounding of identity theft aided by information lifted from discarded storage devices, you want devices you no longer plan to use to have no usable information when they head out the door. … [Read More...]

Why

If you are looking to make your own media center computer and are still up in the air about which software/OS you should use, an article well worth the time to read is: Which Media Center Is Right for You: Boxee, XBMC, and Windows Media Center Compared.

While there are lots more choices out there, the ones covered by this article among the most popular. Outside of the obligatory master “yes/no” feature comparison, each OS has it’s own writeup with the respective strengths and weaknesses outlined. In addition to the article itself, the comments are rather insightful and worth looking … [Read More...]

If you have the need for a dedicated file server and have some old equipment laying around, turn it into a fully functional file server with FreeNAS.

FreeNAS is an embedded open source NAS (Network-Attached Storage) distribution based on FreeBSD, supporting the following protocols: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, TFTP, AFP, RSYNC, Unison, iSCSI (initiator and target) and UPnP.

It supports Software RAID (0,1,5), ZFS, disk encryption, S.M.A.R.T/email monitoring with a WEB configuration interface (from m0n0wall).

FreeNAS can be installed on Compact Flash/USB key, hard drive or booted from LiveCD.

One of the great things about FreeNAS is that is supports … [Read More...]

This tip is geared towards servers, but is applicable to desktops as well in certain cases.

Whenever you shutdown Windows, a “stop” command is sent to programs and background services which are currently running. Typically programs will respond to this quickly and close, however services are a different animal which can take a while to quit (i.e. Exchange Server).

After waiting for a specified amount of time, Windows will simply force the program to quit in order to continue with the shutdown. To control how long Windows waits before forcing the service to quit, edit this registry entry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WaitToKillService

Note, … [Read More...]