It’s been announced that US government is about to expand its scheme to get broadband and PCs into low-income households across America.  It’s a similar scheme to others that have been run and that continue worldwide.  As part of the deal Microsoft will provide $250 laptops and desktops pre-loaded with Office and Redemtech will offer [...]

Categories: Hardware, The Web

The insides of computers get dusty and grubby, it’s just a fact of life.  Running all those electrical components builds up tiny static charges which draw in dust that clings to the circuit boards and metal structures inside the case. There’s no way around this either as your PC’s case has to have vents and [...]

Categories: Advice

Operating systems and applications often save loads and loads of information, often without the user knowing about it. This can have privacy implications, considering that it may be possible to recover files, bookmarks or visited web pages easily. We have covered the topic before, see Used Hard Drives Still Haven For Identify Theft for instance. [...]

Categories: Advice

An experiment that began 10 years ago with children living in slums in India being given computers for education has brought about surprising results, according to the BBC. The computers were installed as holes in the wall, much in the way people would expect to find a cashpoint, and children quickly learned to teach themselves [...]

Categories: Misc

If you open Windows Explorer in Windows 7 you see a left sidebar with the items Favorites, Libraries, Homegroup, Computer and Network. This sidebar is called the navigation pane. Each item in the navigation pane can contain links to folders, drives or other computer systems. The computer section will for instance list all partitions of [...]

Categories: Tutorials Basic, Windows

Whenever I’m thinking of building a new PC I’m starting the selection process months earlier. I begin with an analysis of the needs, something that is often forgotten by users. What will the computer be used for? Will it be a gaming PC, office, photo manipulation, server or all purpose PC? What connectors do I [...]

Categories: Hardware

I made the decision last year to postpone the purchase of a new PC to this year. I’m in no hurry to buy the components and build the PC by myself but I figured it would be interesting for everyone if I would write a monthly post that contains a suggested build for the PC. [...]

Categories: Hardware

Have you ever wondered how and why your computer operates as it does? Why does it turn on and load the operating system? It is working because of the computer software that is programmed and installed in it. The program was designed to run your computer and any other program that is on it. How [...]

Categories: Software

It feels rather strange that Microsoft has never added an alarm clock feature to the Windows system clock as this would most likely be useful to many Windows users. A computer alarm clock can be useful for several purposes from preparing dinner to being reminded of appointments and other to-dos. The alarm clock software should [...]

Categories: Software, Windows