Since it is Earth Day I thought I would include a quick post on how cool Freecycle groups are. I doubt these groups will “save the world” or anything like that, they are pretty cool to join nonetheless. I have found some cool tech items and other items that come in handy for everyday living. If you are a geek who likes to hack and play around with legacy computers and video game systems then this is a great way to acquire them. One time a home owner gave away a brand new 52″ HD TV! I live in a rural area … and there is a lot of ground to cover so I am a member of two different groups in different nearby counties.
Basically you might find your treasure item or supply a treasure to someone else. I have found this is a cool way to network with folks about other things as well. The best part is the items are free and you are certainly not harming the environment by sticking what you consider trash into the landfill. You can locate a Freecycle group near you by clicking the Freecycle image below. Good Luck!
Also, make sure and check out my other “Green” tech posts:
Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs
LCD Flat Screen Monitors
Save Energy With Power Options In Windows
Have you ever tried to unzip a file to the Program Files directory in Windows 7 or Vista? You’ll get all sorts of permission denied errors, and generally be unsuccessful. So how do we open up the zipfile as an administrator? For that matter, how do you open any file as administrator?
If you’ve ever tried to copy a file that is locked by another application, you’ve probably seen an error message similar to “The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file”. So how do you copy it anyway?
Let me start by saying that I have no idea why anybody would want to do this, and it’s perhaps one of the most useless articles I’ve ever written. That said, if you’ve ever wondered how to remove the username from the Start menu in Windows XP, this article is for you.
I’ve got a Wacom drawing tablet hooked up to my computer, and ever since I installed Vista’s Tablet PC utilities, I’ve had this obnoxious onscreen keyboard on the welcome screen that just can’t seem to be turned off through any regular settings. So how do I get rid of it?
If you use Outlook and you’ve noticed it being excessively slow or just having errors, you should probably scan and repair your Personal Folders file for any problems. It’s sorta like checkdisk for your email.
In the pursuit for performance, making sure your drive isn’t fragmented is a regular task. The problem is that Windows XP doesn’t allow certain system files to be defragmented without commercial software. What about free solutions?
If you open up a lot of PuTTY windows just to keep connections open, you might be interested in an updated version that supports minimizing to the system tray. I find this very useful for opening tunnels that I wouldn’t otherwise need to interact with on the desktop.
As regular readers know well, I’m a huge fan of using AutoHotkey to automate my entire computing experience… but in Windows 7 and Vista there’s a serious limitation since you can’t run a script as Administrator by default. This means that your hotkeys can’t interact with windows running in Admin
If you can’t figure out how to turn on the Details or Preview panes in Windows Vista Explorer, you aren’t alone. This question popped up on the forum the other day, so I decided to write up the answer for everybody’s benefit.
I have decided that J River’s Media Jukebox is now my music player of choice. I did an initial review in a previous post. Now let’s cover the various features included in this application. Today I will cover how to rip you CD’s into your favorite format.
