MacBook Air

One of the most talked about Laptops on the market right now is called the MacBook Air. What makes it so popular is that it is the world’s thinnest notebook out there.

It is only .16 inches thick and it can fin within a manila folder. A plus side of the laptop is that is can be ran on a 64gb SSD which means it is basically running on flash memory rather then a HDD. What makes this laptop terrible is that to connect to the internet, you need a wifi connection. If not, you must buy an adapter. It ships with a 1.6GHZ processor with a 13-inch monitor. It only has one USB with no internal CD-Rom drive.

Great Deletion and Recovery Tool

First off, I wish to praise about the freeware software called Ccleaner. The C stands for Crap which means crap cleaner. Ccleaner does such a wonderful job in getting rid of everything. CCleaner websites states “It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. But the best part is that it’s fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!” It is great in removing all browser history, deleting programs at startup, doing registry scan, and cleaning your recycle bin.

The recovery tool, made by the same developers, is called Recuva. Ever empty your recycle bin when it contained something you actually needed? With recuva you can get that file back. It can also get files back deleted from your flash drive. This program saved me so many times which is why I highly recommend it.

·         Simple to use interface - just click ‘Scan’ and choose the files you want to recover

·         Easy to use filter for results based on file name/type

·         Simple Windows like interface with List and Tree view

·         Can be run from a USB thumb drive

·         Restores all types of files, office documents, images, video, music, email, anything.

·         Supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5 , NTFS + EFS file systems

·         Restores files from removable media (SmartMedia, Secure Digital, MemoryStick, Digital cameras, Floppy disks, Jaz Disks, Sony Memory Sticks, Compact Flash cards, Smart Media Cards, Secure Digital Cards, etc.)

·         Restores files from external ZIP drives , Firewire and USB Hard drives

·         It’s fast, tiny and takes seconds to run!

Download CCleaner

Download Recuva

Crack Windows Account Passwords

Many people wish to learn how to crack Windows Passwords yet think it is very difficult. Honestly, it is quite easy but this tip is for purposes of recovering your OWN password and not others. This should only be used in case you forget your password and need to get on.

Ophcrack is a cracker that uses Rainbow Tables. What you guys want is the Live CD version where you can just boot to CD and it will crack the passwords without any user interface. The Live CD can be found here. Once you open the page, just click the  ophcrack-livecd-1.2.2.iso. Once you download the .iso, burn it to a CD. Boot the computer to CD and follow the instructions and that’s it! It will begin to crack the passwords. Yes I tried this and it works very fast. There are limitations to it like it can’t crack passwords that are above 14 characters and doesn’t work on passwords that contain special characters. i.e. !@#$%^&*()_.

Hiren’s Boot CD 9.4

Hiren’s Boot CD is an all in one Dos Bootable CD. If you fix computers often, or want a bunch of handy programs, I suggest you download this CD right away. This CD comes with so many useful softwares such as partitioning agents, system performance benchmarks, disk cloning and imaging tools, data recovery tools, MBR tools, BIOS tools, spyware removal tools, antivirus tools, and much much more. What is even better about this CD is that you can boot to CD and then run an antivirus scan.

What good is that?

Say you can not boot to your computer as a result of a virus. Just boot to Hirens Boot CD and scan your computer to remove any viruses.

Download Boot CD 9.4

If you want another link just leave a comment and I will get you one.

Remove Norton Products

I can’t stand almost any products by Norton. Almost every product they produce is a resource hog and other programs can do the same thing yet run much faster. I say almost every product because Symantec Antivirus Enterprise Edition is a good product; however, items like Norton 360 aren’t. Also it is a better idea to run Norton Removal Tool to make sure you get rid of every piece of software so none of it is left behind. This removal tool is also good in case an installation gets stuck halfway through the install.

Norton Removal Tool will remove these–and only these–Norton programs:

· Norton AntiSpam 2004/2005
· Norton AntiVirus 2003 through 2007.2
· Ghost 2003, Ghost Version 9.0 and 10.0
· Norton GoBack 3.1 through 4.2
· Norton Internet Security 2003 through 2007.2
· Norton Password Manager
· Norton Personal Firewall 2003 through 2006
· Norton SystemWorks 2003 through 2007
· Norton Confidential Online 2007
· Norton Internet Security Add-on Pack
· Norton Save and Restore 1.0
· Norton 360

Download Norton Removal Tool

Edit Photos Online

A great way to edit photos is through Photoshop or Gimp but what do you do when you are at a computer that doesn’t have these programs? Easy, just edit it online. Two sites that are very easy to use for editing photos online is Picnik and Snipshot. Both sites are very intuitive and can be esaily learned in a matter of minutes. Additionally, you can do a wide variety of editing such as croping, sharpen, change hue, and much more. If you want to do advanced photo editing then these sites aren’t for you. However, if you wish to change a photo before you add it to myspace, I suggest using these sites because they can do what you most likely need.

It is really neat to use and a fun way to pass time. I really like the sharpen tool in Snipshot because of the detail that can be seen in a photo. Take a look and see what you can do with a simple website.

How To Download Myspace Music

We all know that there are thousands of songs on Myspace and yes we enjoy visiting the pages that contain them but we long for more. We long for the mp3s to download and listen on our computer. We do not want to go on the Internet to listen to it every time. To download any form of media from myspace, visit http://file2hd.com/?myspacemp3. All you must do is select the whole URL from the Myspace page, paste it into the white box, select I have read and agree to the Terms of Service, and choose the file type. In your case it will probably be music.

Whats great about this site is that it works on other sites as well. You can download videos from Youtube and Break with the File2HD site.

Auto Login In Windows XP

Now this is a easy tip that will take only seconds. Whenever you turn on your computer, you go to the login screen prompting your password and username. This is a security feature but what if you are the only one who uses that computer. This security feature then turns into a mundane task but luckily we can get rid of it.

Go to Start->Run Type control userpasswords2 . Select your Username and uncheck Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer and type your password twice in the new box.  Select OK and now you do not have to enter a password every time you turn on your computer.

Test Your Firewall

A firewall is a very important part of the security of any computer or network. A firewall can protect you from port scanners and hackers that can exploit an open port. By exploiting a port, the hacker can install malware applications and steal valuable information from your computer. I would recommend downloading another firewall if you are using Windows Firewall because this firewall is a one way firewall. In other words, it only blocks incoming connections and not connections going out of your computer.  a 2-way firewall can protect you from incoming and outgoing connections.

Now, it is important to make sure your computer’s firewall is up and running. An easy way to check this is to do a simple port scan that will notify you of any opened ports. Gibson Research Corporation offers a comprehensive port scan that can be ran right from your browser. It will notify you of hidden ports, opened ports, or blocked ports.

Create Your Own Windows XP

I stumbled upon a great piece of software called nLite.  nLite and vLite are freeware applications used to create customized installation Cd’s of Microsoft’s Windows XP, 2000, 2003, and Vista. So basically, if you have your own Windows Installation CD, you can customize it to your liking.

What Customizations are there?

You can almost fully customize it to your liking. You can add your drivers to it, delete Windows Updates, remove unnecessary applications and much more. You can reduce Windows XP consumption of resources by stopping unneeded applications.

If you wish to customize your XP use nLite and if you wish to customize Vista Use vLite. As a matter of fact, right now, I am using a customized version of XP to make it faster for gaming.

Download nLite.