Tutorials

Like chocolate and episodes of Mad Men, there's no such thing as too much battery life.

The tagline at OldVersion.com reads as follows: Newer is not always better. That's true of Coke, Star Wars movies, and software. If you recently installed a new version of a beloved program, only to recoil in horror at its "improved" interface, "better" features, and "faster" operation, OldVersion.com is the site for you. It's home to a couple thousand versions of nearly 200 popular programs, from AOL Instant Messenger to ZoneAlarm.

One great reason to network your business PCs is to share printers. Printers that connect directly to the network via ethernet constitute one of the most brilliant innovations ever. Simply plug a printer in and turn it on, and soon it is available to every computer on the network.

Panoramas--images that combine a series of photos into a sweeping vista larger or wider than what you could capture in a single photograph--are among the most exciting and unexpected benefits of digital photography.

The curse of being tech-savvy is that you're often called upon to help friends and family members resolve their computer problems.

My TiVo of choice is actually a media-center PC, one running Windows Vista and its aptly named Media Center software (a staple in the Home Premium and Ultimate versions). Part of what I love about it is the extensive library of third-party tools and add-ons. My favorite: Lifextender, which automatically removes the commercials from recorded TV shows.

My MP3 collection is about as eclectic as they come. I've got songs ripped from CDs, songs downloaded from countless online stores, and songs collected from, oh, let's say points unknown. Consequently, the volume levels are inconsistent across the library: Some songs are too loud, some are too soft, and some are juuuuust right.

One thing you should know about me: I'm no fan of Windows Vista. Some things about it just annoy me to death, like the unnecessary overhaul of certain interface elements. That said, Vista has a few features I positively love, starting with connection sharing. In other words, you can turn your Internet-connected notebook into a Wi-Fi hotspot for others to share.

There's nothing to calculating how many watts your PC will need to operate properly. You total up the power needs of your processor, your motherboard, your video and sound cards, and everything else that goes inside your computer, round up to the capacity of a decently-priced power supply, and there you have it. Of course, you have to know the power needs of your processor, your motherboard, your video and sound cards, and everything else that goes inside your computer, but what's life without its challenges.

Make your programs behave themselves.

Have you ever needed to combine more than one Word document into a single file?

The introduction of the MP3 player enabled people to play their music anywhere, but it has had an unfortunate side effect: Folks have sacrificed the awesome audio quality that the compact disc delivered in exchange for ever tinier music players, simpler room-to-room streaming, and the flexibility to buy songs instead of entire albums. So while the convenience of digital media just keeps getting better, the sound quality itself has suffered.

Theft comes in many forms, but it doesn't matter whether we're talking about your car or an old cassette tape of Frampton Comes Alive that you left lying around at work; you feel violated either way. Digital photos are no different. I hear stories all the time about people who post photos to online photo sites and later see one of their images gracing some stranger's blog. How can you protect what's rightfully yours?

I just spent a considerable amount of time troubleshooting a network glitch between two PCs on my network.

A lot of photos arrive in my inbox each week -- entries for the Hot Pics of PC World (US). I feel honored to be privy to so many slices of my readers' lives. I see artistically crafted vistas taken on vacation; silly moments with kids and pets; special events like birthdays and proms; and photographic experiments captured on lazy Saturday mornings. Sometimes the entries are even inspired by tips or suggestions from this very newsletter.