Computer Realm » tips

Windows Explorer and Live Photo Gallery support RAW

Orrett — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 23:41:38 +0000

Up until now, editing, much less viewing RAW image formats were impossible in Windows Live Photo Gallery or Windows Explore. That however, has changed recently. Microsoft, who has been increasing the functionality of it’s Live applications, has of now added support for RAW images in Windows Explorer as well as Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Thanks to the new downloadable Camera Codec Pack, users of Windows Live Gallery can view and edit RAW photos. For the average photographer, this might not be big news, but for those professionals who use Windows machines, the inclusion of RAW support is a welcome as it makes managing and viewing photos on the fly an ease without the need to open Photoshop, Lightroom or some other program to do so.

The codec pack supports camera formats from Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Sony and many others. Unfortunately, you will need either Windows Vista or 7 to utilize the codec pack. The file size is 4 or 8 MB depending on if your system is 32bit or 64bit. The codec pack can be downloaded here. You can read more about the release at the official Microsoft Windows Live Blog.

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Re-Enable Windows Vista Hibernate Option

Orrett — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 11:42:48 +0000

If you have a Windows Vista based system, you might have noticed that your hibernate option has suddenly disappeared. Thankfully, there is a simple solution you can do to get your computer back to using hibernation regularly. This fix will require some command line use, but we will guide you through the entire thing.

Open the command line prompt by either typing “cmd” in the start menu or going to Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt. Remember to right click and “Run as Administrator.”
If command prompt does not navigate to your root C folder “C:\”, navigate there by typing “cd C:\” and pressing enter to execute.
Next, type “powercfg/hibernate on” and once again click enter.
Restart your computer and under shut down options, “Hibernate” will “magically” appear.

You’re welcome!

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4 Tips to Hide Your Online Identity

Orrett — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 12:06:49 +0000

Identity theft is becoming more and more of a problem, and with the increase in Internet users, unfortunately the numbers are going up and not down. If you would like to hide your online identity, there are some simple no nonsense principles you should follow. I will list four of the ones I and others I have talked to use. Just remember, it is almost impossible to be completely anonymous online, but you can follow some simple steps to make it harder for people to follow your online footprints, whether it be to steal what is yours or stalk you.

Share little identifiable information: Thanks to Facebook, which has been getting people in trouble since 2004, people nowadays seem willing to tell the entire world about their deepest darkest secrets. Do not become one of those, even if you have a private profile, you cannot guarantee that your friends profile is private or that they are the only ones who has access to it. Do not put your business over Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or any other social networking site. I am not saying you shouldn’t have one, but be very careful what you share.

Change usernames frequently: Using just one username or a variation of the same one is not a good idea. You can leave tracks for people to follow. Do not use the same username for every site your register for unless you want people to know who you are.

Change your language: Pay attention to phrases and words you use commonly. If you want to keep completely anonymous and throw of anyone trying to track you, try and change up your lexicon. It’s not a must, but it is added protection.

Delete unused online accounts: Have a Myspace or Twitter account you’re not using? Deactivate or delete it.

There are many other tips you can use, however these are some of the easiest and most efficient methods. Remember, the less you put online, the less people will be able to track your online movements.

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3 Causes of External HDD failures

Orrett — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 06:44:44 +0000

External hard drives, whether desktop or portable, are a great way to back up important files or add additional storage to any connected devices. However, when such a hard drive begins to fail, the ramifications can be serious. Fortunately, if you know what causes external hard drives to turn on their owners, you can prevent your drive from losing that all important data.

Probably the single most common cause of hard drive failures is abuse. Abuse can range from neglect, such as leaving the drive in extreme weather conditions (heat, cold, humidity etc), or physically damaging the drive. Whether a drive is in use or not, dropping a hard disk drive can damage it because the disks inside the drive can get scratched by rubbing against each other or the reader since the space between said disks are mere millimeters. Under no circumstances should you abuse your hard drive, unless of course you want it to fail. Do not drop the drive, leave it in hot, humid or cold weather.

Speaking of abuse, another issue that causes many drives to fail is moving the drive around while the disks are spinning. If you have the drive connected to a computer, more likely than not those disks will be spinning. It is quite easy to tell if information is being written to or read from the drive as the drive will generally make a humming noise or will vibrate when the hand is placed on it. Moving a drive around while the disks are spinning causes the same problems as mentioned earlier, the disks become scratch and eventually can become unreadable.

The third most common cause of hard drive failure involves improperly disconnecting the hard drive. Most naturally, the drive will either be USB, eSATA or in rare cases FireWire. Before you unplug a hard drive, be sure to safely remove the hardware through your Windows or Mac OS before disconnecting the drive. Not doing so can eventually cause the connectors to wear out. This means that the hardware interface of the external drive can go bad and the only way to retrieve information stored on the drive is to pull the hard drive out of the housing and hook it up to a computer.

If you notice that your hard drive begins to make clicking noises, it is a sign that the hardware interface is going bad or the reader is scratching the disks. In such a case, unplug the drive immediately to prevent further damage and seek out repair options.

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Tips on How to Type Faster

Orrett — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:45:33 +0000

Learning to type, for the most part, has become almost as essential as learning to write, and with the ever increasing presence of computers in schools, businesses and homes, being an efficient typist is almost as important as being an efficient writer. Especially for secretaries, students and other individuals who enter large amounts of data into a computer, being a fast typist is an essential skill. What we will explore are some ideas on how to increase one’s typing speed.

Probably the best way to learn to type faster is to get software that teaches you how to do so. We’ve all heard of Mavis Beacon, the fictional character who teaches typing on the award winning educational software of the 80′s, 90′s and 2,000′s. While very inexpensive, the software is single-handedly the most comprehensive instructional software we have seen. This software can be bought for $19.99 at most stores and best of all, the principles taught throughout the lessons are timeless.

If you’d much rather learn on your own, the first step is to get yourself acquainted with the keyboard. know the correct positioning of your right and left hands and know which fingers should hit which keys and which keys they should not. Once you have a good feel of your keyboard, the next step is to begin practicing.

As much as possible, try not to look down at your keyboard. Looking down at the keyboard gives you a crutch, one that can be hard to get rid of. If you need to, type at a slower pace while using the correct fingering. It cannot be stressed enough that using the correct fingering is the single most important step in typing properly. Using wrong fingering will slow you down, especially as you advance in your typing skills.

Practice typing at a steady rate. Short bursts of speed followed by slower typing slows you down. Learning to type steadily will not only increase your overall speed, but increase your accuracy as well.

Getting an ergonomic keyboard can also increase your typing speed and accuracy. Ergonomic keyboards are inexpensive for the most part and one can be obtained for less than $30.

Last but not least, make learning fun. There are many free online games such as Typing Maniac (a Facebook app) that is all about typing. Spend 15-30 minutes every day learning to type faster and before you know it, not only will you be typing a lot faster than you do now, but you will also be more accurate.

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8 Ways to Boost Your Battery Life

Orrett — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 07:39:13 +0000

After a while, all laptop batteries will eventually lose their capacity to charge. However you can greatly extend the life of your laptop’s battery by following some simple tips.

Defragmenting a hard drive is one way to keep your battery juice. When your hard drive is fragmented, needless to say, your CPU has to spend more time finding what it needs which means hard disks will be spinning more and ultimately drain your battery quicker.

If you have Windows Vista or 7, there are Power Management options which can customized. For instance, you can set your computer to go on “Power saver” mode when unplugged. Such a setting normally dims the screen and puts the computer on sleep or hibernation quicker.

Completely draining the battery’s charge is another good way to increase the battery life. The more you do this is the less capacity the battery will loose. Keeping a laptop plugged in all the time is one of the easiest ways to retard battery life.

Turning off WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, WLAN, 4G and other wireless settings greatly increases the battery life since most of these wireless settings are always looking for a connection, and the constant pinging and or searching of networks drains the battery.

If you are not using a program, exit it. Also, use the Task Manager to cut down on the amount of programs currently running in the background. Background programs not only eat up memory and processing performance, but it also drain battery life. On a side note, multitasking is a great way to drain battery juice. If you need to save those precious minutes of usage, monotask.

Turning off graphical effects such as Windows Aero features will greatly increase your battery life. Aero puts a load on the computers GPU which in turn causes the battery to be used more.

Sidebar and Widgets on Windows and Mac are another huge battery hog. Sidebar and Widgets decrease battery life as well as tie down the system and an overall huge CPU and RAM hog.

Last but not least, choose hibernation instead of sleep. When a computer goes in sleep mode, it still uses battery juice because it’s more like suspending system performance. On the other hand, hibernation essentially shuts off the computer while saving the current state (information in the RAM) to the hard drive.

There are many other ways to increase battery performance, but these are the most common and effective. Eventually, your battery will need to be replaced (most batteries last between 2-3 years), however, these suggestions can extend the overall life of your battery.

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How to Change the Drive Letter of a Drive

Luke — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 10:30:28 +0000

By default, drive letters are assigned to permanent and removable storage depending on availability. Driver letters such as ‘A’ are reserved for certain drives such as floppy disks but most of them are available and can be assigned to any drive. Sometimes, you might want to change the drive letter maybe because you use several removable or permanent partitions and would like to categorize them in a certain way or you simply want to assign a letter that usually isn’t used (the latter letters aren’t usually needed and so are not used) simply because you want to be different. In any case changing the drive letter is quite simple. Below I’ve described how this can be done on Windows 7.

Click the start button and type in ‘Disk Management’.

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Your first option would be ‘create and format hard disk partitions’. Click on it.

Right click a drive and select ‘change drive letters and paths’. It is not recommended to change the drive letter of system drives such as the C drive.

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In the new window, click ‘change’.

In the following box you can assign any drive letter from the combo box (unless they’ve been reserved by a permanent storage device).

Save all your settings and restart your system.

If you are on Windows Vista or XP, you will need to go to:

Start > Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management

Continue from step 3 above.

If you follow the steps correctly you will now have the drive letter of your choice for your drives. If you have any comments or ran into any issues leave a comment below.

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3 Excellent Ways to Export Firefox Bookmarks

Luke — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:09:04 +0000

Firefox is undoubtedly one of the best and most popular browsers available today as we saw in the ‘best web browser’ poll conducted on Computer Realm. For most of us, web browsing is an activity we conduct everyday religiously to stay updated, connect with people and for entertainment as well. All of this is primarily done via your web browser and with the overwhelming amount of content and websites available on the internet, the best way to keep track of them is via bookmarks. Bookmarks is also a matter of convenience especially when we can easily access sites we visit regularly via the bookmarks toolbar or by assigning keywords to your bookmarks. Thus, losing your bookmarks can put a lot of us in a tough situation.

You can save yourself the trouble by backing up or exporting your Firefox bookmarks. You might export them just to keep them safe as explained before, or if you’re migrating your data to another computer or if you’re reinstalling Firefox as well. If you heavily rely on your bookmarks, you might want to have access with them at all time so that if you’re surfing the net elsewhere from your personal computer you will be able to use your bookmarks. Below are some ways you can use to export your bookmarks.

Using Xmarks

Xmarks is by far the best method for any of the purposes mentioned above. It is a Firefox addon that lets you synchronize your bookmarks, passwords and history with the Xmarks server. They can then be accessed online or synchronized into another instance of Firefox and other popular browsers (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari) as well. The company was scheduled to shutdown but was thankfully acquired and active as before.

Using Firefox Sync

This is a relatively new (in comparison to Xmarks) addon that synchronizes all your data across your Firefox browsers. It falls short of Xmarks in that it does not allow you to access the bookmarks on a web based interface like Xmarks does so if you are using a public or shared computer the only option would be to synchronize the data to that computer’s browser and delete it afterwards (unless you don’t mind it remaining there), however it does offer synchronization of more data on your browser such as your preferences. Firefox has been made a native feature in the latest version. To get the best of both worlds you may use both services.

Using Firefox

The above two methods are automated, all you need is to set it up the first time and forget about it, however if you need to make a one time backup for some reason you can use this method. Firefox has long offered the option to simple export Firefox bookmarks from your bookmark manager. All you need to do is go to Bookmarks > Show all bookmarks (organize bookmarks in older versions) > Import backup. Here you can choose ‘Backup’ which creates a Firefox compatible backup file, or you may choose ‘export HTML’ which creates a basic HTML file which can be used universally.

Well there you have it, you may use any one of the methods above to backup your data. There are numerous other addons to choose from for synchronization of one time backup. A quick search in the Mozilla addons database should reveal alternative options. IMO, if you are looking to export Firefox bookmarks the above methods are sufficient.

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How to Convert Video to GIF Format

Luke — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 18:33:20 +0000

GIF files are an integral part of the internet as it is the only image format that allows lightweight motion pictures. One of its main uses is as avatars in social communities and forums. GIFs allow displaying dynamic avatars that can spice up profiles and interactions online however while it is a motion picture format they are usually not used to display video thus it does has its limitations. If you are looking to display a motion picture from a scene of an action movie you really like on a message board for example, you’re pretty much out of luck since videos usually aren’t available in GIF format.

Thankfully there’s a solution. I reviewed the freeware Format Factory and I had many good things to say about this converter. There’s yet another use for this converter which is to convert any video file to GIF. You simply need to follow these steps:

Install and run the software. Select ‘All to GIF’ under ‘video’

Select the file you want to convert to GIF by clicking ‘Add FIle’

If you want to select a range click ‘Option’

Once you are done adjusting your preferences click OK and Start to convert the video to a GIF file.

The conversion should be ultra fast since GIF images support only a few frames per second. If you are a Mac user you can refer to this guide. If you have alternative suggestions on how to convert videos to GIF please post it below in the comments.

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5 Reasons Your Video Card Overheats

Luke — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:38:08 +0000

one of the biggest hardware woes, specifically if you use your computer for gaming or other high graphic purposes is your video card overheating. Overheating can cause various pitfalls in terms of your computer’s performance the main consequence being permanent physical damage to your card. While in some situations the reason may seem obvious, sometimes it can be harder to isolate the reason, however in most scenarios you are likely dealing with one of these 5 issues:

Clogged fan

The main device responsible for maintaining a constant temperature of your video card is the fan present in the processor. If this isn’t functioning efficiently it’s quite obvious that it would result in your video card overheating. If you don’t regularly clean your computer, it could be highly likely that your fan is clogged with dust.

This is one of the simplest causes of your video card overheating which can be fixed by simply cleaning your fan, preferably using a blower.

Broken fan

A follow up of the previous point, in some cases your fan maybe malfunctioning or stopped working altogether. This could simply be diagnosed by switching on your computer with its cover open and checking if the fan is functioning. If it doesn’t happen to be working, you have your answer.

Overclocking

Pushing your CPU to its limits by overclocking can cause your video card to overheat. This can seem fairly obvious too as if you find your video card overheating and if you’ve recently overclocked your CPU, it would explain it.

Faulty Drivers

This is a rare cause, but depending on your video card’s brand a badly developed driver could also cause your video card to overheat. If you use an unusual video card with questionable reputation this could be the issue.

Inefficient Airflow

While your fan maybe perfectly in tact and working, the location of your fan also matters. If there isn’t sufficient air flow to your video card it can also cause it to overheat.

Those are typically the 5 main reasons to your video card overheating. If you have any other points in your mind, feel free to share them below.

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