Casey Tech

How to get CrashPlan to back up to a network drive (NAS)

2010-06-27T21:12:00.004-04:00

CrashPlan is a great backup program that has many great features. I won’t go into detail describing them all but I will point out that the one major missing feature is the ability to backup to a network drive (also called Network Attached Storage, or a NAS). After reading through many forum posts and seeing that CrashPlan has no work around for this I was able to piece together a solution.

IMPORTANT: This process involves running CrashPlan as another user and may mess up the integrate of your existing backups on the CrashPlan servers! I have not tested this solution with CrashPlan Central and I take not responsible to fouled up backups! Please read all of the following instructions before starting.

Update: You can follow the directions over at How-To Geek for how to easily make symlinks on Windows 7, Vista and XP.

1: Install Crash Plan

Download and install CrashPlan from their website. Once CrashPlan is installed and you make (or log into) a CrashPlan account you should see this screen:

Now you can close CrashPlan

2: Create a link to your NAS

Now you need to make a symlink on your computer the backup folder on your NAS. To do this first use Windows Explorer to navigate to the back up folder on your NAS. Then right click on the address bar and select “Copy Address as Text”

Now open a command prompt as an administrator and type in this command:

mklink /d “local\directory” “\\server\share”

So for me to make a symlink at the root of my C drive called NAS to the backup folder on my NAS I would have to type this: mklink /d “C:\NAS” “\\HP-NAS\Backups\”

Once the symlink is made you can type “exit” to close the command prompt.

3: Make a CrashPlan user account

Now go the the User Accounts panel in the control panel and click on “Manage another account”. Click on “Create a new account and and then create an account called CrashPlan (the name doesn’t make, you can make it what ever you want) and set the account type to “Administrator”. It has to be an administrator account because otherwise you will net be able to backup files within your user folder.

Click on the “Create Account” button and give the new CrashPlan account a password.

Next you need to click on the Start Orb and then on the little arrow next to the shutdown button and click on “Switch user”.

Next you log into the new CrashPlan account and then once the desktop is up you can log right back out and into your normal account.

4. Make the CrashPlan service run as the CrashPlan user

Now click on the Start Orb and type in “Services” and then click on the result that is called Services. Find the “CrashPlan Backup Service” and double click on it to bring up its properties dialog box. Click on the Log on tab and select the radio next to “This Account”. Now type in the user name and password for the CrashPlan Windows account you just made.

Now click on Apply then go back to the “General” tab and click the “Stop” button and once the service has topped click on the “Start” button. Exit out of the Service window and open up CrashPlan

5. Add Folders and Backup!

In the main CrashPlan Window click on the “Folder” button in the '"Backup Destinations” box. Now click on the “Select” button and select the symlink you made in step 2.

Once you add the symlink click on the “Start Back” button and it should look like this:

Now click on the “Backup” tab on the upper left of the program and click on the “Change” button in the “Files to Back Up” box. Now select the folders you want to back up and then click OK.

If all goes well then CrashPlan should back up with out a hitch.

I have tested the back up and restore and everything worked fine. You can now take advantage of the free 30-day CrashPlan Central online back up.

If this work around for getting CrashPlan to backup to a NAS has worked for you then please let us know by leaving a comment, no log in required! Or you can email us at CaseyTech@GMX.com !

Dragon Naturally Speaking Transcribe Error: “You must enter a filename to read from.”

2010-05-14T21:19:00.001-04:00

Recently I helped a friend setup Dragon Naturally Speaking on their computer so they could transcribe lectures and sermons that they’ve given. According to the Dragon Naturally Speaking website and Youtube, transcribing with Dragon was as simple as training the program and then telling it which .wav or .mp3 you wanted to have transcribed.

So I installed and setup Dragon Naturally Speaking 10.1 for my friend, I helped him train the program so it would understand his voice and then we tried to transcribe a recording he had made. I clicked on the ‘Transcribe’ button on the Dragon toolbar, navigated to the audio file to transcribe and then clicked on the second ‘Transcribe’ button. To my and my friends dismay we were greeted with an odd error message that simple stated: “You must enter a filename to read from.”

I played the .wav file and it worked fine so I tried to transcribe the file again and was greeted with the same unhelpful error message. After many hours of help file reading, converting audio files, YouTubeing, and Googleing (which showed only one unhelpful related result when searching the error message) I realized the cause of the problem. There was a semi-colon in the file name on the file to be transcribed. I removed the semi-colon from the file name, click ‘Transcribe’, navigated to the file, then clicked ‘Transcribe’ again and it worked!

If you are getting the “You must enter a filename to read from.” Error message, then try removing any characters and symbols from the filename and try again. I have only received the error when filenames have a semi-colon ( ; ) in them, but other symbols and characters may trigger the error.

If you have any questions or comments on Dragon Naturally Speaking, then leave us a comment below! Our comment thread is open so no login or email address is required! You can also send us an email at CaseyTech@GMX.com !

Download Marble Mouse Scroll Wheel Here!

2010-03-18T15:15:00.001-04:00

Marble Mouse Scroll Wheel is a small program for the Logitech Marble Mouse that emulates a scroll wheel. This program is normally hosted at http://simans.net/marble/ but that web site is down and I have seen many people on the Logitech forums requesting it so I figured I could act as a download mirror for the program.

You can download Marble Mouse Scroll Wheel from my SkyDrive.

If you have never used Marble Mouse Scroll Wheel before and would like to learn more about it, then you can read the programs description from Google’s cache here.

Note: This is not my software and I am not an official mirror for it. I am only distributing it because the original site is down and it seems to be abandoned by it’s owner. If you are the original author of Marble Mouse Scroll Wheel and would like this mirror taken down then please contact me at Casey-Tech@GMX.com .

4 Steps To A Faster Netbook or Laptop Hard Drive!

2010-03-05T17:08:00.001-05:00

When it come to data throughput, the hard drive in your computer is probably the slowest component in your computer. Most laptops have a 5400 RPM and some netbook hard drives are only 4800 RPM; the slower the RPM of the drive, the slower the drive can read and write data. The only way to fix this is to get a faster hard drive which is not an option for most people, or to have your hard drive reading less data when it tries to read and write data. The less data your hard drive has to read in order to do something, the faster it can do it. Normally to do this you would have to do use a utility like WinZip or Peazip and compress your files, but this is a hassle and makes you files harder to access.

All modern versions of Windows feature hard drive compression and unlike utilities like Winzip or Peazip, this compression is completely transparent to the user. Now, if you Google ‘NTFS compression’ you will see lots of results with people debating on how effective compression is and whether or not it it can make a difference in a computer’s speed. Well here's the truth: if your hard drive is the bottle neck in your computer (if your hard drive light is almost always on), then compression will speed things up. If your processer is the bottle neck on your system (if taskmanager shows your processer at 100% most of the time) , then compression won’t help.

The idea behind using compression to speed up your computer is simple when you look at it like this: The speed of your hard drive is measured in milliseconds, and the speed of your processer is measured in nanoseconds, which are smaller than milliseconds. By compressing your drive you can shrink the size of the data on it (say from 50mb to 15mb) which will speed up the time it takes to read the data. So to read 50mb of compressed data, your hard drive only sends 15mb of data to the processer, which then decompresses the data back to 50mb. The speed difference is really noticeable on slow hard drives.

There are 4 simple steps to speeding up your netbook or laptop hard drive.

1. Run CCleaner. This will remove junk files (internet history, temp files, etc) from your computer and will speed up the next step.

2. Compress your files. Click on the Start Orb on your taskbar, then Computer and then double click on your C: drive. Next select all of the folders EXCEPT for the Windows folder. Right click on the selection and select properties. On the General tab click the Advanced button. Check the box next to ‘Compress contents to save disk space’ then click Ok. Back in the properties window click on ‘Apply’ and then in the new window select to apply changes to subfolders and files then click OK.

After a few minutes you should get a warning saying that the attributes could not be applied to a file, just click ignore all. The compression process will take a while to complete.

3. Add Anti-virus exclusion. Any anti-virus software with resident protection will scan each file as it is read or written to the disk. This is good for catching viruses, but bad for performance. As you compressed you hard drive in step 2, your antivirus software should have been scanning each file for viruses at the same time meaning that if it didn’t see any popup warnings about infected files, then you should be virus free. I would recommend adding your ‘Program Files’ folder to the exclusion list of your anti-virus program. This will speed up the launch of your programs, especially executable heavy programs like GIMP, Photoshop and any video editing software.

4. Defragment. This last step is crucial. After you first compress your hard drive you will have a ton of fragmented files. You can easily get rid of the fragments by searching for ‘defragment’ in your start menu and then running the built in Windows defragmenter tool. If you’d like a nicer tool for removing fragments, I recommend using Defraggler. It is free and has a lot of handy features.

That’s it! Hopefully after doing these four simple steps you will notice that your slow hard drive isn’t as slow as it was. If you have any tips for speeding up your hard drive, then email us at CaseyTech@GMX.com with ‘Speed Up Hard Drive’ as the subject. Or you could leave us a comment below!

Fixed! Google Gears: Failed to load required resources Failed to enable local store

2009-12-21T18:46:00.001-05:00

Today I was playing around with Gmail’s offline mode and testing out Thunderbird 3 to see which I preferred for offline mail access when I temporarily disabled the offline mode. Once I decided on Gmail’s offline mode for mail access, I tried to re-enable it and was greeted with this message: “Failed to load required resources Failed to enable local store”. This means that enabling offline mode failed and I wouldn’t be able to use it for accessing my mail. After some Googling I found that this was a very common problem and often occurs when disabling and enabling offline mode. I couldn’t find a real fix for the problem, but here is what I did to fix it on my computer.

1: Make sure offline mode is disabled for your Gmail account. To do this, open your Gmail account using the “Offline Mail” shortcut that was made when you first enabled the offline mode. Next for to settings, offline mode and click on disable.

2: Next remove Google Gears access to Gmail by clicking on the wrench button on the right of the Google Chrome interface and then select options. Click on the “Under the hood” tab and scroll down to the Web Content section. Click the “Change Gears Settings” button. Now click the blue remove button next to all of the Gmail addresses. Click Apply and close out the options menu and then exit Chrome.

3: Delete your Google Gears profile. It should be located in “C:\Users\(User Name)\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Plugin Data”. If you can’t delete the Google Gears folder then open Taskmanager and make sure that all instances of Chrome have been closed. If you are still having problems then you may want to install Unlocker and use it to delete the folder. If you can’t find the Google Gears profile, then you may want to install the Everything Search Engine and then search for it.

4: After the Google Gears profile is delete, run Ccleaner with all of its options for Google Chrome checked. You can leave the “Saved Form Information” box unchecked.

5: Now open Chrome, log into Gmail and enable offline access.

Hopefully the above steps have helped you solve the “Failed to load required resources Failed to enable local store” error message in Gmail. If it didn’t but you found another way to fix this problem, then please let us know in the comments.

3 Easy Ways to Easily Remove Inaudible High Pitched Noise from Audio

2009-08-19T13:12:00.001-04:00

I recently heard of someone with a very unique audio problem. An audio engineer had recorded some live music directly to his computer and used an old CRT monitor to monitor the recording. Everything came out fine, but when he played the recordings back for review, his children said that there was a high pitched whine in the song that he couldn’t hear. Now instead of having a perfectly crafted song ready for sale, the engineer had to figure out a way to get rid of noise that he couldn’t even hear.

The inability to hear high frequency noises is called presbycusis. It is occurs naturally in adult 30 years and older and it means that you can’t hear anything in the 14 to17 kilohertz range. This isn’t a problem for most people because dialog and common sound are far below this range. Children, however, can here these frequencies very clearly and can be harm by them if heard in excess or at loud volumes.

Fortunately, most audio programs have handy tools to help combat this called a spectral frequency view. This view gives you a visual representation of the sound you are editing so you can edit with your eyes and not your ears. This makes removing what you can’t hear a snap!

In your favorite audio editing program open up the file that has the noise you want removed, then switch to the spectral view. You have to consult the program’s help file to find out how to do this.

Above is a the linear spectral view in Adobe Audition. As you can see, there is a bright horizontal line at the top half of the left and right channel. That line represents the high pitched sound that young people can hear but adults can’t. To remove the sound, use the marquee tool (the square made form dashed lines on the main tool bar, or just press M ) Then select the horizontal line in the spectral view.

Once you have selected the high pitched noise, you can use floating amplitude dial above the selection to turn the volume down to 0db, or you could just press the delete key on your keyboard.

After Audition finishes saving the undo data and redrawing the spectral view, your file should have a blank horizontal line in the top half of each channel.

To prevent getting inaudible high pitched noise in your audio files you may want to do some of the following:

Always use grounded equipment and outlets. This will prevent some noise from being recorded.
Use power stripes that have RF filters. These will also prevent some noise from being recorded. The faint dark horizontal line in the above spectral pictures is from the noise that the power strips I use blocked. You can buy some nice but cheap Belkin surge protected and RF filtered power strips at Google’s Product Search.
Use LCD monitors instead of CRT monitors. In my experience, LCD monitors don’t interfere with and type on computer based recording.
Use cables that have ferrite beads (the round cylinders that most USB and laptop power cord have at the ends). If you don’t have cables wit ferrite beads built in, you can buy ones that clip on to cables from The Shack, or from many on-line retailers.

Keeping your kids safe online is now easier than ever!

2009-05-20T18:14:00.001-04:00

Last year we mentioned Microsoft’s Steady State and how it’s simple imaging and rollback capabilities made it easy to protect your computer from your children, “Guest” users and elderly people. Today we will be highlighting another easy to use program that makes it easy to protect your computer and its users when on the internet.

K9 Web Protection from Blue Coat makes it easy to filter and restrict what websites can be viewed on the internet. It’s great for keep kids from stumbling on to naughty sites, for keeping web novices off of mal-ware filled site and for keeping employees from shopping, gambling, and from visiting Facebook or Myspace when they should be working. More features are explained below.

To get K9 Web Protection, go to the K9 website via the link at the bottom of the page, click the Download K9 Today For Free button on the left of the page. After getting a free license, you will be emailed the link to the program download. Once the program is downloaded, install it. You will be asked for the license key and to setup an administrator password. Remember this password because it is needed to update/uninstall the program, as well as changing its filter settings. After the installation you will have to restart your computer so the K9Filter can be activated.

After your computer is restarted you can start setting the web filter by clicking on the Blue Coat K9 Web Protection Admin button in the start menu. This will take you to the admin login page which will ask you for your admin password which you set up during the installation. Once logged in you can set up filters, manage time restriction, enforcing Safesearch on search engines, blocked keywords and more!

The first settings panel lets you chose which types of sites to block. You can block common things like porn, malware, drug and nudity. You can also block stuff like email, blogs, software downloads and shopping sites and even advertising! .

The Time Restrictions panel lets you set when you want users to have internet access. You can chose from unrestricted access; Nightguard, which lets you set when the internet turns off at night and comes back on in the morning; and custom which lets you pick what hours to to allow and deny internet access.

The Web Site Exceptions panel lets you chose which sites to allow or block by URL in addition to the filters setup in the Filters panel.

The Blocking Effects panel lets you set what happens when a blocked site is reached. If you Show Admin Options, you will have the option to temporarily or permanently allow a site after supplying your admin password. If you enable the time out option, when you can choose to deny web access for so many minutes if so many blocked pages are accesses with so many minutes.

The URL Keywords panel lets you create a list of key words to block in addition to the main filtering rules in the first panel.

The Advanced panel has the option to force Safe Search on search engines that support it like Google, AOL, Live, and Yahoo!. There is also the option to filter HTTPS traffic.

Whether for home, school, business, or library, K9 Web Protection is a great choice for free, advanced web filtering.

Bootstrapping: Sinclair ZX80

2009-05-14T20:37:00.002-04:00

The Sinclair ZX80 was introduced in 1980 and only cost £100. It was available preassembled or as a kit for a discounted price. The ZX80 had had a tape storage device, 1 KB of RAM and 4 KB of ROM that held the Sinclair BASIC programming language, and the operating system. Commands were entered into the computer in the same fashion as a scientific calculator, each key had a different function and could be changed by a shift key, of by the context in which it was being used.

The computer’s display shown over an RF connection on a normal television. The display generator used a mixture of of hardware and software to generate a signal. Because of the very minimal configuration of the ZX80, it could only show an image on the display when it wasn’t processing data. Running a program or even typing would cause the display to black out until the processor became idle.

Now You Can Fix Most Computer Problems With Just One Click!

2009-02-05T21:24:00.001-05:00

According to Cnet, for the past few weeks, Microsoft has been adding “Fix It” buttons to some of the help documents in the Knowledge Base. The purpose of the Fix It button is to automatically do the steps that are described in the Knowledge Base help article. This is great because if there is a problem that has to be fixed by tinkering in the registry or deleting system files, you no longer have to worry about accidently doing something wrong and messing up your computer. Just click Fix It and the problem is gone!

Currently the Fix It button is only on a couple hundred of the Knowledge Base’s thousands of articles. Microsoft is working fervently to have automated fixes; as this is up from just four Fix It buttons when the program started in December. The fixes available now include common problems like enabling the DVD library in Vista’s Media Center, speeding up Outlook downloads , and even download errors in Street & Trips 2008 .

When possible, Microsoft is even going to add a Fix It button into the error reporting tools in future versions of Windows. This is a great improvement from the old “Send error report to Microsoft“ option. The Windows 7 Action Center already includes the framework to offer automatic fixes when a user encounters a problem. In the future, Microsoft aims to have products that are able to spot problems before they happen, or offer ways to take action before problems happen.

It seems that with each day, reports of the new features of Windows 7 are restoring the publics confidence in Microsoft that was lost with Vista. If you have any ideas or improvements that you would like to see implemented in Windows 7, then email us at caseytech@GMX.com, with “Windows 7” as the subject. You can also get instant gratification by leaving a comment.

Find Deep File Paths in Windows Vista

2009-01-22T18:31:00.001-05:00

I recent had the fun opportunity of fixing a computer that couldn’t open files because the file’s path was to deep. For the many people who have not had this problem, some Windows programs can only handle file paths that are 255 characters or less. This means that some programs won’t able to open the following file “C:\Documents and Settings\Casey Tech\Audio-Music Files\Music\Archived Flac Files\Intelligent Dance Music\The Future Sound Of London\The Far Out Son of Lung and The Ramblings of a Mad Man\Disc One\03 - Smoking Japanese Babe (Live In South America -Argentina).flac” because there are 262 characters in the file path. The only way to file this problem is to find all of your files with a long file path, and then rename them so that there are 250 files or less

Unfortunately, I have yet to find a free program that can search for long file paths (However, long file name programs are rampant), but I was able to discover a simple way to find them using the command line and a text file. First, open a command prompt by clicking on the Windows Orb and then typing “cmd”and pressing enter. Next, input the following command and press enter.

dir c:\ /s /b > files.txt

Once the command is complete (it may take several minutes if you have a lot of files.), navigate to C:\User\(Your Name)\ if you use Vista or C:\Documents and Settings\(Your Name)\ if you use XP. Open the file called “Files.txt”.

Now for the boring part, scroll down until you spot a long file path and count the characters. My screen is 1280x800 and was 180 characters wide. I would recommend renaming any files with a file path longer than 240 characters. If your screen is under 240 characters wide, then you can easily just scroll down and until you spot a file path that runs off of your screen. If your screen is wider than 240 characters, then you may want to resize the window so it is narrower. Also, if you have a long list of files, you may want to use the page up and down keys on your keyboard to speed up the process.

Once you file a long file path, you can use Windows Explorer to rename the file, or move it to a different directory. When I found the long file path mentioned at the beginning of this article, I moved and renamed it to ”C:\Home\Casey Tech\Music\Flac\IDM\FSOL\The Far Out Son of Lung and The Ramblings of a Mad Man\01-03- Smoking Japanese Babe (Live In Argentina).flac” Now the file path is only 147 characters long and will no longer be a problem for any programs.

If you have any tricks for dealing with files in Windows, then email us at CaseyTech@GMX.com and put “Dealing With Files” in the subject line, or tell the world by leaving a comment.

Ubuntu Sets It's Sights On The Mainstream Desktop Market

2009-01-11T20:35:00.003-05:00

The New York Times has a very interesting article on Mark Shuttleworth who is the founder or Ubuntu. The article gives brief but through background information on Mr. Shuttleworth and Ubuntu, as well has his plains for the future of Ubuntu and how he thinks he could become a real competitor for Microsoft. You can read the New York Times article here and you can download Ubuntu, the free Linux desktop, from here.

Better Dual Boot and Easier Fullscreen

2009-01-09T18:29:00.001-05:00

Our previous article on How To Dual Boot Better has been updated with more information on how to mount hibernated drives. Also, the article on Better Fullscreen in Firefox has also been updated with information from Sajb.

If you ever have information that could improve our articles, email us at CaseyTech@GMX.com , please have “Update” as your subject, and include the title of the article that needs updating, and the new information.

Use Ctrl+Alt+Del to Cancel Booting in Ubuntu Linux

2009-01-02T12:04:00.007-05:00

Dual booting is a great way to run Linux and Windows on the same computer, however, sometimes you may accidentally boot in Linux when you need to boot in to Windows. To cancel the boot process of Ubuntu and most other Linux operating systems, simply press that great key-combo; Ctrl+Alt+Del. Linux will immediately stop booting and begin shutting down. This is very handy it you have Linux set as the default operating system, but still have to boot in to windows often.

If you have any handy Linux tips, then please email us at Caseytech@GMX.com , with "Linux Tips" in the subject line. If you want instant gratification, then leave a commit that includes your tip.

Articles that may interest you:

Ubuntu Quick Reference Command Line Wallpaper

Better Dual Boot

10 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do in Ubuntu

Get Better Full Screen View in Firefox in Less Then 10 sec!

2009-01-01T17:39:00.002-05:00

Using the fullscreen view in Firefox is a great way to maximize your screen real-estate and immerse yourself in a great website. Unfortunately, fullscreen view can make navigating websites hard because the address bar automatically hides itself when your mouse moves off of it. You can keep the address bar from auto hiding in a few simple steps.

Open a new tab in Firefox and type in about:config

Next, type browser.full in the the filter box. Double click on the result that says browser.fullscreen.autohide to change it to false.

Now when you press F11 to go fullscreen, you won’t lose your address bar and website navigation will be easier.

Do you have any great Firefox tips or tweaks? Then email us at CaseyTech@GMX.com with FireFox in the subject line. Or you can leave your tip in the comments!

Update: According to Sajb at Reddit, when in fullscreen mode, you can simply right click the toolbar and uncheck 'Hide Toolbars".

Slice Splits Your MP3 OGG & FLAC Files Fast & Free!

2008-12-28T19:35:00.001-05:00

Do you have a large music library or audio files scattered all over your hard drive? Then chances are that you have a couple of CD wraps or songs that are too long to easily listen to all at once. I’m sure you’ve have the frustration of being in the middle of a great song, and then have some one interrupt you with something to do, causing you to lose your place in your favorite song. Ever try to let a friend listen to a great 30 second guitar solo in the middle of a song, only to spend two minutes trying to find it? These long songs used to be a burden to listen to and they took up lots of a hard drive space. But now, thanks to the free program Slice, you to will be able to enjoy these songs at the your convince!

Slice is a free audio splitter made by NCH of Australia. Slice can split MP3’s, OGG, WAV and FLAC files in to two or more files with the simple click of a button. You can decide to split files into X files, into files of a certain length or after a certain length of silence. When slicing files, you can chose from many preset quality settings or you can specify your own constant or variable bit rate settings.

Because a picture is word a thousand typed words:

Main Interface:

Options:

Encoded file output options:

Slice is a great free program that we use regularly to split hour long lectures into four minute tracks. Slice only takes about 10 seconds to split an hour of audio, which is great because the previous version of Slice took about eight minutes to do this. If you want to make your life easier, then head on over to NCH.com and get your exclusive of Slice for free!

Computer Ownership

2008-12-27T20:54:00.003-05:00

Via The Economist

Zune Software Prevents It From Charging

2008-12-19T22:47:00.001-05:00

Recently a friend ran in to a very frustrating problem. The battery in his Zune mp3 player had gone completely dead. When he plugged it in to his computer to charge, the Zune software would try to sync the Zune with the computer and one the syncing started, the Zune would turn off because of the low battery. Unfortunately, one the Zune was off, the battery would charge a little and the Zune would turn on, the syncing would start and then it would shut off again. After an hour of this, he called me because he was worried that constantly turning on and off his Zune could damage it. I told him that the Zune was fine and that all he had to do was look through the Zune software settings and turning off the setting that automatically starts syncing.

Once the auto-sync setting was turned off I informed my friend that that feature was one only on older versions of the Zune software and that he should update to the latest version to get lots of new features. After he connected to the internet (dial-up was why the auto update didn’t work.) I had him unplug his Zune, launch the Zune software, click settings, general and then the check for updates button. After the update was complete, he plugged in his Zune and let it get to a full charge, then he reconnected to the internet and launched the Zune software. Next he clicked settings, device and device update. Once the Zune was all up to date. there were no more charging problems.

Have you had any frustrating problems with your mp3 player or music management software? Tell us about it by leaving a comment!

Adobe Air For Linux!

2008-12-18T20:18:00.001-05:00

Today, Adobe has finally released Adobe Air or Linux and it can be downloaded here! For those of who don’t know, Adobe Air is a free program for Windows, Mac and Linux that lets people build feature rich web programs using Flash, Flex, HTML or Ajax. These programs can also be deployed as desktop programs that seamlessly integrate with their web counterpart.

You can read more about Adobe Air in our original post, and to get great free Air apps, you can go to RefreshingApps, or the Adobe Air Market Place. You can read more at ArsTechnica.

8 Free Ways To Keep Vista Running Fast

2008-11-25T01:11:00.001-05:00

Recently, one of our readers was in a public computer lounge and notice a very frustrated trying to get some work done on a computer that looked no more than a year old. She said that her computer was too slow and that she wanted to just get rid of it and get a Mac. The problem is that if the computer is slow because it hasn't done any regular maintenance done to it, or it's slow due to poor computing habits, then getting a Mac won't fix the problem. Also, most people can't afford to get a new computer just because there current one isn't lighting fast. Because of this, I have made a list of things you can do to keep your computer running fast.

Monthly maintenance:
Run Ccleaner- No mater how objectively someone tries to write, they will find no other way to describe Ccleaner other then one of the most useful free tools for windows. Plus, with over 200 million downloads, if is one of Windows most popular utilities. When you run Ccleaner, it will quickly scan your hard drive and remove extra junk files, and free up tons of space on your computer( it freed almost five GB from my computer the first time I ran it). Aside from freeing up tons of space, it can also show you what programs automatically run at start up, and help you manage your installed programs, clean your registry.

Run disk Cleanup- No mater how good Ccleaner is, there are some files that if won't delete because it doesn't if it is safe too. To get rid of these extra files, click on the Windows Orb, click on 'Computer' and then right click on your C: drive and click Properties. Next click on the 'Disk Clean Up' button. Windows will analyze what is on your hard drive and delete what is unneeded.

Defragment your hard drives- As you use your computer and create then delete files; your hard drive will become fragmented. Excess fragmentation will slow down your computer and could make programs stop responding. Before you defragment your hard drive, I recommend that you ---read what to do before start defragmenting to speed you the process---,then run Ccleaner to remove any excess files, which will also speed up defragmenting process. Once you have done that access the windows defragmenter by clicking on the Windows Orb, typing 'defrag', then click on the Windows Defragmenter. Click 'start defragmenting' and then take a nap or read a book out side. Defragmenting could take a few minutes or several hour depending on how big your hard drive is.

Run an anti-virus, spyware, adware program- Did you know that over one half million computers get infected with some form of virus, ad-ware or spy-ware everyday? These infections can slow down your computer, reduce your Internet speed and steal your personal information. The easiest way to rid your self of the pesky parasites is to run an anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-adware program.

If you don't have a good anti virus program or a currently paying for an anti-virus program, then I would recommend that you download and install Avast Anti-Virus. Avast is free and has a very high detection rate of virus'. It also updates it's self automaticly, and has 7 built in protection modules to keep you safe. Avast is free for home use but will require you to register the program. You can download Avast here.

If you don't have a good anti-spyware program, then I recommend that you download and install Spybot Search & Destroy. Spybot is free and will very quickly scan your computer rid it of any nasties. You can download Spybot Search & Destroy here.

If you don't have a good anti-adware program, then you should download Ad-Aware. Ad-Aware is one of Cnet's most downloaded programs, has a very high detection rate and, or course, is free. You can download Ad-Aware from here.

Update your Computer- Nothing's slower than an un-patched and upgrade operating system. The free upgrades and patches provided by Microsoft can help remove bottle necks in your operating system and remove any security flaws or vulnerabilities and resolve some hardware compatibility issues. Updating your operating system is free and easy. All you have to do is click on the Windows Orb, type windows update and then hit enter. Once the Windows Updating window opens you can click the 'Check for updates' button. Within minutes your computer will be safer, more compatible and a little bit faster.

Restart your computer- As you use your computer, it's memory can become fragmented, cache files build up, and things can just slow down. An easy way to fix this is to restart your computer.

One time changes:

Remove Items for Startup List- Every time your computer boots up, it loads programs in to its memory. Most of these programs will place an icon in the system tray and each one of these programs will slow your computer down a little but. If you have installed Ccleaner like suggested earlier, then you can end needless start up program with a few simple clicks.

Open Ccleaner, then click on 'Tools', then click on 'Startup'. Next select the programs that you don't want to run at start up and then click the 'Disable' button. The next time you restart your computer, the disabled programs wont load at start up and your computer should be faster. If you need these programs, then you can always run them from the Windows Start menu.

Move paging file to a separate drive- When your computer thinks, it stores information in RAM. If you run out of RAM, then Windows will start using the paging file on your hard drive as virtual RAM. If you don't have a lot of RAM then your paging file will get use a lot and your computer will slow down. Fortunately, of you have more than one hard drive then you can move you paging file to another hard drive with will decrease the load on your main hard drive and speed up your computer.

If you use a laptop or have a desktop with only one hard drive, then you can take advantage of Vista's ReadyBoost feature. ReadyBoost can make a small paging file on a USB flash drive or SD Card. Moving some of your paging file to a flash drive will speed up your computer just like moving it to another hard drive. To use ReadyBoost (figure this out with Vista.

Turn off extra user interface elements- The user interface in Vista takes up almost 512 MB of memory. This video will show you how to turn off extra interface elements, turn off indexing and more ways to make Vista better:

Upgrade your computer- If you have done all of this and your computer is still slow, then you may need to upgrade your computer. the easiest way to upgrade your computer and get major speed boost is to buy more RAM. To find out what type of RAM you need you can use Crucial's memory scanner and then look for that type for RAM on Newegg. If you can't add more RAM to your computer, then you may want to consider buying a new one because the cost of other upgrades like a faster processor and a new mother board may cost almost as much as a computer that's on sale at BestBuy or Newegg.

Do you know of any great ways to speed up a Windows, Apple or Linux computer? Then leave a comment, or email us at CaseyTech@GMX.com , and make sure to put 'Fast Computer' in the subject line.

Find Your Perfect Pen in Under One Minute

2008-11-23T10:19:00.001-05:00

Ballpoint, roller ball, gel, liquid graphite... there are so many types of pens that it may seem hard to pick the right one. That's way Tul has made a quick, simple handwriting analysis flash applet to help you choose the right pen for your writing style and personality. The handwriting analysis only takes about one minute to complete and is surprisingly accurate. Once the analysis is finished, you'll be greeted by Dr. Gerard Ackerman who will tell you about how the way you shape and form your letters when your write says a lot about your personality. After that he will recommend a pen that fits your writing style.

I did the writing analysis and surprisingly, Dr. Gerard Ackerman was write (lame pun but its still funny). He described my personality perfectly and even recommended that I write with a rollerball pen, which happens to be my preferred type of pen!

You too can try Tul's handwriting analysis by going to the Tul website an clicking on on the 'Begin Your Analysis Now' button. And if you want to know more about hand writing analysis, then you should read more at Wikipedia and at Paralumun.

15 Things You Didn't Know About The New MacBook

2008-11-14T12:48:00.001-05:00

APCmag.com did a great article on 10 things you didn't know about the new MacBook, however there article was a little long winded, so here is a summery of 10 things you didn't know about Apple's news product:

1. Target Disk Mode is gone
This means no more using your MacBook like an external hard drive, or accessing and repairing the file system without removing the internal hard drive or booting into the system

2. The system migration tool has been upgraded
The system tool is now faster and features a pause button

3. The system chipset has changed, not just the GPU
MacBook's will no longer feature Intel integrated graphics and will have the NVIDIA 9400M chip set instead. This means that you have an Intel CPU but not an Intel controller chipset. Unfortunately, Nvidia's new integrated graphics have caused problems.

4. Brake the glass screen cover; replace the whole screen.
The new glass front panel that covers and protects the LCD is bonded to the aluminum case to keep the laptop lid extra thin and extra strong. However, if you drop your MacBook and brake the screen, then you will have to replace the entire laptop lid.

5. The new MacBook has a special build of OS X
The new MacBook runs OS X 10.5.5, build 9F2114. The latest release on all other Macs is build 9F33. The main difference seems to be changes to the Energy Saving and Trackpad options.

6. The battery indicator is now on the left side of the notebook
The battery indicator is no longer attached to the battery. It's now on the left front of the notebook, which means no more flipping over your laptop to see how much battery you have left.

7. No more flimsy keyboard
Thanks to the ultra-ridged unibody design, the MacBook has a very stiff chassis which means no more flimsy keyboards!

8. The speakers are better!
There are no speaker grills, but speakers quality is really good. There's no real bass, but they don't sound like tinny netbook speakers.

9. The LCD viewing angle still sucks
There is still a very real difference between the screens on the MacBook Pro and MacBook. Tilting the screen helps a bit but not much.

10. Installing a hard drive is super easy!
To change a hard drive in MacBook, all you have to do is pop off the battery cover, undo do one screw, then pop out the current hard drive and pop in the new one.

Bonus Features!
11. Dual Hard Drives!
The new MacBooks are the first notebooks from apple to use a SATA optical drive, this means that you could remove the optical drive and replace it with a second 500GB hard drive and have the first 1TB MacBook.

12. Spend more to use a projector
Apple is not providing any video adaptors with the new laptops which means you will need to shell out an extra $50-$150 to get external display adaptors.

13. Brake the keyboard, replace the whole body.
Thanks to the new unibody design, it you brake a key on your keyboard, you will have to have the entire top case replaced. iFixit wrote about this here

14. Easy hard drive installation for MacBook Pros too
The MacBook Pro now has the same great design for accessing the hard drive as the MacBook does. This means no more paying an Apple technician to replace your hard drive.

15. The cheapest MacBook you can get is a MSI Wind
As long as you don't mind replacing the stock WiFi card for a Dell 1500 WiFi card, and you don't mind using a a USB sound card; then you can install OS X on the MSI Wind just by hooking up a USB disk drive and popping in the OS X install disk. You can find out more about how to do this at the MSI forums.

So, with all of the cool new features and and unfortunate downfalls, what do you think of the new MacBooks? Is a glass covered display worth the cost of replacing the whole lid if it cracks? With better graphics, will more games get ported to OS X? And could more companies start making OS X compatible netbooks? Tell us what you think by leaving a comment or by sending us an email at CaseyTech@GMX.com , with 'MacBook' in the subject line.

Easily Delete ANY Vista Font!

2008-11-09T19:10:00.001-05:00

One problem I have seen many people struggle with when dealing with Vista is the inability to delete most fonts. Vista comes with almost 200 fonts preloaded and most of them respond with "you need permission to complete this action" when you try to delete them. One would think that all you would have to do to fix this it to open the font folder as an administrator, but there is no way to do this. Thankfully, with the help of one of our readers, we were able to find a way to get permission of the font folder, and the video below has a walkthrough on how to do it.

If you have any tips or advice, feel free to email us at CaseyTech@GMX.com , or leave a comment!

Dell Mini 12 - MacBook Air Killer?

2008-11-06T15:42:00.001-05:00

Dell has announced that the Dell Mini 12 (the largest of the Mini line) will be coming to the USA before Christmas! The Mini 12 was released in Japan earlier this year and has been a huge hit. This new net book is being compared to the MacBook Air because of it's of lightweight, ultra thin profile and potential to dominate the ultra portable market.

The Mini 12 will have a 12.1 inch 1280x800 WXGA LCD screen which should look extremely crisp seeing as it has the same resolution of most 15.4 inch laptops. The Mini will only be .9 inches at the front and gently taper up to 1.09 inches. The operating systems available will be Ubuntu, Windows XP and Vista. Because of Microsoft's licensing, you will only be able to have 1GB of memory pre-installed, but thankfully you can easily upgrade the memory yourself to 2 GB

Currently there is no mention of the hard drive size, but the Japanese version has a 60GB hard drive and with the sub-$600 starting price, solid state drives probably won't be an option. The processor for the Mini 12 won't the Atom N270 (800MHz- 1.6 GHz 2.5W) like the Mini 9 has, but an Atom Z530 (1.60 GHz 2W). The new processor will have features like Intel Vitalization, low power consumption and demand-based clock switching to help extend battery power.

The Mini 12 isn't on Dell's US site yet but you can see it at Dell Japan

Money Shots:

Conclusion:

The Dell Mini 9 is already extremely popular because of the ability to remove a single panel on the bottom of the netbook and have access to everything inside. It's been called a hackers dream and is one of the easiest netbooks to upgrade. It's only downside has been the small hard drive and slightly cramped key board. Now the Mini 12 is here and hopefully it's large hard drive, crisp roomy screen and luxurious keyboard will enable it to pick up were the Mini 9 left off.

Learn. Read. Click.

Obama is the New President!

2008-11-04T23:46:00.001-05:00

Obama is now the president of the USA. Hopefully he will be even better than Bush.

Pic via 4chan's /b/

Matte or Gloss Screen?

2008-11-02T20:47:00.001-05:00

One love/hate feature among laptops having a glossy screen. Glossy screens are great because they look good and help the colors being displayed look crisper and nicer. However they reflect light like crazy, get smudged very easily, can be hard to clean and can be a pain to see when they are used outside unless you are in the shade.. Matte screens have a surface that is covered in millions of small riffs (think Teflon) so it doesn't smudge easily and is easy to clean. These small riffs also defuse some of the light that hits the LCD panel, this cuts down on reflection. however, this diffusion can make colors look not as crisp.

SchneiderMan at www.macrumors.com took some great pictures of a direct comparison of a matte screen MacBook wand a glossy screen MacBook:

Left is a matte screen, right is a glossy screen. Pictured outdoors in indirect sunlight.

Left is a glossy screen, right is a matte screen. Pictured outdoors in direct sunlight.

Life is a matte screen, right is a glossy screen. Pictures indoors.

So, what type of screen do you prefer to have on your laptop, matte or glossy? Let us know by voting in the poll in at the top of the sidebar! Have any rants or glee filled stories about your screen? Tell us about them in the comments!

Need something cool to read on your monitor? Then go to CaseyTech