How to Charge Your Phone or Tablet Faster

Not all charging is equal. If your smartphone (or tablet) is low on battery and you only have a limited amount of time to charge it, here’s how you can get the most juice possible.

These tips should work for practically anything that charges via USB, including cameras, peripherals, and any other device you might have.

How (and Why) to Change Your MAC Address on Windows, Linux, and Mac

Each network interface on your computer or any other networked device has a unique MAC address. These MAC addresses are assigned in the factory, but you can change, or “spoof,” MAC addresses in software.

MAC stands for “media access control.” MAC addresses are also commonly referred to as physical addresses or hardware addresses, because they correspond to a hardware adapter.

How to Detect if Someone's Stealing Your WiFi

 

It may be hard to imagine, but just a mere 20 years ago, the Internet was nothing more than a novelty -- a way for incredibly smart college professors and researchers to share information, and for a few people to network across the newly developed World Wide Web. E-mail was nothing like it is today. The primitive e-mail systems found at universities or even through accounts offered with the first Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Prodigy and America Online were often difficult to use.

What Exactly Is a MAC Address Used For?

Every piece of hardware on your local network has a MAC address in addition to the IP address assigned to it by the local router or server. What exactly is that MAC address for?

Can Connect to Wireless Router, but not to the Internet?

Have you ever run into the situation where you could connect your laptop to your wireless router, but could not browse the Internet? There could be several things going on in this kind of situation, either your computer has a problem or the router cannot connect to the Internet via your ISP.

So if you’re able to connect to a wireless network, but can’t get out to the Internet, then first check to see if it’s your compute or the router. You can do this by trying to connect to the Internet from another computer connected to the same wireless network.

View Saved Wi-Fi (WPA, WEP) Passwords on OS X

Just about everybody who has a laptop has probably connected to several different wireless networks over the course of time. I tend to travel a lot and take my laptop with me everywhere I go, so I literally have over a hundred wireless networks stored on my Mac. This is great because I can easily connect to those wireless networks whenever I’m in range again, even if it’s 6 months later.

5 Easy Ways to Speed Up a Slow Windows 7 Computer

In terms of optimizing your computer,  99 Ways to Make Your Computer Blazingly Fast is tough to top; but if you don’t have the time to initiate all of those helpful fixes in one session, there are some quick and easy steps that you can take to rejuvenate a slow computer, all in under an hour.

Check out the top 5 ways to speed up a slow Windows 7 PC. Most of these fixes and maintenance procedures are common practice for a computer geek, but may be a gold mine for a beginner PC user looking to make their computer fast again.

10 Top Tips for Bathroom Safety

Don’t let your own home be a safety hazard. A few simple steps can help prevent slips and falls.

How to Build a New Custom PC Without Stressing Yourself

We love building our own computers but it takes quite a bit of time. If you love to build but find you don’t have the time, a custom-built PC still gives you control over your components, while leaving the actual assembly up to someone else.

When considering a new computer, you can buy, build, or just get a laptop. Either way, buying a PC or laptop is pretty easy while building you own computer is akin to anything else that takes care and assembly. There’s a process – research, gathering, assembly, testing – and and while you can certainly research and gather in tandem, you can’t do anything else until you have all the parts.

Altogether, it can take a considerable effort because when it comes right down to it, you’re spending money and you want the best computer for your budget. You don’t simply want to buy the first components that pop up in your search results.

How to Easily View Recently Modified Files in Windows

To find just about anything in Windows, type something describing the file in the search box. Windows will then quickly search all your files, and present a list of matches according to your search criteria. Today we’ll show you how to find files you’ve recently modified.

How to Remove Delta Homes Homepage & Other Annoying Unwanted Homepages

One of my clients called me on Thursday complaining bitterly about how deltahomes.com page took over her browser homepage despite changing it from the Tools/Options menu tips i gave her. I decided to see for myself because she is the impatient client when providing solution to her on phone. 

How to Import iPhone Pictures and Movies into Picasa

If you’re a fan of Google’s Picasa picture management program and the iPhone, you’ve likely already discovered the unfortunate state of affairs: with the default settings Picasa can’t import pictures from iOS devices. Read on as we show you how to tweak your workflow and get things importing smoothly.

Restrict Access to Programs with AppLocker in Windows

If you share a computer and don’t want other users accessing certain applications, there is a new feature in Windows 7 that allows you to block them. Today we take a quick look at restricting what programs other users can access using AppLocker.

Note: AppLocker is only available in Ultimate and Enterprise versions of Windows 7.

Using AppLocker 

25 Computer Networking Tips

 

Running a home network is pretty essential in this day and age.

Thankfully, modern hardware and software has reduced the complexities of configuring networks down to a few setup screens, and the relevant hardware often comes free with an internet connection.

If you have multiple computers, the chances are they're already talking to each other, either through wires or wirelessly. However, while your home network might be up and running, optimising it takes some doing. Follow our simple tips to extract the last drop of juice from your network hardware.