Should You Upgrade To The Professional Version Of Windows 11

What Does the Professional Version Offer? The vast majority of exclusive features in Windows 11 Pro are related to remote management and setup, as well as other business-specific needs. Those are compelling—and often necessary—for businesses. That’s why most PCs that come with Windows 11 include Windows 11 Home. If you’re wondering if you should upgrade your home PC for those features, the answer is almost definitely no. Those features aren’t particularly useful outside of a business or educational setting anyway....

December 22, 2022 · 7 min · 1314 words · Reyes Jones

The Best How To Geek Articles For June 2012

This past month we covered topics such as why you only have to wipe a disk once to erase it, what RSS is and how you can benefit from using it, how websites are tracking you online, and more. Join us as we look back at the best articles for June. The Best Articles of June Note: Articles are listed as #10 through #1. How to Find Your Computer’s Private & Public IP Addresses...

December 22, 2022 · 3 min · 581 words · Thomas Bernard

The Best Websites And Software For Brainstorming And Mind Mapping

A mind map is a diagram that allows you to visually outline information, helping you organize, solve problems, and make decisions. Start with a single idea in the center of the diagram and add associated ideas, words, and concepts connected radially around the central idea. We’ve collected links to websites and software that can help you create mind maps, and collaborate on and share your maps with others. The programs and websites listed here are all either free or have a free option....

December 22, 2022 · 5 min · 1012 words · Joan Montgomery

The Most Useful Bookmarklets To Enhance Your Browsing Experience

Bookmarklets are JavaScript links you can place on your browser’s toolbar that add one-click functionality to the browser or webpage. They are free and help make repetitive tasks in your browser quicker and easier to perform. Use bookmarklets to add functionality to your browser, such as modifying the appearance of a webpage, extracting data from a webpage, and search for highlighted text in a search engine or online encyclopedia....

December 22, 2022 · 6 min · 1221 words · Alonzo Pankratz

The Most Wonderfully Stupid Sonic The Hedgehog Fan Games

Sonic is hilarious. Maybe it’s the decades of bad games. Maybe it’s the Extreme Attitude™, a 90s marketing gimmick that feels dated now. Or maybe it’s just that he’s a weird looking dude. Whatever the reason, it’s really easy to make fun of Sonic, so the Internet provides a never-ending collection of hilarious Sonic pictures, GIFs and videos. But some fans go further. Not content with making images and animations, these fans make entire games serving as one giant Sonic joke....

December 22, 2022 · 3 min · 525 words · Daniel Lonon

What You Said How Do You Stay Connected Away From Home

Earlier this week we asked you to share your tips, tricks, and techniques for staying connected when you’re away from your home broadband connection. Now we’re back with a roundup of what you said. Mooching Wi-Fi was an old standby in everyone’s bag of tricks. The more densely populate the area you live in the better the chances you’ll find an open node to connect to. Twalorn weighs in:...

December 22, 2022 · 2 min · 369 words · Ernest Morrow

What You Said Your Favorite Co Op Games

By far the most popular nomination for favorite co-op game was an outright classic: 1987’s smash hit Contra. Originally released as an arcade game, it was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988. Contra was groundbreaking for the time as it featured simultaneous play for the two players–you and a friend could play side by side without waiting to take your turn. Clearly that kind of side-by-side play resonated with readers....

December 22, 2022 · 1 min · 186 words · Francie Martin

When Should You Properly Eject Your Thumb Drive

When do you safely remove a device? Some users put caution to the wind and yank out any device, while others perform religious rituals every time. Here are some tips and guidelines for practicing safe drive removal. Removable storage has been around as long as the personal computer and safely removing or “ejecting” drives is something that OS X and Linux users are very familiar with. Whenever an external storage device is plugged into those operating system it becomes mounted to a location, and if you just pull it out without warning your OS, typically you receive a nasty warning saying you may have just lost all your data....

December 22, 2022 · 7 min · 1380 words · Erik Howard

Your Camera S Most Important Settings Shutter Speed Aperture And Iso Explained

Getting a nice camera is just the first step in taking great photos—you also have to learn how to use it. Shooting on auto will only take you so far. Shutter speed, aperture, and ISO may sound like intimidating photographer terms, but they’re quite simple—and crucial to getting great photos. It’s All About Exposure Deep inside every digital camera is a photographic sensor that records the images you shoot. When you take a picture, the shutter that normally covers the sensor opens, and the light that’s coming in through the lens falls on the sensor where it gets converted into digital data....

December 22, 2022 · 8 min · 1499 words · Richard Owens

Access Shared Folders In A Virtualbox Ubuntu 11.04 Virtual Machine

Have you installed Ubuntu 11.04 as a virtual machine in VirtualBox but have had problems getting the Shared Folders feature to work? We were able to add a shared folder, but were unable to access it. We found the secret to accessing shared folders in an Ubuntu 11.04 virtual machine in VirtualBox. VirtualBox adds a user group called “vboxsf” to the Ubuntu 11.04 virtual machine. Any user that needs to have access to shared folders defined for that virtual machine need to be a member of that group....

December 21, 2022 · 2 min · 379 words · Jeannie Ayala

Ask Htg Dealing With Windows 8 Cp Expiry Nintendo Ds Save Backups Jumbled Audio Tracks In Windows Media Player

Once a week we round up some great reader questions and share the answers with everyone. This week we’re looking at what to do when Windows 8 Consumer Preview expires, backing up your Nintendo DS saves, and how to sort out jumbled audio tracks in Windows Media Player movies. What Happens When Windows 8 Consumer Preview Expires? Dear Early Adoption Blues, I downloaded Windows 8 Consumer Preview and installed it… over Windows Vista....

December 21, 2022 · 4 min · 773 words · Linda West

Ask Htg Formatting An Invisible Hard Disk Changing Default Apps In Android And What To Do With A New Kindle Fire

Once a week we round up some of the reader emails we’ve answered and share the solutions with everyone; this week we’re looking at how to format and install onto a disk the Windows installer doesn’t see, changing the default for an Android app, and some getting-started tips for the Kindle Fire. How Do I Install Windows On an Invisible Disk? Dear InvisiDisk Man, I’m so frustrated with this! I have a computer I want to install Windows 7 onto....

December 21, 2022 · 4 min · 681 words · James Hiller

Beginner Geek Add Flair To Word Documents Using Tables

Table is most probably one of the best tools in Microsoft Word; it lets you align text, perform calculations, and today we’ll show you how to use tables to add flair to your documents. We’ll start of by giving you a quick tutorial on how to use tables in Word, and we’ll round up today’s tutorial by showing you use tables to give a fluid layout to your Word document....

December 21, 2022 · 2 min · 410 words · Mario Anderson

Beginner Geek How To Link Contacts To Their Social Network Profiles In The Windows 8 People App

The built-in People app in Windows 8 allows you to pull in your contact lists from a few different social networks. The problem comes when you start to get duplicate entries, here’s how to link contacts together without losing any information. How to Link Contacts in the People App Linking contacts is actually quite easy, however, the option is a bit hidden if you are not use to the new “Modern UI” way of doing things....

December 21, 2022 · 2 min · 245 words · Jason Bryant

Bump Your Desktop Into 3D With Bumptop

Your desktop doesn’t have to be a boring graveyard for lost and forgotten files anymore! Transform it with BumpTop into 3D desktop that help you keep organized. Like a real desk. Create the desktop that suits your needs and style. There’s nothing about the installation, you just keep on pressing “Forward” and you are done. When you launch BumpTop for the first time, you’ll be taken in tutorial to show you how to use BumpTop efficiently, it doesn’t last more than a minute so make sure you watch it....

December 21, 2022 · 2 min · 281 words · Joan Wolfe

Do You Really Want A Smart Mirror In Your Bathroom

Smart bathroom mirrors do more than give you 6.5 years of bad luck instead of 7 after breaking them. They can frame your beautiful visage with adjustable LED lights, let you check the weather and email, and even provide feedback on skin flaws over time, in case you want to feel even more self-conscious than usual. There are tons of features to look at momentarily instead of your face, though your face is the default wallpaper you always end up back at....

December 21, 2022 · 3 min · 570 words · Alejandro Castillo

Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name

Have you ever wondered what “XP” stands for or where “Ubuntu” comes from? Some operating systems get their names from obvious places, but others need some explaining. Read on to find out where your favorite OS got its name. We’ve rounded up the most popular and well-known operating systems, as well as a few lesser-known ones—if you know of another operating system with an interesting story behind its name, make sure to teach your fellow readers in the comments....

December 21, 2022 · 8 min · 1516 words · Geraldine Pribbenow

How Can I Disable Windows 8 Swipe Gestures On My Laptop

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Matsemann is less than thrilled with the swipe gestures on his Windows 8 laptop: We can certainly empathize, touchpads are fussy enough without extra functions layered on top of them. This is a problem because the area where I can actually move the mouse with my finger is too small (or, I mostly use the top left of the touchpad)....

December 21, 2022 · 2 min · 389 words · Patsy Juneau

How Do You Recover Data From A Microsd Card That Cannot Be Read

We have all been there and had a storage device of some kind experience a failure, leaving our precious data at risk. But what do you do when the device in question is a microSD card? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post comes to the rescue for a reader in need. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites....

December 21, 2022 · 4 min · 834 words · Walter Labeau

How To Create Or Remove A Hanging Indent In Microsoft Powerpoint

A hanging indent (often called a negative indent) positions the first line of a paragraph a predetermined amount of space behind the following sentences. Here’s how to create or remove a hanging indent in Microsoft PowerPoint. Create a Hanging Indent To create a hanging indent, first, open your PowerPoint presentation and then select the text box that contains the paragraph you would like to add the indentation to. As a note, if there are multiple paragraphs in a single text box, all of the paragraphs in that text box will be indented....

December 21, 2022 · 2 min · 320 words · Katherine Hicks