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Most geeks will tell you it’s well past time to get rid of XP and upgrade to newer, safer operating systems. It can be tough to explain, so keep reading this list of real world reasons to let XP go. Maybe you’re not sure why you should upgrade to a newer operating system. Maybe you’ve tried to explain it to friends but can’t quite explain why they should. Read our reasoning below or join the conversation with your own experiences—whether you’re a Windows user or not, it’s time to put XP out to pasture....

Do you love to tweak your Windows 7 system, customizing it to fit your personality and the way you work? We have shown you many ways to customize the Taskbar, Start Menu, Desktop, Windows Explorer, and other parts of Windows. We’ve collected links below to many of our best articles about adding and creating themes, adding wallpapers, pinning programs and files to the Taskbar, moving the Taskbar to another part of the screen, adding items to the Start Menu, tweaking the Desktop, creating shortcuts and hotkeys, customizing Windows Explorer, adding items to the context menus, and many more customizations....

Large capacity, small-sized, affordable USB flash drives provide us with the ability to easily carry around gigs of data in our pockets. Why not take our favorite programs with us as well so we can work on any computer? We have collected links to many useful portable programs you can easily install on a USB flash drive and create a portable version of your desktop PC. Portable Applications Suites and Collections There are several portable application suites that provide an way to collect a lot of portable programs and easily access them using a menu system....

When you need to print letters or send emails to many customers, clients, or employees, you can do so quickly using a mail merge. With the mail merge wizard in Microsoft Word, you can set this up in just minutes. A mail merge lets you compose the base of the message, insert the names, and create all the letters at one time. The nice part about Word’s mail merge wizard is that you can use an existing list or create one on the fly....

At the company’s Snapdragon Summit 2022, which is being celebrated in sunny Hawaii, Qualcomm announced its newest top-tier chip for phones and tablets. It will likely make an appearance in devices from Samsung, ASUS, and OnePlus next year, and it’s packing quite the punch. The new Kryo CPU, which is sporting a new, Arm Cortex-X3-based Prime core running at up to 3.2 GHz, performs up to 35% better than the previous generation....

Do you use the Run dialog box often in Windows? If so, we offer some helpful tips for tweaking the dialog’s history, or the most recently used (MRU) list. This article shows you how to delete single items, delete the entire history, disable the history, and even disable the Run dialog box, if you don’t want it to be available. NOTE: Disabling the Run command does not prevent users from running programs....

What Does MIL-SPEC Mean? These terms may seem fancy, but in reality, they’re fairly plain. All MIL-SPEC and MIL-STD mean is that a given product has been designed to live up to a specification coming from a lengthy document detailing the MIL-STD-810G standard. How lengthy are we talking? The document is over 800 pages and details many tests covering everything from solar radiation to “acidic atmosphere.” When it comes to protection for our phones and tablets, though, the main thing we care about is Method 516....

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite time tracking tips, tricks, and tools. Now we’re back to highlight the techniques HTG readers use to keep tabs on their time. While more than one of you expressed confusion over the idea of tracking how you spend all your time, many of you were more than happy to share the reasons for and the methods you use to stay on top of your time expenditures....

Each version of Android since Gingerbread (Android 2.3) has included an Easter egg, which is always accessed in the same way. The Easter eggs in the latest versions are becoming more complex, with animations and interactivity. Android’s Easter eggs pay tribute to nyan cat, Tron, zombies, and jelly beans. Each Easter egg is themed to fit with the Android version’s release name. Accessing Android’s Easter Eggs To access the Easter egg in your version of Android, open the Settings screen and tap About phone or About tablet at the bottom of the screen....

It’s a fair question. People don’t know much about infrared light, and it’s hard to find information that explains the potential risks of infrared in layman’s terms. Not to mention, Samsung’s safety disclaimer for the Iris Scanner makes infrared sound kind of scary. But what is infrared, and should we be worried about it? What is Infrared? Infrared (IR) is a form of invisible radiation, and it occupies the lower end of the electromagnetic spectrum....

You’ve got questions and we’ve got answers. This week we take a look at freezer-based data salvaging, swapping out your wallpaper, and how to email text messages. Once a week we dip into our mailbag and help readers solve their problems, sharing the useful solutions with you I the process. Read on to see our fixes for this week’s reader dilemmas. Giving Your Hard Drive the Freezer Treatment Dear Dying Drive,...

Enabling Aero in VirtualBox for Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 Dear Aero Craving, Is it possible to enable the Aero visual effects in Windows 8 virtualized in VirtualBox? I’m running the Windows 8 Developer Preview and I can’t stand the interface without Aero enabled. Is it possible to enable it? What do I need to do? Thanks! Sincerely, Aero Craving in Connecticut Fortunately it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort to enable Aero in VirtualBox....

We’ve shown you how to enhance Internet Explorer with add-ons, similar to Firefox and Chrome. However, too many add-ons can slow down Internet Explorer and even cause it to crash. However, you can easily disable some or all add-ons. To begin, activate the Command bar, if it’s not already available. Right-click on an empty area of the tab bar and select Command bar from the popup menu. Click the Tools button on the Command bar and select Toolbars | Disable add-ons from the popup menu....

Once you visit Francois’s website simply click on the Download Chromium for PC text to start the download. Keep in mind that these zip file (portable) versions of Chromium will access your regular installation’s profile folder if you have a Chromium-based browser already set up (such as Iron Browser for instance). Visit the Download Chromium Homepage [via PC Geek Blog] Those of you who prefer a different approach for downloading Chromium can download the browser from the Daily Builds Archives using the links below....

What Is HDR Video? HDR stands for high dynamic range. It refers to the visual presentation of movies, TV shows, video games, or images. In essence, HDR provides a better, brighter image with more detail than a standard definition video or image. Dynamic range is the term used to describe the amount of visible detail between the brightest whites and the darkest blacks. The higher the dynamic range, the more detail is preserved in shadow and highlights....

Why guess at the performance of your device when you can run some tests and get detailed statistics? These apps test your device’s CPU, GPU, and other hardware components – in addition to your browser. Whether you’re curious about how your Android stacks up against the latest devices on the market, trying to determine the benefits of an overclock, or looking for the best browser, these free apps can help you....

W3M is a terminal web browser for Linux. It’s got a few tricks up its sleeve, including support for images, tabs, tables, frames and other features not usually included with terminal web browsers. If you’ve used Linux for a while, you probably remember using a terminal browser to Google up a solution for your hardware when the X server refused to load. Modern X servers have advanced far beyond this, but W3M and other terminal browsers can still be useful....

One of the best ways to customize your Mac and make it your own is to change your app and folder icons. With just a few simple changes, you can have things uniquely your own. There are a lot of different icons you can change in OS X. The easiest ones to change are your applications and folders but, we warn you, it can be habit forming. Once you start customizing, you may not want to stop!...

Ever feel like taking your voice to the web, literally? Podcasts are a great way to interact with people and supplement a blog. Here’s what you need to know, from buying a mic to hosting it on your site. (Image by notfrancois) Step 1: Premise and Dedication An audio podcast – netcast, if you really want to be brand impartial – is a great way to start a communicative repertoire with people over the internet....

Forgetting your password can be very frustrating, however this situation could be completely alleviated if you always had a password reset disk handy. Lets see how we can create one in Windows 8 or Windows 10. Note: This will only work for local user accounts, if you chose to sign in with a Live ID, you will have to reset your password using an alternative method. Creating a Password Reset Disk If you are using Windows 8 or 10, you’ll need to open the old Control Panel using the search, and then drill down into User Accounts....