300 advanced PC tips

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✔ Stop malware attacks

Free Windows 7 Definitive ✔ Keep hackers at bay Tips ebook

✔ Protect your network Plus 60 handpicked applications

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1 IE customisation 3 Turbo charge taskbar previews 8 Move the Kernel into memory 15 Pin programs to the taskbar 16 Get the Classic look in Windows 7 17 Configure Windows power buttons 19 Calm down UAC 24 Do more with dual monitors 25 Banish ultra-high resolution gripes 33 Turbo charge file transfers 35 Make Windows 7 work like Mac OS 37 Manually update Linux packages 39 Upgrade your distro automatically 43 Get restricted features in Linux 56 Play Windows video in Linux 46 Get speedy searches with Gnome-Do 62 Share a 3G connection over a network 64 Find Wi-Fi hotspots before you arrive 65 Save cash with local SIMs 68 Work smart and safe with portable apps 71 Setup offline email 89 Build the ultimate boot CD 91 Understand PC beep codes 100 Get a better command line 108 Browse your media in 3D with Cooliris 131 Google smarter with Boolean operators 132 Search sites with Google 141 Turn back internet time caching 144 Personalise Google search 156 Spot hackers’ guerrilla psychology 185 Master MAC address filtering 186 Disable SSID broadcasts 191 Boost DNS performance 213 Categorise your Facebook friends 217 System scan for an easy upgrade 242 Top codecs to play any media 244 Stream media to your console 245 Discover Orb media 291 Crack Windows 7’s XP mode 292 Master Windows 7 compatibility 296 Run anything with DOSBox 298 DOG is a gamer’s best friend

300 PC TIPS 1

To celebrate our 300th issue we’ve put together 300 tips to help you get more from the machine you love

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he PC is undoubtedly a miraculous device. One single humming machine can show movies and stream television programs with such aplomb your television will probably feel like it’s ready for retirement. With a few clicks that selfsame box will let you surf the internet – the single most complex machine ever created by mankind. It’s an odd thought too that without the PC the internet probably wouldn’t be what it is today. Think about it: the network would be analogous to a water delivery system in a world without taps. If you want more, your PC can deliver more. With a few extra clicks your box can transform itself into a gaming machine

that’s capable of making any Xbox or Playstation blush. PC games are – let’s be honest – that bit more rewarding and complete than console-based time killers. And finally, when you’ve had your fun watching TV, listening to a little music, surfing the internet and all the rest, you can sit down in front of your PC and get on with the thorny business of earning a living. No other single machine can do all of this and still offer the capacity to do much more. So, to help you along with all these endeavours we’ve put together a list of 300 essential tips to get the best out of your PC. Follow them, and we guarantee that your box of electronics will be able do and deliver even more.

Feature Guide

3 Your PC your way with Registry hacks, p7 3 Click your way to a better Windows 7, p8 3 Break into Linux with our Ubuntu tips, p10 3 L eave the desk with our mobile tips, p12 3 R evive a PC with our recovery tips, p16 3W  indows from the command line, p18 3 Browser extensions to surf in style, p20 3 Search smarter with our Google tips, p22 3 Keep a step ahead of the scammers, p24 3 G et the smartest home network, p26 3 S urefire ways to stay private online, p28 3M  ake your games run smoother, p30 3 Ideas to set your media free, p32

CONTRIBUTORS: Martin Cooper, Richard Cobbett, Alex Cox, Julian Prokaza, Mayank Sharma, Joe Cassels

3 The applications you must have, p34 3 Make Win7 work with old software, p36

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Your PC your way with Registry hacks Want to personalise your environment? Set up Windows 7 exactly how you like it with these handy Registry edits

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indows 7 needs far less of the sleevesup shuffling about that its predecessors demanded for smooth operation. It works, and it works well. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use the Registry to add nifty features or change the settings to your liking. Here are ten things you can do with the Windows 7 Registry. Just type regedit in the usual search box and hit [Enter], then follow our tips.

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Personalise IE8: Bought

your PC from an overzealous manufacturer that’s gratuitously branded Internet Explorer with its own name? Just want to add your own custom touch in place of the default ‘Windows Internet Explorer’? It’s easy. In the registry editor, navigate to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\Software\Microsoft\ Internet Explorer\Main’ and create a new string value. Name it ‘Window Title’, with the space. Then just double-click it and enter your desired window title in the field.

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Stop Snap: Aero Snap is

arguably a very useful feature – we say arguably because, as we’re sure you’ve noticed, it often decides to kick in and glue your

windows to screen edges when you don’t want it to. If you’re not finding the Snap feature useful, then you might as well turn it off. First, navigate to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\Control Panel\Desktop’. There are a number of settings you could customise here, but the one that you’re looking for in this case is called ‘WindowArrangementActive’. The value should be 1 – change it to 0 to make this feature inactive. Alternatively, just make sure you never venture too close to the edge.

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Change stacking behaviour: This particular

tweak is perhaps of questionable usefulness, but we thought you’d like the option to try it anyway. If you don’t like the thumbnail display when clicking on taskbar buttons, then you can change the action and force Windows to open the last opened window of the stack instead. To do this, open ‘HKEY_ CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\Advanced’ and create a new DWORD value. Rename it LastActiveClick and set its value to 1 to switch this mode on. Should you change your mind, you can always go back and delete the key or set it to 0 to revert back later on.

1 Personalise IE8: You can create a new key simply by right-clicking and selecting the ‘New’ option. It’s as quick and easy as that!

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Speed up menus: Make menu items automatically drop down a lot faster with this tweak. Go to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Control Panel\Desktop’, right-click ‘MenuShowDelay’ and click ‘Modify’. Now change the current string value to something like 100 – hey presto, near-instant menu appearance.

7 1 Quicker taskbar previews: Hover is much less bother if it’s sufficiently speeded up.

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Quicker taskbar previews:

Are you bored of waiting the couple of seconds it takes for the graphical previews to pop up when you hover over icons on the taskbar? Or would you rather they took longer to appear? The choice is yours. Go to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced’ and create a DWORD named ‘ExtendedUIHoverTime’. Now double‑click to open it, click the ‘Decimal’ radio button, and then change its value to the number of milliseconds you’d like the process to take. The default is 400ms.

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Change other delays:

Stay in the same key (Explorer\Advanced) and you can tweak a couple of other timings. Add a 32-bit DWORD into the mix named ‘DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime’. Switch this to decimal in the same manner as before, then change the value data field to alter the number of milliseconds it takes for the Aero Peek function (minimise all windows) to kick in when you hover over the icon on the right of the taskbar. Alternatively, do the same with a DWORD called ‘ThumbnailLivePreview HoverTime’ to alter how long it takes for the windows that are associated with taskbar thumbnails to come to the front.

Stop space checking: Free up a tiny shred of system resources. Go to ‘HKEY_ CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Policies\Explorer’, create a new DWORD called ‘NoLowDisk SpaceChecks’ and set its value to 1 to switch off disk space checking.

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Move the kernel: If the Windows Kernel is in memory, it will run slightly faster than it would if it were on your hard drive. Hunt out ‘DisablePagingExecutive’ within ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management’. Change its value to 1.

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Change the name: Bought a second-hand machine? Then you might want to alter the name of the registered owner. Go to ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\’, double-click on the ‘RegisteredOwner’ key and then change it.

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Boost speed: There’s one tweak that will make every hover action much faster, from tooltips to the Start menu. Navigate to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Control Panel\Mouse’ and tweak the ‘MouseHoverTime’ value. A word of warning, though: never choose 0 – it’s completely unworkable. 3 300 PC TIPS 3

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Click your way to a betterlooking Windows 7 It’s easy to tweak your operating system for a more personalised computing experience, and our brilliant tips show you how…

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our fresh installation of Windows 7 gives a ‘one size fits all’ configuration, but there are countless ways in which you can tweak the standard operating system to make it better suit your particular needs. Built-in customisation options include the usual controls over the interface theme and the way in which Windows alerts you to important events. There are also a bevy of free add-ons, which provide an even wider choice of customisation options – from ways to change parts of the OS that Microsoft doesn’t cater for, to adding clever new features that make Windows 7 even more capable. Here are 25 of our favourite tweaks.

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Change the colour of the Aero UI: Windows

7’s sleek Aero theme is a definite improvement on Windows XP’s ugly Luna, but you may not like its default colours. Right-click the desktop, choose ‘Personalize’, then ‘Window Color’, and you’ll be able to tweak the colours to your heart’s content. Shades of red work particularly well for distinguishing between active and inactive windows – unlike the default blue tones. You can turn off transparency here too, should you wish to.

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Change the Windows theme: Customising

the colour scheme of Windows 7 is one thing, but how about more drastic changes? Rightclick the desktop, then choose ‘Personalize’, and you can change the entire interface theme – the desktop wallpaper, colour scheme, system sounds and mouse pointers. A handful of themes are installed by default, but click the ‘Get more themes online’ link and you can download others for free.

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Change your user account picture:

Customising your user account image is a great way to differentiate quickly between multiple accounts on a single PC. Windows 7 comes with a selection of images to choose from – just go to ‘Start | Control Panel | User accounts and family safety | Change your account picture’. The ‘Browse for more pictures’ link at the bottom of this window also enables you to choose one of your own images and Windows will automatically resize it to suit.

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Switch system sounds: Windows has

long been able to make noises to reflect just about anything it does, but not everyone wants to hear a ding, beep, buzz or click

510 super quick tips 28 26 27 Customise the Start button: If you don’t like the look of the round Windows 7 Start button, you can change it with Start Orb Changer. You can download the program for free from http://bit.ly/w7start and switch to one of 10 readymade Start button images, or use one of your own.

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300 PC TIPS

Get Rainmeter: Rainmeter takes the Windows 7 Sidebar Gadgets idea and extends it to the whole desktop. A free download from www.rainmeter.net, it enables you to integrate all kinds of useful system information, along with RSS feeds and Twitter updates.

1 Customise your user account: Choose from the default account pictures, or choose your own from your image library. for every system event. Go to ‘Start | Control Panel | Appearance and Personalization | Change sound effects’, and you can selectively change or disable the sounds that Windows 7 assigns to each system event. You can also select from a range of other novel sound schemes, or opt for ‘No Sounds’ if you prefer to work uninterrupted.

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Add a taskbar toolbar:

Windows 7’s ability to pin programs to the taskbar has eliminated the need for the Quicklaunch Toolbar, but you can still add other types of toolbar for quick access to

Add backgrounds to windows: If you like your desktop to be busy, Windows 7 Folder Background Changer will probably appeal. It’s free from http://bit.ly/w7bc. After downloading, there’s no installation – just run it, select a folder, pick an image and re-open the Explorer window.

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certain tasks. Right-click on an empty part of the taskbar, then select ‘Toolbars’ and you can an address box for quick-launching URLs, or a desktop button for ready access to desktop shortcuts when your screen is full of windows. Touch-screen PC users can also add a tablet PC input panel for quick onetap access to the on-screen handwriting input.

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Customise the Start menu: Microsoft has

removed the ‘Classic Start menu’ option from Windows 7, but you can still alter its look and

Make Explorer windows more XPfriendly: To make Windows 7 more familiar, enable the menu bar from ‘Organize | Layout | Menu bar’, then turn off the bottom ‘Details’ pane. Go to ‘Tools | Folder Options’, then enable ‘Show all folders’ and ‘Automatically expand to current folder’.

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Control window sizes with the keyboard: If Windows 7’s Aero Snap doesn’t offer enough control, try Window Manager. This free download from http://bit.ly/windowsmanager enables you to set window sizes and positions for applications, then activate them with keyboard shortcuts.

11-35 feel to make it better suited to the way you work. Right-click the ‘Start’ button, choose ‘Properties’ and a dialog box will open with some basic privacy settings. Click the ‘Customise’ button and you can then make more drastic changes to the Start menu’s appearance.

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Change what the Start menu ‘power’ button does:

Thankfully, the excessively complex shutdown option on Windows Vista’s Start menu has been streamlined in Windows 7, but Microsoft has also changed the default power button behaviour from ‘Sleep’ to a full shutdown. If you want to change it back, right-click the Start button, choose ‘Properties’ and select your preferred option from the ‘Power button action’ dropdown list.

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Calm down UAC:

Microsoft wisely opted to reduce the constant pestering of Windows Vista’s User Access Control with the release of Service Pack 2, but Windows 7 brings more granular control over when you’re asked to confirm certain system-level actions. Go to ‘Start | Control Panel | User Accounts and Family Safety | User Accounts | Change User Account Control Settings’ and you’ll see a slider. The bottom position disables UAC completely, but the next notch up is the best (and least annoying) option for safe computing.

the Action Center, accessed via ‘Start | Control Panel | System and Security’ and you can alter what Windows badgers you about – including the fact that UAC is disabled. Just don’t think that turning off warnings about inadequate antivirus protection is a good idea…

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Move the taskbar:

Don’t like the Windows 7 taskbar at the bottom of the screen? Then why not drag and drop it to one of the desktop’s three other sides? You might need to unlock it first, though – just right-click on an empty area of the taskbar and deselect the appropriate option. You can also click and drag the edge to the taskbar to make it wider, which is ideal if you’ve pinned lots of applications to it.

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Go Gadget crazy:

Windows Gadgets enable you to add at-a-glance information to the Sidebar at the right of the screen

to save you looking it up in the web browser. Right-click the desktop, choose ‘Gadgets’ and you’ll see a list of available tools, with a link to download more at the bottom of the window. To enable a Gadget, right-click it and select ‘Add’. Most Gadgets have individual settings – hover the mouse pointer over an active one to show its ‘spanner’ icon.

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Stop the screensaver interrupting video playback: Disabling

the Windows screensaver and setting your monitor to turn off after several minutes’ inactivity is a great energy saver, but it’s a pain if it kicks in when you’re watching an online video. The solution is Mouse Jiggler – a free download from http://mousejiggler.codeplex. com. Run the tiny program and it will make Windows 7 think the mouse is moving imperceptibly, even when you’re nowhere near it, thereby preventing power-saving options from activating when you don’t want them to.

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Turn off combined taskbar buttons: You can disable Windows 7’s combined buttons. Right-click an empty part of the taskbar and choose ‘Properties’. Use the ‘Taskbar buttons’ dropdown to disable button-combining, or use it only when the taskbar is full.

various clumsy hacks that enable you to change the Windows 7 user login screen, but the free Logon Changer utility from www.tweaks.com/ software/tweakslogon does all the hard work for you without fuss. Just point the program at the picture you want to use and it will resize it accordingly, back up the original and then make the change. Simple!

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1Windows Gadgets: Add a wealth of information to your Sidebar. You can download extra Gadgets if you can’t see what you want.

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Customise the Notification Area: Windows 7 tries to manage the contents of the Notification area at the right of the taskbar, but you may need to lend a hand. Right-click the taskbar, choose ‘Properties’ and then click the ‘Customize’ button on the General tab to see options for each Notification area icon.

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Turbo-charge file transfers: TeraCopy, a free download from www. codesector.com/teracopy. php, supplants the Explorer copy function with its own buffered copy. This can be far quicker and enables you to preview file operations before committing to them, and to pause transfers.

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Do more with dual monitors: If you use

two or more monitors with Windows, but want a taskbar on more than just the main display, Ultramon is the software for you. As well as making windows on each monitor easier to manage, Ultramon enables you to assign different wallpapers to each desktop, and enables you move to windows around each display with a mouse click. You can download a 30-day demo from www.realtimesoft. com/ultramon – the full program is available for £25.

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Turn off Notification Area alerts: Windows

7 likes to keep you informed about the state of your security settings, but you might not want to know about every single thing that crops up. Go to

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Change the login screen: There are

Makes Windows easier to see: Ultra-

high-resolution monitors can make certain parts of the Windows interface tricky to see, particularly if your eyesight is far from perfect. Switching a TFT display to a lower, non-native resolution will only make things worse, but Windows 7 offers a better option. Go to ‘Start | Control Panel | Appearance and Personalization | Display | Make text and other items larger and smaller’, and you’ll see two options for making everything in Windows, from on-screen text to the taskbar, look bigger.

Change desktop icons: Right-click the desktop and choose ‘Personalize’, then click ‘Change desktop icons’ and select the icon you want to change. Click ‘Change Icon’ to see a list of other icons you can use, or hit ‘Browse’ to use your own – www.iconfactory.com has a good, free selection.

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Make Windows look like Mac OS: A simple way to make your PC ape Mac OS X is with the free Snow Transformation Pack from www.winxsoft.com/ stp/download.html. The changes are dramatic, reversible and extremely convincing, with only a handful of compromises. 300 PC TIPS 5

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Break into Linux with our expert Ubuntu tips Fancy dabbling in the world of Linux but not sure where to start? Our top tips will introduce you to a new world of computing…

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aking a trip into the weird and wonderful world of Linux with the world’s most popular distro isn’t always the easiest of tasks, particularly if you’re used to Windows’ clean embrace. This isn’t helped by the fact that Ubuntu isn’t as fully featured as it should be from the start. Learn a bit about the OS, and get up and running with some interesting and helpful tools by following this guide.

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Run essential updates: Any Linux

installation worth its salt will alert you immediately to any changes that need to be made after installation, particularly if you’ve installed from a Live CD that might not be entirely up to date. Ubuntu alerts you to this with an orange flash in its taskbar. Click on it, enter the administration password you set during installation and use the Update Manager to install the essentials. You’ll also find it at ‘System | Update Manager’.

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Manually update packages: The auto-

updater isn't the only way to get your system up to speed. The package manager – which deals with downloading, installing and configuring new programs – might need a little

1 Check the Package Manager: Ubuntu provides a quick and easy way to install new software in seconds. Dig around in Synaptic Package Manager and you’ll find all kinds of free goodies. kick, however. Open a terminal window (select it from the menu, or hit [Alt]+[F2] and type gnome-terminal), then type sudo apt-get update to ensure that Ubuntu’s knowledge of packages is up to date.

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Perform package upgrades: The next

step is to turn your installed packages into the shiny new versions, which you can do using a slightly different command in the terminal window: apt-get upgrade. Insert it (remembering to prefix it with sudo, which tells

510 super quick tips 51 52 Change your wallpaper: Ubuntu features some pretty – clearly Mac-inspired – purple desktop backgrounds, but no operating system is really yours until you’ve plastered a picture of your cat all over it. Right-click the desktop and choose ‘Change Desktop Background’ to load one in.

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300 PC TIPS

Switch window styles: You can change the look of your desktop’s windows from the ‘Appearance Preferences’ window. Click the Theme tab, then click on a style to see how it will look. If you click ‘Customise’, you can combine elements from different themes.

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Ubuntu to perform the action as a super user) and apt-get will hammer through the list, marking and installing any packages that have fallen behind the times.

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Upgrade the distribution: Apt

is a monster of a tool. It can help you stay right on the cutting edge with little or no effort on your part. Let's say, for example, you’ve had an Ubuntu installation running for a while, but you want to install the latest version of the OS. You need to do a full backup, burn a new

Install hardware drivers: To get the most out of your Ubuntu desktop, you’ll need the optimal drivers for your graphics card. They’re not installed by default, but if you go to ‘System | Administration | Hardware Drivers’, you’ll see your options. Select the latest driver, install it and restart.

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disc, sit through a reinstallation process and cross your fingers, right? Wrong. Type apt-get distupgrade to bring your installed distro in line with current standards automatically.

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Manage repositories easily:

Apt doesn’t conjure packages out of thin air. It uses repositories – vast databases of software packages that ensure the latest versions of software are always easily available from (almost) one place. To add more repositories, we recommend starting by

Set up desktop effects: You’ll get a fancier looking desktop if you switch on visual effects (‘System | Preferences | Appearance | Visual Effects’). Install the ‘compiz’ settings application – search Synaptic for ‘compizconfig’ – and you’ll have access to many more stylish tweaks.

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Add a dock: There’s a neat little desktop application, based on the code behind Gnome-Do (discussed elsewhere), that emulates the dock from Mac OS X. It’s worth a try. Search Synaptic for ‘docky’, install it, and you’ll be able to configure its minutest details by simply clicking the icon on the far left.

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5Do more with Gnome-Do 48 46 47 Set up Gnome-Do: Adding functionality to Ubuntu starts with Gnome-Do, which simplifies and speeds up searching for programs and files, or activating functions. Look in the package manager for ‘gnome-do’ (or install it using apt-get) to add it. You’ll now find it in the Ubuntu menu.

Understand the panes: Get Gnome-Do running, then hit [Super]+[Space]. [Super] is the [Windows] key on a standard PC keyboard. The left-hand pane contains the item you’re searching for, while the right-hand pane will eventually contain the action to be applied to it.

installing a repository manger. Type sudo wget http://mac4deb. googlepages.com/addrepo -O / usr/bin/addrepo into a terminal window to install addrepo, then sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/addrepo to set its permissions properly.

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Add new repositories:

Adding another source for software is easy; once you’ve installed addrepo, you can do it in the terminal by typing something along the lines of addrepo deb http://mirror2. ubuntulinux.nl/ lucid-seveas all. If you find new repositories online, they will usually give you the right details to enter. You could also do it graphically by going to ‘System | Administration | Software Sources | Third Party Software | Add’.

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Check the package manager: Ubuntu’s

package management tools are, as you might have noticed, not restricted to the command line. Synaptic Package Manager is an excellent graphical interface for apt. To open it, go to ‘System |

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Play Windows videos: Type this into a terminal: sudo wget http://www.medibuntu. org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_ release -cs).list –outputdocument=/etc/apt/ sources.list.d/medibuntu. list. Then run sudo apt-get install w32codecs to get the appropriate files.

Try it out: We’ll use Firefox as an example application for Gnome-Do. Start typing firefox and it should appear in the left window after a few letters – that’s all you need to type. Now hit [Tab] to switch to the second pane, and start typing the action you wish to perform, such as Minimise or Close.

Administration | Synaptic Package Manager’. Part of the fun of repositories is hunting around them for interesting packages – feel free to have a poke about!

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Install restricted extras: Ubuntu is

free software, so many features are left out by default for licensing reasons. That doesn’t stop you installing them yourself, though. To get the Flash plug-in, support for MP3 and DVD playback, and standard TrueType fonts (among other things), search Synaptic Package Manager for ‘ubunturestricted-extras’ and install it. All the essentials are in that single package.

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Use further features: The arrow keys are a satisfying way to navigate around Gnome-Do. Start typing in the first pane, then hit [down] to see all the possible options. Use [right] to expand folders or panels. Choose one, hit [Tab] and use the [down] arrow to select the action to perform on it.

down retro shooter; and vDrift, a track-based racing simulator. All deserve a place on your hard drive.

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Enable more tweaks: There’s a

single package that will open up a world of further customisation options, and that's ubuntu-tweak. You can download the DEB package

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Add more plug-ins: Gnome-Do can act on just about any software. Bring up the window with [Super]+[Space], click the little down arrow at the top-right corner and select Preferences. You can then add plug-ins for everything from Google tools and Twitter to music players such as RhythmBox.

from www.ubuntu-tweak.com and, ensuring you don’t already have a package manager open, double-click it to open it with the GDebi package manager. Now simply click on ‘Install’, and Ubuntu Tweak will appear in System Tools under the ‘Applications’ menu, connecting you to a host of system tools from one useful place.

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Get some games:

Ubuntu’s default selection of games is a little weak. There’s a wealth of gaming gold on the default repositories, though. Search for and check out the following: Tremulous, a decent first-person shooter; FlightGear, a seasoned and accurate flight sim; Gridwars, a flashy top-

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Install VLC: You’ll find VLC listed in Synaptic under a search for ‘VLC’. Like most apps, it installs a number of other programs at the same time, which it needs in order to run. However, it doesn’t install the Firefox plug-in – search for ‘mozilla-plugin-vlc’ to find it if you want media handled in your browser.

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1 Get some games: vDrift brings Gran Turismo-style realistic racing to the Linux desktop. It’s definitely worth a try, especially as it’s free.

Set up Samba: Sharing files with Windows computers? You need Samba. Search for ‘samba’ within Synaptic, mark the packages ‘samba’ and ‘system-config-samba’ for installation and click ‘Apply.’ You can use the configuration app to set up permanently linked shares.

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Mess with panels: Ubuntu’s default layout is a mix of OS X and Windows. To fiddle with its panels, right-click an empty spot and select ‘Properties’. You can also add or remove elements with the appropriate command. If you’ve installed Docky, you may need to shift at least one panel out of the way.

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Unleash GIMP: There’s one premier artistry app for Linux, and that’s GIMP. If there were an award for ‘most Photoshop features aped’, it would win two of them. It doesn’t come on a standard Ubuntu Live CD, but it deserves to, so grab it from Synaptic Package Manager and get doodling. 300 PC TIPS 7

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Leave your desk behind with our top mobile tips If you spend a lot of your time on the road or away from home, our key tips will help you make sure you can easily access your data, wherever you are…

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loud computing, smartphones and netbooks mean more of us than ever before are free from a desk-bound PC. To make the most of your mobile experience, check out our essential tips for computing on the move…

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Use a tethered modem: If you aren’t

away from a wireless network often, then getting a broadband dongle might not be worthwhile. Instead, try tethering your mobile phone, provided your network supports it. Essentially, your laptop uses the mobile’s internet connection for its data. Some phones include tethering options, but there are also tethering apps for most platforms. Joikuspot (www.joikushop.com) will do the job for Symbian-based phones, while Proxoid (http://code. google.com/p/proxoid) performs a similar task for Android devices.

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Make MiFi work:

You can share the connection from a 3G dongle across your network using Internet Connection Sharing. In the Network and Sharing Center, choose ‘Change Adapter Settings’, then rightclick the connection for your dongle and select ‘Properties’. On the Sharing tab, tick ‘Allow

other network users to connect through this computer’s internet connection’. On the Network and Sharing Center, choose ‘Set up a new connection or network | Set up a wireless ad-hoc (computer to computer) network’. Follow the instructions. Ad hoc networks can be flaky, so if you need to share a connection regularly, try a MiFi. The telco 3 does pay-as-you-go units from £50 – see www.three.co.uk/ Mobile_Broadband/MiFi.

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Call with Skype: Save

money on expensive hotel phone bills by making your calls over Skype. If you have a decent wireless connection and a laptop with a microphone, you can buy flat-rate calls to landlines using Skype for £2.24 per month, while 3 permits you to make Skype calls via its 3G broadband service. Other networks restrict VoIP data over 3G. Many Wi-Fi-capable phones support Skype too.

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Find Wi-Fi hotspots:

Check out where you’re travelling in advance to see if there are any free Wi-Fi hotspots about. To find them, simply browse to http://bit.ly/wifi-hotspots and enter a postcode or location. It will provide a list of nearby hotspots and connection details.

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Get local SIMs: Call

and data charges for roaming can be steep, even when you take EU caps into consideration. With an unlocked phone, it could be much cheaper to buy a local pay-as-you-go SIM. Check out the providers’ websites before travelling to see which company offers the best data plans.

documents. When you make changes and save them to your Dropbox folder on your computer, these are uploaded to Dropbox and then replicated on your other machines as soon as you log on.

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Use Portable Apps:

way to save money on phone calls abroad is to invest in a Skype number. You can get one free if you buy a month’s landline calls. Give this to your contacts and they’ll be able to call you at a normal UK landline rate. If you’re not on Skype when they call, they’ll be able to leave you a voice mail. When you call them back using Skype via Wi-Fi, you’ll only pay the cost of a UK landline call.

If you’re on the move and your laptop dies, then you need a way to access your data and most common programs. Install Portable Apps (www.portableapps.com) on a USB flash drive alongside your most useful files and you can enjoy your own virtual desktop on any public PC, without worrying about leaving browsing traces, so long as you use Portable Firefox. You can even use your favourite Firefox plug-ins and carry them around with you. The full installation of Portable Apps includes the OpenOffice.org software suite.

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Buy a Skype number: A further

Install Dropbox:

Whether you’re home or abroad, it helps to be able to get access, at any time, to the most recent version of whatever documents you’re actively working on. Dropbox provides online storage and synchronisation with as many computers as you install it on (www.dropbox.com). The first 2GB of storage is free, which is enough for most people’s active

Secure your passwords: Keepass

(www.keepass.info) is an open-source password management program that stores your passwords in an encrypted file. Install the program on your laptop and then save the password database file in your Dropbox folder. Do the same on any other computers that are running Dropbox and you can access your most up-to-date passwords from any of your PCs. Ensure that Dropbox is secured with a strong password. If your laptop breaks, you’ll still be able to get to your password database using the Portable Apps version of Keepass and web access to Dropbox.

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Use the cloud:

1 Dropbox: Mirror your most used files so you can access them from the web if you can’t use your laptop. 8

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Dropbox is a good example of a cloud-based service that can be invaluable when you’re on the move, but it’s worth considering using other services to increase your storage. You

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510 super quick tips

1 Power Options: Eke out more battery life when away from power by dimming the screen and hastening sleep if your laptop’s left idle. can use a combination of photo services, such as Flickr, Picasa and Photobucket, along with Google Docs, Zoho and gOffice for documents. Then you can get general storage at Humyo or Mozy, which both offer a lots of space. Remember to select encrypted providers for sensitive information. Most of these services also provide sharing options that make sending someone else a document as simple as passing on a URL.

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Set up offline mail:

Even in the world of mobile broadband and ubiquitous Wi-Fi, there are still places where you won’t be able to get a signal and you’ll have to work offline. Plan for this by ensuring that you have an offline mail client such as Thunderbird (http://bit.ly/ mozilla-thunderbird) installed, even if you use a web-based email service. Download your messages before hitting the road so you can refer to them and write responses while you’re offline. For Gmail, you can install Google Gears or get a simple backup of your messages by getting Google Desktop to index them. An offline client is still the best option, though.

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Extend battery life: Consider ways

to extend your battery life if you have to spend extended time away from a source of power. Set your Power Options to dim the screen unless you’re working in bright sunlight because this extends battery life significantly. Also try any tricks that will take load off the processor: disabling unnecessary background processes, closing programs you’re not using and even turning off Aero. All of this will ensure that your laptop consumes less power and you’ll get more life out of the battery.

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Optimise for bandwidth: Consider

ways in which you can optimise your connection when you’re on reduced bandwidth. You might have dropped to a GPRS connection or even had to resort to using dial-up. In these cases, a slow connection can limit your productivity. Shut down synchronising services such as Dropbox and Windows Live Sync. You can sync up again when you get onto a better connection. Turn off any other programs that poll the internet. Disable pictures in your browser, plus any other multimedia you can – the results, while ugly, will be easier to manage speed-wise.

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Stay secure: If you’re

using free hotspots or any that enable you to connect using an open wireless connection, ensure that you have a decent firewall installed. Comodo (http://personal firewall.comodo.com), Agnitum (http://free.agnitum.com) and ZoneAlarm (download it from www.zonealarm.com) provide free firewalls that generally outperform Windows’ offering. Consider installing one to turn on in these circumstances. Just enable access for your web browser and email program. Ensure that you use Windows’ public network settings too.

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Tether your iPhone: In iOS 4, you can turn on internet tethering by choosing ‘Settings | General | Network | Internet Tethering’ – but only if you’re with a provider that allows it. While it can be expensive to change in the middle of a contract, it’s definitely worth confirming this feature next time.

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Get audio channels: If you’re in need of entertainment and you’ve got a 3G signal, Tuner Internet Radio is one of the iPhone’s best apps. It’s not free, but for hundreds of channels, the £3 fee is a bargain. It’s available to download from Apple’s iTunes App Store.

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Use Mobile Dropbox: Get quick access to your Dropbox files on your phone. There’s an Android app available in the marketplace, and one for iPhone and iPad in the App Store. A Blackberry app is on its way. Learn more at www.dropbox.com/ anywhere or get simple mobile web access at http://m.dropbox.com.

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Find yourself: There’s no need to go anywhere without access to a map. Google Maps is available for all popular phones and mobile devices. See www.google.com/mobile/ maps for relevant download links or just point your mobile browser at m.google.com/maps.

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Keep cool: If you’re using a laptop plugged in for extended periods, consider buying a laptop cooler to prevent it from overheating. These cost around £20 and plug into a USB port. They use fans to cool the underside of your laptop, ensuring you get stable performance for lengthy use. Take a back-up drive: Consider carrying portable back-up media with you, especially if you’re travelling for any period of time. A passport drive is small enough to tuck into most laptop bags and is USB-powered. Expect to pay around £60 for a 500GB drive, which should offer enough space.

Charge in the car: A car charger for your laptop ensures that you can top up its juice by plugging it into the cigarette lighter while you’re driving. Generic ones are available for between £10 and £20. Try to get one for your specific model if possible, though – it’ll cost a bit more, but it’s worth it.

Spare battery: If you’re stuck on a train or plane with no charging point, a spare battery can pay dividends. You can usually find spares at a reasonable price on eBay and one could effectively double your working time. Check the capacity of the battery and don’t forget to keep it charged.

Encrypt files: Consider

what might happen if your laptop or thumb drive gets lost or stolen. By encrypting any sensitive files, you can make sure the vital data within it can’t be accessed. Use TrueCrypt (www.truecrypt.org) to create a virtual encrypted disk hidden within a file on your system and place all your most important files there. Anyone getting access to your PC won’t even know that the disk is there, keeping your data safe.

Watch the skies: Got time to look up and see the stars? If you have an Android phone, then you can get an annotated map of the sky wherever you are, thanks to GPS and Google Sky Map (www.google. com/mobile/skymap). It adjusts according to where your phone is pointing, so you can find out about any part of the sky.

Back up at home: Your laptop is likely to undergo greater wear and tear than a static computer, making it more vulnerable to data loss. It makes sense to back it up whenever you touch base at home or at the office. Keep a copy of all your important data on at least one other PC, so that it’s easily accessible. 3 300 PC TIPS 9

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Revive a PC with our disaster recovery tips Get your PC back up and running after a crash or virus attack with our essential steps for diagnosis and recovery

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ere’s the scenario: one minute you’re working and surfing quite happily, the next the Blue Screen Of Death rears its ugly head and your machine won’t boot. Whatever’s happened to Windows is serious and the problem is confounded by the absence of backups. You’ve been promising to make some but never quite got around to it. Don’t panic! Just follow these steps.

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The easy win: Before

you bring out the big guns – which we‘ll discuss later – it pays to explore the easy options. Try using Windows’ own repair and recovery tools, accessible from your installation disc. Depending on the version of Windows that you’re running, the choices will differ. For Windows 7, the key is Startup Repair. This will hopefully “automatically fix problems that are preventing Windows from starting”.

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Leave your hard drive alone: If

you’re dealing with sensitive data on a crashed PC, it pays to be careful. It’s safest to leave the operating system

alone and try to access data, files and folders indirectly. This is particularly true if you suspect you’re battling a virus attack. By running the host OS, you give the contagion the opportunity to call home, update and send out more of your data. With all this in mind, we say don’t boot a damaged OS – use a Live CD rescue kit instead.

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AVG Rescue CD:

1 Inside Security: This Rescue Toolkit lets you scan your PC for viruses and rootkits.

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Free ISO burner: To turn an ISO disc image into a functional Live CD, you need an ISO burner. Newer versions of Windows feature such tools as standard, but if you’re after something more featurerich, try Free ISO Burner from www.freeisoburner.com. It can burn to a wide range of media.

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If your PC has been brought to its knees by a virus, getting back into Windows filesystems, from common NTFS to with enough control over the more obscure systems. The toolkit system to remove the contagion will scan for viruses and let you get can be tricky. Thankfully, there’s online from a defunct PC. It can also an easy answer – the AVG Rescue sniff out rootkits. CD. Download the ISO image from http://bit.ly/avg-cd and burn the The Ultimate Boot image to a CD or create a bootable CD: If nothing we’ve USB key. Whatever you choose, the discussed so far has Linux-based rescue CD makes it worked, go for the big guns. It’s easy to scan and remove viruses. time for The Ultimate Boot CD The Inside Security Rescue (www.ultimatebootcd.com), Toolkit (www.inside-security. a collection of 100 applications de/insert_en.html) isn’t strictly that should help even the most a rescue system – it’s knackered PC get back more a tool for forensic on its feet. The security analysis. It interface breaks can, for example, apps down into examine a huge categories, such Build a bootab variety of different as BIOS, CPU, le disaster recove Memory and so ry disc for Windo on. Follow the ws menu structure. p80 Given the number of apps on offer, you should be able to find one that will salve your PC’s ills.

1 AVG Rescue CD: Despite its flexibility and immense power, this essential disc has a simple, straightforward interface.

55 super quick tips

GParted: GParted is a classic among open-source applications. It’s essentially a program that lets you move, resize, check, copy, create and delete hard disk partitions. It’s not uncommon for these to be damaged during a serious crash, so having GParted to hand as a Live CD is essential. Despite the program’s obvious power, it’s extremely simple to

Undelete a file: Pandora Recovery can resurrect deleted files. Use the portable version – installing it natively risks overwriting the data you’re trying to rescue. Get it from www. pandorarecovery.com and build a bootable USB version of the program on another PC.

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Ghost for Linux: Norton Ghost is a classic application – we’ve used it and loved it since version one. It’s a partition-cloning tool and can be vital in a disaster. To experiment with the concept of partition cloning, try Ghost for Linux. It’s an open-source project found at http://bit.ly/ghost4linux.

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A beeping PC: If your PC does little more than beep after its crash, it’s sending you an encoded diagnosis of its ailments. All you need to do – albeit from a different machine – is visit www.computerhope. com/beep.htm, where you’ll find a complete guide to beep codes.

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What went wrong? When you’re back up and running, you need to work out what caused your PC to fall over. Here, the Windows Crash Dump is your friend. Microsoft does offer some help (http://bit.ly/ ms-support), but for the ultimate insight, visit Crash Dump Analysis (www.dumpanalysis.org/blog). 3

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Whip Windows into shape with command line tricks The Windows command prompt is already a great way to perform back-end tasks, but you can make it even better

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espite rumours you may have heard to the contrary, the Windows command prompt is far from dead. It’s just gone a bit quiet lately, that’s all. The command prompt – or DOS prompt, if you refuse to let go of the past – still underpins Windows 7, and offers a quick and technical way of moving files about, listing directories and performing a wide range of back-end tasks that might not have a graphical interface. There’s a lot to learn about the humble prompt, and you can get more out of it with these helpful hints.

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Customise it: The

console’s default colour scheme of white text on a black screen not doing it for you? It’s surprisingly straightforward to alter the look of the command prompt. Bring up a window by typing cmd into the Windows 7 search box, or the ‘Run’ dialog if you’re using an older version of the OS. Right-click the title bar and select ‘Properties’, then go to the Font tab to choose from a few different typefaces. The Colours tab lets you determine the hue of both selected and unselected text; if the standard shades don’t take your fancy, you can use the ‘Selected colour values’ boxes to choose custom colours.

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Make it better:

By default, the command prompt is quite restricted in its scope. It’s therefore worth tweaking a few of the values in the Properties dialog to make it bigger and improve its memory. Select the Options tab and set the buffer size to 500 to increase the number of previous commands to be stored by the prompt, then toggle ‘Discard old duplicates’ to stop it remembering your every use of the ‘dir’ command. Now go to the Layout tab and make the screen buffer height somewhere around 1,000, and increase the window height to a more reasonable 50 lines.

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Add functions: Quite

why Quick Edit, which is accessible from the Options tab, is switched off by default is quite beyond us. Switch it on and you’ll be able to copy text by dragging it and then rightclicking the mouse in the command prompt. You can then paste text into the prompt by right-clicking without dragging. Intuitive.

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Quick command prompts: Opening up

a command prompt is usually a pretty long-winded exercise that involves a lot of

55 super quick tips 101 102 Use the keys: Can’t be bothered typing that super-long string again? Use the [Up] key to bring up the most recently used command. Keep pressing it to browse through your history, or use the [Down] arrow to move forward in time. You can also hit [F7] to bring up a formatted list.

Tab Completion: If you’re interacting with a file or folder, start typing the filename and hit [Tab]. Provided it’s in the folder you’re working in, the name will be auto-completed. If there are other files with the same start string, hit [Tab] again to skip through them.

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1 Customise it: New colours and fonts can go a long way to making the dated old command prompt feel like home again. tedious typing, followed by the hassle of having to navigate to the specific folder that you want to work in. But there's an easier way to go about it.

In Windows Explorer, hold the [Shift] key and right-click the folder in which you want to open a new prompt, then simply select ‘Open command window here’. You can also open a command prompt with elevated administration privileges with a minimum of fuss by right-clicking the folder while holding down the [Shift]+[Control] keys.

Drag and drop There’s a second way to fill in filenames and folders, and it’s arguably even easier than the previous method. Just click and hold an item in an Explorer window, then drag it to the command prompt and drop it there, and Windows fills in the filename and path automatically.

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Try an alternative:

While it’s not possible to replace the Windows command line, there are plenty of shells that give it a more advanced interface. Try out PowerCmd (www.powercmd.com) for a multi-pane interface that enables you to do a lot more, or search for ‘GlassCmd’ to give the console a Windows 7-style look. Console (www.sourceforge.net/ projects/console) will give you a tabbed interface, but for a more powerful take, try Take Command from www.jpsoft.com.

Change some names: The command title enables you to, rather pointlessly, alter the title bar of the command window from the current directory to whatever you affix to the end of it. The command prompt does the same for the C:\> part of the shell itself.

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Use the history keys: Did you know that you can type the previous command one letter at a time by hitting [F1] repeatedly? This is a handy way of getting to the part you got wrong if you’re retyping the last entry. Try using [F2] and [F3] as well – we’ll let you discover exactly what they do. 3

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Browser extensions that will change how you surf Whether you use Firefox, Chrome or another popular browser, a quick click is all you need to make it even more versatile…

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he ability to add features to browsers makes them the most powerful applications on your screen, but with so many to choose from, where do you start? Too many and you’ll slow down your system; not enough and you're wasting an opportunity. Here’s our guide to the ones you can't afford to be without.

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Greasemonkey:

Greasemonkey runs user-written scripts to completely alter many of your favourite websites, giving them a new look, invisibly mashing up different services and adding brand new features. Visit the website at www.userscripts.org to see

what’s possible. It’s available for Chrome and Firefox, and is built into Opera as UserJS.

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AdBlock Plus:

Many of us are virtually immune to online ads by now, but if you get a site that goes just that little bit too far, AdBlock Plus (http://adblockplus.org/en) is the best way to slap it into shape. It strips out everything from pop-ups to embedded Flash animations, making your browsing fast, smooth and less likely to make you feel the urge to reach for a Pepsi, the cool, refreshing choice of the new generation. As a bonus, it’ll also strip out any malware too.

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CooIiris: This is

not just a media browser, but it’s an incredibly impressive one too. CoolIris (www.cooliris.com) creates 3D walls of content from your favourite social sites, which doesn’t sound like much until you see it in action. Finding that one photo or video is so much easier when you can see all the options stretching out into infinity. It works on your desktop files too, giving you a great way to read everything.

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Feedly: An

alternative way of reading Google Reader, now in Firefox and Chrome. Feedly reparses your RSS feeds into a magazinestyle format, making it less effective as a dedicated research tool or if you have to read every last story, but much smoother if you just want to see what’s going on right now. An icon on your toolbar brings it straight up, and if you want to go back into full research mode, it’s easy to return to regular Google Reader. Get it from www.feedly.com.

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Web Developer Toolbar: As the

1 Chrome extensions: One-click installs without any need to restart the browser make Chrome excellent for playing with extensions.

55 super quick tips 121 122 IE Tab: Not many of us use IE by choice, but sometimes there’s no other option. IE Tab lets you open up a window in Firefox (http://bit.ly/ietab-firefox) or Chrome (http://bit.ly/ ietab-chrome), but using the IE rendering engine instead. It gives you all the benefits, and is easily closed afterwards.

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Session Manager: Most of us need more than one website at a time. Session Manager helps you recover from crashes by bringing up complete sets of tabs. It’s available now for Firefox (http://bit.ly/sm-firefox) and the Chrome browser (http://bit.ly/sm-chrome).

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name suggests, you won’t need this one if you never play with HTML and CSS, but if you

PrintPDF: You can download web pages easily enough, but if you want to make sure you see them properly on another platform, PDFs are the answer. PrintPDF is a tool that exports them directly. For Firefox, see http://bit.ly/pdf-firefox. Chrome users should go to http://bit.ly/pdf-chrome.

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do, you can’t afford to be without it. Now for both Firefox and Chrome, it adds all the options you need to troubleshoot your designs, from highlighting individual elements to poking at the CSS directly. Get it from www.chrispederick.com.

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NoScript: Scripting

technologies have made the web a more powerful place, but they sometimes just get in the way. NoScript (www.noscript.net) lets you switch them on and off per page, but because it uses a whitelist to decide when it kicks in, you never need to worry about a rogue page jumping on your back before you can block it. It’s only available for Firefox at the moment.

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DownThemAll:

One for hardcore file junkies, this pulls every file from a web page at a click, saving you the effort of going to each link, clicking ‘Save Target As’, and pointing it to a directory. It’s for Firefox only at the moment, from www.bit.ly/downthemall. Chrome has its own equivalents though, including Download Selection, Download All that does the same thing as DTA, and a range of assorted downloaders for specific sites.

124Karbon FLV Downloader: This is a great way to download FLV video files and MP3s embedded in web page code. For FLVs, you’ll need a dedicated Flash player to watch them later on, at your leisure. You can download it from http:// bit.ly/karbon-firefox.

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SearchPreview For Google: SearchPreview shows you a thumbnail of the sites in a Google search list, giving you another clue about whether you’re about to go to the right place. Firefox users can get it from http://bit.ly/sp-firefox, while Chrome users should see http://bit.ly/sp-chrome.

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Bit.ly: The most popular of the URLshortener tools out there, Bit.ly takes any link you give it and crunches it down into a more Twitter/instant message-friendly format. For Firefox, go to http://bit.ly/bitly-firefox. For Chrome, you need to head over to http://bit.ly/bitly-chrome.

1 CoolIris: A beautiful-looking wall of images, videos and other content. Use it to browse websites, or files on your hard drive. Look for its icon to open up image collections from your favourite pages.

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FireFTP: A

complete FTP client inside Firefox. It’s not as good as something like Filezilla if you use FTP a lot, for either website management or downloading lots of files, but if it’s only an occasional thing these days, it’s great to have something like this on hand to handle the gruntwork. It’s for Firefox only (www.bit.ly/ftp-firefox). The closest Chrome equivalent that's currently available is Chrome FTP (www.bit.ly/ftp-chrome), although that’s considerably less polished at this point.

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Instapaper: Not

an extension, but a bookmark that should work on anything – although you can get plug-ins as well. Instapaper stores any long articles you find and don’t have time to read. Best of all, as it’s a web service, there are viewers available for almost everything, including any web-enabled computer. Get it from www.instapaper.com.

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All-In-OneGestures: Gesture

support has to be used to be fully appreciated. Opera pioneered it in web browsers, and when you’re used to it, it’s impossible to go back. Navigate, close windows and more with simple sweeps of the mouse and it becomes an almost subconscious act. If this specific plug-in doesn’t work, there are

others, although Opera still has the edge in terms of fluidity due to its built-in support. Get it from http://bit.ly/aio-gestures.

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Delicious Bookmarks:

Another bookmarkbased extension, in both ways. Syncing bookmarks is fine, but if you’re like us, you quickly end up with far too many to manage. Delicious (www.delicious.com) is the perfect way to sort, share and tag anything of interest online. You can see what other people have said about them as well, and import them into almost any web browser or other link collection.

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StumbleUpon:

On the other hand, if you’re having trouble simply finding something good to read online, sit back and let StumbleUpon (www.stumbleupon.com) show you the way. Tell it what you’re interested in and it finds you a page that might qualify. You can also add your own favourite sites to the collection, bookmark any of interest for later use, and comment or read comments on sites from other users.

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AutoProxy:

Proxy servers are a godsend if you want to access content you’re not sup… to keep your online life private. And nothing else. Because that would be Very Naughty. AutoProxy (http://bit.ly/autoproxy) lets you

switch back and forth between identities with ease. You’ll still have to track down the right proxy server for what you want to do, and you should be careful that you switch it off before doing anything crucial like online banking, just to be safe.

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Evernote WebClipper: This

is the ideal way of keeping snippets of interest, images or any other clippable content from around the web. With the free Evernote package, you get 40MB a month, which is plenty for web content, and you can access it from any machine or on the major mobile platforms. An IE plug-in installs with the desktop client (not required, but very helpful for managing your note collection), with Firefox/Chrome plug-ins available separately. Get it from www.evernote.com.

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FoxyTunes:

Don’t waste time switching away from the web just because a Justin Bieber song ‘accidentally’ found its way into your music library. With FoxyTunes, you can control almost every major music player from within your browser – which, despite the name, can also be IE. Sorry, no Chrome. Media is one area where Firefox definitely still has the advantage, with Chrome's only real plug-ins being for online players and simple look-up checks of services like Spotify’s library. Get it from www.foxytunes.com.

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Remember The Milk: One of the best task managers around, integrating beautifully with Gmail and available on iPhone and Android. The Firefox and Chrome plug-ins connect it with Gmail too. See www.rememberthemilk.com to download it.

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Chrome Reader: One of the most bizarre and annoying things we’ve noticed about Chrome is that Google makes it incredibly fiddly to subscribe to feeds. This simple but incredibly effective plug-in fixes that problem immediately. You can download it from http://bit.ly/chrome-reader.

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Unhide Passwords: Security is rather pointless when you’re alone, and Unhide Passwords removes the starring-out so you can see what you’re typing. It’s for Firefox only (http://bit.ly/unhide-firefox), but there’s a Chrome equivalent (http://bit.ly/unhide-chrome).

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Copy Without Formatting: When you copy text from the internet, it retains its formatting when you paste it. This add-on sits in Chrome and gives you a shortcut that only spits out plain text. Find it at http://bit.ly/cwf-chrome, or get the handy Firefox equivalent from http://bit.ly/cwf-firefox. 3 300 PC TIPS 15

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Search smarter with our expert guide to Google The information’s out there, but how do you get your hands on it? Follow our tips to mastering the world’s biggest search engine…

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he good thing about Google is that generally, you don't have to be too precise or bend over backwards to find things. When you want something specific, though, or just can’t find it the oldfashioned way, these tips will bring it right to your fingertips.

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Add context:

Simply typing in a search term is usually enough, but you can help Google along by adding a little more context to your query. The easiest way is with Boolean operators. For instance, type fish+chips. The most common are + and – for adding and removing elements, but you can also use * as a wildcard, the tilde symbol (top left of your keyboard) for similar terms, and quotes to get only the “exact phrase you type”. One that almost nobody uses is |, which means ‘or’.

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Search certain sites: Google

doesn’t have to look at the entire internet. By adding a ‘site: clarification’, you can point it to just one page (or, using an ‘I’ as well, multiple). For instance, if you can’t remember whether you read an article on our page or on our sister site TechRadar, you could ask it for

microsoft site:pcplus.co.uk | site:techradar.com to bring up lists from both. The order you get them in will depend on how much PageRank the individual articles have, but both of them will appear in the lists.

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Check spellings:

Google can also zero in to specific types of search, such as replacing your dictionary. Do the search define:portmanteau and it’ll pull definitions of the word from a number of different sources, including Wordnetwb, Wiktionary and Wikipedia. You can also use a regular Google search to check your spelling by typing in how you think a word goes. If you have it wrong, the correct version will be listed at the top of the search results. Of course, it’ll still do the search too.

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has a powerful calculation engine built in. Try a simple sum like 4*25 and it’ll spit out 100 almost immediately. That’s not the clever part. Try 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Celsius, or MMX in decimal and Google pulls the numbers and works it out. It’s not guaranteed, of course – often you’ll just get search results. A few of the more

510 super quick tips 146 147 Customise your search: The Google sidebar offers a number of useful customisation options, including stripping out shopping sites if you just want information, or vice versa if you’re in the mood to buy. You can also prioritise sites you’ve visited, sites you’ve yet to see and much more.

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Do sums: Google

See more results: It’s said that most people only look at the first few results, but if you want more, you can crank up the number. Simply visit http://bit.ly/g-prefs and you can alter this so it displays up to 100 results, although this will obviously slow down the search.

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1 Browse by subject: Start with a general subject and page through the categories and related topics using the Wonder Wheel. advanced ones include the Faraday Constant, the mass of Earth and handling distances in Astronomical Units. However, for more powerful calculations of that sort, accessing many more databases, try Wolfram Alpha – www.wolframalpha.com.

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Ask direct questions:

Simpler searches will pop up immediately, which can be very handy. Why mess around with time zones when you can just ask What is the time in San Francisco? You can also look up

Search safely: Everyone knows you can activate SafeSearch to cut out most of the nasty content online, but if you want to be a little safe, ‘Search Preferences’ also lets you lock SafeSearch on any PC. It only applies to the browser you’re currently using, and you’ll need a Google Account to do it.

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similar live details, including the status of flights in the air, although to be on the safe side, it’s best to go to the airline company’s own page for live lookups.

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Search by location:

Location-aware search may still be limited, but you can get a head start by telling Google where to look. Say, for instance, that you want fish and chips. There’s no point simply typing fish and chips, unless you’re interested in the history or cooking details, but

Search by extension: It’s amazing what you can find if you know what file extensions to look for. Feeling nosey? Do a search for inurl:view/view.shtml and you’ll get nothing but webcam views from around the world. Think of it as oneway chat roulette.

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Monitor social media: Not a Twitter or Facebook user, but want to see the latest stories being passed around? Google now acts as a targeted firehouse for update content. Do a search, then click on the ‘Updates’ option in the sidebar. Any new results are automatically displayed.

131-155 add your postcode on the end of the search – in the case of our office, fish and chips ba12bw, and it’ll highlight the nearest places, give you phone numbers, show you a map and even display some reviews.

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Filter your results: Google is

often smarter than it appears, given a nudge. In Google Images, try a word that could be misconstrued – a name such as Heather or Raven or Cliff. Down the left-hand side, you’ll see a dedicated option to only show faces, stripping out any non-human entries. The same panel can also only show clip art, photos or line drawings, ignore colour or monochrome as you prefer, and even focus solely on results meeting a particular colour palette. By default, Cliff mostly shows, obviously, cliffs. Switch to faces, and it’s Cliff Richard. Choose red, and it’s a DVD called Red Cliff.

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Browse by subject: The

Wonder Wheel gives another way of browsing these options. It’s also in the left-hand sidebar, but this time it produces a chart. The original search provides the starting node, with paths jutting off in all directions. Click these and you move from node to node, getting further away from the original search, but hopefully in the right direction. This is great for when you’re not sure what you want, or you just want to explore.

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Log your searches: As

well as searches, Google can keep a log of the sites you’ve visited using a feature called

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Follow trends: Even if you only run a simple blog or fan page, it’s worth spending some time thinking about SEO. Google Trends (www. google.com/trends) lets you see what people are looking for around the world, revealing the most sought-after stories.

Web History – try it out by visiting www.google.com/history. This uses a toolbar to track your movements – not just on Google – bringing up a timeline of your actions and searching your archives online. You can also switch it to just monitor your searches. Needless to say, if you’re worried about the privacy implications of this, or that you might accidentally stumble onto the ‘wrong’ site, make sure you leave this one alone.

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Sort by time:

The explosion of blogs, Twitter and live news reporting means that Google now factors time into its searches. Many searches will now display Twitter posts, videos and relevant news stories, but to be even more specific, look in the left-hand column to zero in by time. This ranges from simply ‘Latest’ to ‘Past 24 Hours’, ‘Past 2 Days’ (good for factoring in time distances), or a ‘Custom Range’ for if you know when something happened. Simply typing a year into the search box rarely works.

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Use the cache: If a

site’s down, it’s not the end of the world. Google caches most of the pages in its search collection, and you can access them by entering, say, cache:pcplus.co.uk – although hopefully our site is up and running perfectly smoothly while you read this! The cache tells you when the snapshot was taken, and gives you the option for a text-only view. Importantly, though, when you click on a link, it goes outside the cache. You’ll need to append the ‘cache: tag’ to each page in turn if you want to keep browsing.

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Look for title content: Google isn’t restricted to searching page text. If you really want to be precise, look for content in the title via ‘intitle: tag’. This can be used in a few other ways, such as looking for directories on an FTP server by searching for site:myftp. gov intitle:index of.

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1 Search by Timeline: The Timeline brings you news from a wide range of sources, all sourced from within the dates you specify in your search.

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Search for specific files:

Trying to find a particular type of file? Google doesn’t only look for HTML. Type what you’re looking for and then append the ‘filetype: tag’ on the end. For instance, ‘filetype:doc’ will only bring up those types of file. This search supports PDF, Office formats, Shockwave Flash and a few more.

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Optimise your search results:

If a search isn’t producing the right results for you, there are ways in which you can optimise it. In the left-hand sidebar, look for the option that says ‘Related Searches’. At the top of the search, you’ll find a stack of other searches that have taken people to the pages you’re looking at. Searching for ‘Inception’, for instance, offers alternatives ranging from ‘inception meaning’ and ‘inception 2010’ to ‘inception plot’ and even ‘christopher nolan’.

Add Google to your site: If you love Google, you can integrate searches into your own pages. Access the Custom Search Engine beta at www.google.com/cse. You can add sites and pages to its archive, and add the boxes wherever you like. It’s $100 for an ad-free version.

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Personalise your search: The

more you use Google, the more it learns about you. By logging in, it remembers what you’ve looked at and makes it easier to find things. Of course, you might not want that, in which case you can log out. You’ll also want to do this if you're egosurfing or doing SEO work to make sure you’re getting the same Google rankings that anyone else would.

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Search by Timeline: The

Timeline lets you zoom in on any time range and see news pulled from assorted sources, including books in Google Books, newspaper reports and web pages. Searching for the Anglo-French Wars, for instance, brings up a timeline that runs from 1600-2010, stepping down into individual years, then months. This is a great way to track the progress of a story back through time.

Get advanced: If you’re having difficulty forming a search, try the Advanced Search option at www.google. com/advanced_search. There are no tags or Boolean complications, but most of the same abilities in a very easy sheet. Click the option at the bottom for even more tips.

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Get extra detail: Not getting enough information from Google’s site descriptions? In the sidebar, look for the option ‘Page previews’. This gives you shots of the sites you might be about to visit, as well as extending the site descriptions of the first couple of entries. 3 300 PC TIPS 17

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Keep one step ahead of hackers and scammers Don’t rely on software alone. You need to keep your wits about you if you’re going to avoid online crime

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nly The Paranoid Survive is a tract on corporate fundamentals penned by Intel’s ex-Chairman Andy Grove. The words should, however, be tattooed on the back of every PC owner’s mouse hand. The internet is full of thieves and vagabonds united by one common goal – to separate you from your hard-earned cash. Here’s our guide to staying one step ahead of the bad guys. Follow it and you can shop, surf and socialise online, and sleep soundly afterwards too.

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Guerrilla psychology:

Don’t be fooled into thinking cyber crime is a technical problem with a purely

technical solution. A firewall and antivirus software can protect your computer, but they won’t keep you and your identity safe. Social engineering is the black art of influencing people, and it’s the hacker’s best friend. In essence, hackers can control us thanks to a refined understanding of human characteristics such as trust, ignorance, greed, the need to be liked, the desire to help and plain old gullibility. Not even the most sophisticated software can hope to protect us from ourselves. In order to stay safe, educate yourself about social engineering. Take a trip to http://bit.ly/social-engineering for a brilliant briefing on the subject. If you get keen, check out The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security by Kevin Mitnick.

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Avoid being a mule: Working

from home, earn £500 a week commission. It sounds to good to be true, and it is. Scammers pass stolen cash to unsuspecting people, who transfer it back to the thieves via electronic payment. Your job with the work taken out is money laundering. Beware.

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Set a serious password:

If you’re struggling to create passwords that will stump a hacker, check out Microsoft’s guide to adding complexity to access codes in such a way that you can still remember the logon. It can be found at http://bit.ly/ms-pass. When you’ve made a password, you should rate its relative security. Microsoft offers an excellent password checking tool, which can be found here: http://bit. ly/ms-pass-checker.

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Split your emails:

1 Set a serious password: Change your router’s default settings as soon as you get it. If you don’t, you’re a sitting target for the bad guys.

510 super quick tips 171 172 Ditch IE6: If you’re still using Internet Explorer 6, shame on you. Not only are you likely to be getting less from the internet – Google and YouTube have now stopped supporting the ageing browser – but it’s also riddled with security flaws. Do yourself a favour and download a newer browser.

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Check out Virus Total: If you’ve received a file and are worried about its provenance, upload it to www.virustotal.com. The site will run the file through a number of virus-scanning engines to find any hidden malware. It’ll also send you a handy report document.

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Rather than linking Facebook, Twitter, newsgroups, forums, shopping and banking sites to one email address, use multiple addresses. As a minimum, use one for social activities and one for financial

Listen to Bruce Schneier: Renowned security expert, blogger and self-styled security guru Bruce Schneier has a thing or two to say about every aspect of the topic, ranging from the virus right up to national security policy. Visit his blog at www.schneier.com and add it to your bookmarks.

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business. Your social address will rightly draw more attention than your business one – that’s the way you want it to be. If the former is hacked, it won’t be as nightmarish as losing control of your financial address.

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Take care on public networks:

Never, under any circumstances, use a public network for financial transactions. Only send your personal and financial details over a network you’ve set up yourself, or one you know to be secure. Who knows what horrors are lurking on the hard disk of that internet cafe machine, or somewhere between it and its internet access point? Hackers have also been known to set up laptops to broadcast networks with names such as ‘Free Internet Access’ in hotels. They’ll let you pass internet traffic through them and harvest any juicy details as you type.

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Virtualise: The

truly paranoid should virtualise. The idea is simple: create a virtual PC, use it to surf the internet and, when you’ve done, destroy it, along with any viruses that may have infected it while you were online. Running a virtual version of Ubuntu from

Check firewall logs: Firewalls keep logs of traffic they’ve rebuffed. Check these and look for patterns – maybe a particular IP address is pinging your network or a certain port on your setup is spewing out too much traffic. These sorts of things can suggest a viral infection.

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Stop redundant services: The more software and services you’re running, the greater the risk you could be compromised. Be ruthless – delete or deactivate applications and services you don’t use. This will reduce the number of ways into your machine that are available to hackers.

156-180 within Ubuntu is likely to be the easiest way of achieving this style of computing, and it’s likely to be very safe too.

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Anatomy of an iffy shop: By

making online shops look slick, official and safe, online criminals hope to dupe us into disclosing credit card details. Fake shopping sites, like much online criminality, rely on social engineering. There are, however, some tell-tale signs that should help you spot an iffy shop. First, avoid sites that ask for cash, cheque or virtual cash payments only – only do business with sites that accept credit cards. Next, ensure that the shop has a physical address, ideally in the UK – shopping abroad throws up more potential problems.

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Be wary of Facebook: There

are two key areas of social networking security – the technical sphere and the human one. Technical security is about setting up your profile correctly – your favourite site will explain how, so follow its guides. Next is the human aspect of security and our old friend, social engineering. No quantity of settings and checkboxes can prevent a user from willingly complying with the bad guys, and this is what they depend on. There’s one simple rule to follow here: don’t do or say anything online that you wouldn’t do or say in real life.

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A price on your identity: If you're

in doubt about the value of your credentials, visit www.everyclickmatters.

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Be cautious: If you must use file sharing, do so with the utmost paranoia about security. When you’ve downloaded a file, isolate it and, if possible, execute it from a virtual environment to ensure it’s safe before letting it into your true computing environment.

1 Beware geeks bearing gifts: On the day of its release, the internet was groaning with torrents for StarCraft II. However, the downloads were malware, just waiting to be downloaded and executed. com/victim/assessmenttool.html. Complete the questionnaire and discover what you're worth to a scammer…

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Beware geeks bearing gifts:

Social engineering can be our worst enemy when it comes to making us run malware installers. On the day StarCraft II was released, security firms reported a huge number of warez downloads for the game that were really wrappers for viruses. On the day Michael Jackson died, sites sprang up claiming video exclusives of the singer’s last moments. Again, these were links to malware. Employing the lure of a hot topic as a means of walking us towards malware is a common hacker tactic. When you’re tempted to click a link, follow the old mantra: if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

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Choose your flexible friend:

Never be tempted to use or enter details from your debit card – always use a credit

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Update software: Windows 7 and most major apps are happy to update themselves automatically, but you should still run their update systems manually to ensure they’re working. Smaller apps may need updating manually, so check their makers’ sites for updates.

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card. Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act (1974) make credit card companies liable to pay if you’re the innocent victim of fraud. Card companies may, however, avoid paying out if you’re proved not to have taken ‘reasonable’ care with your card – doing something like writing down your PIN, for example. Credit cards themselves also offer different levels of fraud insurance, so shop around before choosing a card and make sure you read the terms and conditions closely.

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Pump and dump:

Don't be tempted to follow unsolicited dead-cert share tips. The senders will probably hold a lot of them. When you and other victims buy, the price will go up. They'll then sell, leaving you holding the baby.

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Just like that: A

common online action site scam is to sell goods that are ‘like’ top brand goods. Your new watch

Enter your own URLs: Never follow links to URLs emailed to you and don’t Google your bank’s address. Google can be tricked into moving spoof sites up its rankings table by criminals looking to entice people to sites designed to harvest logon details. Enter important URLs yourself.

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may be like a Rolex insofar as it ticks, but that could be your lot.

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Act on your doubts: If you

think an online shop or service is dodgy, do some checking. A WHOIS search may let you see the registration details of a site. Visit the website www.whois.net and check out your suspect site. Companies House (www.companieshouse.gov.uk) also enables you to check out details about company addresses, owners and the like. Look for big discrepancies between onscreen addresses and physical offices.

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We've found a virus: Bogus

security experts call unsuspecting PC owners claiming they've found a virus on their hard drive. All you need do is pay a fee and they'll remotely remove the nasty. In reality, the scammers are just working through phone lists, planting the seeds of fear and then collecting bucketloads of cash.

Check site safety: Download McAfee’s excellent SiteAdvisor from www.siteadvisor.com. The browser plug-in has a traffic light system that shows dangerous sites in search results. Following its green, yellow and red site rating icons will help you to avoid compromised web locations.

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Test your system: Test your antivirus system using the Eicar string. It’s a text file that all antivirus engines should pick up, no matter how it’s wrapped or compressed. Get it from www.eicar.org. It’s completely safe and won’t land you in legal hot water. 300 PC TIPS 19

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Get the fastest, safest and smartest network From initial setup to continuing maintenance, make your home network work for you by following these top tips

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unning 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.

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Change channel number: Wireless

walls – but that doesn’t mean you can just stuff it next to a wall or cordless telephone, or use it as a stand for your stack of DVDs. Treat it with respect. Try to keep it in a central location, away from other wireless devices; make sure it’s not in direct sunlight; lift it off the carpet; and ensure its vents and air holes aren’t covered.

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Improve reception: Try as

you might, you’ll find it’s sometimes not possible to put the router in a good spot. One way around the problem is to buy a router with multiple antennas and point them in a variety of directions covering your home. Alternatively, if you’ve already got a router, check

whether it’s possible to upgrade its antennas to something stronger. However, don’t get disheartened if your router doesn’t have any antennas. A wireless repeater compatible with your router is a perfect solution.

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Use WEP:

Running an unsecured network will earn you brownie points from neighbours and hackers with cars, but that’s about it. Wireless routers support a variety of encryption methods, such as WPA and WEP, but these aren’t enabled by default. WPA2 is the most secure method at the moment, but before deciding on an

routers operate on a fixed channel. Since most routers ship with a pre-selected channel, the wireless signal may interfere with other routers in the vicinity that are operating on the same channel. Changing the wireless channel from the factory default is a good starting point if your wireless signal strength is poor.

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If you really don’t want to use encryption, you can force your router to only connect to specific PCs. Your router identifies each computer by the unique MAC address of its network gear. Feed it a list of MAC addresses to connect to and you save yourself the trouble of entering a password each time you log in. The disadvantage is that you’ll have to add the MAC address of any new computer before it can get on your network – which is probably a more annoying way of getting things done.

186 1 Forward ports: Some routers also support port triggering, which is the more advanced cousin of port forwarding.

5Install a hardware firewall 198 196 197 Get a distro: You can configure a firewall on a Windows or Linux machine, and there are also a bunch of third-party software firewalls available. However, building a firewall isn’t easy. If you’re serious about putting one up, download a dedicated firewall distro, such as Ebox.

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Restrict access to specific PCs:

Disable SSID broadcast: All

Give the router space to breathe:

The biggest advantage of a wireless router is that it can penetrate doors and

encryption method, make sure your network cards and adapters support it as well. Bear in mind that older machines – and games consoles such as the Nintendo DS – don’t support WPA.

Install the software: Ebox is distributed as a Live CD ISO and there are VirtualBox/ VMWare images as well. It’s based on Ubuntu Server 8.04. You can also pull in Ebox packages to a standard Ubuntu Server 10.04 installation. You can find it at www.ebox-platform.com.

Configure settings: Ebox can be adapted flexibly to your network. You can use it to restrict services that can be accessed and slice the network to keep some areas more secure than others. The distro runs a browser-based interface for adding, removing and configuring the components.

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wireless routers have a Service Set Identifier (SSID) that identifies them to network computers. Routers from the same manufacturer generally ship with the same SSID; ‘Netgear’ or ‘Cisco’, for example. You should first change the SSID to something unique to set your router apart from those of your neighbours.

Filter content: Besides the firewall, intrusion detection (via Snort) and filtering content (via DansGuardian) are two other highlights of the distro. DansGuardian can also plug into the ClamAV antivirus scanner and filter content based on known virus signatures.

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Exploit other features: In case you’re still not satisfied, Ebox can also act as a gateway and provide a host of other services. It bundles various applications that enable you to turn your network into a VPN, host XMPP chat sessions or run a Postfix mail server, a Squid web proxy and more.

181-205 Then, once all your hardware has been set up, it’s better to turn off broadcasting the SSID altogether. This ensures your router isn’t displayed in the list of available networks, and won’t be a target for potential hackers.

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Keep the firmware updated: Router

manufacturers keep working on firmware, even after hardware has been shipped. In addition to tweaks in the user interface, new versions might make better use of the various components in the router, or add extra features. Just like with an operating system, it’s a good idea to upgrade the firmware of the router regularly – check the manufacturer’s website for a new version. In the good old days, there was the risk of a botched firmware upgrade bricking your router, but it’s a lot safer today.

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Familiarise yourself with the router manager:

All routers ship with a browserbased manager. To use many of the tips in this article, you’ll have to log in to this interface – try typing 192.168.1.1 into your web browser for the most common location. It’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with the various options and settings you can tweak from within this software. Many routers also have detailed documentation that’s updated regularly, so hunt out the latest manual online.

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Check your connections:

There’s nothing more irritating than receiving a ‘cannot connect to remote machine’ error. To ensure a solid connection, use Ethernet cables where possible. It’s also a good idea to check the connection between the two PCs with the ping command. To do this, simply open a command line and type, for instance, ping 192.168.1.2. You’ll need to replace the address given here with that of your target machine. Ping works identically on Windows, Mac and Linux.

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Forward ports: Many

servers and applications – for example, file-sharing software, FTP

1 Windows 7: The redesigned Network and Sharing Center screen has lots of options for advanced users to play with. servers and music-streaming servers – need to serve people outside the network. These applications accept connections on specific ports. With port forwarding – check your router’s interface – you can poke holes in your router and ask it to direct incoming traffic on a particular port (or, if you wish, a range of ports) to a specific computer that’s on the network.

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Change DNS providers: DNS

is what fetches you a website by translating the human-friendly address, such as www.pcplus.co.uk, into a bunch of machine-friendly numbers. It also displays the ‘404 page not found’ error, corrects misspelt URLs and finds the fastest route to a web server that hosts the site you want to visit, along with lots of other cool things. Generally, it’s up to the ISP to put up a DNS server. However, there are other free services as well, including the likes of OpenDNS and Google Public DNS.

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Use USB adapters:

These days, it’s difficult to find a laptop or netbook without a built-in wireless module, but if you’ve used one, you’ll know that they can’t always be relied upon. Network cards with antennas are the best option, but they’re really only suitable for desktops. If you really need both mobility and assurance, make sure you get a USB adapter. Most of them ship with a Windows driver, but many work out-of-the-box on Linux as well.

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Enable Dynamic DNS: The

Dynamic DNS feature enables you to connect to your computer remotely. Back in the day, when real-estate on the web was expensive, it was a wonderful option to show off your HTML skills and host your own website. Now, by associating your dynamic IP address with a domain name, DDNS enables you to connect to the internetexposed home computer from anywhere in the world. In addition to enabling the feature on your router, you’ll also have to register with a dynamic DNS provider, such as DynDNS.org.

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Save power with Wake-onLAN: What’s

the point of keeping a print server on when there’s nothing to print? The smart way to save energy is to use the Wake-onLAN feature of the network card. Thanks to this, you can put the machine to sleep after it’s been configured to wake upon detecting network activity.

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Encrypt your online activity:

With the range of snooping tools now available, it isn’t safe to do anything online without covering your footprints. There are lots of tools that promise to encrypt your online activity, making it completely unintelligible to anyone who might be listening in. Some of the best ones to try are the Enigmail plug-in for Thunderbird (http://bit.ly/enigmail), Psi for Google Talk (http://psi-im.org) and FireGPG, available for Gmail (http://getfiregpg.org/s/home).

Turn on UPnP: Universal Plug and Play helps smart devices that support UPnP to discover each other without any user intervention. Once turned on from within your router, UPnP enables a compatible infrared device, a Bluetooth phone or a FireWire camera to see and talk to each other.

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Write files remotely: The most logical use of a network is to share files. This is the job of the SMB protocol. Thanks to it, you’ll be able to write files to a remote network share via Network Neighbourhood. On Linux, the SMB protocol is implemented by Samba.

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Share printers remotely: In addition to sharing files, SMB can be used to share printers attached to a Windows machine. Once configured via the Windows Control Panel, a printer can be used to accept print orders or even be managed from a remote machine, irrespective of its operating system.

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Format shareable partitions as FAT: PCs running Windows can easily see each other and share files. For Linux or Mac machines, ensure the partitions are formatted with the FAT filesystem. Create them as Samba shares and they’ll show up under Network Neighbourhood.

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Plug in USB drives: Once, if you wanted to share files on the network, a network‑attached-storage, or NAS, device was the best bet. Not any more. New routers enable you to plug in one or more USB devices that are automatically accessible by all the users connected to the router. 3 300 PC TIPS 21

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Surefire ways to protect your privacy online If all else fails, you can always change your name and move house, but before taking such a drastic step, try these methods of keeping your data safe…

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rotecting your online privacy should be top of any serious PC user’s list of concerns. Here’s our guide to how the bad guys steal personal data, and tips revealing how to foil even the most devious villains.

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Be careful what you put online:

First, the obvious one. Once you’ve released something onto the internet, it’s never, ever coming back. That doesn’t mean you need to become an online hermit, but it does mean that everything you put out either under your own name or a constant pseudonym can come back to haunt you.

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Check yourself out online:

After Googling yourself, check out a site such as 192.com, where you’ll be able to find your details from the Electoral Roll. The good news is that you can have yourself removed by sending in a form at www.192.com/help/help-home. Repeat this process on similar sites to make yourself completely ex-directory and you should be clear from at least opportunistic searchers. Another thing that people often miss is that if you register a website address, by

default your name and address are listed in the Whois database. Non-commercial users can opt out of this on .co.uk addresses, making them a good one to register for personal sites. For other domains, many registrars offer an anonymity service, which really means claiming the domain belongs to a third party, but forwarding any information that comes in. This usually costs a few pounds per year.

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Watch out for scams: Always

be on the lookout for phishing sites pretending to be your bank, favourite game’s homepage, social media service or similar pages. Never visit one through a link – always type the address in directly. Most phishing attempts are woeful, but occasionally a convincing one slips through. Whatever you do, make sure you never enter any payment or other critical information onto a site with no padlock icon. This means the connection is secure. Without it, anyone could be eavesdropping on the data you send. Many services, such as Gmail and Backpack, also let you use these ‘SSL’ connections while you’re using their service. It slows them down slightly, but not to the extent that you’ll notice.

1 Be careful what you put online: Whether you post photos, opinions or jokes, remember that once it’s out there, there’s no taking it back.

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Even if a page does have the padlock icon, don’t trust it fully. All it means is that technologically speaking, your data is safe, not that the company will treat it properly. As boring and over-padded as they are, it’s always worth checking sites’ privacy policies to see what they let their employees do. As an example, does that backup site encrypt your data so they can’t see it, or do you just have to take their word that they won’t sneak a peek? At the very least, you’ll be able to seek better restitution if they’re caught with their fingers in the till.

55 super quick Facebook tips 213 211 212 Check your privacy options: Originally, everything on Facebook was locked down. Now things have changed and almost everything is public. Visit http://bit.ly/ fbk-privacy to customise your settings and switch off anything you don’t want the whole internet to see.

Stick to Friends Only: Anything you do want to make available, switch it to Friends Only. Friends of Friends opens you up to spammers getting into your network through friends who add everyone who asks. It’s best not to play the numbers game and only add people you actually know and trust.

Don’t trust the padlock:

Separate your friends: Facebook lets you categorise Friends by group, separating work colleagues from friends or family. It’s well worth doing this. Remember, it’s not just what you post – if one of your friends tags you dancing on a table at a drunken party, that’ll appear in your feed too.

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Only use networks you trust:

Remember that there’s no better way for someone to get your information than by controlling the computer you enter it on. Never use email, banking or similar services from a public terminal, such as at a cybercafe or in an airport, or over a non-trusted Wi-Fi connection. Just because it says ‘Free airport Wi-Fi’ doesn’t mean it’s not actually controlled by the man two seats away. At the same time, you’re not safe just because you’re at home. Regular malware sweeps are essential to make sure you’re the only one with the keys to your trusty PC, and that your data’s staying put.

Check your permissions: Facebook now plugs into many websites, which can also get their hands on your data. You should regularly check that you’ve given them all permission in ‘Applications Settings’. If it’s a website or application you don’t recognise, cancel its access.

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Stay alert to changes: Keep a close eye on any changes to Facebook’s privacy options. It’s made it clear that it wants people to live more open lives, if only because the more we do, the more it can do with our data. That doesn’t mean you have to let it. Keep using it, but remember to stay vigilant. 3

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Top techniques to make your games run smoother The length of this console generation has given most of us a rest from the upgrade wars, but if your action is becoming staccato, here’s how to let the killing flow…

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ll computers eventually start to creak in their old age, but with a few quick tweaks and techniques, you can prolong their life for years – especially if you’re willing to lose a bit of modern glitz to play the games that work them the hardest. Here’s our guide to enjoying the best entertainment, without necessarily spending a fortune on new hardware.

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Clean your PC:

Like all applications, games benefit from a clean system. Before you even think about buying new hardware, do some spring cleaning.

Even Windows 7 benefits from a slash-and-burn reinstall every few months to get rid of the cobwebs, memory-resident apps and other shackles that so easily accumulate over time. If games are running slower than they used to, it’s a very good first step to take.

version of Windows installed, you should be good for anything on the market. If you’re not sure what you should buy, you can visit www.crucial.com and run its System Scanner tool. This will tell you both what memory to buy, and how much you need.

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Install more memory:

Any major component of your PC can be a drag on your system if it isn’t powerful enough. Memory is one of the cheapest to upgrade, and the easiest – you simply pop in new sticks and you’re done. If you have 4GB RAM and a 64-bit

Change your video card:

If you didn’t buy a dedicated gaming PC, or your PC is a couple of years old, the graphics card in it is likely to be mediocre to terrible. Any 3D game relies on having a powerful graphics card to crunch the numbers, but buying one isn’t necessarily as easy as just plugging one in. Graphics cards can be incredibly big, and your case needs both the space and the cooling to handle that. They also need to be connected to your PC’s power supply, and if that’s not powerful enough, the card won’t work even after you fit it. Be sure to check all the specifications before ordering. Given a choice between ATI and Nvidia cards, we currently recommend Nvidia.

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Update your drivers: It’s easy

1 World of Warcraft is a great example of a game that’s old but still looks fantastic thanks to its graphical design, rather than technology.

to forget, but the best video card in the world will struggle without the most up-todate drivers. If you have trouble

510 speed-ups to run right now 233 231 232 Tweak the resolution: This is the easiest thing to turn down if you need a performance boost, but also one of the most problematic. LCD screens are designed to work with a specific resolution, and setting it lower will make your game smeary. If you do crank it down, don’t go too far.

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Turn it down: Other options vary from game to game, but the standard advice is easy – if it can be lowered, try lowering it. Games aim for a mid-range system by default. Turning down texture quality is a great way of speeding up games with lots of close-up action.

Shut down other apps: Before launching your game, press [CTRL]+[ALT]+[DELETE] to bring up the Task Manager and shut down any memoryhungry applications. Web browsers, mail clients and office apps are a particular drain. Leave your antivirus and firewall applications, though!

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with a game, updating the drivers should always be the first step – it’ll expect you to have everything ready for it. This can be a pain, but a necessary one.

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Boost your CPU: If you

don’t have a decent video card, there’s little that any CPU will do for you on its own. However, it still plays a key role in determining how fast your system performs. Dual-core is fine for the overwhelming majority of modern games, but quad-core is obviously better if you can afford it. You don’t realistically need anything more than that at the moment, though.

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Forget about overclocking:

It may sound like heresy, but overclocking your CPU is unlikely to make any real appreciable difference to most games – a difference, yes, but generally one that will be measured in a few extra frames. If you plan to try it anyway, make sure your cooling can stretch that far. Generally, though, overclocking has become something you do because you enjoy overclocking, and it can safely be avoided if you’re not comfortable getting your hands that dirty.

Software solutions: There’s a diverse range of applications out there that claim to be able to speed up your PC, but most of them can safely be ignored. If you have the basics covered, your performance will be fine. If you don’t, software tweaks won’t make much difference.

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Check for malware: Malware could be getting in your way, without being as obvious as the viruses of old. You should be running antivirus software, but if nothing else, get something like Windows Security Essentials (www.microsoft. com/security_essentials).

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Clean up: On

the other hand, if you don’t mind a little dirt, this is a great time to check the state of your case. If it’s full of dust and the airways are blocked, it won’t be getting cooled properly, which can seriously affect the performance of your components. To clean it out, switch the power off and use a can of compressed air to clear away the dust. This is especially important if your PC is on the floor.

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Consider solidstate drives:

With all the pieces in place, it’s time to look at your hard drive. This is the perfect time to look at a solidstate drive for both Windows and your game files. They’re smaller than regular drives, but the performance more than makes up for that. We recommend having two drives, the second one a nice, big, traditional terabyte model to hold things like videos and photos, leaving the main drive entirely for the applications it does so well. You’ll want a large one though – modern games are incredibly big, and they’re only going to get larger as the graphics improve.

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Cut back:

If your games are still running slowly, it’s time to start switching things off. Be aware that when you do this, you’re going to notice the effect of it much more. A lack of something like antialiasing is incredibly obvious when you’re intentionally staring at a jaggy object. When the bullets are flying, you’re unlikely to notice as much. As a case in point, many console games don’t bother with it at all.

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Online issues: In online games, the best PC in the world will struggle if it doesn’t have a good network connection. If you’re wireless, make sure the signal strength is solid, or look into upgrading your router/receiver. If you still have Wireless G (or worse, B), it’s time for Wireless N.

1 Neither the Xbox nor PS3 can hold a candle to a modern PC’s power, but if you want to switch on all the advanced features at high resolution, you’ll need a hefty machine in order to get a playable experience.

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Check your PC's v-sync settings: Now

for the mysterious v-sync. This is vertical-synchronisation, and when it’s switched off, you can encounter problems if your graphics card is churning out data faster than the monitor can display it. This gives an effect called ‘tearing’, which can make it look as though the game is stuttering or lagging when it’s actually performing above and beyond. Leave v-sync alone.

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Turn off filtering:

Anisotropic filtering is similar. It looks good, but it’s the kind of looking good that you don’t really notice in the middle of a game. It does slow down rendering, though. Switch it off for an immediate performance boost.

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Wire it up: Look into getting a wired internet connection. Depending on how your house’s electricity is wired up, you may be able to use a pair of HomePlugs to create a wired network using the power lines, getting faster performance and removing wireless interference issues.

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Remove reflections:

Real-time reflections are one of the most intensive graphical effects around, but you won’t lose much by switching them off. We’re all so used to water being just a coloured plane that you’re more likely to notice an effective reflection for being good than to chafe at its absence.

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Tone down shadows:

Shadows are a fundamental part of many games’ atmospheres, and it’s a shame to lose them. Instead, you normally get to tone them down to something easier for the game to render – for instance, switching off soft edges, or replacing the carefully rendered shadow with something simpler, like a blended circle.

Check your PC’s ping: When online, the easiest way to check your performance is to look at your ‘ping’. The lower it is, the better. Under 100 is essential for fast action games. If it’s higher than that, you need to play on better/closer servers, or check what else you have running.

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Turn down your effects:

Before you start switching things off, try turning them down. We don’t actually recommend losing all antialiasing if you can avoid it, but you probably don’t need it at 8x power. Try dropping down to just 2x and seeing if that makes any difference.

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Tinker with your graphics card settings:

If the game itself doesn’t give you any options that you can tweak to improve its performance, your graphics card might. The ATI Catalyst Control Center, for instance, offers an option called Overdrive, which lets you do basic graphics card overclocking on the fly, without you having to open up your computer's case.

Get a gaming router: Look for a dedicated gaming router, or one capable of prioritising certain types of traffic. This will give the lion’s share of the connection to any games, where every packet counts, while letting more laid-back applications do their jobs as well.

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Choose games carefully: If you can’t get games running smoothly, look for titles that are more friendly. Casual games have low system specs and can still look and play well. Check out PopCap’s range at www.popcap.com, or the indie Diablo clone Torchlight at www.torchlightgame.com. 300 PC TIPS 25

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Ideas to set your music, movies and TV free Enjoy a more streamlined entertainment system on your computer with our tips for making the most of your media

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orget hard work – your PC is a hub of all things entertaining, from games to videos and music, and you’re going to be distracted no matter how hard you try to get something done. Feel like you’re achieving something while giving in to procrastination by making your media library bend to your every whim.

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Get the right player: Playing

back media properly comes down to two things: the right player and the right codecs. You should deal with the former first, and there are plenty of choices out there that are more robust than (but perhaps not as pretty as) Windows Media Player. The first option to try out is VLC (www.videolan.org), a highly regarded multi-platform player with a few fairly advanced abilities. Alternatively, try Media Player Classic – less capable, but more compatible with a wide range of formats.

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Download a codec pack:

Codecs are a tricky business – try to delve any deeper than installing them and hoping they work and you’ll be in for weeks of reading about exactly what they’re doing. The

TV streams around your house – or over the internet – you’ll need Orb, (www.orb.com). It’s an elegant solution. Install the software, get it running and you’ll be able to point any browser to the website at http://mycast.orb.com to start watching your home media – including the output of your TV card – from other devices.

1 VLC Media Player: Go completely mad – watching videos in ASCII mode is impractical, but the results are interesting nonetheless. simplest thing to do is install a codec pack, hand-picked by the community for compatibility. The primary free one is XP Codec Pack. Don’t worry about the name – it’s fully compatible with later versions of Windows. There are other packs out there too, but these aren’t necessarily safe/ legal to use, so tread carefully.

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Tweak the EQ:

Soundcards often include advanced interfaces that enable you to mess around with the way sound is output. Your results will vary depending on your PC’s sound hardware, but you’ll find the settings screen in Control Panel. Go to ‘Hardware and Sound | Sound’, find your device in the Playback tab and then click ‘Properties’.

5Make Media Center better 258 256 257 Skip the startup: There’s no need for the animation that pops up when you start Media Center. Luckily, it’s simple to stop it. Right-click the shortcut and, in the ‘Target’ box, add the phrase /nostart upanimation after the text that’s already there. Click ‘Apply’, and you’re set.

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Straight to the library: There are other switches you can add: try /homepage :Music BrowsePage.xml /Push StartPage:True to force the program to start in the media library. To jump to live TV, try /homepage: Video Fullscreen.xml /PushStart Page:True – Live TV.

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Stream to consoles:

While your PC is probably able to play back multiple file formats, your other devices might not be. Even the Xbox 360, which is generally quite capable of playing back video, baulks at certain types. The solution is to transcode that video and send it to the console in a different way, a job that's handled admirably by Tversity (www.tversity.com). You can use it to set up a UPnP interface to stream to consoles, and convert formats like YouTube directly.

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Move Live TV:

Tversity covers the task of shifting pre-formatted video files on a local network well, but to move

Skip further: The Quick Skip button hops you forward 30 seconds, but let’s make it three minutes. Run regedit, go to ‘HKEY_ CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\ Windows \CurrentVersion\Media Center \Settings\VideoSettings’ and change the value of ‘Skip AheadInterval’ to 180000.

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Get more to watch: You can

probably find places to download TV shows off your own back. We’re not about to incriminate ourselves by pointing you to the all-tooobvious illegitimate sources of material that can be found all over the web. Finding legal content is probably more difficult. Start by checking out www.clearbits.net, a site dedicated to helping legitimate content providers share their works by bittorrent, and swing by www.legaltorrents.com while you’re at it.

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Explore the classics: If

you just want something to watch, why not dig out something from the olden days? The Internet Archive, found at www.archive.org, contains a wealth of interesting abandoned

Integrate Twitter: Point your browser to www.mce zone.com/plugins.php and grab the plug-in. Unzip the file, double-click the installer and find it in Media Center’s ‘Extras’ section. Log in with your usual details and you’ll be able to tweet while watching.

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Watch IPTV: If you only install one plug-in into Media Center, make it TunerFree MCE. Grab it from www.tunerfree.tv and install it. You’ll then gain access to the terrestrial TV channels, as well as all of the various on-demand content that’s provided by services such as BBC iPlayer and 4oD.

241-265 content from times gone by, and even modern content that’s deemed worthy of preservation. Dig through and find a movie or slice of audio that you like, and use the links in the left-hand column to download the content in your choice of formats.

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Grab content from Youtube:

Miro, formerly known as Democracy Player, is a fantastic all-in-one media player and downloader with one particular talent – searching through streaming video sites and grabbing content for later consumption. It couldn’t be easier. Download Miro from www.getmiro.com, install the player, open it and use the Video Search function in the left-hand column to find what you’re looking for. Just click the 'Download' button next to the content you want and it will be stored in Miro’s video library. Make sure you start the video playing and click the ‘Keep’ button if you want to hang on to it – otherwise, Miro automatically deletes downloads after a certain expiry time.

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Convert to your mobile device: Videora

is generally considered the best free conversion application for getting all sorts of videos onto your iPhone or PSP for offline viewing. You can even convert FLV files, which is handy if you’ve extracted a bunch of them with Miro. Download the program from www.videora.com, then install it – keeping an eye out for the chunk of insidious crapware it attempts to install halfway

through – and navigate through the (rather horrible) interface. From there, video conversion is a simple point-and-click job.

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Stream Live TV: If you’ve

been around the internet for some years, then you’ll know of the folly of live streaming. It’s a great idea, but not one that works well. You can try, though! Your first port of call, for a variety of European stations and worldwide news, should be www.tvlizer.com, the latest in a long line of aggregation sites. Then you should check out www.tvcatchup.com for a decent selection of UK channels. You can even use this site on your mobile devices, but don’t expect miracles.

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Remote control VLC: VLC has

a little hidden functionality that enables you to control it from any PC in the house. If you’re using your laptop and have a movie running on the box under your TV, for example, just point your laptop’s web browser to the IP address of the media PC at port 80 – 192.168.1.2:8080, for example – and voila! Full remote control access. There’s a free iPhone app that performs the same function, although it’s a little heavy on the ads for the full (paid-for) version.

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Find some more remotes:

The best known remote control application for the iPhone is Apple's own iTunes remote app, and it works particularly well – if you can stand to use iTunes. You’ll also

find an app for controlling popular homebrew media centre XBMC, although this one doesn’t have a free version. And if you happen to have an internetconnected Blu-ray player and a bunch of films from Universal, hunt out pocketBLU. It’s a very specific iPhone remote control that only works in these particular circumstances. Is it any wonder the Blu-ray format hasn’t really taken off yet?

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Back up your library: Make

a copy of your media on an external drive to protect it from electronic death. Simple! With most applications you’ll need to hunt through your various folders and copy files manually, but if iTunes has one saving grace, it’s the program’s ability to make this task easy. Start by consolidating your library (‘File | Library | Consolidate Library’) to bring all of your media content into one folder, and then copy that folder (usually ‘\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents \My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music’) to your backup disc.

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Master metadata: If

you have a huge music collection, you’ll know how annoying it is when certain tracks aren’t properly tagged. You could wade through and tweak all of your tags yourself, or you could download Picard from www.musicbrainz.org and have it do the hard work for you. The community-supported audio-tagger uses a vast database of shared information to get things right, and if there’s something it doesn’t know, you’ll be helping the next person who’s in your situation by adding to its repertoire.

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Go completely mad: VLC has one

1 Miroplayer: It’s easy to grab content from YouTube. Miroplayer is the most convenient way to download videos straight into a player.

final trick up its sleeve: it can display your videos in the classic ASCII style. If you’ve ever wanted to watch an epilepsyinducing video made up of ANSI-coloured text characters, now’s your chance. Just go to the ‘Preferences’ screen, hit the ‘Video’ section and change the output mode to ‘Colour AsCii Art’. You might need to stop and then restart your video to see it in action.

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Play YouTube videos: If you go to the Media menu and choose ‘Open Network Stream’, you can paste in the address of a YouTube video and have VLC play the highest-quality version available in its own interface. This means easy skipping, multi-monitor fullscreen, and you won’t need a browser open.

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Rip on the fly: Want a quick way to take clips from DVDs or any other video source? In the View menu, select ‘Advanced Controls’. Play back a video and hit the record button that’s displayed. A recording of the current video, in MP4 format, will appear in your Videos directory.

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Set as wallpaper: Pointless it may be, but VLC’s ability to access the DirectX video layer means you can use a video as your wallpaper. Hit [Ctrl]+[P] to bring up the Preferences screen and, under ‘Video’, choose ‘DirectX output’. Restart VLC, then select ‘Enable wallpaper mode’ on the same screen. Pretty!

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Take it with you: If you’re taking videos around on a hard drive, why not include a copy of VLC with them? PortableApps has compiled a version that’s only 20MB in size and doesn’t require installation, so it will run off your external drive. See www.portableapps.com.

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Download an alternative: VLC being a free, open-source application, others have taken the code and run with it. We recommend checking out Kantaris for an alternative with a heap more features built in, notably a gorgeous user interface. You can download Kantaris from www.kantaris.org. 3 300 PC TIPS 27

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Leave your desk behind with our top mobile tips If you spend a lot of your time on the road or away from home, our key tips will help you make sure you can easily access your data, wherever you are…

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loud computing, smartphones and netbooks mean more of us than ever before are free from a desk-bound PC. To make the most of your mobile experience, check out our essential tips for computing on the move…

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Use a tethered modem: If you aren’t

away from a wireless network often, then getting a broadband dongle might not be worthwhile. Instead, try tethering your mobile phone, provided your network supports it. Essentially, your laptop uses the mobile’s internet connection for its data. Some phones include tethering options, but there are also tethering apps for most platforms. Joikuspot (www.joikushop.com) will do the job for Symbian-based phones, while Proxoid (http://code. google.com/p/proxoid) performs a similar task for Android devices.

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Make MiFi work:

You can share the connection from a 3G dongle across your network using Internet Connection Sharing. In the Network and Sharing Center, choose ‘Change Adapter Settings’, then rightclick the connection for your dongle and select ‘Properties’. On the Sharing tab, tick ‘Allow

other network users to connect through this computer’s internet connection’. On the Network and Sharing Center, choose ‘Set up a new connection or network | Set up a wireless ad-hoc (computer to computer) network’. Follow the instructions. Ad hoc networks can be flaky, so if you need to share a connection regularly, try a MiFi. The telco 3 does pay-as-you-go units from £50 – see www.three.co.uk/ Mobile_Broadband/MiFi.

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Call with Skype: Save

money on expensive hotel phone bills by making your calls over Skype. If you have a decent wireless connection and a laptop with a microphone, you can buy flat-rate calls to landlines using Skype for £2.24 per month, while 3 permits you to make Skype calls via its 3G broadband service. Other networks restrict VoIP data over 3G. Many Wi-Fi-capable phones support Skype too.

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Find Wi-Fi hotspots:

Check out where you’re travelling in advance to see if there are any free Wi-Fi hotspots about. To find them, simply browse to http://bit.ly/wifi-hotspots and enter a postcode or location. It will provide a list of nearby hotspots and connection details.

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Get local SIMs: Call

and data charges for roaming can be steep, even when you take EU caps into consideration. With an unlocked phone, it could be much cheaper to buy a local pay-as-you-go SIM. Check out the providers’ websites before travelling to see which company offers the best data plans.

documents. When you make changes and save them to your Dropbox folder on your computer, these are uploaded to Dropbox and then replicated on your other machines as soon as you log on.

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Use Portable Apps:

way to save money on phone calls abroad is to invest in a Skype number. You can get one free if you buy a month’s landline calls. Give this to your contacts and they’ll be able to call you at a normal UK landline rate. If you’re not on Skype when they call, they’ll be able to leave you a voice mail. When you call them back using Skype via Wi-Fi, you’ll only pay the cost of a UK landline call.

If you’re on the move and your laptop dies, then you need a way to access your data and most common programs. Install Portable Apps (www.portableapps.com) on a USB flash drive alongside your most useful files and you can enjoy your own virtual desktop on any public PC, without worrying about leaving browsing traces, so long as you use Portable Firefox. You can even use your favourite Firefox plug-ins and carry them around with you. The full installation of Portable Apps includes the OpenOffice.org software suite.

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Buy a Skype number: A further

Install Dropbox:

Whether you’re home or abroad, it helps to be able to get access, at any time, to the most recent version of whatever documents you’re actively working on. Dropbox provides online storage and synchronisation with as many computers as you install it on (www.dropbox.com). The first 2GB of storage is free, which is enough for most people’s active

Secure your passwords: Keepass

(www.keepass.info) is an open-source password management program that stores your passwords in an encrypted file. Install the program on your laptop and then save the password database file in your Dropbox folder. Do the same on any other computers that are running Dropbox and you can access your most up-to-date passwords from any of your PCs. Ensure that Dropbox is secured with a strong password. If your laptop breaks, you’ll still be able to get to your password database using the Portable Apps version of Keepass and web access to Dropbox.

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Use the cloud:

1 Dropbox: Mirror your most used files so you can access them from the web if you can’t use your laptop. 28

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Dropbox is a good example of a cloud-based service that can be invaluable when you’re on the move, but it’s worth considering using other services to increase your storage. You

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510 super quick tips

1 Power Options: Eke out more battery life when away from power by dimming the screen and hastening sleep if your laptop’s left idle. can use a combination of photo services, such as Flickr, Picasa and Photobucket, along with Google Docs, Zoho and gOffice for documents. Then you can get general storage at Humyo or Mozy, which both offer a lots of space. Remember to select encrypted providers for sensitive information. Most of these services also provide sharing options that make sending someone else a document as simple as passing on a URL.

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Set up offline mail:

Even in the world of mobile broadband and ubiquitous Wi-Fi, there are still places where you won’t be able to get a signal and you’ll have to work offline. Plan for this by ensuring that you have an offline mail client such as Thunderbird (http://bit.ly/ mozilla-thunderbird) installed, even if you use a web-based email service. Download your messages before hitting the road so you can refer to them and write responses while you’re offline. For Gmail, you can install Google Gears or get a simple backup of your messages by getting Google Desktop to index them. An offline client is still the best option, though.

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Extend battery life: Consider ways

to extend your battery life if you have to spend extended time away from a source of power. Set your Power Options to dim the screen unless you’re working in bright sunlight because this extends battery life significantly. Also try any tricks that will take load off the processor: disabling unnecessary background processes, closing programs you’re not using and even turning off Aero. All of this will ensure that your laptop consumes less power and you’ll get more life out of the battery.

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Optimise for bandwidth: Consider

ways in which you can optimise your connection when you’re on reduced bandwidth. You might have dropped to a GPRS connection or even had to resort to using dial-up. In these cases, a slow connection can limit your productivity. Shut down synchronising services such as Dropbox and Windows Live Sync. You can sync up again when you get onto a better connection. Turn off any other programs that poll the internet. Disable pictures in your browser, plus any other multimedia you can – the results, while ugly, will be easier to manage speed-wise.

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Stay secure: If you’re

using free hotspots or any that enable you to connect using an open wireless connection, ensure that you have a decent firewall installed. Comodo (http://personal firewall.comodo.com), Agnitum (http://free.agnitum.com) and ZoneAlarm (download it from www.zonealarm.com) provide free firewalls that generally outperform Windows’ offering. Consider installing one to turn on in these circumstances. Just enable access for your web browser and email program. Ensure that you use Windows’ public network settings too.

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Tether your iPhone: In iOS 4, you can turn on internet tethering by choosing ‘Settings | General | Network | Internet Tethering’ – but only if you’re with a provider that allows it. While it can be expensive to change in the middle of a contract, it’s definitely worth confirming this feature next time.

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Get audio channels: If you’re in need of entertainment and you’ve got a 3G signal, Tuner Internet Radio is one of the iPhone’s best apps. It’s not free, but for hundreds of channels, the £3 fee is a bargain. It’s available to download from Apple’s iTunes App Store.

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Use Mobile Dropbox: Get quick access to your Dropbox files on your phone. There’s an Android app available in the marketplace, and one for iPhone and iPad in the App Store. A Blackberry app is on its way. Learn more at www.dropbox.com/ anywhere or get simple mobile web access at http://m.dropbox.com.

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Find yourself: There’s no need to go anywhere without access to a map. Google Maps is available for all popular phones and mobile devices. See www.google.com/mobile/ maps for relevant download links or just point your mobile browser at m.google.com/maps.

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Keep cool: If you’re using a laptop plugged in for extended periods, consider buying a laptop cooler to prevent it from overheating. These cost around £20 and plug into a USB port. They use fans to cool the underside of your laptop, ensuring you get stable performance for lengthy use. Take a back-up drive: Consider carrying portable back-up media with you, especially if you’re travelling for any period of time. A passport drive is small enough to tuck into most laptop bags and is USB-powered. Expect to pay around £60 for a 500GB drive, which should offer enough space.

Charge in the car: A car charger for your laptop ensures that you can top up its juice by plugging it into the cigarette lighter while you’re driving. Generic ones are available for between £10 and £20. Try to get one for your specific model if possible, though – it’ll cost a bit more, but it’s worth it.

Spare battery: If you’re stuck on a train or plane with no charging point, a spare battery can pay dividends. You can usually find spares at a reasonable price on eBay and one could effectively double your working time. Check the capacity of the battery and don’t forget to keep it charged.

Encrypt files: Consider

what might happen if your laptop or thumb drive gets lost or stolen. By encrypting any sensitive files, you can make sure the vital data within it can’t be accessed. Use TrueCrypt (www.truecrypt.org) to create a virtual encrypted disk hidden within a file on your system and place all your most important files there. Anyone getting access to your PC won’t even know that the disk is there, keeping your data safe.

Watch the skies: Got time to look up and see the stars? If you have an Android phone, then you can get an annotated map of the sky wherever you are, thanks to GPS and Google Sky Map (www.google. com/mobile/skymap). It adjusts according to where your phone is pointing, so you can find out about any part of the sky.

Back up at home: Your laptop is likely to undergo greater wear and tear than a static computer, making it more vulnerable to data loss. It makes sense to back it up whenever you touch base at home or at the office. Keep a copy of all your important data on at least one other PC, so that it’s easily accessible. 3 300 PC TIPS 29

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Make Windows 7 play nice with old software Most modern PCs are designed to run the latest and greatest software, but if you want to go retro, you can – here’s how!

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hether it’s a critical application or an old game you want to play again, the march of progress doesn’t mean you’re cut off from the past. Follow our tips and you can get your retro kicks on your ultra-modern PC.

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Download XP mode: Most

Windows software retains its compatibility with Windows 7, with the main exceptions being drivers (which you'll want to upgrade anyway), installation programs (which have

an annoying tendency to assume that any operating system they don’t recognise is old) and 32-bit applications in a 64-bit OS. If you have the Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate edition of Windows 7, you can download XP Mode – which is really Virtual PC – for free from www.bit.ly/ms-xp-mode. Otherwise, grab Virtual PC 2007 from the same place. For an alternative, try VMWare Server (free) or Workstation (£143), from www.vmware.com/products/ server. You’ll have to supply the copy of Windows yourself though, and install it from scratch.

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Try out a compatibility mode: Short

of emulation, your only option for old Windows programs is a compatibility mode. Right-click a program, choose ‘Properties’ and open the Compatibility tab. This rarely seems to work, but it’s worth a shot. Set the program to run in compatibility mode for any of the supported OSes, which range from Windows 95 to Windows Vista, along with their service packs. The other options on this screen, including ‘Run in 256 colors’ and ‘Run in 640x480 screen resolution’ do exactly what they sound like, but are rarely useful these days.

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Set up a dual-boot:

1Download XP Mode: You can get this very handy tool for free if you have the Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate edition of Windows 7.

5Master DOSBox in minutes 298 296 297 Install DOSBox: DOSBox is a great tool, especially for old games (www.dosbox.com). You can just run the executable, but it won’t do much. While it doesn’t actually sandbox itself from your files in the same way as a virtual machine, it doesn’t give itself automatic access to them either.

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Drag and drop: To run most games or applications in DOSBox, just drag the folder containing its files onto the ‘DOSBox’ icon. DOSBox treats this as a drive, with the folder as the root. If you run an installer, it can’t break out of there to copy any files without permission.

If your software doesn’t run directly, you can set up a dual-boot system and install both operating systems. It’s not just a case of running the setup routines, though – you’ll need to install them in the right order, partition your drive and have devices that each version can use. That modern soundcard driver won’t work on a ten-year-old operating system, even if it works the other way round. See http://bit.ly/dual-boot-guide for a full guide to dual-booting almost every major combination.

Download DOG: For more complicated applications, especially involving CDs, it’s worth downloading a shell. We recommend DOG, which you can get from the main DOSBox site. You create profiles for each application, along with their specific needs, then click their name to fire them up.

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Downgrade Windows 7:

If you have a lot of old software that you need to get running, you can’t simply switch into a compatibility mode to get 32-bit programs running in a 64-bit OS. They may work, but they may not. If you get an error message when you try to run one, your only recourse is to step back yourself. Windows 7 comes with an installation disc for its 32-bit version. You lose out overall if you have more than 2GB of memory though, so don’t downgrade on a whim.

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Use older hardware: The

nuclear option is to pick up old hardware and build a new PC. Look on Ebay and in second-hand markets, or ask friends and family if they have an old clunker they’re willing to donate. You can pick them up dirt cheap, but a Windows 3.1-era PC is the perfect machine for Windows 3.1 and its games and applications. It’s worth taking the emulation route first, though. Virtual machines are happy to translate for these old operating systems, letting your existing soundcard and processor do the talking. They’ll be slower, but on systems that old, there’ll be no shortage of power.

Use hotkeys: DOSBox has many useful hotkeys, but the main ones are [CTRL]+[F11] to slow down the emulation speed, and [CTRL]+[12] to increase it. Press [ALT]+[F12] to turn off any limiters. Avoid [Alt]+[Tab]bing out. You can do it, but it may causes problems with colours.

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Edit a config file: For games that won’t play ball, you can hand-tweak DOSBox’s settings by editing a configuration file. This is a very complicated looking document, but it’s nothing more than a list of options. Visit www.dosbox. com/wiki/Configuration to see the parameters available.