Windows XP and Vista have a cool way of telling you the date and time with the click of a mouse or just a hover of the mouse. You get the same result with both operating systems but Vista just makes everything look pretty.

All of you know where the clock is in you system tray on the lower right hand corner of you screen is? Well if you hover your mouse over it, you computer Vista or XP will also tell you the date.

In XP, if you double click the clock, you will get the Change Date and Time Settings dialog box. The change date dialog box is nice and it tells you what you need to know but it does not look nice and finding out the date and time is not really what it is meant for but it is a good way to change the date and time quickly if you need to.

On vista, when you hover your mouse over the time you get a pretty calendar and clock Window that is nice to look at. If you need to change the date and time, there is a link on the bottom of the Window just as the picture above shows.

Today January 24, 2008, Microsoft announced their Holiday Quarter results. Microsoft killed Apple with a $6.48 ba, ba, ba, billion operating profit and $16.37 billion in revenue. Is that not almost 40% profit? The software business is a good business to be in. This income also beats their highest by $2 Billion. Wow! These numbers are amazing. I wonder what Microsoft is going to do with all this cash? For the full report from Microsoft go here: Link

 
I always suggest you have a backup plan for your precious data on your computer and the most convenient and fastest way is some sort of on-site plan, but what happens if there is a fire?

You should adopt some way to backup your files off-site. Whether it be a VPN (Virtual Private Network) where you backup files to another computer at another location or burning files to discs and giving them to a neighbor, you should keep files in more than one place. What if you have a fire or what if someone steals your computer.

Well… Carbonite.com has a simple solution. Backup your files with them. I must say for the price, I am very impressed. Carbonite offers unlimited data backup for only $50 per year, per computer. Seriously, that is a really good deal for me because I have tons of data. If you have multiple computers, just put a couple of hard drives in the carbonite computer and backup all other computers to the carbonite computer.

Carbonite encrypts the connection so no one sees your files being transferred and it all works automatically in the background. You want the encryption and you want the automatic running in the background so you can forget about the backup. The only downside to Carbonite is the slow backup and having to select media files to upload. You would expect a slow data transfer with any online backup because it is online and you don’t want to waste all your bandwidth if you have a limit. The other downside is the fact that Carbonite did not automatically backup movie files I had. That’s ok, all I had to do was right click the folder they were in and tell Carbonite to back them up. Done and done!

Overall, for the price, you cannot find a better deal for online backup. If you subscribe to this service, you should still have an on-site backup because if you lost a hard drive full of songs it would still take a while to download all of your files. If you have a fire and lose all of your backups, it will take a while to get all of your data from Carbonite but it will be there. I keep carbonite’s service as yet another backup plan for more data redundancy and you should too. To give you an idea of the data transfer, 600 GB will take about 200 days or so to fully transfer. If you are interested use my link to get 15 days free to try it out, I get no money but I think I get 15 free days on top of my subscription. Carbonite works with Windows XP and Vista 32 or 64 bit versions

I have been using a ScottEVest Fleece 4.0 for about 6 months now and have since purchased a shirt and a sweatshirt from them. For those of you Geeks who don’t know what a ScottEVest is, shame on you. ScottEVest clothing has created and I believe patented the PAN or Personal Area Network. Basically, ScottEVest clothes have a ton of pockets for all your gadgets. Seriously, my jacket has 20 some pockets and I never use them all but they are really useful.

To start, all pockets have magnetic enclosures on them to keep your stuff secure if you don’t zip up the pocket. This magnetic enclosure also helps keep you gadgets positioned the same way you stick them in your pocket. This means your stuff stays closer to you and does not stick out when you move around. There is seriously a pocket shaped for anything I can think of and I think every Geek should try out ScottEVest once.

The only bad thing I can think of is Fleece is most common in the vests and sweatshirts. This keeps me warm but I would like another cotton option because my dogs hair is simply magnetized to the Fleece. The ScottEVest Fleece 4.0 is available for $100 @
http://scottevest.com/v3_store/40_SeV_Fleece_Jacket.shtml

The holiday numbers are in, Apple Inc. had their biggest quarter ever with $9.6 Billion in revenue and 1.58 ba, ba, ba, Billion in profit! If you do the math, that is about 16.5% profit. Profit after all rent, utilities, and employees are paid. Those iPhones and iPods are making Apple some money, I have even heard they are marked up around 50%.

This revenue growth was 35% higher than last year’s holiday quarter, actually best in Apple’s history. Wow! Look out Microsoft.

All information quoted from Apple.com, for the full report from Apple check out this link. www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/01/22results.html

Affordable servers are here for everyone. This home Server idea is great for home and small businesses. Here I have the HP home server I bought for myself and family. From the beginning, the HP impressed me with its elegant design and won me over with its simple software.

To start, the HP Windows Home Server is amazingly small, it fits just about anywhere. Open the front door to reveal 4 slots to install SATA hard drives, turn it  around and there is the necessary Gigabit Ethernet port, a ESATA port, and a 3 USB ports for external hard drives. Supposedly drives can be swapped while the machine is on.

The HP comes with 3 discs, one for the HP as a recovery, one for installing the connector software necessary to backup your computers, and one for reinstalling windows on a failed but backed up computer. Yes, if I am to understand everything, you only need the one CD to backup any computer that needs to be restored and has been previously backed up. I suspect, during the process, you will need the original installation  disc. You will also get a setup poster, a couple of manuals, and necessary cables to get up and running.

Upon installing the connector software, I noticed there were some pretty cool features HP added. Namely, the ability to keep all your music in a central place and make it available in iTunes in every computer on your network. Each computer has its own backup and can have shared folders. You automatically have folders setup so you can share files with every computer. This is possible  with current Windows but because you will always leave your server on, the files will always be available. You can setup a way to log into your PC when you are not in your network, share photos online making your server a web site and much more. What is really worth mentioning is the fact that Windows created some sort of challenge for developers to develop software for the server so you will see software that will make the server better soon.

The main thing that makes this Home Server so good for everyday people is because it backs up your computer and you can forget about everything. You don’t have to worry about anything, changes on your computer is backed up every night. You can backup your whole system in the even of a failure or just backup certain files or drives. File backup is necessary because it is not a matter of if your hard drive will fail but a matter of when.

The only downside to Windows Home Server is going to be fixed soon with the recently announced Power Pack 1. The Power Pack will fix some bugs and more important, allow 64 bit connector support. Most people only use the most common 32 bit but anyone using x64 is out of luck for a little while. The release is set to be sometime in the first quarter of 08 so pay attention, it will coming soon.

Many of you may have Windows Vista and hate the new start menu. All the programs are there but the fact that they don’t fill up your screen when you move your mouse over programs might seem foreign. I personally like the way Vista works because of the search and because there is less clutter but here is how to make your start menu look like Windows XP, 2000, ME, 98 etc. There are many ways to do this but here is what I like best

1. Hover your mouse over the Windows Logo (where is used to say start in previous versions) and right click.

2. From there select properties from the box that pops up.

3. You will see a set of tabs in the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties Dialog box. Task Bar, Start Menu, Notification Area, etc. Select "Start Menu"

4. With the Start Menu tab selected, select "Classic Start Menu."

5. At this point you can click "ok" in the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box and you are finished or you can click customize to customize your Classic Start Menu.

Now your start menu looks more or less like previous versions of Windows.

Credit where credit is due! I got all this information from Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.tv while exchanging emails about her iyule screensaver.

Scenario: You have some cool video in the .wmv format, you have Vista, and you want to know how to use the video as a cool screensaver.

Steps in Vista:

1. create a new folder and call it whatever you want and put the .wmv video file in the folder. The folder can also be wherever you want

2. Right click on the Windows Desktop and select "personalize." You can also select "personalization in the control panel to get you to the same place.

3. Select Screen Saver.

4. Then select "Photos" in the drop down menu in the screen saver settings dialog box.

5. click the "settings" box to the right of the drop down menu

6. Check "use pictures and videos from" and click the "Browse" button.

7. Navigate to the place where you created the folder where you put the .wmv file and select the folder. Dont click save yet.

8. You need to now select the theme. Some will not work and some will not look good but one I know that works is "Fade" so for this example I would choose fade to see if it works. I also leave the speed at medium. Ok now you can select "save."

9. Hit the "preview" button to make sure everything works. I would give it a minute because the video does not come up right away.

10. If you are satisfied with all the settings, you can click the "ok" button in the screen save settings dialog box and you are all set.

If nothing worked, check the type of video or try starting over following my steps. I have not test other ways of doing this but I know this works for me. I am making the assumption that this works in all versions of Vista but I have not tried them all, I have done this in Vista Ultimate. Please let me know if it does not work in other versions. I should also note, there is no sound with this technique.

In my case, I purchased the iyule video from Cali Lewis at www.iyule.tv, so now I have a warm fire as my screen saver.

So my mom just asked how I magically pasted text with the keyboard. The answer is a keyboard shortcut.

If you want to copy or cut something and then paste, it is quickly with your keyboard. The + (plus) does not mean hold the plus key, it simply means to hold both the key on the left and the right of the plus at the same time.

This is how:

CUT: ctrl+x This will cut the selected text. (you wont see it on the screen anymore)

COPY: ctrl+c This will copy the selected text. The highlighted text will still remain.

PASTE: ctrl+v This will paste the text wherever the mouse curser is.

You can highlight text with the mouse or by holding the shift key and moving the arrows. The best technique I have found when pasting text is to hold down the ctrl key with my pinky finger and then hit the other key with whichever finger is convenient. You can copy text from just about anything on your computer but you can only paste text in certain areas. For example, text can be pasted to a word document or email. All of this can be achieved by right clicking on a mouse but when you get used to using keyboard shortcuts you will find they are much quicker. All of this applies to the Mac, even the same alphanumeric keys but instead of ctrl you hold down the Apple key. I think this explains everything a little better than the previous post about copying and pasting.