Ever received a zipped file or needed to send a zipped file in your PC or Mac and been told you need to buy a compressing program like Winzip? In most cases, you don’t need to buy any program. In most cases, when you receive a zipped file on a PC or Mac you can double click or click respectively and follow the instructions to get the compressed files.

If someone has requested you send them a zipped file in email or something, you don’t need to buy any software. Here is what you do:

On a PC, create a folder and put the files needed in it, then right click, select "send to," and finally "compresses (zipped) folder." This creates a zipped file you can use to send as an email attachment. If you need to add a password in order to open the zipped file you need to buy software and if you receive a file compressed by a proprietary program you may need to buy software.

In a Mac, the process is almost the same although the version of OSX might make the wording different. Ok… Create a file folder, then put the files in it. Then you need to do the same as a right click in Windows. Either hit "ctrl" and then click the mighty mouse on the folder or ditch the dumb Apple mouse and get a good windows mouse so you can right click. If you are using Leopard, then after right clicking you want to select "compress." Older versions of Mac OS’s may call this archive etc.

If you ever needed to restore a Mac with your recovery OSX CD you will find it will be faster to reboot and boot from the CD. To do this, reboot and hold down the "C" key.

Also, if you have partitioned your drive for Windows using BootCamp on your Intel Mac or have multiple bootable volumes, you can hold down the "Option" key when booting the computer. When booting, and holding down the option key, you will get all available boot options.

The data on our computers is important and priceless to us which is why hard drive failure is big issue these days. Data Robotics’ Drobo "The world’s first storage robot," hopes to fix this issue for everyone with a robotic smart approach to managing your hard drives. Drobo is available for $500

Drobo works like this: You fill up two to four of the four available slots for SATA hard drives, currently 1 TB is the max. Drobo gives you approximately half the amount of storage you put in it. Drobo automatically backs up another copy of your file on another drive so that in the event that one drive fails, you still have your data and you just replace the defective drive. Upgrading drives with Drobo is also easy, you just need to only replace one at a time and wait till Drobo tells you with it’s lights when it is ready. Drobo is making copies of your files to the new drive so you wont lose any data. An important note to make is that Drobo formats a drive with it’s own format each time you put a drive in, so if you take all four drive out at the same time you will lost all of your data. Drobo does withstand power outages so if you want to take out all drives, possibly try unplugging the power plug do whatever you need to do, put the drives back in and then power on Drobo. With Drobo running off of USB only, the people at Data Robotics say Drobo is not for  backup but it certainly can serve the process.

Oh wait a minute, Drobo now has a new friend DroboShare which allows more of a data backup solution with its network connectivity. Available for $200, DroboShare sits on the bottom of your Drobo and allows it to connect to your network via Ethernet.

Drobo cons: Expandability used to be my biggest worry but DroboShare boats connectivity expansion allowing two Drobos to work together. Drobo is also super loud, the fan in the back always seems to whine when I don’t want it to and I worry about heat on the drives because I see minimal airflow. Another note on the fan is if it breaks, there is no easy way just to replace the fan. The fan is necessary to cool your drives. Finally, my biggest concern is price. Why pay $700 for a Drobo and DroboShare that comes with no drives when I can pay $600 for an HP MediaSmart Server that does way more than the Drobo and comes with a 500GB drive. Why spend approximately $600 on a Drobo and a 500 GB drive when you can get the same but a whole server to for the same cost with the HP.

My final thoughts: Drobo is not worth the cost and is too loud. If you turn off your computer when you don’t use it and you don’t mind spending extra money for simplicity, a Drobo is for you. I really like the idea behind Drobo and the creators deserve to get paid for their creation. I just hope that Drobo can sell enough to drop the price closer to what I think it is worth. I do like that Drobo works with PC’s and Macs.

You can buy a Drobo here: Link

Tab browsing allows you to view multiple web sites in one open Windows. This idea really reduces clutter on your desktop and just about all browsers are now on board.

In Firefox or Internet Explorer, all you have to do is type the web address in the URL area of the browser, then hold down the "Alt" key and tap the "Enter" key. In Safari on a Mac (latest version of Safari only), you hold down the "Apple" key and tap the "Enter" key.

There are a few web sites I use each day and I keep them up and running in my browser in multiple tabs. All I have to do view the other sites is click on a desired tab.

Most die hard Apple fanboys and girls out there already know this but for any newbs to Apple the feature that allows you to scroll in a MacBook or MacBook Pro is really cool and time saving.

All you need to do is use two fingers on the touchpad instead of one while moving them up or down. Using two fingers on the touchpad will scroll if necessary in any active window or while in safari. This is especially helpful when navigating blogs or web sites where you need to scroll up or down. As far as I know, this is a fairly new feature that works on MacBooks that are a few years old.

I just recently bought a MacBook Pro because I can put Windows on it having two laptops in one. Mac and Windows. The first time I booted windows after the BootCamp installation I freaked out because there was no way to right-click.

Well, it took me about a minute to figure out a quick way to do it. I assumed this would not work but because you install Mac drivers after the Windows install I decided to try. To my amazement, right clicking works with the touchpad just as it Works while in the Mac environment.

All you do is touch the touchpad with two fingers and then use a third (I suggest thumb) to get the right click functionality. I am very thankful of Apple to think of this in Windows because windows users are lost without a quick way to right click. We just need all those options!

So thats it! Two fingers on the touchpad and another to click. This will get you the right click functionality if you are in the Mac environment on a MacBook or MacBook Pro or if you are using Windows with Bootcamp on a MacBook or MacBook Pro.

Happy Clicking!