Given where I live in Southern California, I have decided to learn Spanish. I was horrible at learning the typical way when in high school so I decided to take a different approach. I decided to try Rosetta Stone the, "Fastest Learning Course, Guaranteed. Used by NASA, FBI, 10,000 Schools."

I’ll tell you one thing about learning a language. Unless you are a super brainiac, you will not fully learn any language until you fully immerse yourself in it. You also risk forgetting it if you don’t use it. The traditional way of reading a schoolbook where you read the word and read that it means xyz in English just did not cut it. One of my bilingual friends told me that in order to be successful, you have to know what is being talked about in the foreign language without doing a mental translation of what is spoken in your native language in your head. Rosetta Stone aims to solve this by showing you an image and telling you what it is, building on it, and adding more and more. Overall, I have been really satisfied with Rosetta Stone, I am not fluent in Spanish but I really feel that is because I have not used the program enough. I have only spent a few hours using Rosetta Stone while owning it a few months. Had I used the software every day for the past few months over and over, my dumb head might be speaking Spanish. If you have had trouble learning a language, I strongly suggest trying out Rosetta Stone. The newest version of Rosetta Stone works with Windows or Mac platforms.

Have you ever been poking around your Windows Vista computer, found the Windows Experience Index score and wonder what the heck it is? One thing that might confuse people is that your overall score is the lowest of all the ratings and not an average. For example, you may have a 5.1 for the processor speed, a 4 for ram and a 2 for graphics which is the lowest but your overall score is 2.

The answer is pretty simple. The idea behind rating is to help you out when you install software on your computer and ensure you will know what to expect when you buy and install a video game or utility. In the past, when people bought games, the needed to make sure their video card was good enough, processor was fast enough and so forth. The number system solves this. If you buy a Vista video game rated at a minimum 5, every category in your system should be a 5 or greater otherwise you will possibly have issues. Whether it may be ram, processor, or video, you game will lag because the rating is lower than what is expected. If you buy a game and it’s rating is a 3 and your overall average score is 5, you be able to play the game with no issues.

Hope this helps you understand why this rating system is in your computer. If anything, it is a way to brag to friends when your number is bigger than theirs.

If you need at a minimum, weekly dose of tech news and commentary, please tune in to KFI am 640 talk radio on the weekends from 11 am to 2 pm for Leo Laporte The Tech Guy. If you cant tune in your radio, you get the stream from KFI at KFI640.com, or twit.tv/live which will soon be twitlive.tv.

Leo is amazing at helping people learn and solve everyday technical problems an average user might have. The show may sometimes get geeky, but is made for an audience that may or may not know anything about tech. Leo has been a source of inspiration for me and I hope for you too.

Leo also creates too many to count, podcasts that release just about every day. Check out twit.tv for getting any of his shows delivered to you via RSS or iTunes.

Have you ever burned a CD only to find it does not work or part of it is missing? If so, the fact that the CD does not work is generally not your fault. The problem is with Buffer! Most burning software these days like Nero and Roxio automatically set to burn full speed which may be spitting data too fast at either the disc or filling up the buffer and causing errors. One problem this could be is using CD’s rated at a lower speed than your burner is burning at.

To fix this, don’t go out and buy new DVD’s or CD’s just set the setting to burn slower. Generally, you can set the speed just before you hit the burn button in most programs.

This tip is for Windows Vista Home Premium and above. Sorry Basic…

If you have ever wanted to change the color or appearance of Windows Vista? With some simple steps, you can personalize the look of your computer and the slick transparency in Windows.

Right-click on your desktop and select Personalize. A windows will pop up, then select Windows Color and Appearance where you will find an array of colors, enabling of transparency, and options for intensity.

So you have a network, multiple, pc’s, shared Internet, the whole nine yards, but how do you share files over the network. When using a Vista and XP machine, there are a few more steps but is pretty easy to set up. The easiest way to network files is use the standard Vista way but then you have to move your files to the shared area if you know what that is and you would not be using Vista’s cool networking features.

The key to networking a hard disk or folder is to plan two things: Where the drive or folder is going to be and the name of your network. You want to pick a place for the shared drive or folder that will be in a computer that is on the majority of the time or always on. If you create a shared drive in a computer that is turned off frequently, the other computers on your network wont be able to access the files on the disk or folder. The other thing that is forgotten frequently is the name of the network. If you are using all Vista PC’s, the name is WORKGROUP and MSHOME is the default for XP. It is important to change the name in a Vista or XP machine if you are going to share files over a network. To make things simple, this tutorial will assume all computers are Vista and not change the name of the network or "workgroup" as it is referred to in Vista. One of the cool things about Windows Vista is its auto sensing network technology which means your shared drive will be seen automatically if the workgroup is the same. Just a side note, there are many ways to share files in Windows, this is just one way.

Once the location for the shared files have been decided, the first step is to right-click on the drive or folder and select properties. From the window that pops up, click the sharing tab, then advanced sharing. Yet another Window will pop up and you need to click the box for share this folder, create a name (this will be the name identified on the network), and click permissions. In the Permissions box, you get some options for your users: full control, change, and read. Most people will want full control which will allow people to copy or read files, modify them, and save them in the shared folder. If you want people to be able to only read the files then select read but they wont be able to save to or modify the shared files. Click "OK" over and over until all the open windows with "OK" are gone. Your shared folder is now ready to be accessed.

Now you will want to be able to access the the files from the shared location to test the shared folder or drive you created. Again, there are many ways but one of the easiest is to click "Network" right from the start menu. Here is where you will be stopped by Vista’s new security features. Once the network window opens, you will see all the computers on your network, click on the computer with the shared drive where you will have to enter the username and password of the computer with the shared drive. When you enter the username and password, you might want to check remember password so you don’t have to do this again. Now you will see all available shared folders available in that computer. Just click on the folder and you will see all your files. You are finished as far as what you can do to share the folder but there is one last step you might want to do to speed up access to your folder. Right-click on the shared folder and select "Map Network Drive," select any drive letter you prefer that is not taken on your current computer, check reconnect at logon. Now this shared drive will show up with your regular drives in your computer area, you can also right-click and create a shortcut for somewhere else in your computer.

Just one more thing! You can also map a shared drive via "Computer," formerly My Computer, by clicking "Map network drive," and follow the steps to find the shared folder or drive as explained earlier.

Depending on what hardware you have, you may have many "Optional" Windows Vista updates you don’t actually want to install. Possibly you just hate seeing all of the language packs available for update. If you don’t want to see these updates, there is a simple way to remove them from the list.

From Windows Vista Update, click View Updates, right-click on the update you don’t want and select "Hide Update." Now when you use Windows Update, you wont have to worry about seeing updates that are optional that you don’t want… That is until there is another unwanted optional update.

If you are like me, you cant live without email, you could do without it because it takes up too much time but you are too invested in it.

Sometimes I find myself looking for email I accidentally deleted and until a few months ago, I was not able to do anything about it. With Google offering tons more storage for email than my current provider and given the fact that Google email storage keeps getting bigger, I had one of those light bulb moments. To fix this accidental deletion issue, I decided to forward every email I get to a Gmail account from Google. My current email service provider allows me to receive email, delete it, or do whatever I normally want but they also allow me to send a copy to another address. So in a nutshell, whenever I get an email at my current address, I get another copy at this Gmail account. If one day my my email service provider deletes my email by accident, I can get all my copies in my Gmail account.

If you are in a household with many computers all with their own iTunes libraries, there is a great way to share the music from one computer to another. ITunes now allows you to share your library over your network. Once configured, you will see the library available in the shared section of the left hand panel in iTunes.

Here is how to set it up:

From iTunes, select "Edit" and then "Preferences." Once the Preferences windows opens, select the "sharing" tab, and finally "Share my library on my local network." You are able to select various types of music, videos, and much more. At the bottom, you can also require a password.

All music should stream fine over a 54G wireless connection but you will want a physical connection for video.

Eventually, we all have a spare or old computer we no longer need that is sitting around collecting dust. Some of us might get the idea to sell it but others may decide to give it to charity. Whatever the reason is, you must make sure you properly delete the data on the computer you are donating off of the hard disk.

It is a common misconception that reformatting a drive deletes the data on your hard drive. Actually, when you reformat a drive, you really just the the drive to forget where the data is. The drive in your computer may not show anything there but it is still there until it is written over by saving new data. With proper tools, data from a formatted drive can be recovered quite easily.

DBAN or Derik’s Boot and Nuke is a free utility that will really wipe all data from your drive. Instead of reformatting a drive, DBAN actually writes 0’s or blobs of data over your data. DBAN has a variety of options to overwrite data over and over multiple times for when you want to be really secure.

To find DBAN, do a Google search for "DBAN." Once there, read the instructions on how to create a bootable CD and run DBAN.

!!!Warning!!! If you use DBAN on your C drive, you will erase everything and never be able to recover anything again. This is exactly what you want to do if selling or giving away a computer.