Sometimes you have your hands on the keyboard and it takes extra time to grab the mouse and move to the address bar to type a web site while using Internet explorer. If you are looking for a way to speed up the process, try typing Alt+d. This means hold down the alt key and then press the d key. This will move you to the address bar and you are free to type hopefully making your browsing experience quicker and better.

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.

I just want to warn people who are using Windows on their MacBooks with OSX and BootCamp. Don’t use the sleep feature! I have not tried this with XP and please confirm if you have but I have tried this with Vista. Make sure you shut down your computer…

Normally I hit shut down but I recently hit the sleep button, you know the one that looks like the power button in my MacBook Pro and my Vista MacBook went to sleep. Well everything did what it was supposed to do.. Everything went off and the computer turned on to Vista when I  hit the power button.

The only problem was, I could have fried an egg on it! This makes sense to me now since the boot configuration in BootCamp needs to run. So the computer does not really shut off but the fans apparently do.

If anyone has had similar circumstances, please let me know. If I am doing something wrong, please let me know.

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.

I recently purchased the Lite-On Blu-Ray player/ DVD burner, model number DH-4OIS for $150 and have been very happy with it. I purchased this drive to watch Blu-Ray movies in my computer. Having a Netflix account, I am able to watch as many Blu-Ray movies as I want and have had a few that caused a slight inconvenience.

I have a super Rig, Core 2 Duo 7750, Vista x64 Ultimate, 6 GB of Ram etc and was surprised to hear what might be the drive buffering on some Blu-Ray discs. Blu-Ray discs have super encrypted copy protection that does require a lot of horse power in a computer but I am just not sure what the issue is. I doubt it is my computer but it may be… But it also may be the drive itself. Possibly the buffer in the Blu-Ray drive is not big enough!

Rest assured, this only happened in 2 of 10 Blu-Ray discs and I was able to hit pause, then wait, and then press play to resume my movies but I don’t want to have to do this when I am watching a movie. If anyone has had similar issues, please let everyone know your experience. If you are thinking of buying this drive, do some research before you buy.

I can’t believe it is here but we are seeing 1 TB hard drives sold for under $200! This price may be a limited time offer but since it is out there, I would not buy any 1 TB hard drive for any more than $200.

The link for this one is the "eco" friendly drive that has variable speeds from 5400-7200 rpm.

Some advice about high capacity drives: At first I was not sure about the investment in a drive that would operate at 5400 rpm because of slower speeds but I have heard from some people that this may actually be better for drives with really high capacities. It seems that because the densities in these drives are so compact, little movements from case fans or even the fast 7200 rpm cause the drive to error and it spends more time correcting errors than an average drive does. So although these new 1 TB drives may run slower than regular drives, a 5400 drive may be quicker than a 7200 rpm.

In my last post, I explained why it is important to create a restore disc from HP when you get one of those computers with the backup on a hidden partition. HP bailed my customer out by allowing us to order a restore CD for $16. I almost forgot to post the link! If you need to order a replacement disc for your HP or Compaq, use this link: https://warp2.external.hp.com/driver/dr_country_select.asp?Product=5069-6646&lang=en&cc=us 

I just worked on a customers PC and with the help of HP, I turned a computer into a big doorstop. Fortunately for me, there was nothing that I could do to prevent what was about to happen.

If you don’t already know, many computers like HP to name the one I was working on, do not come with system recovery discs. There is a recovery partition that will backup your computer in the event it crashes but you are supposed to create a recover disc if your hard drive fails. Well… My customer as I’m sure most people do, did not make a recovery disc. When I received the computer it was too late. We needed to do a full reformat using the hard drive recovery partition and we followed the steps to do it, hit F10 and select Destructive Recovery. Here is where HP has really screwed up. The system reformatted the C drive first and then opened up the recovery for installing it. This might seem to make sense but I wish HP would make a system to scan the recovery partition first because when the computer tried to install Windows, we got error after error and it was obvious we could not do the restore. Since we reformatted the C drive, we could no longer boot Windows and had no way of fixing it. It is likely that the recovery partition was corrupt which means creating a recovery disc would not work either. The computer went from a virus infested working Windows to a 30 pound doorstop. I dont know if this is a hard disk error or because their is a new virus that is really, really bad.

Fortunately, HP will save you for a small fee. I was able to order a 1-2 day shipping of an XP recovery disc for $30, 5-7 day shipping costs $16. If you don’t want to do this like my customer and I, please make your recovery disc when your computer prompts you or find out how to do it after you have already started using your computer

There are many reasons that your tech guy might need to reformat your computer but it is important to know what is going to happen to your computer after he or she does it. Some argue to reformat once a year, your computer may have had files deleted, wont start, or infested with spyware but when it comes time to do it, you need to be ready.

The main thing to remember when reformatting your computer is that it is going to put back into the same state as when you bought your computer. It will work fast and new but every single peace of software you installed and every file you created will be gone. It is extremely important to backup your data and be prepared to install software that you added after your computer was purchased. If you no longer have the software, you will have to buy it again or steal it again if you are a creep with no morals. You will have to reset your settings, like bookmarks, desktop background etc. Basically, anything that has changed since you purchased your computer will be gone. So be prepared! The last and very important issue is the fact that your computer will be behind in critical security patches from both either Microsoft or Apple if you are using a Mac and they need to be downloaded and installed before you do anything. Again! Backup data! Re-Install Software! Update Security Patches!