If you were raised on IBM 84-key, nonstandard laptop, or ergonomic keyboards, you may be near madness from the placement of the Caps Lock, Ctrl, and Windows logo keys on stan-
dard 102-key keyboards.

PC Magazine’s TradeKeys utility ($8 U.S.; www.pcmag.com) lets you change, swap, or disable keyboard keys (including modifier keys) in almost any way. Different users can switch among
different mappings quickly.

Read more »

The world’s major print newspapers have also launched online editions that you can browse for free. Many ask you to fill out a free registration form so the site can harvest a little demographic data for its advertisers. Other newspapers try to make a few bucks by charging for online articles, either by monthly subscription or per article. For example, a number of newspapers let you read breaking news for free, but make you pay for archived articles more than, say, a week old. News sites like Google and Yahoo News frequently link to articles on newspaper sites. If you hit a for-pay site, use your Back button and try another link. You can usually find the same article for free from another paper’s site.

Read more »

There are a variety of News sites offering plethora of news on any subject under the sun. Among them Google and Yahoo are topmost.  These sites let you peruse headlines from hundreds of news organizations at once. Broadcasters like the BBC and CNN have also created Web sites, making text versions of their storiesalong with photos, audio, and videoavail-able online. 

Read more »

There are several different types of DVD writable drives available in the market as follows:

DVD-R: Can write to a blank disc once. The discs are compatible with most recent DVD video players.

DVD-RW: Can be written and rewritten to. The discs are compatible with most recent DVD video players.

Read more »

The Home versions of Vista suffer from some stricter limitations on available main memory and peer-to-peer networking than the non-Home versions. I ’ll summarize these limits as follows:

•  32-bit Vista versions will always be limited to 4 GB of RAM, due to limitations of x86 processors.

• 64-bit Vista versions have dramatically different limitations in the various editions:

  Read more »

The differences between 32-bit Vista (usually referred to as the x86 version in honor of the 32-bit architecture of Intel’s 80386, 80486, and Pentium processors) and 64-bit Vista are more complex. The good news is that, if you’re buying a new PC with Vista preinstalled, it will probably come with 32-bit or 64-bit processing already enabled, depending on the chipset that powers your machine.

Read more »

In order to make it easy for users to find new gadgets that will run on both the Windows Sidebar and desktop, Microsoft has created a few Web communities. The first is called, appropriately enough, Microsoft Gadgets (http://microsoftgadgets.com/). The second, which is available from the link Get more gadgets online in the Sidebar’s Add Gadgets window, is called Gadgets for Windows Vista (http://gallery.microsoft.com/Results.aspx?vista=landing&rdm=113828&l=1&ti=2)

Read more »

Windows Sidebar should launch automatically when you boot into Windows Vista. If you disable the Windows Sidebar’s autorun functionality, you’ll have to go digging for it in the Start menu. It’s somewhat hidden in Start->All Programs->Accessories. This is made all the more confusing because Microsoft has changed the way the Start menu expands; instead of the submenu system employed in previous versions, the submenu expands and contracts in place right within the Start menu now. When Windows Sidebar starts, you’ll see a subtle black shadow appear on the right side of the screen.. Additionally, a blue Sidebar icon appears in the tray notification area next to the system clock. Depending on how your system is configured, you should also see one or more gadgets, or mini-applications, displaying in the Sidebar itself.

Read more »