Here’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.  I’ve always thought the preview size on Windows 7 were a bit too small.  I have a decent size monitor, about 22 inches, and so whenever I hover over the taskbar to preview what I’m working on the size is so small that I have to move closer to the monitor to see what’s going on.  This little registry hack makes the size to a much more easily viewable size that I’m comfortable with.  You can get the instructions here on how to change the size.

I use my HP desktop everyday.  I blog, read emails, surf the web and also watch TV on my PC.  No, not internet TV but actual over the air HD quality TV.  My HP Desktop has a built in TV tuner and also a remote control to go along with it.  However, whenever I change the volume on Windows Media Center there’s this annoying green volume bar that pops up each time I click on the volume +/- controls.  The pop up last a few seconds therefore I have to wait a few seconds between each click.  That’s the annoying part.  The volume control goes from 0 through 50.  Imagine waiting a few seconds to change the volume if you needed to quickly drop or raise the volume.

This annoying volume bar is actually not part of Microsoft Windows 7 system but is related to Microsoft.  It’s a built in feature of the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.  Follow these steps to disable the annoying green volume bar.

1. Click on Microsoft Keyboard

2. Go to Key Settings and scroll down to Volume and click on configure

3. Uncheck Display volume and mute status on screen

FIXED!

Email phishing is nothing new but I guess there’s still plenty of people falling for the scam otherwise I wouldn’t get one in my inbox.  Here’s a Paypal email phishing email that I recently received in my Yahoo mail.  How did I figured out it was a bogus email?  It’s pretty simple if you look carefully.  First sign that this is a fake email is the sender’s email address.  The sender’s email is ‘no-reply@accountsettings.com’ but the email body states that it’s from paypal.com.  Most legitimate email from any company would end in @company-name.com. Second, and probably the most important sign that this is a phishing email, is that there is a “link” to verify your account.  Anytime there is a link embedded inside an email I would definitely not click on it.  Always go to the company’s website directly to log into your account.  Also, if you hover your cursor over the link (DO NOT click on it) you would see at the bottom of your browser that the link goes to some weird long-named URL.  That’s usually the tell-tale sign that the email is bogus.  Third and lastly the least important sign that this is not a legitimate email is that there is no info on you from the sender.  The email just say’s “Hello” to no name.  Wouldn’t an email from a company that has your info send you an email that would start out “Hello yourname,”.

If you happen to be lucky to get one of these make sure to report it to the real company so that the can make sure there customers are aware of the scam.  For Paypal you can report email phishing at spoof@paypal.com.  You probably won’t get a human reply email but you will get a computer generated general email stating that they received your email and won’t email you any further on the reported email.  Also, you can report the spammers to the Federal Government at phishing-report@us-cert.gov and they will use the it for their research.

Web advertising is a necessary evil.  Ninety-nine percent of online contents are “free”.  You need not to shell out a credit card or pay for services like email, news, games and online storage.  However, to support all this “free” service web advertising is the main revenue for website owners.  Microsoft advertising displays ad that are relevant to your Bing search history and places them along your search queries.  You can opt out of the personalized ads through this link.  Once you complete this form MS will place a cookie on your PC to disable tracking.  If you delete this cookie the opt out setting is also removed and you will have to redo the opt out process.

However, this only eliminate “personalized” advertising.  It does not eliminate advertising at all.  The ads will still be there based on your current search and not on past searches.  All this really does is eliminate the tracking cookie that Microsoft uses to keep a history of your searches.

sfgate.com:

A class action complaint filed in San Jose federal court alleges that Google Inc. broke the law when its controversial Google Buzz service shared personal data without the consent of users.

One of the first thing I did after setting up the hardware is to change my admin password.  It’s one of the easiest things to do that can protect you from nearby hackers.  The default user id and password for most D-Link router is

Username=admin

Password= (leave blank)

and the router address is usually 192.168.0.1.

Step 1. In your browser type in 192.168.0.1 and hit enter

Step 1a. At this prompt page just hit log in since there is no default password

Step 2. Click on Tools and there under Admin Password go ahead and change it to something you can remember, then click Save Settings.

Short and simple.  Make sure you close out your browser and try to log in with the password you just entered.

1. Run Disk Cleanup from the start menu

2.  The Windows.old file is located on the C: drive, click ok

3. You won’t find the option here until you click on “Clean up system file“

4. Again select C: drive

5.  Here you will be able to select “Previous Windows installations(s)“

Now you should see some extra disk space and maybe even a bit improvement on system performance since you got rid of thousands of files that you don’t need anymore.

Have you ever needed to get some cash quickly but didn’t want to drive to the nearest ATM because you know you’ll be hit with a $2 fee from your bank and another $2 fee from the ATM.  If you withdrew $40 that’s $4 in fees (10%).

A quick an easy way to get cash, up to $50, without getting hit with any fees is go to the nearest Albertsons, Safeway, or any other supermarket.  Buy some gum, everyone needs some gum for fresh breath,  or anything and use your Discover Card.  When you swipe it on the PIN pad it will ask if you want cash back.  Safeway will let you get up to $40 and Albertsons limit is $50.  This will even work at those self-checkout registers.  They will show up on your statement as a regular purchase for the total amount of the purchase and the cashback as one transaction.  You won’t incur any fees and if you pay your statement in full at the end of the month there’s no finance charge either.

After you install the hard drive, follow the provided installation pamphlet,  you have to set it up on the PC and format it.  Here’s how to do it.

Note: a terabyte hard drive took me a few hours to format the drive so be patience when you are formatting the hard drive.

1. In Control Panel select System and Maintenance and select Create and format hard disk partitions.

2.  Now you should see Disk Management application loaded and you should see a disk “Not initialized”.  You wan to right click on the “Disk 1″ area and select initialize.

3. If you hard drive is less than 2TB then you would want to select MBR (Master Boot Record)

4.  Now you want to right click on the “unallocated”  area and select New Simple Volume

5.  New Simple Volume Wizard pops up and you continue through.

6.  Pick a drive letter you would like to associate with that new hard drive.  I picked M for “Mass Data”.

7.  Here you want to leave everything as is except for the Volume label.  Change it to whatever your heart desires.

8. Now you are done, your new drive should show up when you click on “My Computer”.