Monitor the Weather from Your Windows 7 Taskbar

Keeping up with the weather forecast can be hard when you are extra busy with work. If you need a simple but nice looking way to integrate weather monitoring into your Taskbar then join us as we look at WeatherBar.

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By friendlycomputers

McAfee to compensate home users for bad update

McAfee is promising to reimburse home customers hit by last Wednesday's faulty virus update, which hosed tens of thousands of computers.

Facing complaints and questions from people whose PCs crashed or kept rebooting as a result of the buggy update, McAfee formally apologized in an official blog last Friday. But now the company has gone a step further.

McAfee is committing to reimburse home and home office customers for any money they spent to fix their PCs as a result of the problem. Details are sketchy now, but the company is hoping people will sit tight for a few more days until more information is available.

"If you have already incurred costs to repair your PC as a result of this issue, we're committed to reimbursing reasonable expenses," promised McAfee in a special announcement for home and home office users. "Steps to process your reimbursement request will be posted in the next few days. Please check back here in a few days."

And for loyal customers whose PCs were impacted but plan to stick with McAfee, the company has promised to extend their antivirus subscriptions for another two years free of charge.

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By friendlycomputers

The Ultimate Guide to Windows 7 Security

Windows 7 has been warmly received and swiftly adopted by businesses, with the result that many IT admins are now struggling with the platform's new security features. In addition to changes to User Account Control, BitLocker, and other features inherited from Windows Vista, Windows 7 introduces a slew of security capabilities that businesses will want to take advantage of.

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By friendlycomputers

How to Upgrade Your Netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium

Would you like more features and flash in Windows on your netbook? Here’s how you can easily upgrade your netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium the easy way.

Most new netbooks today ship with Windows 7 Starter, which is the cheapest edition of Windows 7. It is fine for many computing tasks, and will run all your favorite programs great, but it lacks many customization, multimedia, and business features found in higher editions. Here we’ll show you how you can quickly upgrade your netbook to more full-featured edition of Windows 7 using Windows Anytime Upgrade. Also, if you want to upgrade your laptop or desktop to another edition of Windows 7, say Professional, you can follow these same steps to upgrade it, too.

Please note: This is only for computers already running Windows 7. If your netbook is running XP or Vista, you will have to run a traditional upgrade to install Windows 7.

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By friendlycomputers

Experience the iPad UI On Your PC

Want to test drive iPad without heading over to an Apple store? Here’s a way you can experience some of the iPad UI straight from your browser!

The iPad is the latest gadget from Apple to wow the tech world, and people even waited in line all night to be one of the first to get their hands on one. Thanks to a simple JavaScript trick, however, you can get a feel for some of its new features without leaving your computer. This won’t let you try out everything on the iPad, but it will let you see how the new lists and pop-over menus work just like they do in the new apps.

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By friendlycomputers

How to Analyze, Clean Out, and Free Space on Your Hard Drive

Hard drive space is cheaper than ever, but as Parkinson's Law dictates, your data (and, let's face it, BitTorrent addiction) somehow expands to fill your space available for storage. Here's a few simple but effective ways to clean out your hard drive.

Whether you're looking to free up gigabytes worth of hard drive space or you just want to clear out the extra cruft because you're serious about a clean hard drive, we'll highlight how to find and remove the biggest space hogging files on your drive, remove unnecessary files hiding deep in your filesystem, and offer a few tips for keeping things clean. The main focus of this guide is on Windows, but I'll offer up Mac alternatives where available. (Mac users, you may also want to check out our previous guide to cleaning up and reviving your bloated, sluggish Mac.)

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By friendlycomputers

The right font can save you money

Hit by the high prices of inkjet and toner cartridges, we're all looking for ways to shave some bucks off the cost of printing. New data from Printer.com found that because different fonts use different amounts of ink to print, using the right font could save you as much as 31 percent off your inkjet and toner cartridge expenses.

Printer.com, a Dutch company that compares printers and their costs, recently put its theory to the test. The company set up two printers--a Canon inkjet and a Brother laser printer--to see how much money could be saved by using different fonts. Both printers were left at their default settings of 600x600 dots per inch.

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By friendlycomputers

10 Essential iPad Tips & Tricks

Any idiot can use an iPad at a basic level. It's designed that way. But even still, there are things that you're just supposed to magically know—things no one ever necessarily tells you. So we're here to help.

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By friendlycomputers