February 2011 archive

Change the Default Document Format to Office 2003 in Office 2007 & 2010

Change the default document format in Office 2010

More people are making the switch to Office 2007 and Office 2010 however there are still those clinging on to older versions who are unable to open the newer Office 2007 formats (such as .docx and .xlsx which are differentiated from older versions with the extra “x” on the end of the file extension). I …

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Panasonic 3D Blu-ray Home Theatre Sound System (SC-BTT755) Review

With a day to spare, I have completed the review video for the Panasonic SC-BTT75 3D Blu-ray Home Theatre Sound System. I received this system back in December last year and have put it through its paces across a range of activities including: CD audio playback, DVD videos, Blu-ray videos (3D and standard videos), regular …

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Check Your Logs Regularly for Strange Activity

If you maintain your own server sometimes it can be easy to overlook what is going on with it especially when it sits tucked away somewhere out of mind and out of sight. Particularly, if you are running applications that can cost you money such as a VoIP PABX it is wise to check the …

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Open a Command Prompt Quickly in Windows 7

Windows 7 - Open a command prompt from Windows Explorer

Particularly for those of us who work a bit with a command line it can often be a pain to manually change directories if you want to wade more than about four folders deep. Luckily, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 contain a handy little feature to get to a folder quickly. Simply hold …

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Know the Difference Between Wall Chargers and USB Chargers

Another short, sharp tip for this evening. It seems these days that we have a constant merry-go-round of gadgets needing to be recharged be it mobile phones, tablet devices, portable music devices, wireless console controllers or even USB batteries. Sometimes, we just need to charge something quickly without knowing which option is necessarily best. USB …

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Reclaim Space – Remove Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Backup Files

Removing backup files created during service pack installation

One of the hot topics today is the general release of Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 to the public. Whilst it isn’t a ground breaking update in terms of adding new features to Windows 7 (a lot more of the action is related to Windows Server 2008 R2) it does contain a few important …

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Windows Home Server 2011 Features Time Machine Backups… Sort of…

Automated backups for Windows machines has been a staple of Windows Home Server since it was first released and in  Windows Home Server 2011 that core functionality has been preserved. Microsoft had planned to  support backups of Mac OS X computers through the Time Machine feature however Apple removed the ability to do so by …

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An Easier Way to Run Applications as Administrator in Windows Vista & Windows 7

Here’s a quick tip for this evening. From time to time, we need to open an application as an administrator instead of the limited user rights that we have by default in Windows Vista and Windows 7. However, this can be a pain as you need to locate the program you want to run (either …

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Panasonic 3D Blu-ray Player (DMP-BDT300GN) Review

As promised, I have completed the review video for the Panasonic 3D Blu-ray Player (DMP-BDT300GN) after two months of use. This period of time catered for a break over the Christmas period as well as other commitments I have had to fit in. As with previous videos it is available in high definition for those of you …

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Automatically Reinstall Common Applications After a Format with Ninite

Ninite Website

If you have been following the blog you might be aware that I undertook a clean install of Windows 7 on a laptop. Of course, there’s a process to go through in order to backup existing data, reinstall Windows and then copy back the required data from the backup. However, some of that data is …

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