July 2011 archive

Bolster Your DOS USB Boot Disk – Part 1

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Yesterday, I walked through how to make your own DOS USB boot disk with the final result being a bootable USB stick that won’t do much more than let you browse the USB stick itself and other internal FAT and FAT32 drives. Today, we’ll make that USB stick a bit more useful. The first and …

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Dell XPS 8300 Unboxing

This was an unexpected gadget but a colleague of mine recently bought a new computer to replace an aging laptop that gave up the ghost earlier in the year. Anyway, he’s handed over his Dell XPS 8300 to me to do some basic tweaking for him. So, of course, I had to unbox it. I …

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Windows Phone 7 and Google’s Artificial Limitation of Multiple Calendars

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If you happen to use more than one calendar in Google Mail or your corporate e-mail then you might have realised that Windows Phone 7 only seems to support the primary calendar for some reason over Exchange ActiveSync. This is despite other EAS compatible devices such as the iPhone and iPad having worked with multiple …

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Don’t pay Full Price for LastPass and Xmarks Premium

Here’s another quick tip for this evening. For those of you who use either LastPass Premium or Xmarks Premium by themselves but have fancied picking up the other service after LastPass acquired Xmarks last year you should probably remember that these services are available in a bundle. Normally, these premium services by themselves cost $12 …

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Shoot Now and Focus Later with a Lytro Camera

You could be forgiven for thinking I had mistyped the title of this blog post. Many people would know that cameras rely upon the user focusing upon a subject or a particular field in a shot prior to capturing a picture (most notably with SLR cameras). Otherwise, you end up with a blurred photo with …

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What Does 3G+ Mean in Windows Phone 7?

Here’s a quick tip for tonight. If you use Windows Phone 7 you might notice on the lock screen that you have a “3G+” symbol from time to time and wondered what it meant. You might be forgiven for thinking that you’ve unlocked some sort of turbo charged connectivity but there is quite a simple …

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Make Your Own DOS USB Boot Disk

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool

This one might be a bit out there for the regular crowd out there but for those of us who grew up on the DOS command line (myself included) sometimes you need to get back to basics. Some faithful tools and utilities such as SpinRite only work in DOS and in order to use them …

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Boydo Test Drives Windows Phone 7

Just a quick update for tonight. From here on in I will be using the new Samsung Omnia 7 I picked up on the weekend as my primary phone. For me, there’s no better approach in becoming more familiar with a device than to jump in with both feet and work it out as you …

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Samsung Omnia 7 Unboxing

Well, I have been itching for a little while to get a device that would let me test drive Windows Phone 7 ahead of the highly anticipated Mango release. As I own an Android device (Samsung Galaxy S) and an Apple iPad I have two major players covered but was lacking when it came to Microsoft’s latest …

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Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 2

It seems that not too long ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9 for Windows Vista and Windows 7 but Internet Explorer 10 is now in the process of being developed. In fact, it only took Microsoft less than a month to start talking about IE10 after the release of IE9. Microsoft is also stepping up …

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