Tech Tips

With the introduction of Microsoft Office 2010 comes web based versions of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. This will allow you to work on documents from any computer with an Internet connection. All these applications will also be available on mobile smartphones as well. Microsoft boasts the ability to simultaneously share and work on documents with others online. This is a direct rival to Google's online office suite, Google Docs. While Google Docs works well for basic editing, there are sometimes compatibility issues. It's nice to see Microsoft finally adding this functionality to their office suite.

Click here to learn more about Microsoft Office 2010.

Western Digital has unveiled the WD TV Mini Media player. It's a compact media player that plays video, audio, and shows pictures from almost any USB storage device such as external hard drives, digital camcorders, cameras, and flash drives.. The media player supports a maximum video resolution of 1080i. The player supports a wide variety of video formats and is priced at $99.00.
Click here to visit Western Digital's site to learn more.

1. Should You Worry About Data Rot?
"Data rot" refers to issues relating to the medium onto which you back up your data, and how long that medium is good. This really isn't an issue for most currently in-use back up systems, more so where and how archived data is stored. Most backup mediums only last 5 to 10 years depending on how they're stored. The New York Times has an interesting interview with a man from The Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, California, where they touch upon many interesting points about this issue.

Click here to read the article.

2. Complete Guide to Going Paperless
Lifehacker has put together an excellent article on going completely paperless. They have information on how to stop credit card offers, insurance mail offers, getting off direct mailer lists, catalog lists and much more. Information is also provided to help you figure out what paper documents you actually have to keep. And for those you don't - how to best store them electronically.

Read the complete article here.

3. "Remember the Milk" Task Manager
"Remember the Milk" is quite an impressive task list manager. This feature rich application allows you to see your task list from just about anywhere. You can use the website, get the iPhone app, Blackberry, Windows Mobile application, use Gmail integration, or access it from almost any device you wish. You can use Google Map integration to specify locations for your tasks. You can set it to send you reminders to your cell phone, e-mail, and nearly all instant messenger clients. Most of the features are free, but there is a Pro version with even more features for $25 per year.

Click here to try out Remember The Milk.

Windows 7 is Done, Reviews On Deck
So Windows 7 is finally complete; developers, manufacturers, and Microsoft partners all have access to the final version of the software. The consensus seems to be that Windows 7 fixes everything that Microsoft screwed up with Vista. They took the capable and stable Vista kernel, enhanced it and made all of the changes the public disliked. The operating system is much faster than Vista, being able to run on more basic hardware than its predecessor. They got rid of the annoying security popups, greatly improved the functionality of the start menu, and made too many other changes to list. Various websites have started to post reviews for Windows 7; Gizmodo have posted a rather in-depth review of the OS that's worth reading. The public release date for Windows 7 is October 22nd. Click here to read Gizmodo's review of Windows 7.