It’s been a busy week between finals at Florida Tech and a major problem with an article I wrote on running XP Mode in Virtual Box, so here’s your chance to catch up my How-to Geek articles if you’ve been waiting for me to post them here.
Outlook:
I wrote two articles about my favorite plugins for Outlook: Forgotten Attachment Detector and the Drop.io plugin.
And then, to continue my series on running XP Mode in extreme and unusual ways, I wrote an article on how to run XP Mode in VirtualBox. Windows XP didn’t appear to activate correctly when users started trying to follow my directions, so we quickly went back to the drawing board. Thankfully, MysticGeek at How-to Geek dug up a great way to still get XP Mode to work in Virtual Box via the VMLite plugin. This integrates XP Mode with Windows 7 very nicely, including showing XP programs directly in your Windows 7 Start menu just like the official XP Mode. Check this method out at Install XP Mode with VirtualBox Using the VMLite Plugin, and you can even still see my original infamous article if you’d like at How To Run XP Mode in VirtualBox on Windows 7 (though remember, you won’t actually be able to activate XP Mode this way).
Books, books, and more books!
Microsoft press has the good habit of giving away free ebooks periodically, and they recently released a new on on their blog for free. This book, Own Your Future: Update Your Skills with Resources and Career Ideas from Microsoft, offers some unique and interesting pointers to make your career more successful in any field. Check out their blog post for more info, and download the book for free in PDF or XPS formats.
One more thing!
The neatest new download of the week was the new Opera 10.50. It brings a sleek Aero UI and great Windows 7 integration to the most popular browser that no one uses (on the desktop anyhow). This new version should help change that; it’s fast, pretty, and easy to use with streamlined menus. But this wasn’t Opera’s only new release of the week; they also released a beta version of Opera Mini 5 for Windows Mobile. Unlike previous versions that ran in Java, this version is a native Windows Mobile browser, includes tabbed browsing, and is amazingly fast. Opera Mini was already my favorite browser on Windows Mobile (Chrome and IE8 tie on the desktop for me :) ), and this just made it even better. Check them both out when you have a chance; you’ll enjoy it!
In between all of my new writing at How-to Geek, I have still been writing some articles for Digital Inspiration. I recently reviewed Manymoon, an exciting project management system that is fully integrated with Google Apps. It works both with the free standard Google accounts, as well as pro Google Apps accounts. Find out more here: Manymoon, an Online Project Management Software for Google Users
Then, I personally started out blogging at WordPress.com, but then recently moved to a self-hosted WordPress.org install with MochaHost. The great thing is, I was able to move all of my old content to this site, and also redirect all of the traffic from my old theoldestof8.wordpress.com domain directly here to www.techinch.com. Check out the article I contributed to at Digital Inspiration for exactly how to do this: How to Migrate your Blog from WordPress.com to a Personal Domain
Would you like to try out Ubuntu (or any other popular distribution of Linux) from the comfort of your Windows 7 (or Vista or XP) desktop? With a quick download of the Ubuntu ISO and VMware Player, you can do this easily. And, you can even run Linux apps side by side with your Windows Apps, and even see their icons in your taskbar! This article is my latest on Virtualization, so check it out on How-To Geek to see how easy it is to run Ubuntu right inside Windows!
Want to make Windows 7 Starter look and work just like you want it to? Check out my post at How-to Geek for tips and tricks on how to change your screensaver, sounds, theme, icons, and even customize your desktop! Once again, I’ve been presently surprised that Windows 7 Starter is more capable than one would assume at first glance. Continue reading at How-to Geek:
Speccy is a new, great little system tool that gives you detailed information about all the hardware on your computer. It is even available in a portable version so you can run it on a computer at a store, friend’s house, or anywhere else you need to check detailed stats. My favorite features is that it shows the model, speed, latency, and more from your Ram; this is really helpful if you’re wanting to add more RAM to your computer. Check out my whole overview of this tool at How-to Geek:
My favorite feature in both Windows 7 and Vista is the “Previous Versions” tool. This has absolutely saved me several times, including once when I accidently deleted a nearly finished essay! I think this is the hidden gem in modern versions of Windows, so I really enjoyed writing about it for How-To Geek. Check out the article intro below, and then continue reading it at How-To Geek.
Have you ever accidently deleted a file, or removed a crucial part of a document only to realize it no longer makes sense? Windows 7 is smart enough to protect you from yourself, and here we’ll see how you can restore files in any edition of Windows 7.
My recent article on How-to Geek about running XP Mode without hardware virtualization got a lot of comments from people wanting to run XP Mode on other editions of Windows. XP Mode is only licensed for Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate, so if your computer is running 7 Home Premium or Vista you cannot run it. But, if you have your own legal copy of XP, you can make your own XP Mode. It’s actually very easy with VMware Player, and takes less steps than importing the standard XP Mode. Check out my article at How-to Geek, which details all the steps involved and offers some tips on integrating your virtual XP with Vista or 7!
Several months ago I wrote about VMware’s release of VMware Player 3.0. This was a major upgrade to VMware’s free desktop virtualization offering, adding support for creating virtual machines and running them in Unity mode. Windows 7’s release, then on the other hand, boosted desktop virtualization’s position in the marketplace with XP Mode which brings a virtualized copy of XP to Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate. Many people have been disappointed that Windows Virtual PC, required to run XP Mode, also requires hardware virtualization support. If your computer doesn’t have it, then you simply can’t run XP Mode.
Or can you? Thanks to VMware Player, you can actually still use XP mode even without hardware virtualization! And, even if your computer can run Virtual PC, you may get better performance or features using VMware player. Check out my article at How-To Geek for all the inside information on how to do this!
For all the talk about Gmail, Hotmail is still a very viable and highly used webmail service. My main email account is a Windows Live Hotmail, and I can easily access it from Outlook, hotmail.com, or my Windows Phone, depending on what I’m doing. Most of my emails come to my @live.com Hotmail address, but I also have a number of other email accounts, including from my college, Gmail, and more. The great thing is that all of my mail is always avialable through Hotmail. No matter where I am, I can easily check Hotmail and get all of my email!
So how do I do this? Check out my article at How-To Geek for more info!
Keeping track of multiple email accounts can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. If you’re a Hotmail user, you might want to integrate all of your POP3 accounts into a single address for more efficient access.
Hotmail can send and receive emails from any POP3 enabled account, and it even supports SSL for secure connections. Most email accounts from your internet service provider, work, or school will work directly in it. Make sure to have your other account info, as you may need it in advanced setup. For this demonstration we’ll walk through setting up a Gmail account, but it should work with your other POP3 accounts as well.
What’s the best way to make tech simpler? Well, what’s better than detailed how-to guides on the very best of Windows, virtualization, apps, the cloud, and more? How-To Geek has been doing a great job at this for some time, and they have many very helpful posts with vibrant screenshots and detailed instructions on ways to make tech work better for you. And I’m proud to announce that I’ve joined their team! I’ve been getting situated this past week, and today my first post has been published as the featured article of the day! I couldn’t be more excited. So, without further introduction, here’s my first How-To Geek post about a product I love, Windows Live Mesh:
This is only the start, and I have tons of other exciting articles coming in addition to the usual great articles that How-To Geek publishes. But not just there; stay tuned here too, as I’m still continuing to publish new, unique articles both here at Techinch and at Digital Inspiration as well. Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS or Twitter feed, and I’ll post all of my new articles across the ‘net right here. Enjoy, and let me know anything you’d like to see covered and I’ll make sure it’s covered at one of these places!
