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Winter driving tips, tricks from 'The Early Show'

I was on the phone with my parents who live in Ohio earlier today and they commented on how they've accumulated roughly two feet of snowfall in February alone--and the month isn't even over yet! Based on what I've heard, the snow is just going keep on coming, and all of my east coast buddies are ready for a break already. With the snow being a fact of life in the immediate future for many Americans, I thought it timely to present some video about how to deal with driving your car in snowy and icy conditions. … Read more

Clean your computer's clock

This program, like many others, promises to clean your Registry, make your computer run faster, and, if you're lucky, do your dishes, too. At least when it comes to cleaning your Registry, Advanced Registry Optimizer seems to do a pretty good job.

The scan process was easy to initiate and was done in about 3 minutes, although don't forget that the scan time depends on the computer system. A smart-looking row of five tabs and their labels makes navigating the program options stress-free, and the lack of lag on the system was much appreciated. The user interface has … Read more

iFixit Manuals now free to the public

The website "iFixIt" has been a goldmine of information and how-to instructions for repairing various models of Macintosh that have been released over the years, starting with the "Pismo" PowerBook G3 in 2004. Their take-apart manuals have been filled with detailed photographs and illustrations that clearly show the steps for replacing parts, and accessing components for servicing. On December 15th, they licensed all of their repair manuals to the public for free.… Read more

Winner or sinner?

Some of us here at the lab think there needs to be a "Netologism," a new Internet word, for registry cleaners, something that encapsulates their controversial, let-the-user-beware nature. You may know the species: They generally offer a free download and/or system scan, which identifies "problems" in the Windows Registry that they will fix, if you buy the full version, which is usually around $30. If you pay up and just let it do its thing on your registry, there's a darn good chance you'll boot back up to a sick machine, or your … Read more

BOL 1074: Forget the tablet, let's hype the Courier

While the Apple Tablet is much more fashionable to hype, the Microsoft Courier turns out to be very hype-worthy. We also find out, once again, that Rafe knows where he works. And the U.S. has relaxed its grip on the Internet. Good thing? Bad thing? Irrelevant thing? Or over-hyped thing like an Apple tablet?

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1074

Everything we know about Apple’s touch-screen tablet http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/apple-tablet-everything/ http://gizmodo.com/5370252/apple-tablet-aiming-to-redefine-newspapers-textbooks-and-magazines

Microsoft’s Courier tablet details emerge … Read more

Microsoft says automated 'Fix it' is working

Microsoft says that rather than struggle to fix their own PC problems, computer owners have proved themselves more than willing to just click a "Fix it" button and let the computer take care of itself.

Since about January, Microsoft has been adding the automated fixes for an array of PC problems for which there is a single known solution. In the past six months, it has added more than 300 "Fix its" to automate the steps needed to solve problems, change settings, and even protect against viruses.

Recently, Microsoft used the approach to help people defend … Read more

A great mix of maintenance tools

Cocktail is both useful and fun for inveterate Mac tinkerers and would-be power-users (that is, power users who aren't hard-core enough to use the command line). This multipurpose utility can help you keep your computer happy and healthy, giving you access to scores of tweaks and optimizations pulled together from various utilities, preferences, third-party hacks, and command-line tools.

Cocktail can help you with routine maintenance and customization across your disks, system, files, network, and interface. Cocktail is organized around these five areas, with highly customizable options for everything from clearing caches and repairing permissions to changing the appearance and … Read more

iPhone MMS send failure fix

I woke up last Friday morning, just like everyone else, looking forward to finally getting MMS on my iPhone 3GS. However, for some of us, the excitement turned into dismay when the MMS update didn't work.

Users were discussing the issue under the topic MMS message send failure on Apple support forums. I was experiencing the problem and initially I could not fix it--even after spending more than 2 hours on the phone with Apple and AT&T. Today I decided to take a new approach and I found an ironically simple fix for this problem that we … Read more

Major, minor iPhone 3.1 upgrade problems and how to fix them

A number of iPhone Atlas readers, and numerous more on Apple's Discussion boards, have reported a bevy of problems--some large, some small--after upgrading to iPhone OS 3.1. The following two procedures work to solve a number of the reported problems:

Reset your iPhone by holding down the sleep and home buttons until the Apple logo appears. Restore your iPhone: In iTunes, click the Restore button under the Summary tab. Restoring the phone will erase contacts, calendars, photos, and other data on the phone, but will restore automatically backed-up information including text messages, notes, call history, contact favorites, sound … Read more