The In's and Out's of In-ear
Whether you're a gamer, a movie-buff or a music connoisseur - there is one piece of equipment that is essencial to your entertainment... Sound... I spoke earlier about the benefits of HD wide screens. For the complete package, you need a good sound system. Its easy to go overboard when buying sound equipment for your computer... A sub-woofer sounds good and therefore you must have one... 4 speakers must be better than 2! A good sound card is surely needed?!?! Or so your mind tells you... There has never realistically been a cheap and easy way to have good sound... and you possibly have never been able to experience it either, because you're scared of waking people up... or it scares you...
They may not be brand new, but in-ear headphones have gained a lot of quality since you last checked... Standard headphones are rubbish, they're extremely uncomfortable, the sound is always tinny and you can hear background noise... In-ear headphones solve all these problems, sound insulation and a comfortable design means that you can use them for long periods of time without being distracted! The bass is amazing because the speakers fit deep into your ear canal... A good set may cost you a bomb for what appears to be just a pair of earphones... but trust me, money well spent! A medium range set will cost about $20-30... Sennheizer is a good benchmark! Check them out here. Along with your HD widescreen, you may as well be in the IMAX theatre :P
Life after technical redundancy
We all know how the relationship between computer and individual goes, it starts out great! You love your computer and you're pretty sure it loves you... You send hours and hours wasting away infront of it, and you become even more attached to it once everything is running smoothly. Problem is, this relationship is doomed to fail... Now that its 2010, it seems almost daily that there is something better and cheaper out... Newer models strutting their stuff in front of you and taunting you with their better performance. Well, its not all doom and gloom, luckily, the technology age has given us a wide range of accessories and replacement parts. We don't need to spend hundreds and thousands to get a glimps of perfection. Take the monitor for instance. A few years ago, 1024*768 screens were all the rage... Now we have much larger screen displays, and not all of them will take a bite out of your pocket.
Upgrading your screen is one of the most satisfying things you can do to improve your computer. The newer HD widescreen displays are simply mouth-watering! The contrast-ratio's are so impressive these days, you might even be tricked into thinking you've got a brand new system. Go out and buy yourself a 20" screen or bigger, the skies the limit really... You won't be disappointed...
Hide It!
Hide! is one of the coolest and most useful little applications around, and unlike many other, consumes so little processing power that its perfectly normal to leave it on forever! What this application does is hide any window you want, and has it pop up instantly on the press of a button... You can group items together and hide them all too...
Say you're working on something secret, hit F9 and that window will instantly disappear from view, and even the start menu bar!(F8 to bring it back) With grouping, you can group an unlimited amount of windows and hit F6 to hide them all (Ctrl + F6 to bring them back) I only wish I had found this application sooner... Now all I do is keep my email client open 24/7, hit F9 when I'm not using the computer, and then anyone can use the pc without seeing my email or constantly having to log out! It should be a default application its that cool! Download it Here : http://goo.gl/WmWE
AVG Free
Forget paying enormous amounts of hard earned cash on protecting your pc, AVG free is fully equipped with Anti-virus, anti-spyware, a link scanner, a email scanner and even identity protection! The full version comes with a firewall and something called "safe downloads", which you will only need if you tend to be careless or are prone to being scammed.The free version of AVG comes equipped with so much and does its job so effectively, its hard to imagine not having it there...
Do yourself a favour and learn more about these two products - If the free version is not for you, you won't be parting with too much cash anyway :) Download the free version here : http://goo.gl/866X
