The Actiontec GT784WN is a pretty nice DSL modem/wireless N router. For most of you, it will work right out of the box — even auto-detecting all your settings.

If you’re on Qwest/CenturyLink, not so much. In fact, they’ll try to tell you that the modem isn’t even compatible.

Lies!

In fact, it’s not only compatible, it’s pretty easy to set up. I’m going to repeat some of the normal setup steps here. If you know what you’re … Keep reading »

If you use OSX and Windows together often, you’re likely to end up with a bunch of hidden .DS_STORE files all over your Windows drives. You can easily search and destroy them all using this command:

(Open the command line first of course. You can do this by going to Start > Run, then typing “cmd” and mashing enter. Or just type “cmd” in the Windows 7 search box.)
del /s /q /f /a:h .DS_STORE
That will find every instance of this Mac … Keep reading »

Recently, I installed Lubuntu 11.10 (a netbook-optimized version of Ubuntu) on my wife’s netbook at Lifehacker’s suggestion. And wow–did it make an incredible difference. It’s like a brand new machine compared to Windows 7 running on it, which was getting unbearably slow.

While Lubuntu will look and act pretty familiar to anyone born and raised on Windows, I wanted to make sure when I handed the netbook back to her, she was as comfortable as possible. That meant configuring, … Keep reading »

Ever wanted to have some more organization on your dock? I like to keep things separated more or less by group: everyday things, development tools, and apps that just happen to be open but aren’t permanent fixtures on my dock. I also like to keep my documents and folders separated from minimized things and the trash on the right side.

It’s fairly simple to drop some spacers … Keep reading »

At first glance, it may look like Microsoft disabled recording of internal—or “what you hear”—sounds in Windows 7. Well, they didn’t. It’s a little trickier, granted, but this is (often) a quick fix.

To enable it:
1. Right click on the speaker icon in the system tray (bottom right).
2. Choose Recording Devices
3. In the empty white space, right-click and choose Show Disabled Devices. You should see Stereo Mix appear in the list.
4. Right click on Stereo Mix and choose Enable.
5. Right click … Keep reading »

iTunes 10. Good stuff. But I’m really surprised that Apple — who are known for their design expertise — would not only violate a well-known design convention, but their own well-known design convention with those stoplight control buttons. It may seem like a simple annoyance, but multiply it by 1000 times over the course of a week or a month, and you have a fairly irritating problem.

Fortunately, putting those buttons back the way they should be is pretty easy. (Mac … Keep reading »

We have Windows 7 Home Premium 3-bit on one computer and suddenly couldn’t change the wallpaper. This seems to be a problem out there. There can be various ways to fix it. This one worked for us:

Hit the Start ball

Type “adjust appearance”

A link called “Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows” will appear. Click that.

Toggle the top check box “Animate controls and elements inside windows”

Worked for us. Your actual mileage may vary.

Let’s face it—there are way too many different types of cables. I get asked fairly often what they’re all for, and do we even need them all? It’s really not as complicated as it seems—sort of. Anyway, let’s get to work and untangle that mess behind your TV!

Before we get too deep into it, we need to define the terms digital and analog.

Digital? Analog? Huh?
You’re probably already pretty familiar with these, even if you might not be familiar with the … Keep reading »

Okay, so the thing about downloading a file is that you usually know that you downloaded it. Because you did that. You downloaded it. Intentionally. On purpose. And now, when you open it, Windows or OSX feels that it needs to remind you that you downloaded it.

Goodness, I find that annoying–especially when it’s my own file or script that I created, or it’s a Microsoft program that Windows is telling you to be careful of, because who knows where a … Keep reading »

Sometimes, you just wish you could list your WP pages more like posts. I wanted not just a list of them, but with some kind of excerpt. Here’s how I did it:

… Keep reading »