Our example system, running Windows 7, was set up from a worst case scenario point of view: Someone who was only interested in quickly getting to all the “fun stuff” on the internet with absolutely no concern for personal or computer security. Freshly Installed – Pre Malware Here you can see the number of processes (and type) that were running on our freshly installed Windows 7 system. The install was so fresh that the only protection that this system had was the Windows Firewall and Windows Defender to keep the malware and virus hordes at bay....

RELATED: How (and Why) to Switch to Apple Notes Stop Notes From Uploading to iCloud By default on all devices, Apple enables iCloud upload for everything. All of your folders are stored in iCloud, and when you create a new note you can be confident that it will be available on all of your other devices soon enough. There used to be an option to store notes “On My iPhone” or “On My Mac” on respective devices....

What Is “Mouse Shoulder” Pain? When people think about workplace injuries, they usually think about the dramatic ones like severe injury from an accident with machinery or such. But for lots of people whose jobs entail doing small movements over and over again, injuries more often take the form of repetitive stress injury (RSI). You end up with shoulder pain not because you blew out your rotator cuff but because you had poor posture and ergonomics at your workstation....

To get to the Disk Cleanup utility, right click on one of your hard drives in My Computer, and choose Properties. Click on the Disk Cleanup button. The Disk Cleanup utility will scan your hard drive to determine the amount of space to be saved. Click on “Compress old files” in the list, and you will notice the View Files button change to Options. Click that. In this resulting window you can change the amount of days to wait for unaccessed files to be compressed....

Usually what is happening is one or more applications is hanging up to 20 seconds (in the Registry all values are set to milliseconds) while the OS tries to shutdown. Before making any changes to the Registry it is highly advisable to create a backup. The first thing we need to do is access the Registry by going to Start Run and type in “regedit” (no quotes) then click OK....

Microsoft Excel has supported inserting images into spreadsheets for years, but they floated above the sheet instead of appearing in cells. That’s finally changing. Microsoft is now testing a new function in Excel, called IMAGE, which returns an image within a cell. Unlike the existing method of inserting an image (from the Insert tab), the new function keeps the image inside the cell, so it can stay in its intended place as you adjust rows and columns....

Coolness: 0.5Usefulness: 0.8Show-Off Factor: 3.9 Vista Start Menu Health With Start++ Coolness: 14.2Usefulness: 999.9Show-Off Factor: 24.9 As you can see, significant stat increases just from installing Brandon Paddock’s Start++ Start menu enhancement, mostly in the area of usefulness. What’s this all about, you ask? Start++ is a small add-on application that lets you create aliases of words and characters to commands or searches. You can set the commands to run with administrator privileges....

You may find yourself wasting a lot of time checking email throughout the day and wondering why none of your projects were completed. If the desktop notifications are distracting you we can simply turn them off. With Outlook open click on Tools Options and then the E-mail Options button. Now in the E-mail Options window click on the Advanced E-mail Options button. Now uncheck the box next to “Display a New Mail Desktop Alert” and while at it you might at well uncheck “Play a Sound” too, then just click OK and close out of the remaining windows....

This was the question reader Kyle asked me earlier tonight, and after some research I discovered that there wasn’t one… so I wrote a utility with this functionality, assigned to the Ctrl+Win + Space key combination. So you first used the Win + Space key to bring the sidebar and detached gadgets to the foreground: Now you can use Ctrl+Win + Space to send the sidebar and all detached gadgets back behind the previous foreground window....

“We expect that Microsoft will abide by contractual agreements and continue to ensure Activision games are multiplatform,” a Sony representative told The Wall Street Journal after the sale was announced. Where Sony’s statement becomes interesting is the mention of “contractual agreements.” Does that mean Sony expects Microsoft to hold Activision Blizzard properties to itself when these existing agreements expire? It makes sense that Microsoft would want to avoid legal action by not fulfilling the current deals, but could we see a world where games like Call of Duty and Diablo are only available on Microsoft platforms?...

To quickly get to this panel, you can open Control Panel, and then type “startup” into the search box. The link for “Stop a program from running at startup” shows up immediately. You could have also opened Windows Defender and fooled around with the menus until you find the right spot, but this seems quicker to me. Now you can see the Windows Defender screen that lets you manage the startup programs....

The theme works pretty well, and it’s certainly not the only dark theme out there, but it’s one of the better ones I’ve seen. Here’s the default look for the theme running under Windows Vista: The only thing I’m really not a fan of is the toolbars, which are a little difficult to read: But where this theme really shines is when you’ve combined your toolbars to a single toolbar....

The Basics Just like a Mac, the iPad includes a slate of basic keyboard shortcuts that work with every app. They help you navigate iPadOS, launch apps, and edit text. These are the shortcuts that you’ll probably use most often. System Shortcuts Command+H: Show home screen Command+Tab: Open app switcher Command+Space: Open Spotlight Search Option+Command+D: Show Dock Shift+Command+3: Take a screenshot Shift+Command+4: Take a screenshot and edit Text Editing Command+C: Copy Command+X: Cut Command+V: Paste Command+Z: Undo Shift+Command+Z: Redo Command+B: Bold Command+I: Italicize Command+U: Underline Command+A: Select all Command+Up Arrow: Jump to top of the page Command+Down Arrow: Jump to bottom of the page...

Why Posture Matters More Than Ever People are spending more hours on the computer than ever before as they’re becoming a staple in our daily lives. Whether you’re working, gaming, watching shows or movies, or just browsing the internet, you’re likely doing so while sitting down. Most of us already know that poor posture can lead to a large number of health problems over time. This includes everything from back and neck pain, rounded shoulders, spinal dysfunction, headaches, and even carpal tunnel syndrome....

As you might expect from Razer, the company is packing the latest and greatest from NVIDIA and Intel in the laptop. You can get up to a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, which is as good as it gets for laptop cards. It also comes with up to an Intel Core i9-12900H processor. The screen tech is what really had us drooling over the Razer Blade 15. Depending on your priorities, you can get it with either a Full HD 360Hz or QHD 240Hz screen....

Here are some tips on breaking free of subscriptions that no longer spark joy. Why Cut Back on Subscriptions? It could be argued that subscription models aren’t purely about consuming media, whether it’s games, music, movies, or niche and original content. The way we treat these subscriptions often feels like we’re paying purely to have access, rather than to actively use the subscription. It’s nice to have a Netflix subscription ready to go the next time a new documentary or original smash hit lands, it’s nice to have Spotify for listening to music in your car on long journeys, and it’s great to have Game Pass for times when you’re not playing one of the $60 new releases you had to buy from the store....

Turns out, in Word all you have to do is use =lorem() instead of =rand() and you’ll be able to insert the lorem text instead. We found out about this from a comment by reader Will, who gets the reader of the week award… which I just made up. Just type in =lorem() into your document, and hit the enter key… And just like that, Lorem Ipsum is inserted automatically!...

What’s Bias Lighting? Never heard of bias lighting? There’s no time like the present to learn about the eye-fatigue-preventing lighting style. For a deep dive into the topic, including tips on lighting placement and color temperature, do check out our guide to bias lighting. In short, though, bias lias lighting at its most basic is simply a relatively dim light source placed behind a computer monitor, TV screen, or even around a projection screen in a home theater, that introduces a small amount of indirect light into the environment without directly shining it into the viewer’s eyes....

In this example you can see how the numbered list is interrupted by a table. When you are ready to start the next item in the list, click on the Home tab on the Ribbon, and click the Numbering button. Within your document, you’ll see the smart tag. You can click on it and select “Continue Numbering” If the smart tag isn’t showing up, you can also right-click on the number and select Continue Numbering from the context menu....