One of my favorite features of Mac OS X is how PDF (portable document format) tools are tightly integrated into the operating system. Want to save something as a PDF document? Any app that can send a document to the printer, be it a Web page, a screen capture, or a nicely formatted report, can just as easily do a “Save As PDF”, and even specify what image quality should be used. Sure, Adobe sells its Distiller program, but on a Mac I would estimate that 95%+ of your document to PDF requirements are already included in the operating system.

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Many Microsoft Windows 7 users have started to notice a decline in their batteries longevity.  At first they were confused thinking it was the BIOS drivers that needed to be upgraded, but then began to notice that others who installed Microsoft Windows 7 had the same problem. (more…)

I made the huge mistake of letting my son play with my iPhone and when I went back to check a note a few days later was horrified to find that they were all gone. Really not good! Is there any way to recover notes from my iPhone or from within iTunes? If it makes a difference, I’m running Windows 7 on a Dell laptop.

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My mom keeps checking out what sites I visit and I want to clean up my tracks. It’s not that I’m going anywhere I shouldn’t - of course - but I just really want some privacy and just want to be able to wipe my MSIE8 (Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0) browsing history. How do I do that?

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I just spent the better half of the day upgrading my son’s Dell 1721 laptop from Vista to Windows 7. I have done my share of Linux installs and upgrades on all kinds of hardware configurations but this was one of the toughest I have ever been through. Once I resolved it, the fix is rather easy, but finding the fix was a challenge. I am thankful for the many people who post useful information in forums so that people like me can resolve our problems. Hopefully this post will help some folks and save them a great deal of time and frustration.

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Every so often I go to download some software for my Acer Windows PC and have to decide between a 32-bit and 64-bit version of the application. I’m running Windows Vista but when I look, it just says that I’m running “Home Premium”. How do I know if I’m running 32-bit or 64-bit Windows?

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I saw your earlier article about how to set up your Mac so that it requires a password when waking up from sleep or from the screen saver (see password required to wake Mac from sleep). Nice. Now, how can I do that with my Microsoft Windows Vista PC laptop?

Dave’s Answer:

Glad that other article was helpful. I think it’s pretty darn important to be aware of these privacy and security issues on your computer, whether you’re running Windows or Mac OS X. It’s just too likely that between kids, colleagues, pranksters and actual delinquents that someone can spin your laptop around and do something you don’t want while you’re in the bathroom, ordering a new drink at a cafe, or even at the store, computer sitting on the table at home.

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I want to turn off all the miscellaneous sounds in Windows that make noise when I carry out some action — like the clicks whenever the web browser goes to a web page, or the dings whenever a box appears on the screen asking me a question. I can turn my speakers off, but I still want to be able to play music or watch movies. Can I disable all the annoying Windows sounds, without turning off music that plays through my computer?

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I know how to open a command prompt in Microsoft Windows, but the normal methods for cutting and copying and pasting — like Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V — don’t seem to work inside a command prompt window. How can I do copying and pasting with a command prompt?

Dave’s Answer:

It’s possible to copy and paste within a Microsoft Windows command prompt, and to copy and paste text to/from other programs, but the commands and keyboard keys to do so are different from most other Windows programs.

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I took some photos with my digital camera and I want to e-mail them to friends or upload them to my Facebook, but the files are enormous, and uploading them takes forever! Can I make them smaller while still having the photos look the same?

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