The brand new XBOX 360, which is a slim and sleek version of the old Xbox360, was announced today that it was released and will be in stores later this week!

It’s got a 250 GB hard drive, has a sleek black exterior, and a 801.11N Wifi connection, the fastest wifi connection for consoles.

The news was released on at E3, the largest gaming convention, after a series of Kinect demo games.

Previously I made a blog post about a very useful windows keyboard shortcut.

Heres another keyboard shortcut that I find incredibly useful as a computer repair technician.

Windows key + Pause Break

This will open up the Windows system panel. From here we can do many things

• Check the computers amount of RAM, Processor type and speed, and Windows bit version (32 or 64).
• Access Device Manager
• Access sytem properties and adjust things for system performance (Visual effects, memory usage, etc).
• Change logon settings
• In Windows 7, change Windows Product Key

As a computer repair tech Im always accessing the System panel. This is the quickest way to get there. A lot easier than control panel or right clicking anything.

I hope that as a regular home user you will also find this useful.

Welcome to an easy guide to stream media from your PS3 to your TV. This is the main reason I initially bought a PS3 apart from Netflix, the primary source of my media comes from my computer. I have a a lot of mp3 albums on my computer and videos that Id like to watch on a bigger screen. (I don’t pirate movies illegally (anymore), so I primarily watch streaming Netflix movies (which I pay monthly for.)

To do this, you first need a PS3.

Step 1- Get a PS3.

Step 2- Download and Install PS3 Media Server.

You can download PS3 Media server here, make sure to select your correct operating system.

After it is installed, open it. PS3 Media Server is a great out-of-the-box configuration. It automatically searches for your PS3 on the wireless network. Once it finds it, it will display a PS3 on the main page.

Windows Firewall might ask you to allow PS3 media server to connect to the internet. Do it.

Step 3- [OPTIONAL] Configure Navigation/Share settings.

This step is optional because by default PS3 media server shares all hard drives on your PC. If you want to allow certain folders to be shared and disallow others, you can do that in the Navigation/Share Settings tab.

Step 4- Select your Media Server from either Video or Music from your PS3 Dashboard.

Browse through your files with a PS3 controller or PS3 DVD Remote (which I recommend highly), select, and play.

That’s all it takes. This application is easy to install, ready-to-use, and awesome. The list of features is intense!

Awesome, hope you guys have happy media playing. But remember, don’t steal torrents!

I was working on a clients computer last week and he had 512mb of ram on a Windows Vista machine. It’s one of those machines that was released right when Vista was released, and the latest technology then called for 512mb. My job was to increase the performance and speed, the client complained that it was too slow. Theres a problem with machines that are only 512mb of ram and running Vista–You can’t do too much without upgrading RAM. But with what you can do, you can really make a difference with a 3 simple steps:

1. For smaller ram machines, use a USB Stick for ReadyBoost.

You can buy a 4gb Kingston USB flash drive from Amazon here: Plug in the Flash drive to any USB port and you will be displayed with a pop-up that you can select “Use this device for ReadyBoost”, then allocate as much MB as possible from the device. This is the surest way to increase speeds on a low-ram machine.

2. Turn Windows Enhanced features OFF

The Aero feature on Windows 7/Vista uses a lot of resources to make your OS look pretty. Disabling it will greatly increase your performance. This is especially useful for gamers or people who don’t really care how nice their desktop looks. To do this on Windows Vista right click your desktop and go to Personalize, then Window Color and Appearance, and on the bottom you should see a link that says “Open classic appearance properties for more color options.” From the drop down list, select Windows Vista Basic to turn off Aero. For Windows 7, the process is like this: Right click on the desktop and go to properties, then Click on the theme “Windows Basic Theme”, or any other theme not listed under Aero. Also, for a little extra speed, on Vista and Windows 7, hold down the Windows key and press Print Screen on your keyboard to open up the System display. Click the button Advanced System settings, Under “Performance”, click the button Settings. From there you can uncheck some things that will speed up your computer. I recommend unchecking things like Shadows under menus and mouse pointer. The idea is to make your computer faster without making it too ugly. I recommend a middle-ground.

3. Turn off Indexing for all your hard drives.

Indexing is what makes searching for files easier in Windows. It remembers all the files you have searched previously and keeps them in a database, but this really slows down your systems performance. Go to My Computer from the start menu. You should see a list of your hard drives. Right click on them (Usually C:, and D:), and click Properties. From there, Uncheck “..allow files to have contents indexed.” When Click Apply, then Ok. At this point Windows will go through all the files on your hard drive(s). It will take a little bit, but when its done, you’ll notice a speed increase on your system. These should help you big time. Leave me a comment if it did!

I’m going to show you guys how to get Avira AntiVirus 10 Free without the pesky advertisements that normally pop up by default.

Step 1 – Download Avira 10

First, download the latest version of Avira AntiVirus to continue.

Step 2 – Download NoNotifyAvira

While thats downloading, download No Notify Avira here.

Step 3 – Install Avira 10

Step 4 – Restart computer

Step 5 – Disable AntiVir Guard

Step 6 – Patch Avira 10

Step 7 – Renable AntiVir Guard

Now you have a very good free anti-virus without the worst part of free software… POPUPS!!

This was a short how-to but I hope it helped.

I’m going to show you how to create your own portable applications.

This is really cool.

I dislike installing applications with setup wizards because a lot of applications install shortcuts in various places, registry keys, and uninstallation wizards that can clutter a system. It’s so much easier to run an application executable (.exe) from a folder and manually delete it when you’re done. Maybe I’m a computer geek but to me thats preferable.

But beyond personal preferences, its absolutely useful and functional because with portable apps we can take a USB stick or a CD and run applications on other systems anywhere we go without installing anything. This is very useful for computer repair, such as removing spyware and viruses. Portable applications make CDs useful again and not just for data storage.

Okay, so lets start. This is a very simple process. It can be done in 5 steps.

Step 1- Download the application Universal Extractor. It’s free.

The link is at http://legroom.net/software/uniextract

Step 2- Install universal extractor.

Step 3- Find an installation file for a program that has a setup wizard.

Step 4- Run it. Point to the installation file and a directory that you want the portable app to be extracted to.

Step 5- Open the folder and go to the $app directory. There you will find the contents of the setup file which you can run as a portable app!

Now you have a portable application! In this example the application is used for backing up ICQ, Yahoo, and MSN contacts for my PC repair business. This makes it quicker and easier to do operating system reinstalls on client’s systems.

Voila!!

One keyboard shortcut that I use every day is something that I think a lot of people don’t know of. When I say every day, I mean every day. I’ve probably used it once or twice while writing this post.

Windows Key + D

For you noobs out there, the windows key is the key that has the windows logo on it. Duh!

This combination will temporarily minimize all windows that are open and send you to your desktop. Pressing it again will return all windows back.

You can also press Win key + M to minimize all windows, but pressing it again wont bring them back!

Why is this useful?
How many times do you download stuff to the desktop and then try to get to it by manually navigating there?
How many application links are on your desktop that you need to use to open software?

Try using this keyboard shortcut over time and see how useful it really is for you.