Best Tech Videos On The Net

More storage and a performance boost? Upgrade your hard drive without having to re-install anything!

We demoed this on a pair of notebooks, but the basic software and techniques will work on desktops, too!

for more info on the software we used check out Disk Copy for PC users. If you want a more open source solution check out FOG and Clonezilla. If you want the comfort of off the shelf tools check out Norton's Ghost and Acronis True Image.

For OS X users the best solutions are the free Carbon Copy Cloner and trial ware but free to use SuperDuper!.

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Want to play your video collection on any media extender, console or Apple TV? Step one is to get your movies off of the DVDs and onto your hard drive! Part 1 of our DIY Video Jukebox Series

For Mac owners checkout HandBrake.

For PC owners your choices are bit more varied. Along with the PC version of HandBrake, you can also use the AutoGK. It's a GUI front end for a several different open source video transcoding tools that let you harness their power without the tedious need to jump from one app to another each time. AutoGK is great especially for fans of DivX and Xvid encoding. Finally there's AutoMKV. Like AutoGK, AutoMKV is a GUI front end for various tools that are used. The benefit of AutoMKV is it's higher level of tweakability and output format diversity.

And if you run into unexpected problems VideoHelp.com offers a wealth of resources and advice for any video encoding, transcoding or formatting issue.

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Checklist for a new PC. Hard Drive Speed vs. Size, SmallNetBuilder, Roll your own backup, What does Gigahertz mean?

Andrew's looking to soup up the Atom processor in his new Netbook... we'd max out the memory, and update all your drives since you've already deleted the shovelware you don't want.

What exactly -does- Hertz or Gigahertz mean when you're talking about computer chips? Good question, Mark. It's the basic unit of frequency in the International System of Units, and it's the number of Cycles per Second as it applies to your processor's clock rate.

Free Download Pick: Camino, an open source, OS X optimized browser based on Mozilla's Gecko engine. This cousin to Firefox works on both Power-PC and Intel based Macs, and it's use of the Aqua interface helps it fit in seamlessly with your other Mac apps. Veronica's always been a huge supporter of Firefox, but finds Camino runs better on OS X... and Mac lovers will find the keychain access for passwords online, and the integration of enhanced AppleScript support especially useful!

Mark wants "the best external hard drive to get for backing everything on my computer. Software, documents, files, drivers,and OS (XP). Like ghosting my system." Veronica loves Western Digital's My Book, while Patrick usually drops the biggest Seagate drive he can afford in the cheapest external USB case his local computer shop has in stock.

Should Carlos go with a bigger hard drive, or a faster spindle speed? A 7200RPM drive might sound faster than a 5400RPM (it's spinning faster, right?) ... but if the 5400 RPM drive has a much higher areal density, it might move more bits under the head of the drive even tho it spins slower!

Send us a video question! All you need to do is record yourself in front a video camera asking a question no longer than 15 seconds. Then up load them to YouTube, and email us the link with "Video Question" in the subject line. Thanks!

This week's Website We Can't Get Enough Of is Small Net Builder, an absolute treasure trove of networking information, from troubleshooting guides for wireless networking, network security how-to's, news on the latest developments in networking, and, best of all, tons of reviews and benchmarks of the latest networking products! (Check out the performance charts, so so useful when you're shopping!)

HP's TouchSmart PC: You asked, so we've got a demo and review of this all in one PC with the giant touchscreen.

Kevin twittered... "I've been looking for an alternative to CyberLink PowerDVD 8 for Blu-ray playback... you should do a round up on Tekzilla!"

Patrick's left PowerDVD for Arcsoft's TotalMedia Theater, which brings Blu-ray and HD DVD playback to your PC, and, better yet, integrates it into the Windows Media Center!

Jim's looking for a good subwoofer in the $300 - $500 range; he's got Klipsch speakers and was going to buy a Klipsch sub but read some so so reviews for their mid to low end line. Jim also asked about the Hsu Research subwoofers... we'd go with one the Hsu designs in a heartbeat! Amazing sound, excellent build quality, and they're pretty easy on the wallet, too!

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All the options Firefox should have included in the first place.

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Take the mystery out of choosing PC games.

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No need to be jealous of Firefox's AwesomeBar.

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Learn about Spotlight's Hidden Functionality.

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ThemeForest has a nice feature; It allows the authors to upload zip files containing screenshots of their themes. A script then extracts these files and displays the images accordingly. Though I doubt that the developers used PHP to accomplish this task...that's what we're going to use!

Created by Jeffrey Way.

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Today’s screencast is a bit misleading! Over the course of the next two tutorials, we’ll be creating a jQuery style-switcher that will allow the user to switch between CSS files. However, today we’re only going to be working with PHP! Day 15: Part 2 will cover the jQuery.

Created by Jeffrey.

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View a page without clicking on the link.

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Turn off Microsoft's error reporting prompts.

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Adobe Photoshop's Principal Product Manager joins Bert again to continue explaining lots of the new features in CS4 (Creative Suite 4).

• Camera Raw (over 200 formats natively supported inside of Photoshop)
• Simple painting and graduated filer/gradient tools inside the RAW environment (the cool thing about doing it in RAW is that all the settings are non-destrictive - same as some of the features in Adobe Lightroom)
• Dial in adjustments using brushing tools in camera RAW
• A plugin called pixel bender that harnesses the power of the GPU to let you do a ton of things on the fly (look for the pixel bender at labs.adobe.com)
• Applying photos as a texture onto a 3D surface
• 3D navigator tool for rotating on multiple axes
• Controlling lights and sources of light in 3D images
• Painting Directly on 3D surfaces
• Mixing 2D and 3D together - applying 2D imagery to a 3D environment

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Principal Product Manager for Adobe Photoshop John Nack visits the show in a first of a 3 part special introducing Photoshop CS4 (aka Creative Suite 4).

• A cleanup of the bridge interface
• Performance feature updates (what makes it run faster and feel better) - taking advantage of the GPU (graphics processor). John demonstrates a few things with a 442 megapixel image.
• Spring loaded keys
• Canvas rotation
• Tabs in the Photoshop interface
• Application frame that helps isolate your creative space
• The adjustments panel to take the best practices and bring them front and center
• and more...

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There are many, many ways to create equal columns with CSS. This is one of those features that was MUCH simpler to achieve back in the days of html tables. In the next couple of years, when the use of CSS tables becomes more reliable, we won’t have this problem anymore. (For more information, watch this video.)

Created by Jeffrey.

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www.cdxtech.com - How to save some time when using Microsoft Excel.

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