Tag: PC,@FEATURES

InPrivate, Incognito, Private Browsing -- whatever they want to brand it -- all modern browsers offer a special mode designed to keep what you do online a secret from prying eyes. Despite different names and origins at different companies, they all work in basically similar ways: A new browser session is created that operates separately from your existing one, with its own history and cookies ...

Symptom: You reach into your pocket or bag, and, well, it's empty! Diagnosis: Beyond the understandable distress of losing a pricey smartphone, laptop or tablet PC, the real trauma is the sudden and unfettered access afforded to the slippery-fingered jerk who took it. The cost of a new laptop is meager compared to the personal and even financial havoc that a motivated thief can wreak ...

Symptoms: There are a range of telltale signs that your PC has been infiltrated by a binary ne'er-do-well, but, counterintuitively, the worst case scenario is when there are no obvious symptoms at all. For starters, you may have an infection if your PC or Internet throughput has become consistently sluggish, and a restart doesn't cure it. Frequent, random pop-up windows with ads or system ...

We want to make one thing clear: we're not picking on Windows. But, the truth is, for a number of different reasons, keeping Microsoft's OS safe requires more thought and effort than other systems. Entailing more than hackers and viruses, being secure means protecting your privacy, securing your data, and ensuring that your account passwords are as robust as possible (and not written down on ...

Share Despite the fact that most Americans have been doing it for at least a decade, buying a laptop is getting increasingly difficult. A laptop makes a great gift if you don't mind splurging a bit for somebody, but the range of models available and the minuscule differences between them make navigating the crowded notebook scene a daunting task. Before we go any further, let us explain why you ...

In our quest to digitize every last bit of our lives, one thing has escaped us: a streamlined system for taking and managing our notes. We've looked at Evernote, which is an impressive service with some top-notch software, but it had one major flaw in that we couldn't get it to stick; it just never worked for jotting down quick notes. Simplenote is the ideological opposite of Evernote. It lacks ...

It's no secret that Internet Explorer has been the lame duck of the browser market since Firefox landed on the scene. One of the first things most tech-savvy people do with new PCs is install Google Chrome or The Fox, and with good reason. Though IE7 and IE8 did a lot to modernize the look and basic feature set of the default Windows browser, the truth is that, under the hood, it still couldn't ...

If you want to shave a few bucks off your electric bill and save a couple trees, the most common methods involve buying all new appliances and just turning everything off all the time. But you can actually trim your bills and reduce your carbon footprint with a simple piece of software called Granola. This little applet sits in the system tray of your Linux or Windows PC, monitors how much energy ...

Dear Switched: Help an Apple-hater out. I've searched everywhere for the PC equivalent of a MacBook Air: super slim, light, with a good-sized display, a full-powered processor and good battery life at a similar price. But amazingly, I haven't found any to equal it. I can't stand the thought of giving Steve Jobs my loyalty, much less my cash, so help a hater out and JTMWTG! Dear Hater: We ...

Yes, the purpose of our Friday roundups of free Flash games games is to get you through your final weekday. Till now (and after now, too), that's been our tenet, but we are cheating a bit this week. See, five indie designers got together and packaged a charmingly titled "Humble Indie Bundle," which works on PCs, Macs and Linux-based computers. Since they are independent designers (not a big ...