Windows Tools, Help & Guides

If you love gadgets I have one for you right here. Correction I have found a whole package of cool gadgets for your windows, and best of all you can get it for free, no cost, Nada, nothing… you get the point.

The creator of the package has done his best to tweak the gadgets to fit nicely with Windows Aero (tho not all are transparent). You get 14 gadgets like Calendar, Email, CPU-monitor, stats, recycle bin, weather and one that I really liked; The Radio Gadget. You can choose from a range of music categories or add your own URL. Start and stop your favorite station with a single click.

The Email Gadget checks your POP3 accounts at intervals of your choice and displays all new and unread emails. Hopefully they can get it to work with Hotmail, Yahoo, G-mail etc. very soon.

You can download it here: Download from DevianArt

If you don’t have a home network set up or if you have some of the components you need but haven’t set everything up yet, this guide is for you. In this guide, I show you what hardware you need to set up a home network, where to get it (if you’re in the UK), and give the basics of connecting it all together.

Please note that this is assuming you have an ADSL subscription (i.e. BT, TalkTalk, Sky, etc), and not Cable (i.e. Virgin). Also, whatever ISP (Internet Service Provider) you are using, if you have joined within the last few years, they should have sent you a free wireless router, with cables, anyway. If they haven’t, and you’re out of your contract, you should be able to speak to them and get them to send you the equipment out for free. For example, BT would send you their Home Hub, which is a really decent piece of hardware (especially as you can run a virtual “phone line” off of it, with BT BroadBand Talk!)

This guide is part of the Home Network Setup, Sharing, Streaming, and Backup Series. Learn more about setting up a home network, configuring file sharing and streaming, and performing network backups on the series homepage.

If you’re in the United States, please use the US guide to pick hardware. Otherwise, read on:

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As part of the Home Network Series we’re showing, on Windows Forums, what hardware we use on our home network. What do you use?

If you don’t have a home network set up or if you have some of the components you need but haven’t set everything up yet, this guide is for you. In this guide, I show you what hardware you need to set up a home network, where to get it (if you’re in the US), and give the basics of connecting it all together.
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If you have more than one computer in your home, you’ve probably considered setting up a home network. If you’ve set up a home network and it doesn’t work the way you’d like it to, you’ve probably considered throwing your equipment out of the window. Please, close the window and read on. This week, I’ll walk you through what hardware you need to set up a home network, where to buy it, and how it works together. I’ll then show you how to share files on your network, how to stream media across your network (and out to the world—even your phone), and how to back up your data, automatically, to any PC in your home.

Note: these guides are written for all recent (XP, Vista, 7) versions of Windows unless otherwise noted. If you find any incompatibilities, please let me know.

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This time I am going to show you how to make Outlook use an existing pst-file when performing a clean install. If you already have read my article on how to take backups of your emails and contacts – you’ll be half way there.

Restoring an old pst-file is almost entirely the same as copying the pst-file, only in reverse: nigeb ste’l

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