Consumed Consumer . org

Continuing my SSD saga with windows installation. For what is worth, I have original Windows licenses with COA for all the new computers and laptops I purchased plus I even purchased and additional Windows license from DigitalRiver, as a student, for about $39. Unfortunately, that license was supposed to be for Windows Professional, as I ordered and was instead for Windows Home, which although at the same price point, lacked important functionality. I tried to contact the reseller to get the problem rectified but that was not possible (no response). Needless to say, I’m not as happy as one could be.

Not long ago I dropped my old trusty tablet hybrid on the floor and the monitor went blank. I had to quickly purchase a new laptop, which itself was fixed only days ago. I will discuss here how I got a new one and what others can do when their laptop is almost dead to retrieve their data.

For a long time I’ve been toying with the idea of running a TOR relay for my own privacy reasons and to give back to the community as well. Though my router and NAS (and possibly even my WD Live box) have enough chutzpah to run it, I prefer to use a very old computer instead for reasons of separation (security). For a while, I even considered buying a Raspberry Pi or some other similar cheap gizmo, then I remember I have a bunch of old computers I've never used..

After successfully formatting my 2 new Western Digital 2TB discs properly, with the "advanced 4k option" , the time has come to move all the data from my existing 2TB array (1 TB + 1 TB in RAID 0) to one of the new drives. The quickest way to do this is to connect the drive via the NAS unit USB port.

I have a laptop that allows me to swap my DVD drive (which I don't use much) for a second hard drive in RAID. I'm looking at buying a drive in the $100-200 range to complement my existing SATA drive.

After installing Windows, I started playing with it extensively. These are the voyages of the Windows 10 Technical Evaluation, its continuing mission to explore strange new apps and computing paradigms, to seek out better GUIs, to boldly go where no stylus pen has gone before. In this article we will look at partitioning for dual boot with Linux and the very first impressions.

Let's start by wishing you a prosperous, joyous and all-around successful happy new year ! We wish we could join other sites in presenting you with an insightful retrospective; alas, we cannot - we only started a couple of months ago, and we have yet to finalize the "look and feel" of our website.

Finding myself stuck with some outdated Linux distributions on an older Toshiba tablet hybrid (without DVD or CD-ROM drive), I decided to upgrade it to a more modern and useful distribution.

After our salute dedicated to Microsoft Windows 7 milestone, it is only natural to repeat our welcome to Windows 8 RTM and answer the burning question “where can I get the ISO?” .

I purchased my gaming laptop ( .ca ) in a hurry, at a time when many others were buying theirs, and was unable to get all that I wanted. Compromises had to be made. But this past December, I took the plunge and upgraded the memory and the hard drive (which was already quite fast, but a little too small).

One of the most annoying "features" in Windows is the "Compressed Folders" feature, where Zip files are displayed as folders. While this may be nice for some, most users accumulate a large number of zip files in a folder, making it unviewable in Windows Explorer. We look at how to get rid of it.

As I was running out of space on my DNS-323, I decided to upgrade my two 1 TB drives to 2 TB. Due to insufficient research into the matter, I was surprised to read, prior to performing the upgrade, that there are significant performance issues with these drives.

There are many ways to recover mistakenly deleted files. Most OSs provide some kind of trash function or "Recycle Bin", which allows you to very easily undelete files. There are, however, situations when that is not possible.

We recently needed an older computer and discovered we had forgotten a login password. Our development server for designing and testing a website will most likely reside on an older laptop running in dual boot with Windows XP SP 3 and Backtrack Linux 5.

After my RAID-0 has recently failed catastrophically, the time has come to set up another pair of HDDs in my DNS-323. I figured a step-by-step howto on what I've done would not be useful only for me if I had to do it again, but to any other owner of this extremely popular unit. This is a rather long article, as it contains several smaller articles, but it is hopefully complete and suitable for a reinstall, cuz that’s the way I roll.

In response to numerous requests, we are publishing a no non-sense guide to backing up your encrypted or unencrypted DVD with the use of high-quality, ad/spyware-free gratis programs on Windows XP (it might work on Vista as well).

March Break is fast approaching and though entertainment choices abound, it's worth having a quick glance at what's on the menu. The main course is, of course, C&C 4 as well as the oldies that Westwood Studios made available for free download.

I recently got another used laptop off eBay. It came without an OS so I was going to install Linux, but seeing that Windows 10 has just become available for download, I decided to give it a try and install Linux alongside, in dual boot. First, let us look at downloading the ISO, comparing the 3 possibilities: NetSession, Direct and BitTorrent. This article represents my pre-install research – the install experience and tips coming up soon.

A question that keeps popping up all over forums is how to convert various proprietary ISO formats into something useful and useable. We shall answer.

I recently had to play a bit with a new installation of Ubuntu and again, old unnerving ghosts came back to haunt me. Since these ghosts have a habit of tormenting indiscriminately, I am sharing my solutions with you.