Tezzo's Technology Blog

Learn how to add memory to a laptop, turn an old laptop drive into external storage, and use your laptop's power settings most effectively. It's been almost a year since I served up some nice, hot laptop tips (see "Laptop Q&A: Power Off Quickly, Fix Sticky Keys")--and that's inexcusable. I'll make it up to you this week with some useful advice on adding memory to a laptop, turning an old laptop hard disc into an external drive, and using your laptop's power settings effectively. Add RAM to a Laptop So my dad was griping that his Acer Aspire 9300 laptop takes forever to boot. I inspected it for spyware, excessive startup programs, and the other usual suspects, but everything checked out. More at PCWorld

What can you do with a few gigabytes and a USB port? Quite a lot, with the right software. Learn how to encrypt your work, run whole systems, rescue Windows, and customize your thumb drive with these USB-geared tricks. 10. Give Your Drive a Custom Icon An "oldie" but goodie. If you use multiple USB drives, or just want to make your USB drive more recognizable at a glance, you can give it a custom icon. The root of the trick is keeping a .ico file on the drive—you can create one from any image with any number of tools, including the ConvertIcon webapp. Now when you plug in your USB drive, you'll know which one you're looking at on your desktop and explorer windows. More at Lifehacker

"Stream video content to your PC with Boxee, and play your favorite songs right away with GrooveSelect. Let's take a look at another media-related tool this week: Boxee, a free download that streams video content from Hulu, Netflix, and TV networks. I've also run across a fun little program that lets you play any song you want, instantly ". More at PC World