Tezzo's Technology Blog

Why limit your on-the-go Web surfing to hot spots when you can get online almost anywhere with a cellular modem or MiFi-style hotspot? Here's how to pick the right service and device to bring mobile broadband to your laptop. It's an exciting time to get Internet on the go. Less-expensive 3G service plans and new 4G networks are making wireless cellular modems faster and more affordable than ever. In many cases, you don't even need to sign a contract. Wireless modems aren't just for PCs any more, either. Many connections will work other gadgets too, like your iPod Touch or iPad. (They can even turn those devices into phones, with the right voice-over-IP software.) Depending on your hardware, plan and usage, you'll pay anywhere from $20 to $60 a month for nationwide connectivity at speeds of up to 6Mbps, which is as fast as some cable connections. Here's what you need to know to pick the right service and hardware . . . More at: PC Mag

Sam asks, "How do I convert a PAL DVD made in Europe to NTSC?" I've experimented with a handful of ways to convert PAL format video to NTSC, with none of them yielding perfect results. If you have a friend in Europe who sends you a DVD created in the PAL format, you might have problems playing it back if you don't either have a DVD player with PAL support or a computer that knows how to playback PAL format content. One way around this is to convert the PAL DVD to either a digital file on your PC or converting the file to an NTSC compatible DVD. Making a PAL Video File The easy solution to your problem is to simply convert the PAL DVD to a digital file on your computer. While there are rules about DVD drives supporting multiple regions or both NTSC and PAL, software doesn't care what format a digital file is in, it simply plays the file. To convert the PAL DVD to a file, you need VLC Player. You can download VLC Player here. More at Jake Ludington's Digital Lif...

You can pay a monthly fee to your cable provider for a time-shifting DVR, but if you prefer control and flexibility to DRM and, well, that monthly fee, you can roll your own DVR with a TV tuner for your PC. So you've set up a geeky media center that non-geeks can actually use, but you still have a separate method for watching and recording live TV. If you'd like to consolidate your devices, a TV tuner is the perfect add-on for your media center. We've briefly discussed TV tuners before, but the state of modern television can make the buying process a little overwhelming. There is no one-size-fits all solution to buying one, so we've created this guide to sorting out whether a TV tuner is right for you, and how to go about buying the right one. More at Lifehacker

Netbook makers are including more features, bigger screens and keyboards, and faster parts. We walk you through the latest trends and tell you what features really matter in a netbook. The first batch of netbook to hit the scene was greeted with awe and surprise. That tiny laptops, which were once sold at a premium, could be had for half the price of a typical system seemed incredible. Since then, the stakes have risen and the competition grown fiercer. Netbook makers are including more features, bigger screens and keyboards, and faster parts—all while slashing prices like a Walmart special. These devices, which are popping up in more and more households, are also becoming increasingly popular among small business professionals and college students who are about to head back to school. More at PC Mag

It won't cost you a penny to add voice calls and texting to Apple's tablet with these five apps. The Apple iPad performs several functions with aplomb—it's a wonderful media player, Web surfing device, and, thanks to a deep apps catalog, it can become an e-book reader, gaming system, or a myriad other devices much like the iPhone 4. There's one task that the iPad can't do out of the box that the iPhone 4 can: place calls and send texts. But even those functionalities are within reach if you download the right apps, some of which are designed with iPad in mind and others of which were originally designed for the iPhone. More at PC Mag

Are you upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 or buying a new PC? In both cases, you face the same tedious chore: reinstalling all your apps. That means digging out a bunch of CDs and/or downloading programs from various sites, then installing them one at a time. I don't know about you, but I can think of better ways to spend several hours. Ninite creates a custom software installer with all the freeware and open-source apps you want. Just choose from the dozens of available programs--everything from AVG Free Anti-Virus and Dropbox to OpenOffice and uTorrent--and the service builds an installer that will download and load them all. More at PC World

A few months back I explained how Windows 7 users can use built-in tools to create a system-repair disc--an important step to take given that few PCs these days come with one. A reader who uses Vista wrote to ask how he can accomplish the same thing. (Stop snickering. Plenty of people use Vista, and a few of them even like it.) The answer to your question, Dom, is another question: Have you been good about installing Windows updates? Because when Microsoft released Vista Service Pack 1 back in 2008, it included a recovery-disc builder very similar to the one bundled with Windows 7. To see if you have it, select Start, All Programs, Maintenance, Create a Recovery Disc. Then just follow the instructions. If for some reason you don't have SP1 or can't find the tool, try NeoSmart's Windows Vista Recovery Disc, which is available in both 32- and 64-bit versions. And what about XP users? Your best bet is UBCD4Win, a free boot-CD creator that provides a wide variety of tools for r...