I've been doing this for years...

Whenever I want to get something (pictures, files, spreadsheets) from one computer to another, I just email 'em to myself. BUT... I don't hit "send".

Say what?.

My recent post about TV talk show hosts reminded me just how much I miss the fun folks who used to run a 24-hour cable channel called Tech TV. Yep, it was all computers all the time... for the geek in all of us.

The best part is they covered topics for beginners including new computer users altogether (think: senior citizens, moms, parents, and just plain 'ol late-bloomers into the computer world) as well as topics for more advanced users of computers (like webmasters and others just starting to dabble into the world of HTML).

They never went too far in either direction, which meant that each show could keep your attention -- no matter what your level of expertise with computers was. Plus, they made it FUN. Real-life computer and Internet how-to's and explanations that were actually fun to learn and try.

Anyway, it's been 3 years now and I'm (obviously) still having trouble getting past the fact that they changed the focus of the network from computers to gamers. TechTV became G4 on cable. Here's one of their last shows (Check it out, they talk about DVD vs Blu-Ray when it was introduced in 2004!):

I got to wondering what all of those fun people are up to these days...

A lot of people ask us for computer advice...

Good news. Black Friday sales are upon us, and where else can you find brand new laptops from $299 to $799 and full-size desktop computers ranging from $199 to $699 outside of Black Friday sales events?!

Here are the best deals to be found on computers at sales events taking place on the day after Thanksgiving -- November 23, 2007.

This will be the third year now that I've had my eye on Black Friday sales. Last year, we snatched a few good deals... but nothing big.

While Black Friday events in general guarantee that you'll hear things like "Prices slashed!"... "Rock-bottom prices!"... "Lowest prices of the season!"... and "Best sale ever!"

Each year, a handful of really "hot" items seem to make their way to the top and attract all of the media's attention... and the consumers'.

For example, last year it was the 42" Plasma HD TV. And the year before that it was the laptop for under $400! (We have friends that tried for both, and failed.)

Wondering what the hottest items are this year???

My desktop computer is starting to lag a bit when I have a ton of programs open at once -- especially when I'm working with one of the 33,000 digital photos that I have stored on my computer (like in Photoshop or something).

So I decided to have a look inside and see exactly how much memory I have, type of RAM, and the processor speed of this computer. And... how many empty slots I had available for more memory.

Let me tell you... there is no better (or easier) way to see every single thing you have on your computer than to use the Belarc Advisor program. You download the free program online (it's small... only 1456 KB) then open it up on your computer and run it.

The info it tells you about your computer is AMAZING!

Have you ever accidentally deleted some photos from your camera's memory card (SmartMedia, Sony Memory Stick, IBM Micro Drive, MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital card, or any other common data storage devices for digital cameras)?

We hadn't until yesterday. Jim was on the road. When he's at the races, he sends me a fresh batch of photos to upload to his racer's websites each day. Only, on this day, he accidentally deleted half of the pictures before he actually sent them to me.

And of course, they were the best ones... the photos that people were eagerly waiting to see online!

I did a little research here at home and found a FREE program that saved the day...

Want to have some fun with the start-up page on your computer? You know... that page that shows up first, every time you jump onto the Information Superhighway.

You probably already know that you can set your opening page to any website address that you want. But did you know that you can change it to your very own personalized page -- one that houses all of your favorite things?

I've experimented with a number of different personalized homepages as start-up pages in my Internet browser, including:

• My.Yahoo.com


• Google's personalized homepage


• NetVibes


• PageFlakes


• ProtoPage

See why I think personalized homepages are so cool, and why I like NetVibes the best...

This list is updated regularly to reflect the latest pageviews and Comments, as well as others' links to the articles which appear in the Computers, Blogs & How-To's category at TheFunTimesGuide.com.

I've written about fun & creative USB drives before.

Here are two of them:

Humping Dog USB Thumb Drive (...Jim bought 3 of these!)

Keychain Memory Card Reader & USB Flash Drive (...I still want one of these)

I recently found another one. It's the USB drive made from a Lego block!

Check it out...

I made the switch from Internet Explorer (IE) to Firefox in April 2005, and I've never looked back!

What follows is a growing list of all the reasons that I personally love Firefox.