Tech Olive

I’m a man of multiple browsers and I’m sure many of you are too. Sometimes Firefox doesn’t always cut it and I have to move over to Chrome for a while. A big downfall with using multiple browsers is that your saved passwords and bookmarks on your favorite browser aren’t with another browser that you might switch over to every once in a while. This becomes a huge pain in the rear end, but the guys over at Tested mention a quick and painless way to sync your bookmarks and saved passwords using Xmarks. This powerful, yet simple plugin can sync bookmarks, saved passwords, and even opened tabs over multiple browsers and even over multiple computers. The plugin currently works with Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Safari. We recommend you give it a try.

via [Tested]

With all the glorious Quarter 4 games just around the corner, it’s hard to contain all the excitement, and it’s all slowly building as the release dates grow nearer. More often than not, there’s that one game that stands above the rest. That one game that we’re all counting the days until its release. No other game quite compares to this one’s anticipation in your mind.

Today we offer you a way to count those days without having to scratch hash marks into your wall, with the use of your very own lightweight and customizable desktop countdown timer! With just a few minutes, we’ll show you how to create an awesome and fully customizable desktop countdown timer that will count the seconds to any date you wish.

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Plain and simple, Dropbox is a freeware application that automatically syncs files over the internet and also to any computers that you own. This is a dream if you have multiple computers in your household or if you share files constantly with your friends. The one thing that makes Dropbox unique from a lot of other syncing and sharing services is the ability to simply drag and drop files into the Dropbox folder on your computer and have them instantly be available to any computer that you give permission to. Any file that you put inside the Dropbox folder will automatically be synced and monitored for changes, so each time a change is saved, it backs up and syncs the file again. Best of all, it works with Windows, Mac, and Linux, so you can share files easily across different OSes. They also have an iPhone app available for free as well.

In this quick tutorial, I’ll show you how to get started using this extremely simple application and what features are the most useful.

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If you haven’t read Part I of our two-part Spring Cleaning series, read it here.

So, you’re tired of your PC gasping for fresh air and/or you want to start charging rent to those spiders that have built their webs running from your GPU to your RAM. No problem. With about 45 minutes, you can bring your PC back to its full cooling and airflow capabilities and if you prefer, you can take a little extra time to manage some of those internal cables that are beginning to resemble a botany class gone wrong.

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Reader Patrick writes:

I recently let a friend borrow my LCD TV. When it was returned to me I was presented with new little scratches on the screen itself and one large deep scratch. How would I get these out? HELP ME OLIVE!!!

I’ve heard of a lot of ways to remove and fix scratches from an LCD screen, some myth and some actually true, but we think the fellas over at Hackosis have a couple of good ways to fix a dinged up screen. One is a quick-and-dirty method involving petroleum jelly and the other is a more thorough, permanent fix involving lacquer. Keep in mind that it’s extremely important that you use a microfiber, antistatic cloth when cleaning/fixing an LCD screen. Anything like paper towels with large fibers will scratch that sucker right up.

Having PC issues? Need recommendations on what new piece of hardware/software or PC video game to get? Need relationship advice? Send us your question and we’ll answer it!

Here at the Olive, we’re no strangers to HD video and playback, and after being annoyed by Windows 7′s inability to display thumbnails or detailed information of our .MKV HD video files, we decided to do something about it. Some research revealed to us DivX’s Tech Preview, which adds this functionality to Windows 7 free of charge. So, we decided to put together a quick tutorial and share the information! Read on after the jump.

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It’s that time of the year, folks! Okay, it’s been that time of the year for a couple weeks now, but we can guarantee that a majority of you are still slacking in getting your PC in tip-top shape for the hot months ahead. So, we’re here to bring you a two-part series on spring cleaning your PC. This first part involves the software side of cleaning out your PC. You most likely haven’t defragged in years and there’s probably random, unused files just sitting their collecting dust. Your desktop is probably cluttered with random icons and your media files are most likely strewed all over the place. All of this can wreak havoc on your PC’s speed and agility, but I’ll be listing off some programs and techniques for getting your PC back to how it should be.

Image Credit: awjmfotos

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One weekend project I had recently completed was connecting a family member’s computer to a television in another room. While this sounds dead easy at first, there were some problems with the particular setup that I was dealing with. First and foremost, this is a standard-def television that has limited connections and the PC doesn’t have S-Video, so it’s not as easy as just slapping on an S-Video cable and calling it a day. Also, the setup that I use must be simple. While I’m technically capable, said family member is not. So, I can’t do anything too complex. Join me after the break for a quick tutorial on getting your computer connected to a TV, despite there being several blocks in the road.

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It’s very apparent that netbooks are known for not being all that powerful. They’re great for portability, checking your email and surfing the web, but when it comes to heavy information processing like playing HD video, you’ll have to look elsewhere, or do you?

One of the biggest cons with my netbook was that it would barely play my HD collection, but that was until the guys over at PC Pro showed a fairly simple way of accomplishing it by using the ever-diverse Media Player Classic and the CoreAVC codec. CoreAVC is known as one of the fastest software decoders out there, and when it’s coupled with one of the best video players, Media Player Classic, you get the ultimate video player for your netbook. Mind you, CoreAVC will cost you $10, but there’s also “other ways” to get it, of course.

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Netbooks –as convenient as they are– lack a bit in the performance category, but that doesn’t mean you have to settle for less in productivity and overall experience. You can get a lot of power out of these applications without using a whole lot of juice. The best part? They”re all completely free of charge. Here’s a quick list of the top applications that have proven useful for me during my netbook journey.

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