Windows XP: If you're thinking about moving to Windows 7 but dreading the migration, Windows 7 Migration Tool takes some of the hassle out of the process.
If you're upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 you don't need the Windows 7 Migration Tool, the built-in migration tool is fine and a Vista to Windows 7 upgrade doesn't require a wipe of the previous operating system. Moving from XP to Windows 7 is a little trickier thanks to the full system wipe that precedes the install of Windows 7.
Windows 7 Migration Tool comes in several flavors including a free basic edition. The free edition will check for compatibility issues, scan your XP installation for applications and save application settings as well as generate a list of applications you need to download—the basic edition doesn't automate the reinstall process for you unfortunately. It also transfers your desktop personalizations and the contents of My Documents.
Windows 7 Migration Tool Basic Edition is freeware, Windows only. Know of a tool for easy migration to Windows 7? Let's hear about it in the comments.
You're always pulling up that episode for friends—the one with the one-armed man, teaching lessons—and need to get to it quickly. With Hulu's new tagging, you can add up to 30 tags to a video for identification.
At the moment, the tags aren't working as part of Hulu's universal search bar, but we're presuming they'll get there eventually. In the meantime, the tags—which anyone can add to any video, and have "voted up" by other users—work as a kind of public catalog of what's happening in each video. Wondering if this is that Family Guy with the ridiculously long chicken suit fight sequence? It's safe to assume someone will have tagged it as such, and clicking the tag should bring up other videos with that same gag as well.
The holidays mean food, fun, and family—but they can also mean stress and frustration. Avoid small disasters by throwing together a holiday emergency kit to aid in rescuing your carpet, meal, or toilets from any unpleasant surprises.
In holiday times such as Thanksgiving, the pressure and stress is on to create the best experience possible. It's also true that any problem that could arise often does, and being caught off guard can make it feel like the world is coming down around you. Home guru Bob Vila's weblog advises assembling a few household items that can save the day, or at least your sanity, when a few common holiday emergencies arrive. For example:
Hydrogen Peroxide. For wine stains on rugs or dresses. (It's Thanksgiving. Spills happen. Accept it and just be prepared to deal.) And this removal tip gets a five-star rating from readers.
CLR toilet and sink de-clogger. Let's face it, a mid-dinner toilet clog is worse than burning the turkey.
Check out the full list from BobVila.com which includes a few saviors when it comes to dull social interactions and alcohol. Do you have anything to add to the items above? What do you keep on hand—just in case? Sound off in the comments.
Now that we've had some time to play with the Office 2010 Professional Beta, we thought we'd share what's new and useful inside Microsoft's big suite. Take a gander at the pictorial evidence below.
Overall, Office 2010 is not the kind of leap forward that Windows 7 was from Vista (or, for most PC upgraders, from XP). It adds a lot of stuff that's previously been available only through plug-ins, makes performing the basic tasks of opening, printing, and sharing documents a good deal more convenient, and throws in a few new features that will expand the repertoire of those who really know their Office.
The free Office 2010 Professional Beta doesn't include access to Office's online component (ReadWriteWeb has taken a quick peek at them), and we'll mostly be sticking to Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint components on this tour. OneNote fans, you'll get your own peek soon enough! In the meantime, you can check out Microsoft's own video preview (Silverlight is, unfortunately, required).
For even more Office 2010 preview, with those new-fangled moving pictures, head over to Office 2010 in Videos, helpfully compiled into one place from YouTube by Adam.
On to the photos. Click any of them for a bigger (usually much bigger) view
Heavily discounted noise-canceling headphones, HDTVs, hard drives, and even a NAS storage-unit with a built in Blu-ray burner are but a few of the things you'll find in today's deal roundup. Broke? Grab some free holiday tunes.
Writing emails while offline can help keep you on top of things, especially while on the go. As of today, Offline Gmail allows you to add attachments to an email while you're offline, bringing essentially the full offline experience to Gmail.
No one likes sending out the "Oops! I forgot my attachment!" email following an incomplete draft. If you work offline with regularity, Offline Gmail's new offline attachment feature means less chance of forgetting. For those who have held off using offline access, here's how to get things started:
If you haven't tried offline access yet, visit the Labs tab and follow these instructions to get started:
Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
Click Save Changes.
After your browser reloads, you'll see a new "Offline" link in the upper righthand corner of the Gmail page, next to your username. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Gears if you don't already have it.
If you aren't using Offline Gmail just yet, take a closer look at what else it gets you.
Popular one-deal-a-day bargain finder website Woot has just launched a new section, deals.Woot, which instead of featuring one good deal chosen by Woot staffers, features a list of great deals found and voted on by Woot users.
TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid affectionately (and rather accurately) calls the portal the "Digg for bargains." The site features a list of user-submitted and voted-on deals from around the web, and, like the regular Woot site, is very tech- and gadget-heavy in its list of deals. There are still a few other things hiding inside the site, like coffee, t-shirts, and even bacon salt, but old fans of Woot and all technophiles will be happy with the plethora of deals available.
While most of the site is user-run, the deals on the top part of the page are all sponsored—that is, they are still deals, but they were submitted by retailers or manufacturers, not by users. The deals still need to be deemed worthy by Woot's staffers, but just keep in mind that they do not follow the Digg-style process that the rest of the site does.
Users of our very own Better GReader Firefox extension have been able to turn on favicon support for their feeds in the Reader sidebar for a while now (a favicon is, for example, the little 'lh' that displays next to the address bar when you're visiting Lifehacker); now the folks on the Reader team have caught up, adding favicon support for your subscriptions. It's not enabled by default, so you'll need to head to your Reader Settings page and tick the Show favicons for subscriptions checkbox to get it up and running. Good times. [Google Reader Blog]