How to Overclock Your Video Card with MSI Afterburner via Lifehacker

Keep Your Computer Cool and Quiet with Regular Cleanings [Video]

Keep Your Computer Cool and Quiet with Regular Cleanings

We've gone through how to evacuate PC dust bunnies before, but tech video blog NCIX shows us how to do it, step-by-step, through the magic of video.

The video isn't brand new, but removing dust bunnies from your computer is a timeless art, and if you've got an older computer that has gotten hotter, noisier, and less reliable over time, giving the insides a good cleaning could do a lot of good. It'll make your fan work quieter, more effectively, and spare some of your circuitry from shorts and overheating. All you need is a screwdriver and a can of compressed air. Check out the video to see how it's done, and hit the MakeUseOf link below for more tips on keeping your computer run cool and quiet.

PC Cleaning Tips / Removing Dustbunnies [NCIX Tech Tips via MakeUseOf]

Send an email to Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com.

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The How-To Geek Guide to Computer Microphones

With Gmail adding the ability to make free calls within the US and Canada, now is a great time to invest in a quality computer microphone. We’ll take some of the guesswork out of that process, and give you some tips on setting up your microphone once you get it.

Photo by visual.dichotomy.

What To Look For

There are a ton of different microphone options, and a long list of specifications for each. Which of these matter and which are just hype?

Form Factor

The biggest difference between microphones is their form factor. This should be the first thing that you decide on.

If you’re a gamer or just prefer all-in-one devices, a headset is a good choice. Headsets are headphones that have a microphone attached to them. The quality and comfort of the headphones and the microphone vary pretty widely, so read reviews of models in your desired price range.

If you already have a good pair of headphones or you just want something cheap and easy, a desktop microphone works best. These include some sort of base so that you can just place the microphone on your desk and you’re good to go.

If you’re considering doing some podcasting or other audio recordings, you should look into a professional microphone. These are larger, heavier, and are designed to be held either in your hand or in a mic stand – which can be an additional expense. The most common professional mics are either dynamic or condenser. Dynamic mics can take a beating, so if you’re rough on your electronics, they’ll hold up better. Condenser mics are more fragile, but in general do a better job reproducing sounds.

There are a few other form factors that may work better for you, like lapel mics that you can clip to your shirt, or conference room microphones that are designed to be in the middle of a table full of people. If you have a specific need, a quick web search should reveal the ideal microphone form factor to look for.

Connector

Photo by ladyada.

There are fortunately few options for how your microphone can connect to your computer; however, there are some important differences between the options.

A 3.5mm connector is the same as the plug from most headphones. Most computers – even laptops – have a 3.5mm microphone connection, so in most cases, you can just plug your microphone into the 3.5mm jack. However, the on-board sound features of most motherboards and laptops are not very high quality, so if you’re planning to do any podcasting or recording, you might need to invest in a dedicated sound card with a 3.5mm mic input.

USB connectors are becoming increasingly common. These will work the same on any computer with a USB connection, so there is no need to buy a sound card if you plan to make recordings. There is no particular downside to a USB mic, unless you’re already running low on USB slots (though in that case, you can pick up a cheap USB hub!)

Professional microphones tend to use the XLR connector. If you already have a professional mic with an XLR connector, or are dead set on one, there are XLR to USB adapters, and higher-end sound cards tend to have some method of accepting XLR input. These options are somewhat expensive, but they can be cheaper than getting a professional USB mic of equivalent quality.

There are also wireless options, if you prefer not to deal with cables. These typically connect through radio waves received at a USB dongle connected to your computer, or through Bluetooth.

Noise Cancelling

Many microphones – even inexpensive ones – offer some degree of noise cancelling. If you’re in a noisy room, or if your computer is particularly loud, this is a feature to look for. Be sure to read reviews to confirm that the noise cancelling feature works well!

Directionality

Microphones can be designed to pick up sound directly in one direction – unidirectional mics – or in all directions – omnidirectional mics. If you’re in a noisy room, a unidirectional mic is a better choice. If you want to pick up the noises in the room, for instance in a conference call situation, you will want an omnidirectional mic.

Frequency Response

Many microphones will list their frequency response range (e.g. 40Hz – 16KHz). By itself, this information is not particularly useful, and you should not judge a microphone with a wider response range as being objectively better. Human voices typically fall in the 85-255Hz range, well within the capabilities of even the cheapest computer microphone.

However, if you’re doing more professional recording, then you may want to investigate a microphone’s frequency response curve.

Other Factors

Manufacturers may list other specifications, such as microphone sensitivity and input impedance, but in general these factors are not important compared to those listed above.

Like with most computer parts, there is no best choice – it depends on what you plan to use your microphone for and how much you’re willing to spend. Above all, do your research and read reviews (Amazon and Newegg are good review sources) before making your decision!

Testing Your Microphone

Once you’ve chosen a microphone and connected it to your computer, you should test it out to make sure that your voice comes through loudly and clearly. The steps to do this vary depending on your operating system.

Windows 7 and Vista

Click on the start menu and type “sound” into the search field. The Sound Recorder program should be the first option. Open it.

Note: if you have disabled search, you can find this in All Programs > Accessories > Sound Recorder.

Click on the Start Recording button and speak into your microphone, the same volume and tone that you would use while chatting online.

When you’re done, click the Stop Recording button, save the audio file somewhere, and listen to it to confirm that your microphone is working properly.

If you don’t hear anything, or if it’s too loud or too quiet, right-click on the volume control indicator in the system tray, and select Recording Devices.

Note: if you’ve hidden the volume control indicator, you can access this through Control Panel > Sound.

You should see your microphone listed. If you speak into it, the bar at the right should fill depending on how loudly you speak.

Right-click on your microphone and select properties. Go to the Levels tab and change the microphone volume to an appropriate level.

Record yourself again to make sure that the volume level is good. There are other options that you can change in the Microphone Properties box – try them out if they seem useful to you.

Windows XP

Windows XP provide a nice wizard for testing and setting an appropriate volume level for your microphone.

Right-click on the volume control indicator in the system tray and select Adjust Audio Properties.

Note: if you’ve hidden the volume control indicator, you can access this through Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices.

Switch to the Voice tab and click the Test hardware button.

The wizard will ask you to speak some sentences, repeating your recorded audio, and adjust the volume accordingly. Quite handy!

Ubuntu Linux

Open a terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type in the command alsamixer.

Check to see if the Mic entry has a reasonable volume. If not, use your arrow keys to highlight the Mic entry and raise the volume to around 50. Press M on your keyboard to ensure that the there is a green 00 underneath the bar, not MM.

To test your microphone, click on Applications > Sound & Video > Sound Recorder.

Record yourself speaking for a few seconds, then stop the recording a play it back.

Mac OS X

Note: we did not have a Mac OS X test machine available. But managing the basic sound options is similar to that in Windows using the Sound preferences.

If you have the iLife bundle, the easiest way to test your microphone is to open GarageBand, start a new blank project, and record audio. Play it back to ensure that it works as intended.

If you do not have iLife, try the Audacity program, described in the Recording Audio section below.

Using Your Microphone

Here are some tips to get the most out of your microphone.

• Turn off your speakers. If you don’t, then the audio coming from your speakers could be picked up by your microphone, making an annoying high-pitched sound. If you need to hear audio while using your microphone, use headphones.
• Keep the volume at a reasonable level. It’s temping to turn up the volume and the dynamic boost so that you can be easily heard, but that will cause your voice to become distorted (“clipped”) when you raise your voice.
• Test your mic with each application that uses it. Some, like Skype, will change the mic’s volume settings; make a test call to ensure that you can still be heard clearly, and then retest when you use another application afterward.

Recording Audio

If you want to get started recording audio, whether for a podcast, commentary, or other permanent recording, we recommend trying out the multi-platform program Audacity.

When the program starts up, you have a blank slate. To record some audio from your microphone, click on the red record button.

Click the stop button when you’re done, and you have your first audio track!

You can record more tracks, or add onto the current track. Overlaying tracks on top of each other lets you add background music to your voice, or allows you to record two people separately and then combine them together afterwards.

Audacity is a powerful audio editing tool that is free and available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It can export to many formats, including MP3 (though this requires the download of an external MP3 encoder). It may be a little daunting for simple tasks like recording a message for Grandma, but if you want to start your own podcast, it’s worth putting in the time to learn Audacity!

Download Audacity, the free cross-platform sound editor

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Complete Guide to Breathing New Life Into Your Old PC or Laptop

Do you have an older PC or laptop laying around just collecting dust and not sure what to do with it? You could sell it, but not get much for it. Here we bring you a guide on how to bring it back to life.

The rate at which computers are improving these days, you buy a machine and in 2-3 years it’s already considered old or obsolete. As prices come down on more advanced and faster hardware, it can be easy to just buy a new machine to get “the latest greatest”. But what about the older machine? You could sell it, but probably won’t get a whole lot for it. Here we take a look at several ways you can breathe new life into those older machines you have laying around. This guide will cover different methods including upgrading hardware, reinstalling Windows, and installing light versions of Linux.

Upgrade Hardware

If you’re willing to spend a few bucks on some hardware upgrades, you can make your old machine run with more snappy. Before making any changes to your hardware, make sure you backup your system first.

Memory

The easiest way to add better performance to an older machine is to add more memory. Not sure what type of memory you have installed? Check out our article on how to find out the kind of memory your computer has.

Photo by: lempkin

Graphics Card

Another way to improve a computer’s performance is to upgrade the video card, especially if your motherboard has integrated graphics. You will need to know the type of slots that are on your motherboard (PCI, PCIe, AGP…etc). If you aren’t sure what type of expansion slots you have, we can use the utility SIW which is free for personal use. You can also check out our article on how to get detailed information about your PC which shows other free utilities similar to SIW.

If you have a machine that is 5 years old or more, you can find a graphics card relatively cheap online. You certainly don’t need to buy a $500 latest greatest card by any means (in fact your old PC probably won’t be able to use it).

If you search around, you’ll be able to find an affordable new or used card that will bump up your graphics performance.

 

Hard Drive

Another way to improve performance is to install a larger and faster hard drive. In a lot of laptops the hard drive is 4200RPM, you can upgrade to a 5400 or 7200RPM drive that should improve read/write performance. You might also have that older 40GB hard drive filled to capacity…larger drives are really falling in price so doubling the capacity is an option as well.

If you have a dead hard drive on your old system, check out our article on how to use an Ubuntu Live CD to recover the files.

CPU

If you’re an advanced user and want to get really geeky, you could always upgrade your Desktop CPU to a faster one. Keep in mind though that this is more complicated and you’ll need to figure out what CPUs are compatible with your current motherboard and chipset.

For more on finding the right hardware and how to install it, The Geek has a great 5 part series on building a new computer. Reading through the series will help you better understand hardware, finding correct drivers, and how to install it.

Reinstall Windows

After years of installing and uninstalling programs, playing games, and just everyday use of your computer, Windows starts to slow down. It will happen even if you do regular maintenance like Using Disk Cleanup, defrag your hard drive, and clean your system with utilities like CCleaner.

Note: Before doing a reinstall of your OS make sure you backup your important data! Windows does allow you to reformat the drive, but if you really want it cleaned try out the free DBAN utility.

When you do a fresh install, you’ll be surprised how much faster the system runs, especially with XP. Of course after you start installing more software it will start to be less snappy, but will be much faster than it was.

If you re-install your OS from the backup discs that came with your PC or use the protected recovery partition, it will also install any Bloat-ware that came with it. There is no reason you need to have Norton 2005 or an Office 2003 trial and everything else they try to stick on there. A good start to get rid of it is using a free utility like PC Decrapifier.

When using it make sure to use the option to create a Restore Point in case something goes wrong.

Then select the junk to get rid of.

If that doesn’t get rid of everything use Revo Uninstaller Pro to manually remove the rest of the junk. You can use the Pro version for 30 days then purchase a license, or stick with the free version.

After you reinstall your OS try out free and Open Source lighter apps and utilities versus the bloat-ware that came with your system. Our favorite services for installing the more popular free and Open Source apps without any crapware is Ninite. Not only will this let you choose different free apps without the crapware, Ninite also makes installing new software incredibly easy.

Then to make sure unnecessary apps aren’t trying to start during boot up, make sure to go into the System Configuration Utility and uncheck what doesn’t need to launch during startup.

For more tips on doing a reinstall of Windows take a look at our Checklist Guide for Reinstalling Windows.

Use Portable Apps

If you don’t want to install a bunch of new software on your old machine, you might want to take a look at Portable Apps. These will run from your USB flash drive and don’t require installation. Your data can also be saved to the flash drive as well and not clog up your local drive. Plus you’ll have the added benefit of bringing your favorite apps with you to any machine.

For more tips on doing a reinstall of Windows take a look at our Checklist Guide for Reinstalling Windows.

Install a Light Version of Linux

Puppy Linux

If you have an older laptop laying around and it’s running XP and doesn’t have the power to run Windows 7 in a reasonable way, check out using Puppy Linux to add life to it. The download is only 130MB and it will run pretty much any machine from the past 15 years. The minimum Requirements are a Pentium 166MMX CPU and 128MB of RAM.

In our example we installed these light versions of Linux on an older IBM ThinkPad G40 with a Celeron P4 2.0 GHZ Processor with 512MB of RAM. Since every machine is different, you may find problems getting the correct drivers…especially Wi-Fi but overall they did a good job, are portable, and run extremely fast on older hardware.

The cool thing about Puppy Linux is that it runs in RAM from a Live CD or USB install. So even if you have an old computer that has a broken hard drive or no drive at all…you can use it. It’s extremely fast and has all of the apps you would need like PDF Viewer, Chat, Email, Web Browsers, AbiWord for document creation…and more for basic users. It also has a lot of advanced features that advanced Linux geeks would love to tinker with.

If you have an older machine and want to install it to the hard drive as the main OS you can do that too.

DSL Linux

DSL is another light Linux distribution that is small in size and won’t bog down your machine. Like Puppy Linux you can run it from a Live CD, flash drive, even install it inside Windows. The OS is a mere 50MB in size and can run on machines as far back as a 486DX with 16MB of RAM!

Jolicloud

If you want something that looks more modern and includes easy access to the features you love such as Chat, Email, and Social Networks…another good choice is to install Jolicloud which we previously covered. They recently announced the official 1.0 version and while it takes more resources than Puppy or DSL, the system requirements are low, and using it can be a lot of fun.

You can either run the Express Installer which will run Jolicloud alongside Windows, or from a CD or USB flash drive. It’s a cloud based OS and has a lot of features. It comes with quick links to YouTube, popular social networks, productivity apps, and an App Directory with over 700 apps to choose from. So no matter what you might need it should be available. Although they advertise it as a Netbook OS, it can also be used to bring new life back to your old computer.

Whether you bought a new computer to update to Windows 7 or have a Laptop laying around but don’t want to get rid of it, these tips will help you bring the old machine back to life. It also gives you a chance to try your hand at Linux and other free apps. If you have an old PC that is just too old and slow to do anything with, and have no choice but to get rid of it, make sure to dispose of it responsibly.

Download SIW – Free Version for personal use

Ninite Website – Free for personal use

Download Puppy Linux

Download Damn Small Linux

Download Jolicloud

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