Windows 7 and Server 2008 include a hidden power efficiency diagnostic report that can help make your computer more energy efficient.  The report is generated through the powercfg utility and monitors your computer for 60 seconds.  Power settings, hardware and what you computer is doing is all monitored to identify power waste.  Once completed, the report will show errors, warnings and general information about the power efficiency capabilities of your hardware and what is preventing it from operating efficiently.

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The new interface in Office 2007 has a great new look but finding your favorite feature can be a little difficult at first. Microsoft Office Labs offers a helpful utility called Search Commands that brings search to the ribbon. Can’t find a specific feature? Just search for it!

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When using a public Wi-Fi hotspot or any public network the security and privacy of your data is at risk. Most wireless hotspots do not use any type of encryption which means all your traffic is sent in plain text through the air. Anyone with wireless sniffing tools, which are easily to use and find online, can capture all traffic broadcast between your computer and the access point (AP). Any Web sites you visit and anything submitted on a form such as you e-mail address or contact information that is not protected with HTTPS/SSL can easily be harvested. 

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Tired of the Aero Basic non-glass look of Windows 7 virtual machines? With a few steps you can extend the glass experience to all your Win7 virtual machines running on Windows Virtual PC.

First, after you have installed Windows 7 in your virtual machine you need to install the integration components. Click on Tools and then Install Integration Components.

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Operating System virtualization on the client side has many benefits including better security and more flexibility.  Depending on the resources available on your computer you can setup an entire virtual lab running numerous operating systems for testing.  Additionally, virtualization allows you to test software and perform other activities in a sandbox environment that will not affect your primary operating system.  You can infect your VM (virtual machine) but the rest of your computer will be safe.

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It happens to everyone eventually. Your hard drive is suddenly full and you are left wondering where did all my free space go? Now you must begin the task of deleting old files and folders to reclaim space but where do you start? In the past I would suggest manually checking the sizes of all of your folders so you know where to begin the hunt but now there is a great utility called WinDirStat that does the work for you.  After inspecting a drive you are shown exactly how much data is in each folder, what file types are taking up the most space and even a visual representation of the files on your disk.

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The IP address of your computer can be set from the command prompt by running the following commands at an administrative level prompt:

netsh interface ip set address name="Local Area Connection" static 123.123.123.123 255.255.255.0 123.123.123.1 1

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