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Why it's a good idea to own a USB-to-SATA adapter The USB-to-IDE/SATA adapter the most indispensable tool in my PC repair kit. Just this weekend, it once again proved itself worthy of that title. In a nutshell, the adapter allows you to connect an internal hard drive to your PC-externally. What would an internal drive be doing outside your desktop or laptop? Funny you should ask. About a week ago, my media-center PC starting displaying this message during boot-up: "Hard drive failure imminent." And you know what? It was. In short order, the machine wouldn't boot at all. Long story short, I had to replace the drive, reinstall Windows, etc. But I wondered if I could salvage any/all of my recorded TV shows. To find out, I connected the old, non-booting drive (now "naked" outside the system) to a USB port via my adapter. Huzzah! The machine was able to read the drive and copy over the recordings. Except for the hassles (and expense) of actually replacing the drive, no harm done. There's another reason to keep one of these adapters on hand, and that's if you're planning to upgrade to a solid-state drive (SSD). Unless you buy a kit that comes with an adapter, you'll need one so you can image (i.e. clone) your existing drive to the new SSD. Then you'll remove the old drive, install the new one, and presto, you're back in business. (Much faster business: SSDs rock.) Unless you have a pretty old desktop or laptop, you can skip buying a USB-to-IDE/SATA adapter and just go for USB-to-SATA. At the same time, I recommend one that supports USB 3.0. You may not need it now, but it's a good bet your next PC will have USB 3.0 ports -- and that'll make for much faster copying between drives. Trust me: When the time comes that you need to upgrade or replace a hard drive, you'll be glad to have a USB-to-SATA adapter on hand. By-The Xpert Crew @ http://techvedic.com

How about a wristband that glows when you get a text message or a phone call on your smartphone? EMBRACE+ is the new gadget in the market that will glow in various colors on your wrist. The wristband will be a wearable gadget made for your smart phone and will display specific colors to indicate depending on what kind of notification you have received on your phone. You do not have to even take the phone out of the pocket. As soon as you get the notification, the wristband will give a visual notification in a specific color and will let you differentiate between a tweet and text message. The wristband connects to your smartphone using Wi-Fi connection.The EMBRACE+ wristband features will includes indications for incoming calls, text messages, new emails, notifications from social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and will even give you low battery levels indications. It will have a special feature that will help secure your phone. It will give notification if the smartphone goes far away from the wristband. The release date of the EMBASE+ wristband is July 2013. By-The Xpert Crew @ http://techvedic.com https://www.facebook.com/techvedicinc https://twitter.com/techvedicinc http://pinterest.com/techvedic1 http://techvedicinc.tumblr.com/

While it becomes impossible to live without your iPhone 4S, you must be a bit worried about the habit of the gadget eating up all the battery at inopportune times.there are still some vital tips and tricks you can follow to improve your Smartphones battery life. Low Down The Screen Brightness Just as it goes for your laptop devices, you need to lower down the brightness of your iPhone screen, which will enhance the battery life. Adjust the screen brightness under the Settings tab. Make Use of Wi-Fi When You Can Instead of making Voice calls, downloading apps or browsing the Web over your iPhone 3G or cellular connection, it is recommended to always find a Wifi hotspot or make use of your home network. This will help you keep away not only from data charges but also will aid you have a better battery life as your device will not be searching for the data signals. Remember, if you are in an area where there is no Wi-Fi hotspot, it is better to turn off the search and it will help save the battery life of your iPhone 4S. Do Not Use The GPS Tracking Feature If you are using apps that support the feature of Automatic GPS tagging and location such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, your iPhone is working overtime to determine your location. If you do not want to be Geo-tag your updates and posts, must keep the GPS function off. Do Not Use The 'Fetch' & 'Push' feature If you have your iPhone 4S set to 'fetch' the data after every 30 minutes time along with numerous apps to push new alerts and messages as they happen, then you need to turn off this feature on your device. This feature is going to drain your battery. Only use the facility when you really need it otherwise keep it off. Keep Your Notifications In Check To enhance your iPhone 4S battery time, you need to limit your app notifications to just the apps you make use of more often. This actually means that you have to say 'no' to the requests for all kinds of notifications you ge

Computer repair is a common chapter, though not of the common interest. You could have experienced computer problems - hardware or software related. Sometimes, easy to fix with just a restart, while at other occasions seeking expert's hand might have become essential. Lucky in case, system was in-warranty, otherwise, computer repair charges might have given a jolt. Techvedic, your friendly online computer support vendor, narrates 5 simple tips to save or reduce computer repair bill.

"Ever since I was a kid, being a programmer looked fun and exciting. But in the last decade, the novelty of the Internet has worn off, and it seems like we've just been spinning our wheels. With an increasingly uninteresting workload and stagnation in pay, a lot of folks have either left for other pastures or have thought about it. Well, in the last year or two, things have really changed. Here are 10 reasons why now is a great time to be a developer."

With the help of LiveAndroid you don't have to wait to try it out. LiveAndroid has been around for a while now. Originally launched in May, LiveCD allows you to run the Android OS on x86 platforms without actually installing the software. Up until now this was only useful to those with netbooks that actually have an optical drive. However, the folks at LiveAndroid last week announced a LiveUSB version, especially handy for those of you with netbooks or notebooks that don't have a disc drive.

Forms are usually seen as that obnoxious thing we have to markup and style. I respectfully disagree: forms (on a par with tables) are the most exciting thing we have to work with. Here we're going to take a look at how to style a beautiful HTML5 form using some advanced CSS and latest CSS3 techniques. I promise you will want to style your own forms after you've read this article.

"A plethora of cool open source tools is available out there, but not all of them are up to the mark. So today we have a list of 9 Must Have Open Source Apps For Web Developers. Check this list out and pick the ones that suit your needs the best."

In springtime, people's fancies may turn to love, but their to-do list turns to cleaning. Make this the year that you finally recycle all the ancient MP3 players, toner cartridges, ethernet cables, and bulky monitors out of the closets, garages, and spare rooms where they've been lurking. Your home will feel more modern, and you'll be doing your part to boost the 27 percent electronics recycling rate. Just in time for another spring constant, Earth Day. Before you get rid of any of your electronics The first step on your recycling journey: Make sure that none of your personal data will be leaving the house along with your soon-to-be-discarded electronics. If you're using Apple's iTunes to manage your digital music and video, be sure you deauthorize any device you're recycling. "But that computer is dead" is no excuse: Apple expects you to simply deauthorize all your devices via the iTunes app, then reauthorize the ones that are still alive If you're recycling a smartphone, do a complete reset of your phone to wipe out its data and restore it to its factory settings. Before you do this, however, make sure that you've got your data backed up someplace else If you're recycling a computer or a hard drive, don't just assume that deleting files will wipe the data off your system, because it won't. All it does is reformat the space on the drive, and the data can be snagged using tools designed for disaster recovery. Now, on to recycling Broadly speaking, you have three recycling options: You can drop off your unwanted stuff in person somewhere; you can ship it away; or you can donate it to a willing organization. Drop it off in person. The advantage to dropping off your gear is that you don't need to really plan ahead and print out prepaid labels (as you would if you were shipping things away); you just toss your stuff in the car and go Another option that's cropping up across the U.S. is the electronics recyc

Here's one of those sad facts of life that you just can't avoid: Like cars, clothing, and people, batteries wear out. You can't stop this process, but with proper care you can slow it down. What wears down a battery? Charging and discharging. Obviously, you can't avoid either of those acts entirely (although if you could, you wouldn't have to worry about wearing out your battery). The trick, of course, is to do as little charging and discharging as possible. And one way to avoid charging and discharging is to remove the battery when you don't need it. Ideally, you would remove the battery (with the laptop shut down, of course) before plugging in the AC adapter and working at your desk. Then, before you take your PC on the road, you would shut it down, insert the battery, and let it charge for a few hours. In reality, that's not always practical. Shutting down and rebooting your PC every time you go from portable to deskbound quickly becomes a nuisance. Worse, you have to remember to recharge before leaving home. A more practical solution would be to shut down the laptop and remove the battery when you expect it will stay plugged in for a week or more. And don't intentionally discharge the battery before removing it. After all, the whole point is to charge and recharge as little as possible. Some of the charge will be lost while the battery sits unused, so it's still a good idea to recharge it before taking it on the road--even though that requires some planning ahead of time. By-The Xpert Crew @ http://techvedic.com https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=140300136155835&set=o.172245722918618&type=1&theater

"Almost all of us that have used Windows PCs have experienced the Blue Screen of Death, that error-message filled screen that halts the PC and is so unhelpful. Well, here's an amazing infographic we've put together that explains all about these wondrous error screens, from facts about Windows BSoDs, to famous BSoDs in history, to what the error messages mean."

"Let's say that you have children, and you would like to help them learn computer programming at a youngish age. As the father of four kids, I have tried to approach it from several different angles. What I would like to do here is collect some ideas for parents who are looking for different options."

Every day, more and more teachers are using the world-building game Minecraft to engage and educate. The game is a true phenomenon and gamers young and old are using it in countless creative ways. Practitioners of Games Based Education have realized the potential and have embraced Minecraft in classrooms around the world. Now you can too!

"What these courses have in common, aside from the focus on Android development, is that they are all 100% free. You should be able to get yourself started off on developing your first app, and those who have some development experience will find advanced topics covered as well."

MinecraftEdu is the collaboration of a small team of educators and programmers from the United States and Finland. We are working with Mojang AB of Sweden, the creators of Minecraft, to make the game affordable and accessible to schools everywhere. We have also created a suite of tools that make it easy to unlock the power of Minecraft in YOUR classroom.

"Last year, Nicholas G. was 12-years-old. He convinced his dad to get him a developer account from Apple, and began to learn how to program apps. Nicholas is now 13, and the second update to his first app, Quick Notes!!, is out on the App Store. Version 1.0, says Nicholas, has already accrued over 3,000 downloads. How many downloads did your app have when you were 13? Mine didn't have any. It still doesn't."

In case your hard drive is damaged or corrupted then it is better to have functional copy of the drive where you can store your stuff immediately. Cloning a drive is a good option for handling such situations. Have a look on this tutorial.

That got me pondering: Which versions of Windows have been great, and which have been dogs? Here's my list of the 5 best and 5 worst.

Facebook's security team have reason to celebrate as they have claimed another scalp in the ongoing fight against spammers on the social network.

With Ruby, and the gosu gem you can do it. It is fairly easy to get going. And if you follow our screencasts, you can have a game going in minutes! Also, take a look at our recent Show and Tell to get some ideas of the games that can be built by beginners. Have fun!