Island Dog's Articles In Personal Computing » Page 3
March 26, 2021 by Island Dog
I've been using Microsoft Edge as my main browser for quite a while now, and I've been quite happy with it. I really like the Collections feature and I really haven't had any issues with the browser overall. A new feature that came out earlier in the month I believe is vertical tabs . It's a simple idea but for those of us who have been using "regular" tabs for years, might be not so sure about it. That's where I am with it. Using tabs in a browser is just natural now, and I don't even think...
February 3, 2021 by Island Dog
I recently picked up a new 4K monitor for my PC as I gave my current ultrawide to my wife for her work at home setup. I realized I had purchased that monitor in 2016 for this PC which means it was even older. Looking back at my receipts and my previous blog on my PC build , I was a bit surprised that I built it in 2015. I've updated a few things over the years with the last upgrade being a GTX 1660 Super video card, but otherwise it was mostly the same. It has worked very well over the years,...
November 20, 2020 by Island Dog
Happy Friday! I was sitting here trying to straighten up my work area before the work week ends and thought maybe that should be the part of the topic for this week's question. I have my main desktop PC which I mostly use for gaming and design work. My Dell XPS laptop is really just dedicated for work stuff, and I also have an iPad on my desk for casual web browsing and keeping up with emails.  We have a desktop workstation thread here on the forums, and we've seen some really cool ...
November 12, 2020 by Island Dog
I've been updating some of my countdown gadgets for Christmas, and I always had a lot of fun making them. They seem to work just fine on Windows 10 and I still see people using them and other gadgets like my Christmas lights when screenshots are posted around the holiday season. So that brings us to weeks question. Do you still use desktop gadgets, and if so, do you have any favorites? Share them in the comments below.
November 4, 2020 by Island Dog
I came across this post today and it's a good reference for aspect ratios and screen resolutions. https://www.displayninja.com/what-is-aspect-ratio/
November 2, 2020 by Island Dog
In 2015 I wrote a blog post here showing my PC build that I was working on. I've had that PC ever since and it's been one of the best PC build I've ever done. It would run many of the latest games at ultra settings, and has been a great PC to edit videos and just do general work with.  I've added a couple small upgrades such as doubling the RAM to 16GB, adding another SSD drive for games, and replacing smaller hard drives for bigger storage.  Lately though, games are runnin...
September 18, 2020 by Island Dog
Somehow, I missed this giveaway earlier, but I wanted to post it as it ends this weekend. Our friends over at Neowin are giving a Lenovo Legion 5i gaming laptop (U.S. only). Head over to Neowin for the details and how to enter:  https://www.neowin.net/news/giveaway-were-giving-away-a-lenovo-legion-5i-gaming-laptop-us-only
September 15, 2020 by Island Dog
We have a large wallpaper gallery here and since we've been focusing on getting more content added, I was wondering how you use some of these. Specifically, do you take a desktop wallpaper and use it as the wallpaper on your mobile device such as a phone or tablet? On most of my mobile devices I typically just use a photo from my photo album, but I have used downloaded wallpapers before.
September 3, 2020 by Island Dog
Since the beginning of COVID, webcams have been hard to come by as vast amounts of people starting both working from home and having school at home. Webcams sold out for months and it seems they are just now slowly coming back in stock.  If you have a Sony camera such as a RX100 or an A-series camera, you can now easily use them as a webcam without any additional hardware. Sony released the Imaging Edge Webcam application for free so if you have a Sony camera, be sure to grab it. htt...
July 29, 2020 by Island Dog
Happy Birthday Windows 10! Today is 5 years since Windows 10 was originally released on July 29th, 2015. I've been a user since before that being in various beta programs, and overall I have been happy with it over these past few years. It's also exciting for me to be part of a great company that makes awesome products to make Windows 10 even better! Windows 10 has certainly changed a lot over the past 5 years with lots of updates, and our friends over at Neowin have put together a great arti...
July 23, 2020 by Island Dog
I have a new CNC machine going in my shop, and I needed a Windows PC to run the code going to the machine. My current laptop I use for work is a Dell XPS 15" 4K touchscreen which is something I'm not going to keep in a place that is often filled with sawdust. So I needed something as cheap as possible but still capable of running quite a few applications. After searching on Amazon and eBay I narrowed it down to a $90 Windows tablet and an Acer 15" laptop for $190 . I ended up purchasing the lap...
July 24, 2020 by Island Dog
Computer monitors have become much bigger and the prices have become quite more reasonable than they used to. I picked up a nice 34" widescreen for just a couple of hundred bucks. It's not 4K, but HD has been working quite well for me. I do have a 4K touchscreen laptop, and that is certainly nice to have when working with images and video. But the question today is what size wallpaper resolution do you typically look to download? Do you even look to see what resolutions are available? ...
July 7, 2020 by Island Dog
I admit I should be using more keyboard shortcuts aside from just the most basic ones such as copy and paste. I was browsing Windows Central and they have an article which lists all the essential Windows 10 shortcuts. They even have them broken down to help you narrow down any you might be looking for. I'm going to go through it and find some of the most useful that I might use. Here's their list:  https://www.windowscentral.com/best-windows-10-keyboard-shortcuts
June 10, 2020 by Island Dog
Files UWP is a new app that's currently in beta in the Microsoft Store. It's a nice modern app you can use as an alternative to Windows Explorer.  Thanks to Yarlen for the tip! You can download it here .
June 4, 2020 by Island Dog
I have a 15" Dell XPS 4K touchscreen laptop that I primarily use for work purposes. Any productivity software I need is bought and used mostly for this machine. Over the years, I've tried out more types of apps than I could probably ever remember or count. Most of them I never stuck with because they ended up not being not very useful for what I needed. Now, of course everyone's view on what is productive for them will vary from person to person, but I wanted to talk about the software I have...