Island Dog's Articles In Personal Computing » Page 9
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 18, 2020 by Island Dog
It is a good time to give your PC a little maintenance. I also got a new SSD drive just for games, and while I was installing that I was amazed at the amount of dust that has accumulated in the case. I had to disassemble the CPU cooler to get all the years of dust that got trapped in the heat sink.
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...
April 10, 2020 by Island Dog
This is a great video encoding software that was recommended to me by AzDude. I came across this giveaway and sweepstakes and wanted to share. This is especially useful if you are creating .dream files. Get it here: https://www.videoproc.com/video-editor/free-video-editors-software-review.htm  
March 17, 2020 by Island Dog
We always posts screenshots of our desktops, but lets take it a bit further and post images of your desktop setups!  
October 30, 2018 by Island Dog
Recently, I shared an  intro to customizing your Windows desktop . This time, I wanted to do the same type of article, but put the focus on desktop productivity apps. Organize your desktop icons with Fences Fences is one of our most popular apps for a productive desktop. Fences allows you to create fenced off areas on your desktop that you can place your icons in to organize them how you like. Fence can be customized with colors and transparency, and can also be rolled-up to save sp...
October 16, 2018 by Island Dog
My wife and I currently do cruise travel vlogs on YouTube. Recording all our adventures is fun while we’re on a ship, but the real work begins when it’s time to sort through and edit all that footage we have captured over the week. For many years I have done photo editing, which is also quite time consuming, but that’s nothing compared to what it takes to get a whole video edited and ready for uploading. That means I need to use every tool at my disposal to make the process a...