The PC Report

Wolfram Alpha is quite possibly the best maths and computational tool available on the internet. The Wolfram|Alpha “Computational Knowledge Engine” is basically an intelligent search engine that instead of outputting sites for you to visit based on search keywords, it works out solutions and answers, and gives information based on what you’ve entered.

For example, enter the parabolic equation y=x^2+3x+5 and it’ll graph it for you. If you enter death michael jackson it will find the date of his death and post information about that date. Enter gdp australia and it will output info about Australia’s GDP. There are so many more uses, you should just try it out for yourself – head over to Wolfram Alpha now.

I find myself using this really simple add-on for Firefox all the time. Basically what it does is when you highlight text in a passage/title/link/whatever, then drag and drop it anywhere, it will search Google in a new tab for the highlighted text. It also works with unlinked URLs – just highlight an unlinked URL such as google.com, drag & drop it and it will automatically go to the URL – and photos – just drag & drop to download the image (you can disable that if you like).

You’ll find yourself using it a lot if you’re a Firefox user, so head over to the QuickDrag add-on page now to download it.

ImgBurn is by far the easiest and best way to burn disc images on your computer to an actual disc – and it’s free too. When you have an image on your computer, just right click the file, choose burn using ImgBurn, set up your options and wait for it to burn. Simple, easy and completely free and it supports a wide range of disc images and disc types (including Blu-ray). No need to use Nero or another bloated application for your image burning any more.

Fraps is a very handy tool for PC gamers to have, for many reasons. First, is that it can display the current FPS (Frames Per Second) that the game you’re playing is running at, in a simple overlay. It can also record the FPS in a log in case you want to use it for testing purposes or working out averages. This can come in handy if you want to set the game’s graphics for the best possible look and performance.

You also can use Fraps to take screenshots in-game via a hotkey of your choice and save them to a specific directory. I use this all the time when I see something cool in a game that I might want to show my friends. You can see a screenshot I took in-game with Fraps below. You also have a movie recording feature that, if your CPU is powerful enough, can record at up to 60 FPS in a full-sized video with stereo audio. Unfortunately if you don’t configure Fraps correctly for video recording, while recording the game can become quite unplayable.

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Unfortunately the monitor I use does not have height adjustment, and it was too low for my liking so I searched around for a simple and effective method to raise the height of the monitor. I discovered the simple CD monitor stand. All you have to do is find some old CD cases (preferably with no CDs in them) and tape them up into a block shape for your monitor to sit on it. It may not look the greatest, but it’s simple, easy to make, and you can adjust the height in the future by removing/adding more CD cases.

Middle clicking on the taskbar in Windows is a simple thing to do, however it will do different things depending on your Windows version. In Windows Vista, middle clicking a taskbar item will close it, just like closing a tab in your browser. In Windows 7, middle clicking the taskbar will open another instance of the program (eg. in Word it opens a new document). If you want to close the application like in Vista, you’ll have to middle click the preview window, which is easy enough. Try these simple mouse-click shortcuts in future; you might find yourself using it all the time.

Last.fm is a music networking site that not only records what songs you’ve been playing and shares them with your friends, but also recommends you artists based on what you listen to, shows how compatible you are with your friends music tastes and has a radio station that you can listen to over the web (free only in some countries). It’s a great way to find new music for your collection and connect with friends and their music too.

To get started, all you have to do is make a Last.fm account, follow the instructions to get started and then download the music scrobbler for your media player. It works with most music players on the computer, as well as your iPod/iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian OS and even your Xbox 360 (and many more). And if you’re looking for me, I’m scorpus57.

It’s surprising how many people don’t know about this really handy keyboard shortcut. If you’re a Windows user, just press Alt key in combination with the Print Screen (PrtScn) key, and this will take a screenshot of your open/selected window, instead of the whole screen as plain old PrtScn does. Then, you can paste the screenshot anywhere you like, such as Paint, Word, Photoshop, etc. This hopefully will save you lots of cropping time for your captured images.