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Whatever you do, never ever ever ever ever clean your LCD screen with Windex! The ammonia in the Windex will degrade your LCD and ruin your screen. :(

There are tons of over the counter solutions for cleaning your LCD, but I am going to give you a solution you can put together with ingredients you have around the house. The homemade solution is equally as effective as any over the counter product, and does not contain any chemicals that are harmful to the environment! yah! :D

You will need the following:

• a soft cloth (100% cotton only)
• 90-98% isopropyl rubbing alcohol
• Distilled Water
• 100% cotton swabs
• Spray bottle (optional)

Never use anything other than a cotton cloth to wipe your LCD screen. Paper towels will scratch your screen so do not use them!

Create cleaning solution.
You want to create a solution that is exactly half water and half alcohol. Use a measuring cup or eyeball it if you feel comfortable doing it that way. If you have a spray bottle, mix your solution in the bottle.

Prep cloth and wipe.
Dampen your cotton cloth with the solution, making sure it's not so damp that you can wring the water out of it. Wipe your screen in a circular motion. Do not press hard on the screen; just enough to remove the dirt and oil. After you have wiped the entire screen, take a cotton swab, dampen it in the solution, and clean the edges of the screen.

Once you've finished cleaning the screen, take a dry cloth and wipe the screen dry.

That's all there is to it. Only clean the screen when you need to. You shouldn't have to clean your LCD much, but make sure not use Windex! If you do decide to go with an over the counter solution, let me know which one you use and how well it worked.

Best of Luck!
;)]]>Guru LloydMay 30, 2008http://2pointhome.com/articles/tip/44629

Tossing old computers and electronics in the trash is bad for the planet. Techno-Guru Lloyd gives a smarter alternative.

Some helpful e-cycling links:

- Verizon Wireless Hopeline
Feel doubly good, as not only does this program recycle or refurbish your old wireless phones and equipment, it also uses the proceeds to support domestic violence prevention.

- Verizon Battery Recycling Program
Just drop your old cell phone battery off at any Verizon Wireless retail store, and keep all those heavy metals out of the landfill.

- Earth 911
This site has a bunch of informative articles on e-waste and e-cycling.

- How to Recycle Your Computer
Treehugger.com article.

You've probably seen this little orange icon on websites before (including this one):

But do you know what it means, or how fantastically useful it can be?

It's the symbol for RSS, which stands for "Really Simple Syndication" (or "Rich Site Summary," depending on who you ask.) Either way, it's a really practical tool that can save you time when you surf the Internet, especially if you have a bunch of favorite sites you visit regularly.

With an RSS reader, instead of checking each site individually in your web browser -- which may or may not have new content since the last time you checked -- you can view each site's RSS feed and be notified when the site updates. Instead of showing you content from the whole page, though, RSS readers will generally show you an article's title and first paragraph or so, making it really easy to skim through your favorite sites and just read what you want.

I use a program called Shrook, which works well with Mac computers, but all RSS readers work in basically the same way. Here are what some of my RSS feeds look like in my reader:

As you can see, Shrook uses a little yellow star to show when a site has been updated; I can then click on that site's listing and see summaries of the updates:

Then if I see an article that interests me, I can click on it, go to that page in my web browser and read the whole thing.

An RSS reader is ideal for keeping up with blogs, but you could also use it to, say, be notified when a certain airline flight goes on sale, or when someone puts that carburetor for your classic car up for auction on eBay. (A blogger named Jimmy R. has a good YouTube video on using RSS feeds in this way.)

Feedreader and Google Reader are two popular RSS readers, but there are tons of them out there, some with their own sets of bells-n-whistles. Blogger Paul Stamiatou (whom you may remember from his FiOS review a few months ago) wrote an excellent piece on RSS readers, highlighting the details of a few favorites, if you want to really drill down into some specifics.

Desktop shortcuts (called "aliases" on Macs) are okay, as they're just links to programs stored on your hard drive, but you should avoid storing whole files directly on your desktop. (In case you didn't know, your desktop is the main screen you see after your computer's done booting up. It usually has icons for "My Computer," "Recycling Bin," and shortcuts for whatever software's been installed.)

Read More...

One thing you might not have realized is that besides just the programs you opened, your computer is likely to be running a whole mess of other programs, tasks and utilities on its own. Some of these programs are necessary for your computer to function properly, and should not be messed with. Others might be useless, memory-hogging junk that could be deleted for better performance, using your Windows Task Manager.

Unfortunately, computer files are usually given cryptic names like "drgtodsc.exe" not "HEY, YOU DON'T REALLY NEED THIS." So how can you tell what to delete and what to keep?

Fortunately Kevin Purdy of Lifehacker.com has written an excellent step-by-step article on how to do just that, complete with links to software that will help you decipher what's what, prioritize your programs and kill the bad ones before they crash your whole system.

Just be advised: I'd say it probably takes at least an intermediate level of computer skills to follow Kevin's directions, so if you get flustered by things like email attachments, you may want to have a tech-savvy friend walk you through the process before you go on a delete-spree.

Happy streamlining!]]>Jim 2.0Mar 21, 2008http://2pointhome.com/diys/steps/44385

You've made the resolution that this is the year you're finally going to learn how to use your computer for something besides an expensive paperweight. You saw the Gurus on My Home 2.0 and decided to come here for some help. Congrats! If you're just starting out with your first computer, or don't use your old one all that much, these beginner tips can help you a lot.

And if you've been using computers for ages now, you can always forward these tips on to those less tech-savvy people in your life...and spend less of your valuable time on the phone yelling things like, "Whaddya mean, you don't know how to clear your cache?!"

]]>Jim 2.0Mar 21, 2008