It’s a time of maturation for The Practical Nerd. As you can see, a lot of changes have been made to the site, and I’m really excited about where it’s going to take us! There have been some problems on the backend in the last few months or so, and I took some time to finally clean them out and update the site. Let’s take a look at what’s new:

Cleaner site design

I have a soft spot in my heart for the last design – it was an uncommon theme and it grabbed the eye. However, the theme itself caused quite a bit of problems for the way the site ran. After a while, it felt like the site design was getting cluttered and bogged down. I was not a fan of that.

This new theme is simple, but still has a nice splash of color to it. There’s a sophistication to it – just like us nerds. I think this will go a long way in making this site more pleasant to spend some time on.

The return of the podcast

You bet. The podcast has been strangely absent, but that has mainly been due to a month-long battle with bronchitis that saw me fluctuate between endless coughing and sounding like Barry White. The fiance and I both had to load up with antibiotics and cough medicine, and it just wouldn’t make for a very good podcast to listen to. I’ve since cleared up and I’m excited to record one this week. I also have since upgraded my microphone, so we will have a nice, clear sound – again, a little more professional!

ACTUAL related posts

One of my pet peeves over the past few months has been the "Related Posts" section of each post. Previously, it would just list the most recent posts for some reason. I have since fixed that, and now you can see posts actually related to the one you’re reading from the full Nerd Archives! How cool is that?

Condensed categories

As a baby blogger, I thought having a bunch of categories would help in organizing the site. Now, I realize simpler is better, and tags are where it’s at. So I pulled back on the categories for a more streamlined approach to organization.

New tagline

I have retired the "Helping Cooler People improve and enjoy their lives." I had a dream that I could make "Cooler People" the official buzzword of the blog – a derogatory term for people who live in the mainstream. I now know that I should be focusing my efforts on the word "nerd". So now I am redefining the word "nerd" and the tagline zeroes in on that. This was also aided by the surprise popularity of my "9 Reasons Why Being a Nerd is Awesome" post.

A return to WLW

This one doesn’t mean a whole lot to you, but I have installed Windows XP on a virtual machine within my Ubuntu operating system just to use Windows Live Writer. If you are a blogger, you understand why: WLW is quite possible the best thing Microsoft has ever put out. Ubuntu just didn’t have a comparable solution. I wanted consistency in formatting and WLW is the way to do it, so we’re back in that regard.

More focused sidebar

As of press time, there are 236 posts on The Practical Nerd. That’s not a lot of content for some bloggers, but that’s a good chunk for me. And I want people to be able to navigate through some of that and enjoy all of this great content that I’ve put up here over the last year and a half (if I do say so myself). The simpler sidebar highlights the "Random Posts" section and the tags. Start browsing around and enjoy some classic Nerd stuff!

FIXED FEED!

My most hindering complaint about the site, technically-speaking, over the past year has been the broken feed, which screwed up how the posts looked if trying to subscribe to the site (via Google Reader and others). Happily, we can chalk that one up to the previous design as well, as the feed is fixed! This means I will be setting up the Facebook feed once again, and those looking to subscribe can finally see the content as it is supposed to be presented!

Cleaned up backend

Once again, I believe the last design caused a number of problems on the backend of this blog. You probably won’t notice much of a difference in performance, but all the blog plugins have been updated and the entire system is running remarkably better. To be honest, this whole update has restored my faith in WordPress, and it gives me a better feeling to be writing in a nice, clean blog again.

This update was a long time coming and is a big step for the future of this site. I thank everybody who has stuck around, and I hope to continue to see you guys (and more) throughout the near future!

It’s the most recent operating system to date

Less bloat

Ubuntu Software Center

Slick, not overbearing animation

Multiple desktop support out of the box

FREE

Mac-like simplicity without Mac-like prices

No viruses

Great support

Breathes new life into old hardware

GNOME-Do

Ubuntu One

The above is in honor of the Milwaukee Brewers, who just set a franchise record as I type this for the biggest margin of victory in a shutout win over the Pirates, 20-0. Way to go, fellas! We’ve got a lot of ground to cover today, so let’s just get started:

Family Life

Ironically, even though I don’t have kids, I’m fascinated by articles written by parents about how they raise their kids. Here are a couple I saw (plus a marriage one, too):

• Why You Want a Debt-Free Marriage [Simple Marriage] – This is a nice article that tries to help you avoid the problems that come from money issues in your marriage. Amanda and I won’t be debt-free, but we’ll be working our tails off to get there as quickly as possible.
• What Children Can Teach Their Parents [Stepcase Lifehack] – On the flip side of the usual take on parenting, here’s what the older folks can learn from their rugrats.
• Parenting: 6 Myths You Should Know About [Stepcase Lifehack] – My favorite: “#6. Letting your child struggle or get upset is bad parenting.” Too many people think this is truth.

Put a smiiiiile on your faaaaace…

Happiness seems elusive for so many. Check out these great tips:

• Stuff won’t make you happy, experiences will [Unclutterer] – It shocks me how many people don’t realize this. Even if you consciously understand this, do you subconsciously believe it?
• why i won’t be buying an ipad [mnmlist] – This isn’t an anti-Apple article. It’s a common-sense article.
• The Boy and the Sundae [Becoming Minimalist] – This is a really sweet story that teaches a good lesson about giving back to others.

Nerdy Stuff

Time for something a little more technical – but no less practical!

• Ditch Desktop Apps for Webapps, Free Up RAM, and Enjoy the Best of Both Worlds [Lifehacker] – Most of us have a constant internet connection now, and you can do most computing within a web browser without noticing a difference, except your computer will run better. That’s why I use Google Docs, Gmail, Picasa, Google Reader, and Pandora, among other apps.
• Windows Media Player 12 Streams Your Media Library Over The Internet [Lifehacker] – Say what you want about Microsoft, but they continue to just swing for the fences trying to improve their software for our benefits. I won’t say they’re doing fantastic or anything (I still haven’t tried Windows 7, and it is expensive), but WMP12 lets you connect your music and videos to any computer using the same software that everybody has on their Windows computer. That’s pretty cool.
• Why I’m Returning My Apple iPad [Social Times] – Writer Nick O’Neill puts forth the idea that the iPad is not revolutionary and that Apple has missed the boat here. Besides that, he reiterates like everybody else the same thing: we don’t need it.

Make some changes!

Whether it’s in yourself or in the world, we can all agree that a little change would be nice once in a while:

• From the Greats: 6 Tactics to Increase Your Class and Charm [Dumb Little Man] – The old days weren’t perfect, and I wouldn’t want to bring all of it back (sexism, racism, etc.), but people – especially men – carried themselves differently back then. They had respect for themselves, and that’s something we can agree needs to come back.
• Why Rejection Letters are Great [Write to Done] – Yeah, this is about business and writing, but it could easily be called “Why Rejection Is Great”. In other words, rejection puts you one step closer to success.
• the only thing you can change [mnmlist] – Putting big life changes in perspective. If you feel like you’re in over your head, read this one.
• 6 Proven Ways to Make New Habits Stick [Stepcase Lifehack] – Want to go to the gym? Get up earlier? Eat healthier? Start here.
• How to Lose Weight: 6 of My Own Favorite Tips [The Positivity Blog] – Hint: it’s really not that complicated.
• 9 Great Ways to Be Exceptionally Boring [Stepcase Lifehack, again] – This blog really showed me this last week why I kept it in my Google Reader feeds. This is a quick article showing you the habits that make you a bore (and somebody nobody wants to really be around).
• 34 Little Ways to Share With the World [Zen Habits] – The beauty of today’s internet is that anyone can make big changes with small actions. Here are 34 of them.
• Give Up [Rock Your Day] – Stop expecting things to go well all the time. Life doesn’t owe you jack. Then you’ll see some awesome things happen.
• 42 Practical Ways To Improve Yourself [Stepcase Lifehack] – I’m a sucker for any post with the word “practical” in the title, but this one is a great summation of different ways you can make yourself a better person. Pick one that intrigues you and give it a shot!

Money, money, money, money, moneeyyyyyyy…

No list is complete without some money tips. Here are my favorites from the last two weeks:

• Is It Possible to Manage Credit Cards Well? [Christian Personal Finance] – No. No it isn’t. I got ripped to shreds on Facebook the other day for posting a similar anti-credit card article. Makes me sad.
• 10 Ways To Simplify Your Life [Christian Personal Finance] – Here are some great ways to cut out the clutter in your life and make yourself a little money in the process.
• Why Do You Buy? [The Simple Dollar] – This is a remarkable trick: the next time you go to buy something, ask yourself “Why?” five times, just like a little kid. I bet you will wind up saving a little more money.
• 5 Tips For Going Out to Eat on a Budget [Christian Personal Finance] – I am a big proponent of cooking for yourself, but it’s nice to go out to eat once in a while. But don’t blow the bank account when you do by following these tips.
• How To Buy a $5,000 Car [MoneyTalksNews] – We are a nation full of people that pay too much for their cars. Talk about reliability all you want, but you buy the newer car for the flash. Otherwise, we’d all be driving Toyota Corollas or something. If you want to avoid the car payment trap, you need to buy a good used car. This is a great guide.
• Seven Reasons To Care About The Tiny Things (And Seven Tiny Things To Care About) [The Simple Dollar] – Chances are, the tiny things are more controllable than the large things. And they add up.

The world is abuzz about the pending iPad and it’s pre-orders. Everyone is talking about the Microsoft Courier. You love your iPhone/Droid/Blackberry. You constantly search around for bigger, better devices that will do almost everything in the world. In this “buy-buy-buy” haze, have you forgotten the love for your laptop?

A laptop is a versatile tool. When people talk about user experience on new gadgets, they distract people from an important point – you already know how to use a laptop. A laptop can fit in a small bag and go anywhere you want it to. It’s never as flashy or as impressive as one of these new gadgets, but are you just paying for the flashiness? The status? Aren’t we over that in this country?

Over the past few years of developing into the Nerd that you see before you today, I learned how to push a laptop to do almost anything. It boasts an impressive array of features that we’ve all forgotten about. Today, I want to remind you of all the things your laptop can do, and hopefully inspire some of you to hang on to that relic instead of swiping that credit card for another gadget purchase, or dipping into your hard-earned savings. But first, here are the specs on my laptop, so that you know I’m not talking about some super-laptop that you can’t afford:

This is a dual-core, 1.60GHz Toshiba Satellite laptop with 1.5GB of RAM. It has an 80GB hard drive. I bought it with Vista and downgraded to XP about a year and a half later. This setup cost me about $700 when I bought it in 2007, and a quick search on Newegg.com pops up a computer with twice as much memory and a hard drive FOUR times as large as mine for under $400. Honestly, this computer blows mine out of the water, and it cost almost half as much as I paid for mine.

So here’s the list, in absolutely no particular order. I sat down and jotted down all the things I can use my laptop for, so this is a “stream of consciousness”-type list. A quick editor’s note: I’m not dumb. This list assumes moderate maintenance (i.e., running CCleaner about once a week, having a free antivirus application running at all times), Windows XP (though you don’t need XP for most of this stuff), and a decent internet connection.

1. An e-reader

It’s the flashiest feature of them all right now – read books on a screen! The iPad will have books! Well, you don’t need to buy a new gadget for this necessarily. Barnes And Noble and Amazon both offer free software for reading books on your computer, so if you want to buy ebooks, go right ahead! Better yet, visit Project Guternberg and download over 100,000 free ebooks from the public domain if you want.

This is probably the feature I use the least, since you can’t compare the ease on the eyes of a book compared to an LCD screen. This is one place I think the iPad will fail, and why, if you’re a heavy reader, I actually would recommend getting a dedicated e-reader. The e-ink technology is much, much easier on the eyes.

2. A portable television

I’ve written at length about how you can use your computer as your television, and even hook it up to your TV. But also, for quick show-watching on the go, just visit a site like Hulu. I subscribe to a lot of shows within Hulu and they post to my queue the morning after they air. So, all I need to do is log in, go to my queue, and click “Play”. Boom.

If you’re looking to watch live sports, start getting to know TVAnts and StreamTorrent. Plus, this method ensures that you get out-of-market games, too.

3. A pretty good gaming machine

You hardcore gamers looking to play graphics-intensive games will probably want a powerful desktop, but laptops can handle quite a bit too. Plus, if you’re a casual gamer (like myself), you are just looking for simple games to pass the time, in which case, there are plenty of great gaming sites out there like this one.

4. Your new teacher

Miss college? Want to learn a new skill? There are lots of great places online to see and hear lectures and lessons taught by fine professors from all over the country. Looking for something a little more fun? Learn guitar (see link above) or build something cool at Instructables. There are endless possibilities for what you can learn through your laptop.

5. Your complete photo album

When I go to my grandmother’s house, looking through pictures involves emptying a cabinet full of old albums and sitting at the kitchen table while everyone crowds around them and tries to see what’s going on. Nowadays, all those pictures (and more!) can be stored on your laptop. Back them up to a site like Picasa (my favorite) and tag, organize, and share them with everyone forever.

Bonus tip: set your screensaver to pull pictures from the folder on your computer where you keep all your photos, and your monitor becomes an instant digital photo frame when not in use.

6. Your radio

Talk radio, comedy stations, music of all types and genres – internet radio is fantastic. Set up a Pandora station for customized listening goodness, or listen to hundreds of live radio stations on iheartradio.com. Take it with you.

7. Your complete music library

The local version of the previous tip. Imagine: no CD towers to buy, no cases to spend half an hour opening. Download music from iTunes or Zune Marketplace or Amazon. Store them on your computer (and back them up, of course). Rip your current CD collection and then pack away those discs in a bin somewhere. You can listen to any music at any time, anywhere. It’s a beautiful thing.

8. Your map command center

It doesn’t matter if you are biking, running, or driving a car – sometimes you just need directions. Now, you can type in any location or address into sites like Google Maps or MapQuest and you know exactly how to get anywhere. You no longer have a need for a big paper map that takes up half the front of the car. Just search, print, and move on.

9. Note-taker and organizer

If you want a laugh, look at my notes from high school and college: they’re messy and smudged (I’m a lefty), completely disorganized, and a total failure. Today, with services like Evernote, you can organize and tag your notes, and they won’t be smudged or unreadable. Heck, you can even just use a word processor to get the job done if you want. Just pull your laptop out of its bag and get to typing.

10. Complete database of knowledge, regardless of usefulness

Remember how embarrassing it was to go to a bookstore or a library and pick up one of those stupid “For Dummies” books? Now, you don’t need them. I’m amazed they’re still on the shelves at all. There is no longer an excuse for not knowing something. You can Google it, you can Bing it, you can even Ask Jeeves if you want. Get your plumbing/cooking/health questions answered just by typing your question into a search engine. For facts (mostly accurate), hit up Wikipedia.

11. Your calendar of events

I use Google Calendar, but you can use whatever you want. All the things going on in your life can be chronicled, and you can have reminders sent to you straight from your calendar. Stop missing those anniversaries/birthdays/whatever.

12. An address book

My mom kept an address book for years. When I needed a phone number, I needed to go to the closet, pull it out, flip to the section with the first letter of their last name, navigate through old, crossed-out addresses and skim through until I found what I was looking for. Now? I just sit at my laptop, open up Google Contacts, and use the search box to find the entry with the person I’m looking for. You can use Outlook or something else if you want. But have a backup of all your contacts, and you can search them easily at any time.

13. Your weather station

Hop on Weather.com and enter in your zip code at the top of the page – severe weather warnings, detailed forecasts of the next couple of days, and extended 10-day forecasts all come up. You can watch the live radar if you want. Do this stuff for monitoring the weather of your next vacation destination. Turn off the Weather Channel and put down the newspaper.

14. Your professional presentation tool

Ever notice how you don’t see presentations done with big poster boards anymore? That’s because you just need to load that PowerPoint presentation and plug your laptop into a projector. It looks slicker, makes you look good, and was easy to do with your laptop.

15. Your new checkbook

Wave “bye-bye” to adding and subtracting errors. A complete money management system can be had on any laptop. Need to share it with your husband/wife? Use a free online service like ClearCheckbook or share a Google Doc. The math and tracking is done for you – all you need to do is enter in those transactions.

16. Call anybody, anytime – even by video

VoIP technology continues to advance. I run a Skype phone line with a little headset for business. Want to video chat with somebody like you see in the movies? Get a cheap little webcam and you can all you want. I used to video chat weekly with my then-girlfriend while she was in Taiwan. You can now talk to somebody and see them, regardless of where they are. Powerful stuff.

17. Keep in touch with all of your friends, all the time

High school reunions are becoming obsolete with sites like Facebook. We all know what we are doing, all the time. That’s lame sometimes, but it comes in handy. For example, I have friends all over the country, and I can stay a part of their lives through my communications on Facebook. When done correctly, Facebook can enhance your personal relationships, and you can share joys, sorrows, and laughs with people every day.

18. A retro gaming system

Here’s where the fun starts! Do you miss the Super Nintendo? How about classic Nintendo? Sega Genesis? Hop over to your favorite search engine and type in “SNES emulators” to find a program that will play old Super Nintendo games. Download it, then search for “SNES roms” to find and download the games. Plug in a USB controller and you’ll feel like you’re 8 years old all over again!

19. Sports/News Central

Whether you do it in an RSS feed reader or you just visit a site like CNN or MSN, the headlines are always updating and keep you in the loop at all times. Hit up ESPN for live scores of all of your games. Then, cancel your newspaper subscription. I mean, like, NOW.

20. Your recipe database

When I cook, I just put the laptop on the kitchen counter. I don’t need a shelf of cookbooks (although I do still have a few). You can store recipes in Evernote or use a service like Supercook to manage your inventory of recipes. It makes your cooking life a lot easier, and you never have to remember which recipe book that breaded chicken recipe was in.

21. Track your workouts

DailyMile lets you map and save your runs. DailyBurn allows you the ability to track any type of workout, and even track your nutrition levels. You don’t need to keep a paper notebook or print out a spreadsheet. Type it in, submit it, and move on with your life. Slick, slick, slick.

22. Business-builder

Build a website, run a blog, connect on Facebook/Twitter, design brochures, write copy… the list goes on. Take notes during your meetings with clients. A laptop computer offers the flexibility to work anywhere you choose, provided your business can pay those bills. A laptop, in my opinion, is an absolutely essential tool for business-building today.

23. Create CDs and DVDs

I remember back in 2000 when I first learned how to burn a CD. It took forever. Now, I use CDBurnerXP, but you can use just about anything. Put those home movies on a DVD. Make that mix CD for your friend (or that girl you like). It only takes a couple of minutes, and you can do it right from your laptop.

24. Stream home media anywhere in the house

XBox Media Center, now on the original XBox, PCs, Macs, and Linux machines. All your movies and music on any TV in your house, from your computer.

25. Portable CD/DVD player

Again, another invention that I am shocked is still on shelves: the portable DVD player. Instead, play this stuff on your laptop when sitting on the plane or when you’re supposed to be paying attention in class. Chances are, your laptop can handle any kind of DVD, too.

26. Your to-do list

Google Tasks or Remember The Milk, or about a dozen others. Ditch the paper to-do list and type it up in your laptop. Want to keep it simpler? Open up a little Notepad document and bang out your list.

27. The answers to your minor medical questions

I’ve always been a big fan of WebMD, but there are other ways to get medical questions answered, too. This is not a substitute for a doctor’s visit, of course, but it can help you diagnose minor situations instead of paying that co-pay to be told those lumps on your throat are just leftover food scraps. [Note: this is not a good tip for hypochondriacs.]

28. Your shopping mall, all the time

Want to buy anything? Put your shoes down. Stay in your pajamas. Open up your laptop and get to Amazon. Search for whatever you want, and they’ll have it. Oh, and it’ll be cheaper, too.

Okay, so some of these are obvious, but it helps to have them here. Your laptop is a remarkably strong piece of technology. I would think twice before you ditch it to use some fancy-looking thing that only does two or three things on this list.

What do you use your laptop for?

I planned on doing the “same old” routine of posting a link to an interesting article with a little commentary, but there was just so much going on today that I had to cram it all into one! So here we go:

Why You Need to Abandon Your "Rescue Fantasy" (and yes, you do have one!) – Dave Navarro rocks your day with a look at your “rescue fantasy”. He’s right. A lot of people (myself included) spend our time thinking life would be better if only ___________. What a fantastic article this is!

20 Life Lessons I Learned in my 20′s – Marc from Marc and Angel Hack Life pauses to reflect as he approaches his 28th birthday. We all benefit from it.

13 Awesome Money Saving Sites We Love at Wise Bread – The writers at Wise Bread share where you can find coupons, deals, and plenty of money-saving advice. You can even set up a savings account that people can donate money to!

Gizmodo covers the big Apple announcements of today! – Apple held a big conference today to announce cheaper MacBooks, as well as the iPhone 3GS. In addition, the iPhone 3G will now be $99, according to Apple. So the question is, will this be enough to bring in new Apple fans? We know the fanboys are lusting over it (I’m following a few of them on Twitter – yeah, they get pretty annoying on days like this), but what about us casual users? I haven’t owned a Mac or an iPhone, so now I have to think about whether or not this is enough for me to switch. What about you?

Let’s discuss in the comments, shall we?

One of the hallmarks of being a Practical Nerd is the ability to legally get the most functionality out of your computer without having to pay an arm and a leg. But there are so many people I talk to out there that have no clue about most of these options. Therefore, I am begging you to share this article with everyone you know! It needs to be spread around. There are a few great benefits that come with using these Practical Nerd Alternatives:

• You will literally save hundreds of dollars in most cases.
• About 98% of the general public will still retain all the functionality that they need, if not more.
• You will, in most cases, be able to jump right into the program and know how to use it easily.
• All of these options are perfectly fine to use, even if you are sharing files with someone who is using a more bloated program.
• When these programs get updated with new features – you get them, without having to buy a whole new piece of software!

1. Your office program (word processing, spreadsheets, etc.).

Cooler People: Microsoft Office.

Practical Nerds: Open Office, or Google Documents.

Why?: Microsoft Office is the standard-bearer in office products. Everybody has them, and they do fine work. But in 2007, Microsoft Office started messing around with what worked – they added a “ribbon” interface at the top, which looked really cool. The problem is, people who start using it have NO idea how to find anything! In addition, we all know Microsoft Office is freaking expensive. According to Microsoft’s web site, the retail price for Microsoft Office Standard is $399.95! Yup, and this is a suite of programs that does NOT come with Windows.

Open Office replaces your Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint, while also having a handful of programs of their own. Functionality is simple, but loaded with plenty of features. You can use it to open Office documents – even those created in Office 2007, which Office 2003 can NOT do – and save in those same formats. So, if you need to swap files back and forth with someone using Office, there’s no problem!

Google Documents is a suite of office products online – you do all your work in a web browser. Google Docs is much simpler than Open Office, but still has a host of features that make it comparable for most word processing and spreadsheet needs. It also has the ability to create forms that will then supply data for a spreadsheet automatically, and it has Presentation, which replaces your PowerPoint. All files are hosted online, so it is an automatic backup solution as well. Like Open Office, Google Docs also handles all Office files as well.

2. Your web browser.

Cooler People: Internet Explorer.

Practical Nerds: Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.

Why?: Internet Explorer is junk. It takes up way too much resources and slows your computer down. Most of IE’s features over the last few years have been in response to other web browsers’ features that have proven to be very popular.

I’m a Firefox man, and I’m proud of it. You can customize Firefox to handle all of your web browsing needs and then some. It is a powerhouse, and it has a wizard on its official website to walk you through customizing it to your liking.

Google Chrome is a new kid here on the market, and I know plenty of people who really enjoy it. If a web site causes Chrome to crash, it only crashes the open tab, not the entire browser. It is also simple and clean, allowing you to fill the page with websites rather than toolbars.

3. Your antivirus protection.

Cooler People: Symantec, Norton.

Practical Nerds: AVG, Avira Antivirus, Avast!, Panda Cloud Antivirus

Why?: Because antivirus protection should be free. If you are paying for antivirus protection, it is an absolute waste of your money. Use any of the free solutions above and you will be more than protected. Plus, check out The Practical Nerd’s hands-on review of Panda Cloud Antivirus.

4. In-depth photo editing.

Cooler People: Adobe Photoshop.

Practical Nerds: GIMP.

Why?: Photoshop has become the Kleenex of photo manipulation. If somebody has edited a photo, we say they “Photoshopped” it. It is the biggest thing going – and it costs $699. GIMP is free, and it is powerful. It does just about anything the average person would need. If you are used to Photoshop, try GIMPshop, which is a version of GIMP designed to function very similarly to Photoshop for an easy transition.

5. Your note-taking.

Cooler People: Microsoft OneNote.

Practical Nerds: Evernote.

Why?: OneNote is a powerful program and is a great way to hold all your notes – but it costs $99.95. In my experience with OneNote, backing up your notebooks is a big hassle: when I did, in fact, backup my system before I reinstalled Windows, I could not restore my OneNote backup for anything, and there is very little information online to help out with that. So I lost my notes anyway.

Evernote has both a desktop client and an online note-taking platform for you. They sync automatically, so your notes are always backed up and accessible anywhere. Evernote has plenty of great features, and yes, it is free.

6. Burning CDs and DVDs.

Cooler People: Nero or Roxio.

Practical Nerds: DVDStyler and CDBurnerXP.

Why?: How lame is it that you have to spend a couple hundred bucks on software to use something that came with your computer? Why is this not integrated with any software that comes with your computer? CDBurnerXP handles any CD or DVD burning that you want to throw at it. Want cool menus on your DVD? Use DVDStyler. They are both dead-simple to use and make burning any discs a snap.

7. Playing back music and movies.

Cooler People: Windows Media Player.

Practical Nerds: KMPlayer.

Why?: KMPlayer is my newest discovery, and it might be my favorite. Windows Media Player, while free, is fairly confusing to the average user. If you don’t have the right codecs or something is goofy, it won’t play your video. KMPlayer comes with every codec under the sun, and it plays music, movie files, DVDs, VCDs, you name it – “out of the box”, meaning it just works. Install it and then just use it. It’s slick-looking, and it can handle whatever you want to throw at it. Many people online will tell you to use VLC Player for this, but I find VLC to be just a bit confusing for the average user, and it did not always work properly on my XP machine. KMPlayer does, every time.

8. Handling all of your emails and scheduling.

Cooler People: Microsoft Outlook.

Practical Nerds: Gmail and Google Calendar.

Why?: Outlook is also in the Microsoft Office suite, meaning we’re already talking about paying hundreds of dollars just to use it. Gmail allows you to organize all of your email accounts in one place, enables you to search deeply through all of your emails, and you can download a notifier to sit in your system tray to let you know when you have new mail, just like Outlook. Plus, Gmail stores everything online, so you free up a LARGE amount of space on your computer! Gmail also has a new feature called Gmail Offline, which allows you to work on your email offline and sync it up with your Gmail account when you restore internet access. It’s all free, and there are more features than I can even talk about here – I plan to put together a user’s guide to Gmail in the near future.

Google Calendar allows any type of color-coding, will automatically email or text you reminders of events (if you want it to), imports any number of calendars, and you can even share calendars with other people (handy for families that need to work off of one calendar). And like Gmail, Google Calendar stores everything online, which means it is accessible anywhere.

9. Handling your finances.

Cooler People: Microsoft Money, or Quicken.

Practical Nerds: Spreadsheets (both Open Office and Google Docs have checkbook templates online), Mint, Thrive, ClearCheckbook, many others.

Why?: Is it ironic that money management programs cost so much? Microsoft Money costs $59.99, and it has a ridiculous number of features that nobody is ever going to use. Quicken is $39.99 and is pretty much the same. Also, a new version comes out for both and you are stuck with outdated software.

One of my more anticipated posts in the next week or so will be how to manage your money for free and get all the functionality you would use out of Money or Quicken. By combining a spreadsheet with an online account aggregator like Mint or Thrive, you get all the reports you need, plus extra (and useful!) features that only online offerings present. But in brief, spreadsheets allow a neat, safe way to track your expenses while the program does the math for you. Plus, it saves paper, if you are into that sort of thing.

Whew! That’s a lot of different options! But as you can see, mainstream, well-known programs are not always the best options for you. You’ve just been using them because everyone else has. Now you can drop those bulky programs and still do everything you are used to doing! Do you disagree with any of these choices? Do you use a different option not listed here? Sound off in the comments! Let’s hear it!

In the past year, as I’ve dived deeper and deeper into nerdism, I’ve made drastic changes to my computer. It all started with Windows Vista. I defended Vista for over a year – my laptop came with it, and all I really needed out of it was decent performance and an internet connection. Nothing fancy. Then one day last year, about a month after I started living off of my writing business (which completely depended on having an active internet connection throughout the day), my internet would not load any pages. I was connected, but I couldn’t do anything. My then-roommate could do anything with XP, but I was stuck.

I took it to a “Windows Certified” computer repair service. They even came over and sat at my desk for over an hour. Nothing. The guy took it home and worked on it for hours. Nothing. His solution? Reinstall Windows. I called Toshiba (the maker of my laptop) and they told me the same. There was no solution. I found forums online with people who had the same problem, but with no fix for it.

Now, as much as I would like this article to be about how much I hate Vista for that, it’s not. I’m setting this up for you. I didn’t have a copy of XP, and every version of Vista comes with a free downgrade to XP if needed – except for Vista Basic. Guess which version I had? So, since I didn’t have over $200 lying around to buy XP, I started looking at Ubuntu, which is a version of Linux. I tried it out, loved it, and made copies of all my important files onto my external hard drive for “safekeeping”. But, as I installed Ubuntu, I learned that I had absolutely NO idea what I was doing, and I promptly (accidentally) erased my entire external hard drive clean. All those important files and business notes were gone.

So I’m an idiot, right? Well, I learned from that experience and made sure I knew what I was doing the next time I had to install a new operating system on my computer. In fact, I had to do such a thing later in the year, when I learned that Ubuntu wouldn’t allow me to run Skype through my computer – and I had already purchased a phone line through Skype for a year. I managed to get a copy of XP and, after unplugging my external drive so that nothing could happen to it, I reinstalled my computer yet again. But I took my time in moving everything off the external drive onto my laptop’s hard drive right away.

Two weeks later, the hard drive failed completely. All my files were gone. Again.

Now, you may be backing up to an external drive or DVDs, or you may not be backing up at all. But just because you are not reinstalling operating systems every few months doesn’t mean you have no need. Here are a handful of reasons why you need an online backup solution:

1. We all keep important files on our computers nowadays. You’ve got financial records, work documents, and pictures on your computer. It’s a part of your household now, right? You need to protect that stuff!
2. Hard drives fail (apparently). All hard drives can fail. Any time. You just can’t rely on them in the long term for all your storage needs. You need to keep multiple copies to ensure that, when one of them does fail, you can restore your files from another.
3. Natural disasters can negate any local backup. A fire, a flood, a tornado, an earthquake – you name it. If you’ve got everything backed up to an external drive that is sitting right next to your computer, you are missing the point. That’s like making two copies of a document and putting them in the same folder on the shelf. It doesn’t make sense. If one gets physically damaged, chances are both will.

So when I sat down to finally set up my long-overdue online backup, I had certain criteria that I needed to follow:

• It needed to be free, or darn close to it.
• It had to be as simple and pain-free as possible.
• It needed to be reliable.
• It needed to be automatic. I didn’t want to have to constantly be copying files over to the “backup folder” or anything.

So I found Syncplicity, and my search was over.

Syncplicity is a beautiful program. It works for XP users, Vista users (and all you Vista users are going to need it!), and even Mac users as well. You can install Syncplicity, set it up, and have your files backed up before you even figure out how to pronounce their stinking name. Here’s how you can set yours up today and finally enjoy the peace of mind that comes with online backup.

Sign up for a Syncplicity account and install the software.

Syncplicity has two plans: a free plan and a paid one. I use the free one, and it’s all I need – 2 GB of online storage. The free plan also comes with the ability to sync files across 2 different computers. This is incredibly handy if you have a home desktop computer and a laptop that you take on the road. When you use their service, you can automatically have a copy of each document or file stored on both computers. Nice and easy.

Tell Syncplicity which folders to keep backed up.

With Syncplicity, you don’t need to sit and make copies of files all the time. You don’t even need a separate backup folder. The only thing you have to do is tell the program which folders to watch. Syncplicity will automatically back up any files and subfolders in your designated folders. Plus, if you make any changes to a document, the program will back up the new version immediately after you hit the “Save” button. This is the definition of “no muss, no fuss”.

That’s it!

Now, anything that’s backed up will have a little green checkmark next to it, showing you it’s safe. Syncplicity will also be running in the background, taking up very little resources and backing up everything on-the-go. As you make changes, they are being saved. It doesn’t get much simpler than that!

Syncplicity also has extra features, such as easy file and folder sharing with friends, and automatic Facebook integration for pictures that you back up with the program. Check out Syncplicity’s website for more information and to sign up. Do you already have a favorite online backup solution that we should know about? Share it in the comments!