We’ve all used USB sticks to transport files between computers and back up our files, but there are other cool things you can do with a USB stick. You can use one to lock and unlock your computer — just like in the movies. You can also use a USB flash drive to quickly connect to a wireless network on all your PCs, increase your computer’s performance, or even run a web server – directly from the USB stick itself.

Windows XP users can also check out Microsoft’s useful USB Flash Drive Manager application, although it’s been discontinued and does not function on newer versions of Windows.

Lock & Unlock Your Computer

Do you want to lock and unlock your computer with a physical device, like they do in the movies? Use the free PREDATOR application, which turns a USB flash drive into an access control device – a key for your computer. When you leave your PC, unplug the USB stick and your computer will be locked. When you return, plug it back in and your computer will be unlocked. It’s like using the Lock function in Windows, but you don’t have to type your password when you return.

When you unplug your USB flash drive, your open windows will minimize and your screen will go dark – plug it back in and your screen will turn back on.

Quickly Connect To Wireless Networks

Windows includes a feature that can save your current wireless network’s name, password, and other information to a USB stick. You can then use the USB stick to quickly connect to your Wi-Fi network on other computers without typing the password over and over again. In fact, you can even use this USB stick to quickly connect an Xbox 360 to your Wi-Fi network – just select the Windows Connect Now option while setting up a wireless network on your Xbox.

To save your Wi-Fi settings to a USB flash drive, click the wireless icon in your system tray, right-click your current wireless network, and select Properties.

On the Connection tab, click the Copy this network profile to a USB flash drive link.

Click the Next button and Windows will copy the settings for the configured network to your USB stick. Connect the USB stick to another computer, and then double-click the setupSNK.exe file on it to install your network profile on the computer.

Increase Performance With ReadyBoost

If you have a slow hard disk drive in your computer, ReadyBoost can help speed things up. When you enable ReadyBoost for a drive, it acts as a hard drive cache, caching frequently used files. If it’s faster to read from the USB stick instead of your hard drive, Windows will read files from the cache on your flash drive instead. You won’t see much of a performance boost if you have a 7200+ RPM drive – if you have a solid-state drive, Windows won’t let you use ReadyBoost because the cache will be slower than your SSD.

To enable ReadyBoost, right-click a USB stick in Windows Explorer, select Properties, and use the options on the ReadyBoost tab. Windows will only let you enable ReadyBoost if your USB stick is fast enough, so you might see these options grayed out for some devices. ReadyBoost also requires a flash drive with at least 256 MB of free space.

Install A Portable Web Server

If you’re a web developer, you can install Server2Go on your flash drive and turn it into a portable web server. Server2Go includes a complete WAMPP server stack – that’s Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl. You can plug the Flash drive into any Windows computer and quickly launch your web server – no installation required. Having a complete web server package in your pocket can be ideal for demonstrations at meetings and many other purposes – you’re only limited by your imagination. Server2Go is a completely free download.

Use Microsoft’s USB Flash Drive Manager

If you’re still using Windows XP, check out Microsoft’s USB Flash Drive Manager application – unfortunately, it doesn’t work with Windows Vista, Windows 7, and other newer versions of Windows. (You’ll also need this version of the .NET Framework installed to run it.)

USB Flash Drive Manager focuses on managing flash drives – you can back up images of flash drives to your computer, restore them, easily copy files to and from your hard drive, and label your USB stick. It brings together many common flash drive functions located in Windows (along with some that aren’t included elsewhere in Windows, like easy backup and restore) in one window – very convenient for less-experienced users.

You can also install a wide variety of portable applications which you can run off your USB stick without installing them. Check out our list of the best portable apps to get started!

What are some of the cool things you’ve done with a flash drive? Leave a comment and let us know!

Image Credit: USB Flash Memory Close-Up via Shutterstock

It has started this week. Boingo Wireless, the company that has a global presence in Wi-Fi services, extended its footprint across the U.S. with 4,000 new hotspots. Partnering with Google Play, the network is offering complimentary (that reads free) access on high-footfall locations across the country for users of Android phones and tablets, and also Windows and Mac users. It won’t be free for others of course, but the segment of Android, Windows, and Mac laptop users should be a large chunk in itself. But please note that the free Boingo Wi-Fi is only for September.

Among the 4000 new Wi-Fi hotspots, you have 15 airports, such as New York’s John F. Kennedy, Chicago O’Hare and Seattle-Tacoma, Boingo-enabled Manhattan subway stations, and thousands of hotels, shopping malls, cafés and recreational areas. All these are high-traffic spots.

Dawn Callahan, vice president of consumer marketing for Boingo Wireless said about the Google sponsorship –

“Sponsorships like this give users the free Wi-Fi they crave, advertisers the consumer interaction they need, and venues the revenue to offset the costs associated with providing a high-bandwidth Wi-Fi experience.”

The wide swathe of hotspots should be a treat for Android users at least for the free month. Though it is an advertising ploy on the part of Google to make users explore Google Play, it is also an incentive to cut down on your data plan for the month if you are in the vicinity of the hotspots.

Source: Boingo

El explorador de archivos es una parte esencial del sistema Windows. Desde él puedes consultar y organizar tus archivos, administrar tus carpetas y muchas cosas más.

En Windows 8, el explorador de archivos obtiene un ligero lavado de cara mediante la integración de la cinta (Ribbon)  de Office. A continuación te explicamos este y otros cambios del explorador de archivos de Windows.

Cintas, cintas por todas partes

Primero fue Office 2007, luego se extendió a algunos programas de Windows como Wordpad o Paint, y ahora ha llegado también al explorador de archivos: sí, estamos hablando de la cinta, o Ribbon.

Se extiende por Facebook un preocupante rumor concerniente a la privacidad:

"Si uno de tus amigos comenta o indica que le gusta una de tus publicaciones, entonces todos sus amigos pueden verla también"

Pero no todo son malas noticias: se indica también cómo solucionarlo.

¿Es cierto este rumor? No, quien lo redactó desconocía por completo cómo funciona la privacidad de Facebook.

El rumor

Como suele suceder con este tipo de alarmas-pásalo-y-salvaremos-el-mundo, hay varias versiones del mismo texto circulando por la red. Esta es una de ellas:

A todos mis contactos, les pido por favor: Con los cambios de FB, ahora te enteras de cosas de gente que no tienes en tus contactos. Sólo porque un contacto tuyo hace un comentario o pone "me gusta" en algo de esa persona. YO NO QUIERO que la gente que no es contacto mío pueda leer y ver todos mis comentarios y cosas. Pero no lo puedo cambiar yo mismo, porque facebook lo configuró así.

Así que te pido POR FAVOR que aquí mismo arriba, pon el mouse sobre mi nombre (sin hacer click), espera que aparezca una ventana y pon el mouse sobre "Amigos", (también sin hacer click), después baja a "Configuración" y ahí SÍ haz click y aparece una lista. Haz click en "Comentarios y Me gusta" y con eso SE QUITA EL CHECK, de manera que mi actividad entre mis amigos y mi familia no se vuelva del dominio público. Mil Gracias!

Presiona "me gusta" en este comentario si quieres que lo haga con tu perfil. Y pega esto en tu muro para que tus contactos hagan la mismo, si te interesa tu privacidad. SI YA LO HICISTE... GRACIAS!

Después de habernos quedado con un sabor amargo el año pasado esperando el iPhone 5 y desayunándonos con el iPhone 4S llegó el momento, Apple finalmente presentó hoy su nuevo iPhone.

Your brand-new computer should be zippy -- not pokey.

Disappointed because the sleek, sexy new computer you bought moves like a snail? The problem may not be the machine's specs. Extra applications installed on top of Windows by the PC manufacturer can bloat and slow your brand-new system. Use third-party tools, built-in utilities and a bit of research to rid your new computer of memory-hungry apps you were never going to use anyway. Be careful, though, to preserve important system features. If you remove anti-malware protection, be sure to install a solid replacement.

Cuando compramos una PC lo primero que vemos son las características que tiene como, procesador, memoria RAM, etc. Y muchas veces creemos que va a ser la PC mas rápida del mundo, pero cuando comenzamos a utilizarla vemos que no es lo que esperábamos, y creemos que es porque tal vez algún virus ya nos fastidio o muchas otras cosas mas pensamos, pero tal vez una de las cosas que no se nos cruza jamás por la mente, es la idea de que los programas que nuestra computadora ya tiene por defecto son las que ocasionan que nuestra PC no sea lo que esperábamos, aquí te damos algunos consejos sobre algunas cosas que tal vez tienes que considerar no retener en tu PC.