If your system partition, where Windows, applications are installed, personal files and settings exist is beginning to fill up you have a number of options such as freeing up disk space by uninstalling applications or move files from the local drive to an external hard disk. This can be a chore though, because you just don’t know when a need to use an application might arise or you might need to reference a file, which means plugging in your external hard disk and turning it on. Although these are minor inconveniences, there is still a better option, such as installing a new hard disk and separate your personal files from your system drive.

The key benefits of this are;

• your system drive does not full up easily
• better performance
• in the event of a disaster your personal files are kept much safer.

This is also handy for users who might be moving to Solid State Disks, which are fast, but small in storage capacity and still expensive. The great thing too about SSD’s is, you can use them in combination with a mechanical spinning hard disk. So you can have an SSD just for your operating system and applications and keep your large files such as videos, pictures and music on the hard disk when you need to access and store them. In this article, we take a look at such a scenario, based up on redirecting your Windows 7 Personal Folder (or User Folder or what is known as the account folder for Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos to another storage location. Please note, this also works great for partitions too, so if you have a big old hard disk in your computer, you can partition it and redirect some of your user folders there.

How to Change The Location of Your Personal Folders in Windows 7

To open your User folder, click Start > and click on your account name up at the top of the Start menu.

In this folder you will see all the common locations where you store and organize your different data types, like Word documents, spreadsheets, pictures, music, videos and even contacts and saved searches. Before we start redirecting any of these folders to a new storage location, lets prepare the location.

A few months ago, I had created a new partition for backup files, I am going to be using it to store my Documents folder. The first thing I want to do is create a new folder here with an identifiable name to indicate that it belongs to me. Click the ‘New folder’ button on the command bar and give a name, I going to call it adacosta also since that is my user name on this computer.

Creating a folder for our redirected Personal folders.

Another benefit of doing this too, if you have other user accounts on the computer and would like redirect their user folders, you won’t overwrite or damage files from either account.

Once you have created and given the folder a name, go back to your user folder, select the folder you would like to redirect, right click it and click Properties.

This will bring up the properties dialog of that folder, click the Location tab. As described, you can change where files in this folder are stored to another place on tis hard drive, another drive, another computer on your network. Just like we intend to do, click the Move button to begin.

This will bring up the ‘Select a Destination’ window, navigate to the location where you would like to have the Documents folder stored. In my case, it’s on the E:\ Volume in the adacosta folder. I had forgotten to also create a destination folder for it, so I will click ‘New folder’ on the command bar and Select Folder to change its location.

The new location has now moved from C:\ to E:\ to complete this action, click Apply and OK.

Click Yes when this dialog appears.

Any files created from now on that are Saved to the Documents Library in Windows 7, will automatically be saved on the E:\ drive, see below:

Remember, you can repeat this same step for other personal folders such as Music, Pictures, Videos or any of the others available in the User folder.

How to Redirect Your Personal Folders in Windows 7 is a post by Andre from Notebooks.com.

If you want to make Windows a bit more personal, you can customize and change wallpaper in Windows 7 themes in order to change how Windows 7 looks and give it a personal touch.

Themes are one of the great aesthetic features of Windows 7. Microsoft provides a website just for downloading new themes and wallpapers. I must admit, I am an avid collector, especially of the Best of Bing Theme Packs.

No matter how nice the themes look, some themes have a wallpaper or two you don’t find so attractive, here is how you can remove the wallpapers you don’t like from Windows 7 Slideshow themes.

Step 1. Right click the desktop, click Personalize

Step 2. Make sure your wallpaper theme has been selected then click the Desktop Background link a the bottom of the Personalization window.

This will display a gallery of all the wallpapers in that particular theme.

Step 3. Hover over the wallpaper you don’t want to appear in the Slideshow theme and uncheck the tick in the box that appears on the wallpaper. Repeat this step for other wallpapers.

From now on, you will see just the wallpapers you want in your favorite Wallpaper slideshow.

How to Customize Wallpaper Themes in Windows 7 is a post by Andre from Notebooks.com.

When you get ready to upgrade to a new notebook or laptop, selling the old one is a key step in the upgrade process. While there are gadget recyclers that often pay a decent price for an old phone or iPad, the prices for notebooks are usually much less. This means you are often left with eBay, Craigslist or word of mouth.

One of my favorite places to sell notebooks is Craigslist because you can usually sell to someone local and avoid the headaches of shipping and the price of selling on eBay.

1. Post an image of your actual notebook: It’s easy to grab an image from a review site or from the manufacturer’s website, but you’re much better off posting your own notebook, and letting potential buyers know of any dings or scratches. A two and a half year old notebook with no wear is often viewed with skepticism. After you post at least one good image of your notebook, be sure to link to pictures of the notebook elsewhere so that the buyer can get a good look.

2. Write a descriptive headline: Rather than write the model number and screen size, try to fit the important specs in the headline since buyers will recognize that more than the model number from a year or two ago.

For example, try

“15.6″ HP Notebook w/ 1.6GHz Intel Core i3 CPU, 4GB RAM & 500GB hard drive – $399″

instead of

HP dv6-1052 Notebook – $399

3. List the Specs: Here’s a time when you should go looking for review websites that list the specs. Don’t make your potential buyer go looking or ask for the full specs and ports on the notebook. Find a website that has the information on your model and include your specs in the post. Most of the time these websites will have pictures and information about what the notebook can do and you can link back to them to give the buyer more information.

4. Price it to Sell: In order to sell your notebook fast and for top dollar, figure out the right price. One way is to see what similar notebooks are selling for on eBay by searching completed auctions. To do this, sign in to eBay, search for the notebook model and then click “advanced search” where you can select to show completed auctions. Keep in mind you may need to sell for a slightly lower price when selling locally because the pool of buyers is smaller. When in doubt state your price and say OBO which menas “or best offer”.

5. Accessorize and Bundle: If you have accessories you might not use with your new notebook, sweeten the deal and include them in the sale. Buyers love to pick up a complete package and there’s no better way to tap into this desire than to throw in a memory stick extra backpack or old set of speakers. This is a good time to look in your closet for older accessories and clean house.

6. Link to Reviews of Your Notebook: You don’t need to write a review, but look for reviews of your notebook and link to them so that the buyer knows if it is a good notebook or not. For the best bet, have a section marked reviews, and post one sentence of a review with a link to the full review. Do this with at least one review to increase your chances of a sale.

7. Put it in the right category: When you go to sell on Craigslist, put your notebook in the right category, or categories, for the best chance at selling. Don’t try to attract attention in the free area with a for sale item. Your best locations are computer or electronics. If you want to barter, you can also post an ad there, but be sure you list what you want to barter for, or be prepared for some off the wall offers.

8. Repost your Ad if it doesn’t sell right away: This tip and guide to reposting on Craigslist comes from WiseBread. If your ad doesn’t produce a sale in a few days, you can repost your ad to get it back at the top of the search results. Instead of retyping or waiting for your ad to expire you can repost a Craigslist ad in 10 easy steps.

Additional Tips: Do you have any additional tips to get the best price when selling an old notebook, netbook or laptop on Craigslist?

How to Get the Best Price for Your Notebook on Craigslist [Tips] is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

One of the most significant upgrades to the iPhone 4 that came from iOS 4.1 is the HDR photo capability of the camera. Sadly the feature is not available on the 3GS. It would be nice if Apple made it available even though the older model’s camera isn’t as good as the iPhone 4′s. But there is an app for that.

HDR stands for ‘High Dynamic Range’ and it describes a process of taking two or more photos of varying exposure settings and combining them to make the picture look closer to what the human eye can see. For example, with my iPhone 4 I took the following pictures. Notice the sky is blown out and almost entirely white in the left hand photo. But the lake and shore is exposed better.

On the right, the sky and clouds look richer, but the lake and shore are too dark. When the iPhone 4 combines these two photos you get the following:

The sky comes from the right photo and the lake and shore comes from the left.

Sadly, this will not work on the iPhone 3GS unless you get the app TrueHDR. It is a camera app for $1.99 and it works on the 3GS. It creates nice images and it does a better job than the built-in HDR tool in iOS 4.1. Compare the above picture shot with the built-in iPhone 4 HDR camera app and the one below shot with TruHDR. While the above gives a more interesting sky, the one below is actually closer to what the sky looked like the day the pictures were taken. So TrueHDR is more accurate.

The app is simple to use. In automatic mode, which is new in the app’s recent update, point the camera at your subject and tap the screen where you want the camera to focus. Tap the camera butter to engage the shutter release. It takes its first image, then a second image, and finally a third. It then shows you the brightest and the darkest image and asks if you want to combine them or clear them. Once they are combined you hit Save and it is exported to your photo library.

The above is actually aimed at a computer monitor. The first image is what the app looks like when it is first opened. Tap the camera button and the numbers show up. Once the first image is taken the 1” turns white. Then the 2” and 3” after the second and third images are taken. Below on the left is the image thinking” as it tries to display the brightest and darkest image. On the right is the image interface while it is merging the three photos.

Notice that once it is finished merging them, it displays the results. There are options to go back and try again, share it on Facebook, Twitter, via email, or you can save it to the photo library. The Home button takes you to the application’s home screen where you can start the process all over again. The picture below is not a good gauge as to the quality, since it’s just pointed it at a computer monitor. The above photos of the lake better represent what it can do.

TrueHDR is easy to use. It takes longer than the HDR tool built into the iPhone 4 with version 4.1 of the iOS. But it results in richer images and works on the previous generation iPhone. One  warning – hold your hands still while taking the three photos or the results will be blurry.

TrueHDR is worth the $2 for even iPhone 4 users.

Auto, Semi-auto and Manual Capture Modes

Auto Capture is only available in the latest version of TrueHDR which was just released to compete with the new iOS 4.1 HDR tool. In SemiAuto mode it asks you to tap one exposure point and then another. It will then merge the photos. It works best in this mode if you tap a dark and then light area or vice cersa. The Manual mode is similar except that it tells you to tap the light area first and then the dark area. Finally, if you already have two images in the photo library you can select Choose Pictures and it takes the images from the library and tries to combine them.

Below is a video demonstrating TrueHDR in the manual mode. It is actually a demo of the previous version of the app. The video also demos another HDR app called ProHDR which is also just $1.99 and the reviewer likes better. I prefer TrueHDR.

Pros:

• Rich images when compared to iOS 4.1 built in HDR tool
• Easy to use
• Export to social networking sites and email

Cons:

• Slow
• Takes more steps the iOS 4.1 built in HDR tool
• If the user doesn’t hold the phone very steady it results in blurred images

How To Take Better HDR Photos With iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS with TrueHDR is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

Take enough trips to picturesque locations and you’ll soon realize that the really good shots are about 3 feet past the safety rail. Up until this trip I was content with picking up a postcard to capture these scenes but now that I have an Xshot I can easily extend enough to snag those perfect pictures.

While driving along the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway in South Dakota we stopped to check out three  waterfalls; Roughlock Falls, Spearfish falls and Bridal Veil Falls. These provided a beautiful view and many spots for pictures but a better shot was a few feet away – beyond a gate, ledge or overlook.

As the famous photographer Robert Capa said, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” With this in mind I pulled out the XShot and went to work. At Roughlock falls you can see me in action below getting up close to some running water for a more exciting picture.

Here’s a shot of me taking the picture.

Later on at Spearfish Falls which provided many great views I was able to extend just enough to capture several series of falls in a manner that other photographers couldn’t. You can see a few of those images below.

When I first tried out the Xshot 2.0 I thought it would be an item I used once in a while but now I can’t imagine traveling without it.

For more reviews of Road Trip Gear, check out everything we have on the Great American Road Trip 2.0 and follow the NBRoadTrip tag on Notebooks.com.

Xshot 2.0 Perfect for Just Out of Reach Pictures is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

You can’t have a road trip without pictures, especially if you are going to places like Mount Rushmore, the Wind Caves and Devil’s Tower. Thanks to digital cameras, snapping a thousand pictures in the course of a week is easy to do, but if you aren’t backing up your pictures you are asking for trouble. For this trip we brought along an Aegis Padlock external hard drive which secures your files with a PIN number and AES encryption. To protect our images I pulled them off my camera onto the Toshiba R705 we have along and also made a copy on the Aiegis Padlock so that we have three copies.

Copying the files over to the Padlock was incredibly simple since it acts like any other hard drive, except to connect it to your computer you need to enter a PIN number that you choose. From there I simply copy and past the files to back them up.

In addition to the security, the Apricorn Aegis Padlock is handy to have since it is small, durable and comes with a built-in USB cord so that there is one less cable cluttering up my bag. As for speed, I haven’t run any hard drive tests on the device but I was able to back up almost 1.25GB of pictures to it directly from my SD card in about 3 minutes which is fast enough for use as a backup.

Normally I would add in a remote backup solution, but the Internet connection speeds, even on hotel WiFi here are too slow to make that a feasible solution.

The spacious 640GB model we have on the trip also has a backup of several projects I am working on including reviews, videos and pictures. We also included a few movies in case of rain, but we haven’t needed those yet. The Apricorn Aegis Padlock starts at $99 for a 250GB 128-bit encryption model.

For more reviews of Road Trip Gear, check out everything we have on the Great American Road Trip 2.0 and follow the NBRoadTrip tag on Notebooks.com.

Road Trip Backups: Apricorn Aegis Padlock External Harddrive Review is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

Over in the Czech Republic someone (untranslated page) has the new iPhone 4 early and has taken some pictures and some video with it. Here is what they will look like when a rank amateur takes pictures and shoots video with the new phone instead of the great pictures taken for the Apple demo.

This was posted at MacRumors and Gizmodo. Not sure if they have been doctored at all. They look a little blown out but that could just be hot sunlight in midday or my un-calibrated monitor. Other than that, I think they look fantastic for mobile phone pictures. I may quit carrying my little Canon point and shoot.

And here is the video.

Exklusive video taken with iPhone 4 from jablickar on Vimeo.

iPhone 4: Video and Photos Taken With New iPhone is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

I have had a while now to experience some of the improved features in Windows 7 more intimately. One of my favorite past times on the PC of course is listening to music. I would describe my collection as mostly Popular music with numerous Rhythm and Blues selections. I do listen Rock and Alternative but not too aggressively. Windows Media Player 12 is not a drastic departure from version 11, it adds nice enhancements that make’s engaging with your music more fun. Lets take a look:

Windows Media Player 12 features cool interface

The most noticeable difference when you first launch Media Player 12 is the changes to how the UI is now laid out. But before we go into that, lets talk about some of the initial steps to start getting ready:

Setup:

Windows Media Player still comes bundled in Windows, 7. So unlike some applications that were once bundled with the OS but are now a part of the Windows Live Essentials suite, you don’t have to download it. Just like version 11 when you launch the executable for the first time you have a choice between doing a ‘Express’ or ‘Custom’ setup. Of course, I would like to see if there are any new changes, so lets go with the Custom Settings.

Most of the common options you are accustom to seeing during this portion of setup are there, the first change I see is the option to add the Media Player 12 executable to your desktop, which I see a lot of persons do, so looks like a make sense option. Next you can choose to make Media Player your default music or video Player or choose specific file types you would like it to play. Media Player 12 supports numerous formats now, I notice songs that I had to resort to playing in iTunes now play just fine in Media Player eg. MP3 Format Sound and the proprietary AAC.

There are many new supported codec’s making WMP 12 a definite choice for Media.

After you have completed the setup process, you are greeted by the media player, which takes you immediately to the music library. Based on my observations, Media Player adapts a combination of Windows Explorer bread crumb menus which help you to easily back track path ways throughout a folder hierarchy but in this case your music library locations. There is also separation between task and locations as evident by the location arrangements and features like ‘Play’, ‘Burn’ and ‘Sync’ which are now situated on the far right of the interface. The familiar back and forward buttons are still there and makes it easy to move between different areas of the interface.

Below these options you will find a second toolbar which display menus for Organizing, Streaming, creating a playlist, Library Mode and searching in addition to Help. The Navigation Pane situated on the right of the interface is revamped with a new addition. In Media Player 12 Library links such as Year, Rating, Songs are now a part of the library table. You can still find Navigation Pane options under Organize > Customize Navigation Pane. The Recently Added link has been removed. Two new library links Video and Pictures are available providing a central location to truly view all your media. Today’s Portable Players are complex media devices that not only store music and videos, but also photos and those are just two more of the great things users can look forward to in this release.

Lets look a little closer at the different components and within their locations:

Play tab – a combination of ‘Now Playing’ (which exist now only as a mini playing mode – discussed later) with Playlist wrapped into one. Its quite convenient and provides the option of easily navigating back and forth between your custom playlist while also viewing your main library of music. I wish there was a separator to make it easier to identify different albums from the artiste, also, I would have liked to see an option for one song within that active playlist to have the option of Repeat when selected though, instead playing over the entire playlist or having the user manually choose to play over that particular song by double clicking.

Burn tab – provides the same functionality as previous versions without the need to leave your music library. Some nice options are available such as Eject Disc After Burning, Apply Volume Leveling Across Tracks on Audio CDs and Name Disk (not checked by default).

Sync tab – provides synchronization capabilities for your portable player. I was not able to accurately test this since I do not own a MP3 player at this time, but similar options available in prior versions are just the same in this release.

The new mini playing mode, also works for video clips and movies.

If you find activated Tabs distracting, you can easily hide them by clicking the Tab once which will show the entire library. Organization of music in Media Player 12 has been greatly enhanced and the new layout of songs in the library provides a more simplified, yet detailed approach to interacting with your collections. I do find it frustrating that certain areas still cannot be customized, for instance, the Album art column cannot be unchecked, I would like to use that space for another column such as Date Added or Play Count.

One of the nice things I like about playing songs from my personal ripped collection of albums, when I hover the mouse pointer over the Album art in the ‘Play’ tab, it does not display buy. I found that annoying in Media Player 11, I already have the album on my hard disk, why is it suggesting that I purchase the album, a more neutral ‘shop’ link is displayed which could suggest buying more music from that artiste. You can also preview tracks in your library. You might ask, how different is this from simply double clicking a track and listening to it for a few seconds. When you hover a track and click the preview song link on the floating balloon, you will hear the song for approximately 15 seconds, the sweet part is, when you have heard enough, you simply move the pointer away from the floating balloon which will stop playing the song. The Windows Media Player Team could have made it even more innovative by simply hovering over the preview button without any manual clicking.

Windows Media Player becomes a true media player, you can also play slideshows.

Working with Management

Options once available under hidden drop down menus for each button of the player interface in Media Player 11 (Now Playing, Library etc) are now clearly exposed through Organize, Share and New Playlist.

Organize – Features menus for managing your library content, whether its Pictures, videos or Recorded TV. You can customize and arrange your library views by checking or un-checking columns in addition to customizing the Navigation Pane displaying drop down menus and access entire options for Media Player 12.

Stream

A new Stream Menu provides quick access to sharing your media and configuring options for how you can access it from other PC’s, some of the new options include:

• Set up your home PC so you can access your media libraries while away from home
• Allow other Windows 7 PCs and devices to push media to your Player and control it
• Quickly authorize all home PCs and devices to access your media collection

‘Play To’ allows playing media to be streamed from other shared media libraries within Windows Media Player, Windows 7 can now send media to be played on other Windows 7 PCs and DLNA-certified digital media renderers. With Play To,” you can browse or search from within Windows Media Player or Windows Explorer to find your desired media, and then choose where you want it to be played.

A versatile remote control window is presented for each Play To” session, providing you with the ability to control the entire experience. Play To” is available for both local media libraries and for shared media libraries. If you would like to send media from one Windows 7 PC to another, choose Allow remote control of my Player” from the Windows Media Player Stream” menu on the receiving PC. This will cause Windows Media Player to be discovered in the Play To” menu of other Windows 7 PCs on the same network.

Create Playlist – has its own dedicated menu which allows you to quickly create new custom playlist of your favorite content. There is also a sub menu for a New Auto Playlist which is a playlist that changes automatically according to criteria you have specified.

Performance and Quality

Media Player 12 is faster based on my testing, songs instantly play when double clicked in the library. To reduce the waiting time to launch full media player when you might only want to play an album or a few songs, there is a Mini Player mode called Now Playing Mode. This convenient setup instantly opens when you launch a song from an Explorer for instance (by default), immediately your music begins playing, no waiting, no hitching and no glitches. Media Players familiar Now Playing tools are situated here with visualization effects (that I think needs to be updated) and album art in the visualization similar to ‘mediaviz’ that was released for Media Player 10. Its quite nice and makes it more fun playing songs from a folder when you are not particularly interested with working the full media player library. The Mini-Player itself is resizable and intelligent in doing so, it knows when to show certain player controls and reveals more when it resized to a larger size. If you want to go back to the full Media Player, simply click the ‘Library Mode’ button on the player controls. I would have liked to see an option to hide the window border though, to give it a floating appearance. I still would like the option of turning it off and go directly to full library whenever a song is double clicked from Explorer although you can easily switch Library mode from the player controls, it’s just the extra step I would like to get out of the way.

Quality is very good, audio comes back pumping and clear to the listeners ears. This is something I have noticed since version 11, but I think it has more to do with the improvements to Audio in Windows 7/Vista. Since audio sounds puny when played in Windows XP I get a much richer experience on both Vista and 7. I imported 5.4 GBs of music (which is significantly small compared to some libraries), but there were no problems doing so and all my tracks were recognized along with album art. What I notice about miscellaneous tracks in a folder that the meta data such as song information and album art in particular needs to be downloaded again regardless its there hidden. There is also a mis-match of album art for different songs and artiste – kinda funny seeing Bill Haley’s Jingle Bell Rock represented by Shanice Wilson’s Greatest Hits.

You can enjoy your videos and movies in a number of cool ways from full screen to mini.

Watching Video

Watching movies is a favorite activity in Windows Media Player. Version 12 adds some improvements such as automatically going into full screen mode when you insert a DVD. There is also support for the new Mini-mode which looks lovely. From a technical point of view, Media Player 12 supports new video codec’s which were once available through Third party vendors, some include: MPEG-4, 3GPP standards, H.264 video, DivX and xVid. This of course delivers a richer playback experience for the consumer, which results in less disappointment, something which was true of Media Player 11. Often you would download some particular video just find out the correct codec is not installed to view it.

Changes and some missing options:

• Cannot play movies in the Library interface of Media Player 12.
• I cannot find a way to get Media Player 12 to open up in full screen mode when I play a media file, it always starts up in preview mode first – I still love preview mode though.
• Advanced Tag Editor isn’t included in Media Player. Microsoft says editing media information in the details pane of the Player Library allows you perform some of the tasks once available in Advanced Tag Editor.

Overall, Windows Media Player 12 looks like a solid release that will surely keep loyal users happy. Its fast, great design and user interface make it great application that I will continue to turn to for my media. The ability to now work with photos in addition to video is just a great way of defining WMP 12 as a true media player.

Playing with Windows Media Player 12 is a post by Andre from Notebooks.com.