"Are you stuck using Outlook at work? We feel your pain. Compared to the alternatives, like Mozilla's light-weight and customizable Thunderbird client, Outlook is slow, bloaty, and downright unwieldy. Add to the fact that it isn't free and Outlook doesn't appear to have much going for it.

But whether you use Outlook because you have to or have grown accustomed to its interface and are reluctant to switch (or maybe you just want to justify the cost of Microsoft Office), we have some tricks to help you manage your email and contacts like a pro. After all, if you're going to use Outlook, no matter what the reason, you might as well get the most out of it, and we're here to help you do just that."

"After migrating to Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP, the menu and the favorites bar would go black with no apparent reason. So far we didn't discover why this happens and when or if Microsoft will release an update to fix this bug. Meanwhile, learn the trick we are using to restore the menu and the favorites bar to its correct color. The problem can be seen on Figure 1."

"While building our NVIDIA Ion powered Mini-ITX computer system we found that the fan used to cool the Intel Atom 330 processor and Nvidia Ion chipset was louder than what we expected from our prototype ASUS AT3N7A-I motherboard. ASUS said they agreed with the feedback and sent us a new fan that is being used on the retail models. Read on to see how loud the new one is!

"The 40mm fan on the ASUS AT3N7A-I Mini-ITX motherboard is made by EverFlow, runs at ~6400RPM and can be annoyingly loud if you don't like fan noise. ASUS promised us the new fan would be quieter since it would spin slower, but it would have a negative impact on cooling since it didn't have the same airflow ratings. The new fan runs at ~4100 RPM instead of 6400 RPM, so let's see what that decrease in speed does to cooling and the noise level of the system..."

"While people understand that RAM helps your computer run efficiently, not everyone knows exactly how it works. More of it means you can do more simultaneously, but not all people can explain why, or tell you exactly what the RAM is doing in your system that gives it that edge. Let's take a look at exactly what RAM is, and how it works."

"eBay was etablished back in 1995 and is regarded by many as the online auction website. Everyone has heard about eBay and due to its rapid success there are now millions of registered users worldwide selling items every single minute.

Do you have trouble winning items? Have you struggled to win that special gift time and time again? Well today we have the solution for you - our guide to becoming a better eBay buyer!"

"Google has revolutionized the Voice Over IP world by providing a free phone number that allows a user of Google Voice to associate all of their various phone lines to a single number. Now besides the well known features of voice mail and free SMS text messages, there is another hidden gem with Google Voice that could revolutionize the telephony industry by providing free VoIP service to anyone!"

"We found out earlier this week that Intel's Lynnfield-based processors are fast, but who said that cranking the clocks to make them even faster was a bad idea? In this article, we take both the Core i5-750 and i7-870 for an overclocking joyride, and the stable overclocks we were able to achieve is nothing short of impressive."

"Building a mini-ITX computer system is a popular topic these days and for good reason. The form factor is very small, a wide selection of platforms is available and the component pricing is fairly decent. This build guide will quickly go through the steps of building a mini-ITX build from out of the box to completion."

"Curious about the technical differences between DDR3, DDR2 and DDR memories? In this tutorial we explain them all."

"Upgrading your notebook's legacy hard drive to a new, fast SSD is a substantial upgrade that makes good sense for a number of reasons. First, Solid State Drives offer orders of magnitude higher performance under certain conditions, with blazingly fast random access times. They also produce much less heat versus a standard 2.5-inch notebook hard drive and are virtually immune to shock and vibration trauma that will send your old spinning hard drive to an early grave.

In this HotHardware Video Spotlight, we show you how to upgrade your existing notebook hard drive, to a new, fast SSD as well as how to quickly migrate your data for absolute minimal downtime..."

"Buying a new computer is always a tough task, what sort of things do you want to do on there? Just use the internet? Play games? Create websites Because there are so many different types of systems to choose from, not everyone knows what specifications there computer needs to cope with the required tasks. Read on to find out "How to Choose the Right Computer for You"

"Let's face it: the mobile arena is more crowded than ever, and with that overpopulation comes confusion. Specifications begin to run together, prices seem to be all over the map, and actual standout features are harder than ever to locate. If you know someone that has grown frustrated by trying to separate the worthwhile from the worthless, trust us, we feel your pain.

So much so, in fact, that we've decided to break it all down in an easy-to-digest mobile computing guide. Within the pages to come, we'll cover the five main categories of notebooks available today: netbooks, thin-and-light notebooks, midrange notebooks, desktop replacements / gaming rigs and then "everything else", which touches on tablet PCs, slate PCs, etc. Click the link below and take a look..."

"It's that time again folks! In our ever popular series of overclocking guides, we've covered most of the Intel chipsets from the launch of Core 2 Duo. Overclocking the C2D platform was really easy once you got to know what everything did, i7 is no exception, and in many ways, the basics are the same, however, there are a few new things to get to grips with, and that's exactly what we're going to do in this guide.

The i7 platform has been around for a few months now and has become quite popular, especially in enthusiast circles. I've tried out many motherboards from different manufacturers and my favourite, bar none is the Asus P6T Deluxe OC palm (Just P6T from here on in). I will be using the P6T in the guide and I will be referencing its BIOS settings throughout - I'll also be using an Intel i7 920 DO processor and some Corsair Dominator 1600MHz memory, a triple channel, 6GB kit to be exact, more on the hardware side of things later."

"Netbooks offer a really light and tight package at low prices to boot. It's little wonder why sales of netbooks are increasing even in these dire times. However, netbooks do have some disadvantages, one of which being the increased difficulty or even impossibility of upgrading it.

This is why we came up with this guide. It shows you how to properly disassemble the Acer Aspire One netbook so that you can upgrade its memory. You will require some knowledge and experience working with computer hardware. If you are used to installing and troubleshooting your own PCs, then you should be in familiar territory."

"I can't tell you the reason you may need to access a command prompt on VMware ESXi, but I can tell you that I had issues with a vm and needed to manually delete it from disk."

"If you are like me and live in a cramped room with barely enough room to swing a cat-5 cable, you will definitely appreciate the necessity of space. I’ve had a monster of a system taking up half my desk for months and while I love having a full on water-cooled beast in a giant tower case with more expansion than I can possibly fill, it’s time to shrink it down a notch.

Today we are going to look at how to compactify a new rig build into a smaller yet classy enclosure. For this article we worked with ZOTAC and Silverstone to build a rock solid system without breaking the bank."

"Today our at home hardware hacker Artiom shows us how to turn the 1.5TB storage monster into a high performance drive that takes the performance crown away from the Western Digital Velociraptor. Don't think it can be done? We assure you it can, and we show you how. You too can buy a half priced drive and get top end performance. "

"This morning when I got up I had no intention of writing a guide to making a bootable NTFS USB Drive. As things often happen on a review site you often find yourself waking up intending to get one thing done and end up going in a totally different direction. Today was one of those days. I've been dealing with SSD, Platter hard drives and USB Drives all week. Suddenly this morning I found myself thinking wouldn't it be nice to be able to boot to a USB disk with the NTFS file system and run diagnostics, memory tests, and maybe install Vista or XP from a USB disk. How about being able to not only install Vista from a USB disk but once Vista is installed have all the review benchmarks and files I needed consolidated on one flash drive instead of searching for a bunch of disks scattered around my review area."

"The purpose of this article is to illustrate the proper way to install a Core i7 LGA 1366 processor. Overall the process is really not difficult and once you understand the mechanics you'll be a pro in no time."

"In this article we are going to answer one simple and at the same time very difficult question: how to choose a CPU? We decided to collect the mandatory basic information you must know to make an educated choice, and teach you how to choose."