The standard Windows startup sound is shorter that it’s load time, making it a less than ideal indicator of when your machine is ready to use. If you time your startup and make a sound file which is of a similar length to the load time, you are able to use it as an indicator of when your machine is ready for action, giving the start-up sound a real purpose.

This time varies greatly from computer to computer, and changes according to what operating system you are using and what programs and tasks you have running at startup.

Even if you do not want a long startup sound, it is worth placing silence before the sound you currently use so that the startup sound comes to an end at the right time.

Vista has a predefined startup sound which cannot be changed. This is part of their branding. You may want to get around this by changing the login sound instead of the startup sound, though this will not be covered in the article.

This article will show you how to edit or change your current Windows XP startup sound so that you can use it as an indicator of when your machine is ready to use, or to add a personalised touch to your computer. It can also be a nice wakeup call when you get into work as music can lift your spirits and get you in the right frame of mind.

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A Keyboard/Video/Mouse(KVM) switch lets you use the same keyboard, mouse and monitor to control multiple computers. This helps you save desk space and money as you can use the same peripherals to control and view each of the computers you connect.

If you have a dual screen setup, and you would like to connect multiple computers up to your monitors, people will tell you to spend a large amount of money to get a KVM switch which will handle this. 

For a dual screen KVM switch which you can connect 4 computers, you are looking at spending around $500 and you are also likely to have to spend additional money on the cables, and these can cost more than the switch itself. It is almost worth purchasing extra monitors and peripherals to control your computers, instead of buying one of the really fancy switches.

This article will show you a cheaper option to achieve the same result. Halving the cost comes with the most minor of drawbacks:

• Switching can no longer be done through the keyboard (still works for one screen).
• To switch computers, you will need to press two buttons instead of one.

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In all Microsoft operating systems, there is a registry which loads as your computer starts up. The registry lets the operating system know what settings to to start your computer up with. Most settings on our computers are stored in the registry somewhere, we just need to know what to change to achieve what we want.

Windows Mobile devices also have a registry. We can customise many of the defaults on our devices to suit our needs. The structure is very similar to the Windows Registry structure, so if you are familiar with it, you will find this just as easy. If you have not yet delved into a registry, you will find this quite tricky.

This article will cover some of the changes we are able to make to our devices, through our devices registry. I hope to update this article as time goes on so please use the comments to report your own changes. These hacks are for Windows Mobile 5 devices, though some may work with other versions of Windows Mobile.

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I am currently working on two machines, one running Windows XP and the other Vista. I want to share documents between these machines, and I also want any changes I make on either one of the machines, to instantly appear on the other. I have chosen to use my Windows XP machine as my main computer because I like the way it is set up. My XP machine has my entire document collection organised neatly. What I want to do is get to these documents from my Vista machine without manually needing to copy them across or constantly mapping network drives. I want to be able to access my documents by opening “My Documents” on my XP machine, and “Documents” on my Vista machine, with both of these folders pointing to the same location.

This article will show you how to synchronise your “My Documents” folder from your Windows XP computer to your “Documents” folder in Windows Vista. Synchronising your “My Documents” is particularly useful if you have a desktop and a laptop. You can take your documents from your desktop with you on the road with your laptop. This is also suitable if you have multiple computers in your home and would like the documents to be the same on all machines, so you are not fighting with your family over which computer you need to use as all the computers will have your documents.

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For many years now, I have had my computer connected to my television and stereo so that I can watch films from my computer, sitting comfortably on my couch, or to set the mood with winamp visualisations and music when people are coming around. I have not seen many home setups which take advantage of this. It is so much nicer hearing your MP3 collection, pumping out the big speakers in your house.

It is very easy to set up and it can be done very cheaply, and in some cases free. The cost comes in with cables and adaptors which are cheap unless you need to buy an extra component. It should be possible for everyone to acheive for well under $100.

This article will show you how to connect your computer to your television and stereo. We will cover lots of different scenarios so I hope by the end of this article, everyone will have successfully been able to acheive this.

This theory is identical to if you want to hook your computer up to a projector so if that is what you use, this article is also appropriate for you.

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