I thought I’ll briefly write down a tip that helped me yesterday when I upgraded from Thunderbird 3.1 to the new version 5 (which also applies to Thunderbird 6 and also 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and probably more, given this ridiculous version system) – on WIndows 7, by the way. (This problem might not exist on other systems in the same way.)

TB5 uses a slightly different display for the folder tree and the mail list with a slightly bigger line spacing (which might simply be a side effect of the Calibri font). This may result in slightly better readability, but it also means that there are less mails and folders displayed in the same screen real estate, and since I like to use quite a lot folders to organize my mail collection, this resulted in the fact that not all folders could fit on the screen anymore, and having to scroll is inconvenient – especially since it’s virtually guaranteed that the next incoming mail will be put in a folder that’s currently not visible… Continue reading →

If you experience the following problem with either E4200v2 or EA4500 router from Linksys, you may want to apply the latest firmware (Ver.2.1.41.162351 released on July 31, 2014) from Linksys support site. The specific problem is annoying and sometimes critical if you don’t have a proper backup strategy in place. Media files on the external drive attached to the USB port of the router will be converted to folders on a random basis. Once turned to folders, it will be difficult, if at all possible, for these files to be accessible again. In other words, they are lost.

If you want to have a quick analysis of what is stored in an Outlook PST file, this is a good tool and it is freeware.

http://www.systoolsgroup.com/outlook-pst-reporter.html

If you have a VOIP phone service at home, your service provider will give you an analog telephone adaptor such that you can connect the internet-based (digital) service to your existing (analog) phones. The adaptor will have an IP address just like other devices in your network when plugged into the router.

If you log into the phone adaptor (by pointing your browser to the adaptor’s IP address), you will find tons of configuration that can be tweaked to make it work better (or break it if you don’t know what you are doing). If you are really interested in understanding what or how each parameter should be set, these documents (#001, #002) will give you some clues (for Grandstream adaptors HT70x series).

A User-Agent String is sent by browsers when accessing a web server for identifying the type and properties of the browser. In some cases, you may want to force a certain browser to appear to be another (a different version or a totally different browser) for various reasons. You can override parts of the User-Agent String by modifying the registry. Details can be found in these two articles (Article 1 and Article 2).

If you experience problems downloading apps (or updates of existing apps) from Google Play on Andriod phones or tablets, try the following:

• Go to ‘Settings’
• Select ‘Apps’
• Select ‘Google Framework Services’ and Clear Data (please only clear data; do not delete Google Services Framework completely)

Re-try the downloading and this may do the magic.