Category Archives: Review
Adding a Google Apps Email Account to Outlook.com
The new Outlook.com is out from Microsoft and it has quietly made a splash with a reported 1 million users in 6 hours. I am a Google Apps user and I have several email accounts that are not your traditional yourname@gmail.com but are myname@mydomain.com and are hosted on Gmail servers. The set up for regular Gmail accounts is fairly straight forward, the setting up an Google Apps account is not as intuitive for the average guy. Here is how you get it started.
First, go out to http://outlook.com and sign in with your Microsoft ID. If you don’t have one, now would be the time to get one.
Click image to make it larger
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| From settings, select More mail settings. |
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| Under Options, select Sending/receiving email from other accounts |
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| Select Add an email account |
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| Type in your Google Apps email account and password. DO NOT SELECT NEXT. Click on the Advanced options |
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In the POP3 user name box, complete the user name with the full email address. In this example, just copy Email address and paste it into POP3 user name. Change the Incoming mail server to pop.gmail.com. Leave the (SSL) box checked. The second check box is up to you. |
Acronis One-Click Restore: PC Restore Made Easy
On Rich’s Random Podcast Generator #19, co-host Jim Collison and I walked through every tab and feature of Acronis True Home Image 2012. In doing so, we came across something that caught my eye: a feature that lets you to burn a PC backup image to bootable DVD(s). The feature is called Acronis One-Click Restore, and it’s a great way to give family and friends whose PCs you repair a simple way to perform their own PC restore should the need ever arise. The steps to creating the bootable DVD(s) can be a little tricky if you’ve never done it, so I’ll walk you through it.
Start Acronis > click ‘Backup and recovery’ tab > click ‘Disk and partition backup’
![clip_image002[4]](http://theaverageguy.tv/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/clip_image0024.jpg "clip_image002[4]")
Click ‘Multiple partitions selection’
![clip_image003[4]](http://theaverageguy.tv/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/clip_image0034.png "clip_image003[4]")
Click ‘Switch to disk mode’
![clip_image004[4]](http://theaverageguy.tv/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/clip_image0044.png "clip_image004[4]")
Here’s where you will select the hard disk you want to backup/image. You must select an entire hard disk from here in order for the option ‘Place Acronis One-Click Restore on media’ to become available in settings. Otherwise, you will not see it.
A Review of The NEST Thermostat
I was first introduced to the Nest as I was scrolling through my large list of RSS feeds in Google Reader in the fall of 2011. Since then my interest has grown in the product. The idea is perfect… take one of the items in your house, the thermostat and make it better. In the past the Nest was sold only through the website www.nest.com but on May 8th, 2012 the Nest became available at Lowes and more recently at the Apple stores and Amazon.com. It is always nice when a product comes to a local retail store so I can get some hands on experience and see the product in action even if it is only a demo.
Mushkin Chronos 120GB SSD Install and Performance Specs
I recently purchased a Mushkin Enhanced Chronos MKNSSDCR120GB 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) from Newegg. It can be found here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226236
I purchased it to replace a Western Digital 1 TB WD10EACS Green Drive that will be moved into my storage pool on the Window Home Server (where it belonged in the first place). It was also a bit slow at times. See the stats below:
The box with the new drive arrived this week and I couldn’t wait to get it installed on the weekend. After installing Windows 7 Ultimate from scratch (very fast install), updating all the software (even faster) and installing all the regular apps, I ran another ATTO Disk Benchmark with amazing results. How did I ever live with a spinning drive? Well worth the $150 upgrade!
While this is a SATA III drive, I have it in a Motherboard (Gigabyte H55M-USB3) that only supports SATA II drives. The results may have been even better if this drive was on a board that supported a full 6Gb/s.
HP TouchPad is Back! Well, Sort of Back?
I made a big deal about the HP TouchPad just a couple months back and even dropped a few reviews here at the Average Guy (http://theaverageguy.tv/category/hometech/hp-touchpad/). But as most of us know by now, HP decided to get out of the table business (later reversed) sold them for $99/$149, quickly sold out and we thought we would never see them again, right? WRONG!
I first saw this at Best Buy, and today I saw the same thing at CompUSA.com. They are back at $149, but with a catch! (click the graphic to see the deal)
HP TouchPad FB356UT Tablet – WebOS 3.0, Qualcomm Snapdragon Dual-Core APQ8060 1.2GHz, 1GB Memory, 32GB Internal Storage, 9.7" XGA Capacitive Touch, 802.11 a/b/g/n
Ok…so it’s not $99 and you have to buy an HP Laptop or Desktop to get the $150 rebate, but if you were doing that anyway, would you pull the trigger on this?
Good luck and happy hunting!
