From the moment that we heard of the new 40GB Kingston SSD, we couldn't help but get our hopes up. Who knows if (or more likely, when) SSD drives will ever completely replace spinning platters with all the digital media people collect today, so rather than stretching your budget and compressing your media in order to stuff everything onto a 256GB solid state drive, we dug the idea of snagging a small (and affordable) SSD for boot / application operations and utilizing a spacious HDD for archival. Not to mention -- regardless of how fast a disk is -- two are almost always better than one. If you're interested in rigging up a similar setup, hop on past the break to have a look at our impressions.
Continue reading Kingston 40GB SSDNow review
Kingston 40GB SSDNow review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
With the leaking of the 
As we prepare to stuff our faces with a bountiful Thanksgiving feast, we turn our Thanksgiving spirit to the gobs of free software we love to say thank you to the developers, and to give our computers a feast of their own.
Drop your bags, grab a drink, and grab the XP CD—it's time for the holiday ritual of fixing up your relatives' computer. Here are some tips and downloads to keep handy while you're cursing all the auto-starting crapware.
Quick-fix triage: Load the original XP, Vista, or Windows 7 (Really? Broken already?) CD or DVD in the system and boot the system from there, which might require hitting a key to bring up "boot options" or pressing a key when asked to "Press any key to boot from CD." Wait for the CD to load—it may seem like it's installing, but it's just loading a mini-system for installation and, in this case, repair. Follow the prompts to repair an existing installation, or, in the case of Vista or 7, ask it to repair the startup process.
Back up the files: Have your USB hard drive or blank DVDs handy, and remove the Windows CD/DVD from the computer if you tried to use that for a fix. Stick your thumb drive with the Ubuntu (or Knoppix) image into a USB slot, then boot up the computer. You may have to hit F12 or another key to boot from USB, or change a setting in the BIOS (which you can access by hitting a key—written in that fast-disappearing text—at boot-up). You'll be asked to choose a language, then hit the option to "Try Ubuntu without any changes." After some loading, you'll arrive at an Ubuntu desktop.
When you're ready to back up, simply open your USB drive from the Places menu, then open your main Windows drive, and drag files to copy from your Windows system onto the backup medium.
If you're burning to DVD, head to the Applications menu in your temporary Ubuntu system, mouse over the Accessories sub-menu, and select 'CD/DVD Creator' when it pops up. You'll get a folder you can drag files you want to burn into, then hit 'Write to Disc' to burn them.
Click the "Tools" button, choose the Autorun menu on the left, and look through the items on the right. Uncheck the stuff that's really unnecessary—most of it, really, unless they constantly use a printer/scanner or run an antivirus app—and remind your host to un-check the toolbars and "helper" apps offered when installing things.
The fixing process? It's nothing special, actually—just run the quick-fix triage in any case, removing the auto-run apps that bog down system resources, and then run these secondary apps, generally in the order they're listed. Keep Security Essentials or Panda Cloud Antivirus installed (not both!), and, while you're being helpful, back up this computer's pictures, music, and important documents.
Set up their email in Gmail: Gmail has made it 
There are plenty of online TV listing services that detail what programs are showing in your area. Then again, you probably don't care what's on every single channel. Create a personalized TV guide with FreeGuide and skip The Flossing Network.
Your neck can't text you to explain how annoying it is to have to keep looking down at your laptop. Over time it will let you know, though, in a nagging, painful way. If your laptop is your day-to-day work machine, elevate it to eye level using any one of a number of clever solutions. Perhaps one among our 
It's hard to slouch when you're not in a seat. To help your body benefit from your upright instinct, and give your lower body a break from sitting, work a standing desk into your workspace. You can go for it in a big way, like with this 
How your back, neck, and joints fare over eight hours of work can be influenced by how they spent eight hours in bed. Give your body a better night's sleep by catching up on 
If you've stuck with your mouse and keyboard just because your desktop came with them, we feel for you. If you've been using a laptop at a desk without an external mouse or keyboard, we're in tears. Invest in the tools your hands spend thousands of hours on every year by perusing the 
Adam's had his problems with hand, wrist, and back pain from repetitive stress and other conditions at his workspace, and a few years ago, he decided to 
You don't have to have Bob-Vila-level woodworking skills to craft your own workspace—after all, college students have been laying doors on cinder blocks for years. To 
You can do a lot to prevent stress and pain in your hands working at a computer all day, but you'll almost inevitably have bad days full of overly long hours, and, over the long haul, risk sidling yourself with repetitive strain injury (RSI). Percussionist David Kuckhermann knows a thing or two about repetitive wrist and forearm strain, as does 
Are you the type that busts out the tape measure whenever you're putting anything up on the wall? For setting up your workspace with proper distances and heights between yourself and your computer tools, ergonomic goods firm Ergotron offers an 
It's great that you're dedicated to pushing out this project on time, but unless your deadline's right this hour and you need every second, you should be stepping back occasionally to give your wrists, eyes, and arms a rest—and maybe even read something off-screen, while you're at it. If mental reminders aren't enough, apps like 
Eye strain is particularly bad news for those who write (code, copy, or anything else) or assemble things on a computer all day—it hits you right in what feels like your brain, and makes concentration terribly hard. Two simple solutions are to 
Who wants to wait until 2010 to get a look at the Chrome OS?"
Since 
"
Local backup is a useful and necessary part of securing your data against catastrophe, but with the advent of broadband and inexpensive online storage, you've got little reason to not back up critical files to the cloud as well.
Mozy is an automated backup solution. Once you install the Mozy client on your computer, it will back up any files you specify at the frequency you specify. Mozy can back up files while they are open—so that huge presentation you've been working on for the last few hours will be backed up even if you're still working with it. Mozy also backs up based on file changes, only uploading the portion of a file that has changed and not the entire file all over again (meaning quicker incremental backups after the initial backup). Mozy stores previous versions of your files for easy restoration, and in addition to restoring all your files by downloading them, you can also order a backup on physical media for a fee.
Carbonite is the other contender in this week's Hive Five that doesn't offer a free basic account with teaser storage. They have a simple pricing plan: $54.95 for a year of unlimited storage from a single computer. Like Mozy, Carbonite also offers block-level incremental backup to speed up the backup process. You can access your files through a web-based interface when you are away from home, and you can use the Carbonite application to restore all or some of your files at any time. Carbonite does not provide a hard copy of your data upon request, so get ready for some heavy downloading time if you've got a lot of data you need to restore.