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"  Want to back up your iPod without using iTunes? Connect the iPod to your PC. Open any window and select Folder Options from the Tools menu. In the View tab, check &amp;quot;Show hidden files and folders.&amp;quot; Go to My Computer and double-click your iPod. Now you can see a folder called iPod_Control. Double-click it. Select the Music folder, and drag and drop it onto your hard drive. Make sure you have enough space on your drive to accommodate the files. What&amp;#039;s the Delay? Q: My surround-sound system has a setting that allows me to set a delay for the rear and center channel speakers. What does this do and how should I use it? A: Very carefully. The idea behind speaker delay is to allow the sound from all of your speakers to hit your ears at the same time. That way, the &amp;quot;surround&amp;quot; part of surround sound will work, giving your music or movies the 3D effect you paid extra money to get. We asked Clint DeBoer, editor-in-chief of Audioholics.com, to break down the math involved. &amp;quot;You are setting delay in order to ensure that all of the sound from each loudspeaker connects to the listening position at the same time,&amp;quot; DeBoer says. But it&amp;#039;s not always your rear speakers that need delaying. The delay should be set for whatever speakers you sit closest to.  &amp;quot;Sound travels at around 1130 ft. per second,&amp;quot; he explains, &amp;quot;so for each foot of extra distance [of speaker placement], you&amp;#039;re looking at around .885 milliseconds.&amp;quot; So if your rear speakers are 4 ft. away from your listening position, but your front speakers are 14 ft. away, you&amp;#039;ll need to account for the 10-ft. difference, or 8.85 milliseconds. Even though the delay calculation is fairly elementary, if you&amp;#039;ve got anything more than an entry-level home theater receiver, you can probably forgo the math entirely.  &amp;quot;Most modern receivers and processors now do the math for you, allowing users to configure the system using feet or meters. You simply [enter] the distance to the surrounds from the seated position and you&amp;#039;re all set,&amp;quot; DeBoer says. &amp;quot;And most products have independent delays for each speaker in case you&amp;#039;re in a very strange room and cannot get the surrounds evenly spaced from your optimal listening position.&amp;quot;  Screen Play Q: Can I replace the screen on my laptop computer? A: Assuming that the only thing broken is the screen itself, you almost certainly can. But should you? Replacement LCD panels for laptops can be had for between $200 and $600. With the falling price of laptops, it might be easier (and almost as cheap) to buy a new one. But if you still love that old laptop and just want a new screen, vendors such as ScreenTek (screentekinc.com) have thousands of screens in stock at all times. The procedure is pretty basic. There is some variation across makes and models, but in general most screens are connected by a simple ribbon connector to the laptop&amp;#039;s motherboard. Take apart the screen housing, remove the old screen, and replace it with the new one--all you&amp;#039;ll need is a penknife and a small Phillips screwdriver. (On its site, ScreenTek has detailed directions for screen removal.) Now if your problem isn&amp;#039;t, say, a cracked screen, but instead flickering or dimness, you might try replacing the screen inverter first instead of the entire LCD panel. Bring Your Broadband With You Q: New high-speed data networks are being offered by a number of cellphone carriers. If I subscribe to one of these services, can I use my phone as a modem to hook up my laptop to the network? A: It all depends on which carrier you choose. There are three high-speed cellular networks: Verizon&amp;#039;s BroadbandAccess, Sprint&amp;#039;s Power Vision and Cingular&amp;#039;s recently launched High Speed Downlink Packet Access. Both Verizon and Sprint use EV-DO technology and operate between 400 and 700 kilobits per second (Kbps), loading Web pages and e-mail attachments nearly as fast as a home broadband connection. Officially, Verizon&amp;#039;s BroadbandAccess is priced on a &amp;quot;one device, one service&amp;quot; plan. That means if you have BroadbandAccess on a phone, you aren&amp;#039;t allowed to connect it to your laptop to use it as a cellular modem. Verizon requires you to purchase a separate PC card to use BroadbandAccess on your laptop. Sprint&amp;#039;s Power Vision can be added to your phone&amp;#039;s service plan for as little as $15 a month, and Sprint will allow you to use your cellular phone as a connection to your laptop via USB or Bluetooth--for an additional fee. It&amp;#039;s a slightly better deal than Verizon&amp;#039;s BroadbandAccess, but with per-megabyte usage charges, you can pay up to an additional $70 a month if you exceed the 40MB allowance. Cingular&amp;#039;s new service is just as fast as EV-DO. It currently works with a laptop card and eventually will be available via cellphone. Unlimited use costs $60 per month, including automatic switch-over when you&amp;#039;re out of network to Cingular&amp;#039;s international EDGE service (which runs at 100 to 135Kbps). The phone service also will let you simultaneously surf the Internet while you talk on the phone. T-Mobile&amp;#039;s EDGE data service is all you can eat for just $20--including access to Wi-Fi hot spots. What&amp;#039;s the big idea? Imagine if your portable electronics could be recharged by just placing them on a charging pad--without plugging in any cords. That&amp;#039;s what inductive charging is all about. The technology already exists in electric toothbrushes, but it generally charges too slowly and generates too much heat for portable electronics. How does it work? An induction coil creates an alternating electromagnetic field across the surface of the base station. The induction coil in the portable device takes power from the field and converts it back into electrical current to charge the battery. Will it catch on? A British company called Splashpower has plans to release an inductive charging system called the SplashPad in Europe later this year. An American release may come later. The system will work with adapters that plug into cellphones, iPods, etc.--and with future handheld devices with built-in receivers. According to Peter Aloumanis, general manager of Motorola&amp;#039;s iDEN phone division, heat and speed issues are being addressed, and inductive charging should be integrated into American phones in two years. &amp;quot;This is a replacement technology for current charging techniques,&amp;quot; he says. Too Much Information Q: When I transfer document files on a disk or memory key from a Macintosh computer to a PC, I always see extra files on the disk. What are they--and do I really need them? A: In Mac OS X, a small (usually just a few kilobytes) file called .DS_Store is created in each directory that you open with the Finder. The .DS_Store is a simple file with some metadata about window sizes, icon positions, etc., and is usually hidden when you&amp;#039;re viewing files on the Mac. Macintoshes interface with the server message block protocol to read and write to Windows file systems, such as those on your memory key. But even though the system is effective, it leaves those .DS_Store files everywhere. Any time a Mac even looks at a directory, it leaves behind those extra files. The good news is, they aren&amp;#039;t really that important. You can just delete them and your data won&amp;#039;t be any worse for wear. (You can even delete them on your Mac if you view the hidden files.) The bad news is that they&amp;#039;re going to come back every time your Windows-formatted memory device is used on a Mac. If it really bugs you, try out DS_Store Cleaner, a free application for Windows and Macintosh from Red Room Development (redroomdevelopment.com). It allows you to drag and drop folders into a cleaning application, where they&amp;#039;ll be cleared out automatically. Then again, if you don&amp;#039;t mind the extra files, you can always just let them be. T E C H D I Y Watch HDTV on Your PC  If you bought a PC with a flat screen in the past few years, chances are you have HDTV-quality resolution. Wouldn&amp;#039;t it be great if you could get hi-def TV on your computer cheaply while saving up for that big-screen HDTV? Actually, you can.  BY ANTHONY VERDUCCI Photography by Dan Saelinger Complexity: Moderate Materials: Monitor, desktop computer, HDTV tuner card and accessories (shown: ATI HDTV Wonder, $119)  STEP 1 Turn off your computer and unplug the power cable from the wall. Open the PC and look for an empty PCI slot. Before touching the HDTV card, be sure to discharge static electricity by touching a metal surface. Seat the card into the PCI slot and screw down the retaining bracket. Close the computer. (Don&amp;#039;t plug it in just yet.) STEP 2 Different tuner cards offer different connections, but for HD, you&amp;#039;ll want to plug your new antenna into the DTV input on the back of the card. Since cable and satellite providers scramble their broadcast streams, no PC tuner card can fully replace a cable box yet. Most tuner cards also have an analog coaxial input jack for cable. STEP 3 Attach the other end of the wire to the HDTV indoor antenna. Placement of the antenna is essential for a good signal. Place the antenna as high and as close to a window as possible. For optimum accuracy, check what direction the HD signal is coming from in your area. A good Web site for this is antennaweb.org. STEP 4 Once everything is hooked up, plug the computer back in, boot up and install the supplied software. (Check your HDTV card manufacturer&amp;#039;s Web site for the latest drivers and software updates.) If your card ships with a remote control, be sure to hook up the USB receiver. The DTV software should automatically scan for channels. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/how-to/a5569/2242491/>