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The Windows registry is one place that should be left well-enough alone, but just for the sake of argument, what would happen if you deleted the entire thing? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post discusses the possibilities in order to satisfy a reader’s curiosity. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Screenshot courtesy of Wikipedia. The Question SuperUser reader SkYWAGz wants to know what would happen if the entire Windows registry was deleted:...

Laughing Out Loud LOL means “laugh out loud” or “laughing out loud.” It means that something is funny or made you laugh. It is one of the most famous acronyms on the internet and is used in nearly every part of the web. Because of its popularity, it’s even used during in-person conversations and has gained an entry in many English-language dictionaries. You can also use “LOL” as a verb. For example, if you want to convey that something made you laugh in the past, you might type “I LOL’d....

Screen-on Time Defined Screen-on time is the amount of time in hours that a device’s display is open, typically a phone. It’s in contrast to standby time, which is the amount of time that a device can stay in sleep mode. Screen-on time is a valuable figure when talking about battery life. For example, you might say, “this device lasts for 8 hours of screen-on time,” which means you can leave a phone’s display running for 8 hours on a single full charge....

The Different Types of Shell The environment you get when you launch a shell is defined by settings held in configuration or profile files. These hold information that establishes such things as your text colors, your command prompt, aliases, and the path that is searched for executable files when you type the name of a program. There are a number of different files—in different locations in the file system—where these settings are stored....

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Ethree writes: Why indeed? We saw it as a pear in Chrome and, sure enough, when we saved it to our downloads folder it displayed as an apple. On Chrome and Firefox it will show as a pear. Now, try to save it and look at it saved on your desktop....

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader DragonLord is curious about why most operating systems and programming languages count from zero. He writes: Why indeed? As widespread as the practice is, surely there are practical reasons for its implementation. What historical reasons exist for this, and what practical advantages does counting from zero have over counting from one?...

While most of us have probably never stopped to think about it, alphabetical characters are not all the same size in the number of bytes it takes to represent them. But why is that? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answers to a curious reader’s question. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Partial ASCII Chart screenshot courtesy of Wikipedia....

Instant Access to Games Waiting on downloads and updates is one of the most frustrating aspects of gaming, especially for players with little time to waste. When it comes to the cloud, however, these hurdles largely don’t exist. Services like GeForce NOW, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Google Stadia host and stream games directly from servers, meaning that from the moment a game shows up in my library, I can play it instantly with no added wait times....

iPhone and iPad apps must ask for permission “to find and connect to devices on your local network.” This request was iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 updates, Here’s what this message means and how you should answer it. Why Apps Are Asking to Scan Your Local Network Whenever an iPhone or iPad app wants to scan your local network for devices and connect to them, it has to ask for permission first....

When you buy a new laptop or tablet, you’ll often be able to “customize” it by paying extra for a faster CPU. But this may not be a good idea — the higher-end CPU might be a worse fit for the device! This applies to popular devices like Apple’s MacBook Air, Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 tablet, and a variety of other Ultrabooks, full-size laptops, and Intel-based tablets. Hard data from comparative reviews backs this argument up....

Linux isn’t the only alternative PC operating system out there. Some alternative operating systems are developed by large corporations, while others are small projects worked on by hobbyists. We don’t recommend you install most of these on your actual PC. If you want to play with them, you may want to install a virtual machine program like VirtualBox or VMware Player and give them a whirl. Linux, FreeBSD, and More RELATED: What Is a Linux Distro, and How Are They Different from One Another?...

Point-and-shoot cameras have gone the way of the dodo. Sure, expert photographers may turn to DSLR cameras, but most of us are just getting by with the camera on our smartphone. Smartphone cameras are getting better every year, but some things never change. These tips will help you get better photos. And no, using a selfie stick isn’t one of them! Focus, Focus RELATED: 10 Tips for Taking Better Christmas Photos...

Windows 8.1 brings some great new features, from a Start button and boot-to-desktop option to SkyDrive integration and a much more robust Modern interface. However, Microsoft is removing some features that were present in Windows 8. It’s possible some of these features will make an appearance in the final version of Windows 8.1, but don’t count on it. What we see in the preview release is probably about what we should expect in the final release....

Intel x86 or x64 processors have traditionally been found in laptops and desktops, while ARM processors have been found in lower-power embedded devices, smartphones, and tablets. But you can now buy laptops with ARM chips and smartphones with Intel chips. ARM and Intel offer two entirely different and incompatible architectures. Whether you’re choosing a Windows, Android, or Chrome OS device, you can choose between ARM or Intel x86/x64 — and the choice matters for software compatibility....

If your Android device keeps connecting to the wrong Wi-Fi hotspot, don’t despair. Read on as we show you how to easily prioritize known hotspots to ensure the one you want is always ranked above the ones you don’t. Update: This article was done on cyanogenmod and the settings here don’t exist on stock Android. We’re working on an update to the article. We always love it when a reader question forces us to stop being lazy and fix one of our own problems....

When you run an app on your Android device, you can minimize it and return to the home screen easily by touching or pressing the Home button. However, what if you want to quickly get to an open app from within a another open app? Note: this article is obviously meant for beginners. To switch to another app while in one app, touch the Recent Apps icon at the bottom of the screen....

Getting Started First, download the free Windows 7 Start Button Changer (link below), and extract the contents of the folder. It contains the app along with a selection of alternate start button orbs you can try out. Before changing the start button, we advise creating a system restore point in case anything goes wrong. Enter System Restore in your Start menu search, and select “Create a restore point”. Please note: We tested this on both the 32 bit and 64 bit editions of Windows 7, and didn’t encounter any problems or stability issues....

What Are the Requirements for Dual Graphics Cards? Let’s start with one important note: If you use the latest hardware, you’re unlikely to find support for dual-card technologies. Modern GPUs are capable of delivering high-performance gaming without the need for a multi-GPU setup. And, with support for SLI and CrossFire dwindling, game developers are favoring the use of single graphics card machines. If you do have older hardware and are considering installing a second GPU, before even considering whether a dual graphics card setup is better than a single setup, it’s necessary to find out how you can install more than one graphics card in your computer....

Are you a huge fan of Google Chrome, but looking for a way to lock things down or supervise what your children access when browsing the internet with Chrome? Then you will definitely be pleased with the latest feature to be introduced in the Chrome Canary Channel! The new supervised accounts feature lets you add accounts with built-in restrictions and fewer privileges to help keep your little ones safer on the web....