We’ve upgraded our Proxy Sites database to make it even harder to spam and to further ensure the quality of all proxies submitted to the database.

We have also checked every site in the proxy list and removed ones that were broken or slow.

We believe that our proxy list is the best database of proxy sites on the Internet because it is the most frequently updated and because we do not accept money for proxy listings. We always give you the freshest proxies, not the proxies who pay to be put at the top of our proxy list.

Our database is much smaller than it was last week, but the quality is much higher. We currently publish more than 50 new proxies every day. This should help keep you ahead of any content filter which tries to censor your Internet activity.

SolarWinds’ Free Advanced Subnet Calculator is one of those tools that give you 101% of their capabilities without any restrictions or inconvenience. As its name says, it’s a tool that can help you with the subnetting process, but it can also come in handy in showing your address details, calculate CIDR or show available IP addresses within a subnet.
The Address Details tab can offer you a variety of information about a single IP address you’re entering. Whether it’s about the reverse hostname, the hex or binary version of the address, the class info, the average response time or retrieval from RIPE’s database of the proper information, the level of information is easy to understand and can also be handled efficiently.

The Classful Subnet Calculator is very useful in the subnetting process; after customizing the parameters you’re shown a full list of the possible subnets, including subnet mask, inversed subnet mask, the actual subnet size and the host ranges.

The Classless Inter-Domain Route Calculator (CIDR Calculator) extends the Subnet Calculator by adding CIDR support, for even more flexibility.

Last but not least, the Subnet Addresses tab helps you in displaying all the hosts within a subnet, by just entering the IP address and the subnet mask. It also highlights the subnet address and the broadcast address for your information.
An interesting feature was the possibility to export the obtained information into comma delimited files, text files, html files, PDF files or even Excel files, for future analysis.

Solar Winds’ Free Advanced Subnet Calculator is customizable from the skin point of view. It comes with 26 different skins for you to try, but its real power and usability comes from the way it provides IP and subnet information.

SolarWinds makes the Advanced Subnet Calculator available at no cost via their web site.

Your laptop is an expensive investment. Keep it looking and running its best by developing a routine cleaning maintenance program, just as you would perform regular oil changes to keep your car running in top condition. Here are some helpful tips:

• Start by cleaning the laptop case. This case is the exterior shell of the computer; it can be assorted colors, perhaps black or silver. Regularly cleaning this case can help your computer look its best, no matter how many hours of abuse you put it through. Clean this case with a cloth dampened with water. Cleaning solutions such as soap or chemical based products should not be used because they can damage the exterior. If you have something stuck on that water will not remove, try using a Q-tip moistened with rubbing alcohol to dislodge the substance and finish wiping off with the water-dampened cloth.
• Next move on to cleaning the case openings. These openings are the air vents positioned at various locations on your laptop. Sometimes they are located on the bottom or top corners of the laptop. If these air vents are clogged with dust or hair, they can cause the computer to overheat, eventually creating problems such as sporadic reboots. If these vents become visibly clogged, try using a Q-tip and compressed air in a can to clear these openings out. If you use air in a can, make sure not to directly blow it onto the small fans behind the air vents as this can permanently damage them. If there is no way to clean out a vent containing a fan, prop something such as a Q-tip up between the blades to stop them from spinning.
• The next item on the cleaning list is the keyboard. As long as you have compressed air in a can, go ahead and use it to clear out any dust or hair in between keys or along keyboard edges. The keyboards or keys in most laptop models cannot be removed, so you will just have to do your best to get in between the pads if they are very dirty. If you do not have air in a can, a cloth moistened with clean water can be used to wipe off the keypads. Also, if there is something on or between a key that cannot be removed easily with the wet cloth, you an try a Q-tip lightly moistened with rubbing alcohol to dislodge the substance. Be very careful when cleaning keys on a laptop; do not use excess moisture, since all of the delicate electrical components are laid right beneath this board. As long as the cloth is only lightly damp, there should be no problem.
• Onto the touchpad. Each time you use the touchpad, oil from your hands is transferred to its surface; as this oil accumulates, the responsiveness of your touchpad diminishes. Rejuvenate your touchpad response by cleaning it with a cloth dampened with clean water.
  Flat screen laptop monitors are dust magnets. If it’s floating around in the air, it’s going to get stuck onto your screen. Just like your touchpad, accumulated gunk on your screen diminishes its performance, causing you unnecessary eyestrain. Since your screen is not made of glass, it requires special cleaning instructions. Use only rubbing alcohol on a soft, clean cloth to clean your LCD monitor. Do not spray any liquid on your LCD screen as it can cause damage. Do not use paper towels or facial tissues to wipe off the monitor with because they can scratch the surface.
• Cleaning internal laptop components is something that is very tricky, and if not done correctly can permanently damage your laptop. With that said, if dirt or other irritants are building up on any internal components of your laptop, please take it to a computer expert for professional cleaning. They have the knowledge, tools, and experience to take care of your baby properly.
• If other areas of your laptop require cleaning, please refer to the owner’s manual for suggestions. For dirty CD or DVD drives, purchasing a CD/DVD-ROM cleaner is necessary. Visit your local computer or electronics store for details and product specs.

Hopefully this guide as helped you with the basics of cleaning your laptop. Keeping your laptop looking and running its best will guarantee a long, fruitful relationship.

According to Alexa, The Tech FAQ is the 3,731st most popular site on the Internet.

Alexa records web site popularity using the Alexa Toolbar. Alexa ranks millions of web sites based upon user traffic.

How does our rank of 3,731 stack up against other websites? Here are a few of the web sites that we’re beating:

• Whitehouse.gov - 5,295
• Greenpeace.org - 7,924
• BMW.com - 9,280
• Coke.com - 18,767

And who do we have to thank for all of this? You, our loyal (or first time) readers!

Thanks to you all for helping us become the 3,731st most popular web site on the Internet!

Our friends at TradePub have teamed with eEye Digital Security to bring you a free eBook titled Seven Things IT Professionals Must Know.

This free eBook is designed to help you gain key insights into IT security problems and find the safest means to protect your technological assets.

Seven Things IT Professionals Must Know details the seven pain points often encountered by IT security professionals and gives practical advice on how to solve them. This eBook is useful for any IT Professional dealing with internal and external attacks.

The eBook, unsurprisingly, covers eEye products and how they can be useful in protecting enterprise resources, network assets, web sites, and applications. However, the information provided can be useful no matter what IT security tools you choose to use.

The book covers core IT security topics such as:

• How to prevent the loss of protected information
• How to resolve network weaknesses
• How to resist system exploitation through vulnerable network ports
• How to protect against harmful spyware attacks
• How to defend against unwanted intruders

It’s a good read and you can’t beat the price.

Our editors have just posted our latest reviews of new cell phones.

These are the latest and greatest mobile handsets from manufacturers like Nokia, Motorola, and Palm.

Check out these great new cell phones with features like Bluetooth, EVDO, GPS, microSD card slots, and instant messaging.

• Nokia N85
• HTC S740
• Motorola VE75
• Motorola RAZR VE20
• LG KP265
• LG 600G
• UTStarcom Blitz
• Sony Ericsson TM506
• Sony Ericsson T700
• Sharp Sidekick
• Samsung Tocco T919
• Samsung SGH-A237
• Samsung Messager R450
• Samsung M220
• Samsung Knack
• Samsung Cobra M320
• Palm Treo Pro
• O2 XDA Ignito
• Nokia N79
• Nokia 3610
• Nokia 1606
• Motorola Q9
• Motorola MOTOROKR EM30
• Motorola MOTOROKR EM28
• Motorola MOTOROKR EM25
• Motorola Moto ZN200
• LG Invision
• LG HB620T
• iMate Ultimate 8150
• iMate Ultimate 6150
• Casio GZone Boulder

Sony has been known to come out with the best and sleekest devices in recent years and the Sony TZ series is not an exception.

DESIGN

The design of the TZ series is pretty classy. The keys are not your average notebook and the plating between the keys prevents crumbs from dropping between them and causing problems. The finish of the notebook is clean and so is the overall design.

The laptop is among the ultra portable division. With an 11.1 inch screen that is apparent along with a weight between 2.7 and 3.3 pounds depending on the model.

SOFTWARE

Genuine Vista Business is standard on this notebook with the option to downgrade to XP Professional. Although there have been very bad reviews with Vista most of them center on upgrading older PC’s. For that reason it is pretty safe to stick with the Vista Business as it carries some notable upgrades to the old XP system.

PERFORMANCE

Since this is the ultra mobile division of the laptop market a lot of the features that regular notebooks carry are not standard in this division. Such things as an optical drive are still optional on many ultra portable notebooks but thankfully that is standard on the Sony TZ series.

Performance is pretty sluggish though and all the extra software that Sony is notorious for stuffing under the hood of its notebooks are all here which drastically reduces performance. 1GB RAM is standard on the system with the option to double that. The hard drive is 64GB which is the average for this segment of the notebook market.

Although the system does come with an Intel Core Duo 2 processor the gigahertz is only 1.33 and the system cache is only 2MB. This means that multimedia is probably not the best choice for this notebook. You can get by with video playback and picture viewing but video editing photo editing (on programs such as Paintshop Pro or Photoshop) is definitely going to cause the system to lag.

The included Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are great. It also includes EV-DO through Sprint’s super high-speed network which has proven to be the fastest in the industry.

Battery performance is exceptional for the ultra notebook division and is even comparable to regular notebooks. Doing regular web surfing you can expect to get between 5-6 hours of battery life. Of course multimedia such as video chat (notebook comes with a built in web cam), photo viewing and video playback will greatly reduce the battery performance.

CONCLUSION

The only question is if your $1,600 to 3,300 could be better spent. Unfortunately the answer is yes. Although it’s going to be hard to find another ultra portable notebook with the style of the TZ series it’s quite easy to find other notebooks that trump it in specs. The ultra portable Toshiba Protege series is one such alternative.

The bottom line: The TZ series has some impressive specs but the under-performing chipset and crappy bundled software makes this a little less than a sweet deal.

Our Free SMS service is back online.

We have had a lot of troubles providing this free service, in three categories.

The first is tool related. The first SMS script we acquired was a security problem and we had to stop using it. The second script used an SMS service and the company that provided the service went out of business suddenly. We’ve also tried a good number of SMS scripts which simply did not work. We have tested the current script extensively and it’s working perfectly.

The second issue is that some cell phone companies simply do not support email to SMS gateways, or do not support it reliably. The end result is that some people with SMS capable cell phones simply cannot be reached from our free SMS service.

The third issue is related to abuse and complaints. A few people abuse the relative anonymity of our service to send childish SMS messages and then a few other people complain about receiving messages which they do not appreciate. This can be a real hassle and I believe this is the reason why more free SMS services do not exist on the Internet.

Our free SMS service is online again, and it will stay online as long as we can support it. Please don’t abuse our free service, or we will be forced to track down your IP address and beat you with RST packets.

Partitioning the hard drive is not a task which would be performed on a daily basis. It is commonly executed on procurement of a new hard drive. Some consider it a very risky and intricate process but with EASEUS Partition Manager, your outlook will change.

EASEUS Partition Manager (EASEUS PM) is a disk partition management tool, also an alternative to Partition Magic (currently known as Norton Partition Magic). EASEUS PM Software is available in four different editions; Home, Professional, Server and Unlimited. It’s a handy software designed exclusively to aid you with dicing a hard drive to your requirements and taste.

Features and Functions

• Offers a simple and speedy solution in configuring and administrating the hard disk partitions with a comprehensive control over the creation, deletion, resizing, moving and formatting of partitions
• Supports browsing the detailed information about all hard drives, partitions and file systems too
• Labels can be assigned to each partition and supports hiding or un-hiding of partitions
• Comes supplied with an elite element to resize or move the live partitions by making use of the free space without any loss of data
• Helps shrink the size of an existing partition in order to unite it with the available free space and construct a larger partition
• Gives a detailed and comprehensive set of instructions to aid the user in accomplishing a variety of projected steps
• Well-suited with Win NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista and can serve large disks ranging from 2GB to 1TB
• Incorporates a preference to create a bootable CD, that permits to supervise the partitions before Windows loads (could be needed for certain changes)
• Executes a bad sector test and a call on Windows’ CHDISK utility to mend the defects
• Secures and protects the settings, preventing them from unauthorized changes, by providing password locking capability

The Disadvantages

• The interface and the visuals are not too appealing or attractive, starting from the colors to the fonts used. Looking plainly at its aesthetics (appearance), it equals with the aged look of the previous operating systems
• Lacks any kind of backup preference for cloning the existing data

The Conclusion

The user interface may not be worthy of a reward but it balances for the wide-ranged powerful functionalities and ease of use. So grab a copy of EASEUS Partition Manager to make things simple and reclaim peace of mind.

Visit EASEUS Partition Manager’s website

I’ve been getting spammed repetitively from one Yahoo email subscriber who uses multiple Yahoo email accounts. This spamming has been going on for quite some time.

I’ve been blocking this idiot, but that is not very satisfying. I don’t want this idiot using up my bandwidth or the CPU cycles necessary to block his moronic babbling.

I have contacted abuse@yahoo.com repetitively and they have done nothing to block any accounts used by this moron.

Yahoo is completely failing in their moral, and perhaps legal, obligation to prevent spam which is originating from their network.