Mark Spoonauer is the editor in chief of LAPTOP Magazine and Laptopmag.com, which reviewed over 130 notebooks and netbooks in the last year. Here are his favorite notebooks of 2009. So if you're buying a notebook, buy one of these.)

Sub $400

Acer Aspire 1410

Starting Price: $399
This 3.2-pound ultraportable is such a sweet deal it makes us question whether netbooks are long for this world. Acer stuffed a dual-core Celeron processor (about double the performance of Atom), 2GB of RAM and Windows 7 Premium inside a 11.6-inch system with a full-size keyboard—all for just $399. Plus, you get 6.5 hours of battery life. Sure, the 160GB hard drive is a bit skimpy, but the 1410 is a real PC you can take anywhere. [Review]

Sub $700

Gateway NV

Starting Price: $599.99
The NV proves that you can get a good-looking budget laptop that performs. In addition to four color choices (blue, brown, read, and black), this 15.6-inch notebook sports a fashionable metal hinge and glowing LED controls. Under the hood the NV satisfies with the combination of an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive. Our only nitpick is the narrow touchpad button. [Review]
ASUS UL30A

Starting Price: $649.99
If we had to pick a notebook of the year, the UL30A would be it. Why? Because this 13 incher is light enough to take anywhere yet offers enough pep to be your primary machine. This 4-pound ultraportable lasted nearly 10 hours on a charge in our tests (continuous surfing over Wi-Fi), and its ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duo processor can easily handle Windows 7. Bonus: 500GB of storage is nice for the $650 price. [Review]

Sub $1000

Dell Studio 14z

Starting Price: $749.99
Think of it as the poor man's MacBook—with better specs and sound. Dell's 14-inch thin and light notebook weighs in at just 4.4 pounds and features Nvidia 9400 graphics for extra multimedia punch. But unlike the entry level $999 Mac, the Dell offers 70GB more hard drive space, superior speakers, and a backlit keyboard for $160 less. The only trade-offs are the lack of a DVD drive and the need for an adapter for plugging in memory cards. [Review]

Sub $1500

Toshiba Qosmio X505

Starting Price : $1399
Ideal for multimedia mavens and good enough for gamers, the 18.4-inch Qosmio X505 brings serious muscle in the $1,499 configuration, including a blazing Core i7 CPU and Nvidia GTS 250M graphics (with 1 GB of dedicated video memory). We also dig the classy glossy black design with metallic red accents, integrated Blu-ray drive, and booming Harman Kardon speakers. If you want to step up from the 1680 x 945 display to a full HD screen, splurge for the $1,899 model, which also sports 6GB of RAM and an SSD. [Review]
ThinkPad T400s

Starting Price: $1599 ($1359.15 after coupon)
If BMWs are the ultimate driving machines, ThinkPads are the ultimate business machines, and this is the flagship vehicle. The T400s measures just 0.8 inches thick and weighs 3.9 pounds, and it's decked out in supersturdy magnesium (for the bottom and deck) and carbon fiber (for the lid). More important, this 14-incher blows away the competition in terms of ergonomic comfort and performance—when you spring for the 2.53-GHz processor and 128GB solid state drive. [Review]

The Windows 7 Family Pack was a great offer, bundling three full Home Premium upgrades for $150. It was also a limited time deal, but without a set terminus. Well, now we have an expiration date: gift-buying season.
Paul Thurrott traces the arc from start to finish:

When Microsoft first briefed me about the Family Pack back in July, I was told that it would be a limited-time offer "until supplies last" (sic) in the United States and "other select markets." I communicated Microsoft plans for the Family Pack in various articles over the next few months, noting that it was a temporary offer only.
Unfortunately, that's just now becoming obvious to potential customers here in the United States, where the Family Pack has apparently completely disappeared. Numerous email messages this week complain that attempts to find the Windows 7 Family Pack online or at brick-and-mortar electronics retailers have proven fruitless, killing plans for planned holiday presents.

In other words, stocks have run dry, as Microsoft said they eventually would. Minor issue! Seeing as Windows 7 is software, any limit on the supply is totally self-enforced. It's possible that they set aside a certain number of licenses at launch, and they've just burned through them faster than planned. It's also possible that they planned this arbitrary supply excuse so they don't look like assholes when the cost of upgrading a household's worth of PCs to Windows 7 suddenly doubles right before Christmas.
How am I supposed to tell my parents I love them this Christmas, if not with a box of vouchers for OS upgrade licenses? [WinInfo]

Earlier in the month,I had post a tip on how to recover your Windows XP administrator password by using the installation disk.  However, he forgot to mention a few other easier ways how to reset Windows XP password without having to go through the installation process.

1. Use Alt, Control, Delete & The Windows Welcome Screen

If you have set your computer up to login via the Welcome Screen, there may be a slight chance that you will be able to login as the Administrator. Depending on who installed XP on your computer, there may or may not be a password on the Administrator’s account.
So simply press Alt+Control+Delete twice. You will be presented with a login box. Click OK to login without typing any user name or password in. If that doesn’t work, type in ‘Administrator’ into the username box and press enter. If that doesn’t work, so far, you are in bad luck.
If you are able to log in, simply go to the control panel, go into User Accounts and change your password.

2. Login To Another Account & Reset The Password Through User Management (XP Professional Only)

This will only work if you have Windows XP Professional, and you can login with an account. Right click on My Computer and select Manage. Then select Local User and Groups –> Users. Right click on your username and select Set Password. Follow the prompts and set yourself a new password.
If you can’t get into Device Manager because you don’t have a user account to get into your computer, you can try opening Device Manager from another computer. Right click on where it says Computer Management (Local) and choose Connect to another computer… once you are logged in to another computer within your home network.
Then enter your computer IP or Name. For example 169.168.x.x, 10.1.1.x or \\DesktopPC. (replacing x.x with your computer IP address. You can also click on Browse –> Advance –> Find now to browse for computers on your network.
If you are granted access to the remote computer, follow the steps I mentioned above and set a new password. If not, continue reading.

3. Reset The Password Through Safe Mode & Command Prompt

If the above steps have failed so far, you can try and boot into Safe Mode. To do this, press F8 while your computer is booting. Once in safe mode, you can try going into the control panel and reset your password. If you can’t, you can try and open up a Command Prompt by opening Run and typing cmd. Enter net user [username] [enternewpassword]. For example, If I want to change my account which is Jack to password abcde, I would type in net user jack abcde and press enter. Your password should now be changed.

4. Use A Live (Bootable CD)

If you are at this stage, and haven’t so far managed to get into your computer, you may want to use a Live Bootable CD. You may want to have a look at the post 3 Ways To Reset A Forgotten Windows Administrator Password and follow those steps.
Alternatively, you can use the Live CD so you can boot into your computer and access the files so you can back them up on an external hard drive or USB stick. If you can’t get into Windows, this is your only option.

5. Remove Your HardDrive, Backup, Format, Reinstall

One final way, and probably a good thing to do if your computer is running really slow, or you can’t get into Windows at all; take out your hard drive, put it into another computer, backup your data, format the hard drive, put it back into the original computer, and re-install Windows. You may want to have a look at The Idiot’s Ultimate Guide to Building Your Own PC for some help taking out your hard drive.
So these are my basic tips if I can’t get access to a computer to a user account in a Windows XP computer. I hope these tips will come in handy.
Do you have any other tips to get access to your computer because you forgot the password? Let us know in the comments.

Microsoft Office 2010 beta has hit the roads with MSDN and TechNet subscribers already having access to download the latest copy of Microsoft Office. If you are not a MSDN or TechNet subscriber you would still be able to download a copy of Office 2010 beta in the coming days.

Microsoft has already put up a site where users can download Office 2010 beta. However, the download buttons do not work yet. Microsoft will be offering three versions of Office 2010 beta including:

• Office Home and Business 2010 beta
• Office Professional 2010 beta
• Office Professional Plus 2010 beta with Volume licensing

If you're interested in downloading this beta just follow these procedures

1. Go to this official page for office 2010 beta download
2. Click the green colored download button which says Get It Now
3. Now Sign In with your hotmail username and password and enter the information required about your company or if you are downloading just to try new office 2010 beta as a home user then better enter some fake information and click the continue button at the end of the page.
Note: If you try to skip this step by not providing any information you wont be able to get the key and download office 2010 beta
4. Next screen you will see after some loading time, will show you the MAK key for your office 2010 beta which will be valid until October 2010.Save your MAK key by printing the page or write it down some where or just copy paste the key into notepad and save the file. Now scroll down the page and select the 32 bit or 64 bit version of office 2010 beta with the language. 


Microsoft Office 2010