Once a week we round up some great reader tips and share them with everyone. This week we’re looking at building a waterproof boombox, quick access to laptop stats in Windows 7, and how to stockpile free apps and books at Amazon.
Tim writes in with the follow summer-centric tip:
I’ve been slowly working on a waterproof boombox. I got the idea from a sweet build I found on Instructables, but I’m trying to scavenge as many parts as I can (as their build would cost me like $1000 if I bought all the premo parts they used). Still, the design itself and the way they packed everything in is really clever.
That is a pretty sweet build but after reading the comments on the tutorial and seeing how much the other tinkers were pricing the build out at, we don’t blame you for trying to scrounge up parts! Thanks for sharing!
Nicole writes in with the following tip:
I use my laptop for presentations and around the office all the time, so it’s important to be able to quickly check on various laptop-specific settings (like display configuration, battery left, wireless status, etc.). Sure, you can dig through various menus or check individual icons to see the status of those things, but Windows 7 has a pretty neat built-in tool called Windows Mobility Center. On laptops you can press Windows Key+X and it pops up to show you laptop-specific stats.
Well we certainly know a keyboard shortcut we’re going to be getting more use out of. Thanks for sharing!
Sean writes in with the following free-loot tip:
I was messing around on my aging Android phone the other day and I discovered that you can grab free apps from the Amazon App Store even if you can’t use them on your phone (because it’s too slow or too old or whatever). Since I know I’m going to be upgrading my phone eventually, I just grab the apps anyway knowing I’ll be able to install them later. I do the same thing with books, actually. I’ve got the Amazon Cloud Reader and I send all the cool free Kindle books I find to the cloud reader, knowing that when I get a Kindle I can just shuttle them over.
That’s a clever way to secure your digital loot for the future; we often use our Cloud Reader to park free books we’d like to read in the future but don’t want to send immediately to one of our Kindles. Nice tip!
Have a tip or trick to share? Shoot us an email at tips@howtogeek.com and look for it on the front page.
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