So you are a professional and you just bought yourself a new shiny macbook, everything is great and working, congratulations on that! But because this is an imperfect PC world, your clients or boss keep asking you to use some proprietary windows only tools.

The solution? Obviously its bootcamp or VM (Virtual Machine), but here is the dilemma, you already spent $2,000 – $2,500 on your Mac, Applecare and peripherals, you don’t wan’t to add another $199.00 -  $319.00 (Win 7 Home Premium / Ultimate) just for windows and then another $80.00 for virtualization software (VMware or Parallels) just so you can run a few apps.

Most people just pirate their copy of windows. Common, you know what I am talking about, don’t act like you don’t. The problem with any and all pirated software is that eventually it gets patched, you can’t upgrade/update you feel like a criminal when a person next to you sees a bunch of none genuine windows messages from your screen and it becomes such a chore that it’s just not worth the effort to maintain.

Before you head over to Best Buy and fork over $199.00 for a Home Premium, regret your decision, then get stuck arguing with the manager of the store because Best Buy does not do refunds for software that has been opened. I have some great news for you.

Microsoft has resellers, don’t go directly to the source to buy the product, buy from a reseller instead. Resellers get a huge discount which they may use to attract customers by selling for less than retail. After some serious google searching I almost gave up because most of what I found were just cheap windows 7 upgrades, I don’t need no stinking upgrade! And I found a reseller with a whopping 80% discount (its legal).

Why and how can they do this? Well its simple, these guys buy the licenses in bulk, they have huge savings and you don’t get the fancy box or the manuals, most of the money that you pay for the software actually goes towards the advertising and not the product itself.

Without a further adieu here is a link to their store:

http://www.cheapwindows7key.com

Home Basic
$19.99 (+$19.99 for a download, watch out for that)

Professional
$25.99 (+$19.99 for a download, watch out for that)

Ultimate
$29.99 (+$19.99 for a download, watch out for that)

Student are even luckier and they have choices

1. You can get windows 7 for free from your college, just ask around in your library
2. You can buy yourself a legit copy from Microsoft for just $30.00, but you need to prove that you are a student and its only for Universities Students.

Microsoft Student Discount
http://www.microsoft.com/student/en/us/software/windows/default.aspx

- You are welcome ppls

One of the very first things that people will notice when upgrading to Lion is that the scrolling has been “reversed”, in other words the page moves down when you flick your finger up and vice versa, kinda like pushing a page on an iPhone or iPad. It may seem incredibly annoying to get used to at first, but hold on there, don’t change that prefs to “off” just yet!

I admit I first turned it off in a matter of fifteen minutes of use, so if you are at work and just need to get your tasks finished by all means don’t add to the frustration and turn it off.

Some people will argue that its been decades that we used the mouse one way and that the change is just not welcome, I agree with some of that, different isn’t always good. It looks like most people just write opinions but not enough actual reviews, in this case I speak from personal experience because I gave the feature a try.

In my experience it took a little less than a day to get the hang of the new way, just like everyone else I had to use the mouse for the past decade, yet it didn’t seem like that big of a deal to get used to something new. I find Apple’s claims to be true, it does feel more “natural” and dare I say much more relaxing and comfortable, however that only seems to be the case with the magic mouse and the track pad, other mice devices don’t feel as great.

The question is, leave it on or off?

That depends on how you use your mac, If you use a macbook or have a magic mouse or a bluetooth trackpad, you should give natural scrolling a try, you will be glad you did. However if you are using a conventional mouse I recommend turning the option off entirely.

1. Lets begin by creating a new document dimensions of 500px x 500px

2. Now lets make some guides, select the marquee tool then chose Style “Fixed size” and type in Width: 365px Height: 100px

3. Click and release anywhere on the photoshop canvas to select a shape

4. Toggle the ruler by pressing Command+R, create a guide on all four sides

5. Make a deselection and use the rounded rectangle tool to draw within the guides

6. Apply a gradient style to the newly created shape

7. Gradient example: #034372 > #16cfa6

8. Duplicate “Shape 1″ Command+J, right click on the duplicated layer and chose “Rasterize Layer”, make sure to also drag the Fx icon into the trash layer panel trash bin

9. Press Command+I to invert color of “Shape 1 copy”

10. Select the marquee tool, remember to chose “Normal” because we previously selected style fixed size then marquee over bottom half portion of the shape and hit the delete key.

11. Deselect the current selection Command+D, go back to the layers panel and chose create mask

12. Make sure that your guides are visible “+;” to toggle guides. Select the gradient tool and drag bottom to top while holding the shift key to constrain a vertical line

13. Chose overlay for blend and lower the opacity to about 80%

14. Double click on Shape 1 layer to bring up the layers styles window and set 1px stroke filled with #034472

15. Duplicate Shape 1 Layer then double click Shape 1 copy 2, in the Blending Options set fill opacity to 0, uncheck gradient overlay, then set stroke to 1px, position Inside with a white fill

Should look something like this

Press Command+H to hide extras and as a result you will get rid of the vector border surrounding Shape 1 copy 2 mask. Looking good already, but we are not quite done yet, there is still some more work to be done here.

16. Create a new layer above Shape 1 copy 2, Shift+Option+Command+N then select the ellipse tool and add 20px of feather, draw a selection on the lower part of the button

17. Fill the selection with white Command+Delete, set the blend mode to overlay and reduce the opacity to 50%

18. Duplicate Shape 1 copy 2 once more Command+J, change fill to 100% and drag the Fx icon into trash, create a mask and while inside of the mask create a selection of a single corner and press Shift+Command+I to inverse the selection, then fill it with black Option+Delete

19. Deselect the selection Command+D, then using the gradient tool, drag from x to y, then right to left while holding the shift key to restrain a 45 degree angle black to white gradient. Then once more from bottom to top

20. Copy and mirror the corner on each side

21. Add more black to transparent gradient to the bottom corners if necessary, you don’t need all four sides to be perfect

22. As a final touch you can also add a white slope resembling a skewed triangle, lining up with the hard edge of the gloss

23. Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur > Distance of about 200px, change blend mode to overlay and change the opacity to 50%, make sure that it lines up with the hard edge for a sharpened effect.

Add a faint drop shadow, some type and that is basically it. You can download the psd file below, use it however you like, I do hope that you reverse engineer and come up with your own unique variations.

2. Using the star tool, draw over the circle, while drawing do not release the mouse just yet, use the [up/down] arrow keys to adjust amount of angles, without releasing the mouse hold ctrl (command key on mac) while dragging [inn/out] to [contract/extract] the outer part of the star.

3. Select both shapes using the selection tool, using the pathfinder palette (located: Windows > Pathfinder) select the [unite ] option4. Set your fill color to [none ] then draw another slightly larger circle than the original circle, select all shapes and using the pathfinder windows chose the [exclude ] option

5. Draw three more circles as illustrated below

6. Select all shapes and from the pathfinder window chose the [Minus front ] option then reverse the stroke with fill by clicking the reverse button or using the keyboard shortcut (Shift + x)

There you have it, a nice vector gear icon. To personalize you may want to apply your own styles, gradients & other graphical treatments. You may also want to take advantage of the Extrude & Bevel effect located in the (effects > 3D menu) but you must change the color from black to something else for it to look right.

Moving to a new apartment or home is always exciting, the last thing you want to find out is that the extra bedroom you intended to use as an office space does not have a cable outlet. This is exactly what happened to my wife and I in our new apartment.

Three solutions to this problem

• Long coax or ethernet cable (best option, if possible)
• Powerline adapter kit
• Router Bridge (dd-wrt – repeater bridge mode)

First attempt was a Powerline HD Gigabit Ethernet Adapter Kit, purchased at best buy for $149.99 plus tax. After running a few speed tests, I was pleasantly surprised at the stable 15mbs throughput from a 50mbs connection. However different outlets gave different results, and frankly i’m paying for 50mbs so 15mbs just won’t do.

Second and preferred method was to purchase two new and powerful routers to create a strong network, I chose WNDR3700 (main) and Linksys E3000 (client). After flashing and configuring dd-wrt on both of the routers I was able to achieve fluctuating speeds 25mbs – 50mbs.

A word of advice, one mistake that I made was to think that a stronger and more expensive dual band router would be better for the overall network performance. In all honesty I could have created the same stable network for a fraction of the cost, you don’t need a dual band router because the 5Ghz band has a very short range and you can only make use of a single band at a time. If your router is within 802.11n specification it should be more than enough for most people.

Conclusion
Nothing beats hard wire, but if you are in a situation where you need to extend your network, but you can’t run a cable and or your wifi is out of range, powerline adapter may be a good choice for you. However if you do get a wifi signal and don’t mind getting a bit technical, using two routers running dd-wrt might be a better choice for you, keep in mind that if you are having poor wifi signal you can boost the TX Power of the main and client routers for better performance.

What is dd-wrt?
It’s a third party developed firmware which you may use instead of the default router firmware. Check to see if your router is supported.

Why dd-wrt
Its free, gives you more control, more features, arguably nicer user interface.