If you're seeing choppy video playback on your computer it could be because you are watching a video whose quality is too high for the hardware you're using to view it. Because of how videos are normally encoded they use a variable bitrate as opposed to a constant bitrate.

When it comes to Google Chrome I normally use one of the development builds which is generally pretty stable. Unfortunately a few weeks ago I ran into a bug with one the extensions I use a lot, and I had to roll back to a version of Chrome where the bug didn't exist.

I recently heard about a service called BrowserStack that I just had to try out. We've seen services before that let you view a screenshot of what your site looks like in other browsers, but nothing comes close to what this has to offer. You literally get hands-on time with your site in Firefox, IE, Chrome, Safari, and Opera with a wide array of versions supported.

Mac only Recently I had been noticing that each hour when my Time Machine backups ran there was an excessive amount of data being backed up. I could understand the data changing frequently given how much I use my computer, but the backups were still over 1GB even when the machine sat idle.

When things start to go wrong on your computer what is one of the first things you do (after punching your monitor, of course)? Often times I resort to Safe Mode, which prevents a lot of third-party and non-critical processes from starting up. If you try to enter Safe Mode in Windows 8 using the typical F8 key you'll be a little shocked when you're not actually prompted to enter Safe Mode.

If you've been using the DD-WRT router firmware without clicking through some of the tabs you might be missing out on some awesome features. One area worth viewing are the real-time and historical bandwidth monitoring tools that can be easy to overlook.

Windows only You know when someone tells you their computer takes 20-minutes to boot up, and you roll your eyes because you know they are just exaggerating. Well, there is a way to find out. All you have to do is install BootRacer on their machine, and then restart it.

Mac only A lot of people have heard about the negative impact using Adobe Flash can have on your notebook computer, such as the MacBook Air. Apple even went as far as not including Flash when shipping new MacBook Air computers, and it's likely because of the battery implications it can have.

I'm sure at some point or another we've all noticed our system slowing down due to a "runaway" application using up all your CPU or memory. Then we go scrolling through the task manager to find and kill whatever that application may be, and then continue on our merry way. If you've found yourself in a situation like that then you may want to take a peek at SystemMonitor.

Have you ever been in the situation where you're left wondering whether your Internet connection is messing with the quality of your VoIP calls or your online video game experience? You can sit there and test your bandwidth all you want, but the fact is that the speed of your Internet connection might not be the culprit.

I received a tip from Mark over the weekend that NeoSmart had posted their Windows 7 recovery disc ISO images just like they did when Vista was released. These discs are extremely handy to have especially if you didn't receive any installation media with your new computer, which is a common occurrence when purchasing from a majority of manufacturers including Dell and HP.

The odds are pretty good that you've come across the Experts Exchange site while trying to troubleshoot some sort of problem. You probably got frustrated when you noticed that the question being asked was visible, but you couldn't find the answers without registering first. That may not be a big deal if registering was free, but they actually charge $13 a month to get an account.

Naturally Windows XP users have been wanting to upgrade to the latest and greatest Service Pack 3, but it seems as though some users are getting an unexpected surprise. If you have a desktop by HP/Compaq with an AMD processor you may find that your computer shows a blue screen of death (BSoD) when starting up. And to top it all off it won't stop rebooting.