(image courtesy of Lifehacker)

Have you had problems starting up your system these days? Tired of waiting five or ten minutes for your system to go from “booting” to “usable,” including all of the apps running in the background that need to start up after Windows has started and you’ve logged in?

The fine folks at Lifehacker have an excellent guide to speeding your system’s startup by trimming startup items in msconfig and your start menu, and then again using some handy free downloads like CCleaner.

[ Lifehacker :: The Complete Guide to Speeding Up Your PC's Startup ]

The fine folks at PC Mag understand that the economy is tough on all of us, and have some help for you if you’re looking for a laptop to get some work done while you’re on the go. None of these suggestions are great if you’re an avid gamer or need something with a lot of horsepower, but if you’re looking to do a little word processing or web surfing from the coffee shop on the corner, these suggestions are right on the money.

From the ASUS EEE PC (shown above) to the HP Mini to the Dell Studio 15, this batch of laptops can help you get the job done on the go at just the right price. It also doesn’t hurt that most of them are super-portable as well!

[ PC Mag :: 8 Laptops Under $800 ]

If you’re like me, you have all of your music and movies on one system and use another for everyday tasks – I keep my goodies on my home server, but have a completely different PC I use for gaming, word processing, and blogging – like right now! So what does it take to get all of that media all over your house, from getting the video to the TV to the audio on your laptop upstairs?

TechRadar has a complete guide on how to make your network perfect for streaming media, whether it’s audio or video! Doesn’t matter whether you use a Mac, a PC, Linux, want your tunes on the XBox 360 or your PS3, the how-to takes you through it all.

[ TechRadar: How to Set Up a Streaming Media Network ]

Paul Stamatiou was lucky enough to get his hands on an Intel 80GB SSD to put through its paces. Now I’m one of the people who believe that once performance is up and costs are down, solid state storage is going to be the future of computing, and promises to make laptops even thinner and lighter and desktop computers faster.

So what does Paul do with the new drive? Why, he installs it into his MacBook Pro, of course – and he tests how long it takes to boot and shut the system down, since the lack of moving parts and spinning platters should have a significant impact on hard-drive intensive tasks like startup and shutdown. Sure enough, he notices a significant difference, and has the video to prove it. Check it out:

[ Paul Stamatiou :: Review: Intel 80GB Solid State Hard Drive ]