Farewell to Analog Cell Signals

I remember the days of the big bag phones and cell phones that were bigger than your home cordless phones of today. I have to say it’s much nicer carrying around a RAZR without an external antenna than lugging around that bag phone in my car. If you’re fan of those analog devices though, you better get ready for a switch starting in 2008. After February 18 a lot of companies who use analog cell phone waves will be going digital. Apparently about a million cell phones won’t work anymore after the switch. That’s not terribly bad since you can go down to your cell phone carrier and get a new one. However, if you have OnStar and use the phone feature of it, you will lose that capability because of this switch. GM started making changes in 2002 to their vehicles once they heard about the FCC’s decision to let analog be laid to rest, but it’s there are some vehicles that were made up to 2005 that still won’t be able to use the new digital service. Good news for some of you using this OnStar feature…you can pay just $15 and get your vehicle upgraded to be able to use the digital signals. For others, the upgrade might not be possible depending on when your vehicle was manufactured.

If you have a home alarm system, you might want to check and see if you need to go about getting something set up for the switch as well. From what I read most of the big companies have what they need in place and don’t use the analog signal. Some of the smaller companies don’t however. The alarm system uses the analog signal when a landline isn’t connected to the system. If you have a home alarm system and are worried about any potential problems, it might be a good idea to call your company and ask if it will affect you.

GeekByte: Retrieving your Recycle Bin Icon

There are times when we all get a little punchy with the Delete button and delete something that you weren’t ready to rid your Desktop of just yet. I know we’ve all done this with files and folders, but what happens if you delete My Computer or the Recycle Bin icon off of your Desktop? How do you get it back?

Luckily it’s easy to get these little guys back to their home on the Desktop. For XP users, right click on an empty area of your desktop and choose Properties. Click on the Desktop tab and then click on the Customize Desktop button on the bottom of the window. This will open another window that has checkboxes at the top under the section Desktop Icons (original, isn’t it?). Simply place a check in the boxes next to the icons you want to appear on your desktop and click OK. Click OK again on the Properties window and your icons should be back on your Desktop once again.
If you’re running Vista, the steps are a little different. Right click on an empty area of your desktop and choose Personalize. A new window will open with several links on it. On the left side of the window there will be a Change Desktop Icons link. When you click it a new window will open. Place a check in the boxes next to the icons you want on your desktop and click OK. You can then close the Personalize window.
Conversely, you can go into either of these windows and uncheck any boxes of icons that you don’t want to appear on your Desktop.