Review

This is a collection of 116 tips and tricks for optimizing the time you spend using your computers. The tips range from better ways to manage your email to how to setup a web server on your home PC.

Gina Trapani is one of the founders of the lifehacker.com site, and this book collects many of the most useful tips from that site. In addition, you can find summaries of many of the tips at the lifehackerbook.com site.

I have found this to be a very useful book. Despite the fact that I work with PCs everyday, there was plenty of good information. For example, I had never heard of the windows virtual desktop manager dexpot.de - I’m now using it at work and at home to help keep down distractions by having virtual desktops devoted to specific types of tasks (development, tech support, etc.). And I had never heard of Hamachi VPN - a free and easy way to create a VPN that will let you securely connect to your home network while out and about.

She provides ten tips on automating common tasks. The specific tips might or might not be useful to you, but they are certain to inspire some ideas on how you can automate your own repetitive tasks. In all, this is an excellent book to have near your computer desk. Highly recommended.

Be sure to get the latest version of this book: Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker guide to working smarter, faster, better. It has been updated and expanded from the original version.

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