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I-Pass is Illinois’ electronic toll road collection system. Frequent drivers on Illinois and Indiana toll roads can purchase electronic devices called flatpak transponders, which are mounted onto a car’s windshield. Every time the car travels through a toll plaza, a sensor reads the information on the transponder and money is deducted from the user’s account. I-Pass transponders come preloaded with money, but users must log into their I-Pass accounts online to refill their balances....

Also known as jump drives and USB drives, flash drives provide removable data storage using flash memory. The drives are much smaller than the floppy disks that preceded them, while providing exponentially larger amounts of storage. Flash drives are also rewritable, a feature that some CDs and DVDs of comparable size lack. Though most drives have a capacity value printed on their exterior, the only way to check the true size of the drive is by verifying the value from your computer....

BlackPlanet is an online community that was created by Omar Wasow for the African-American online community. It is the largest free site for black women and men to chat on what is important to and relevant regarding African-Americans. Once registered for an account, one can speak to other members for networking, dating or just friendship. Writer Bio

Like most laptops, a MacBook Pro comes with a rechargeable battery. The battery has a limited number of full charges that it can perform before the battery life begins to deteriorate (usually about 300 full cycle charges). If you’re having trouble with your battery staying charged, your battery may need to be replaced. Here’s how to check the status of the battery.

Your home or business’s security system is an investment: you put money into the system to keep your assets safe. If you have installed closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras around your home or business, then you know that they are worthless if the lens is smudged or dirty. A smudged or dirty lens distorts the picture quality and makes identification of any intruders almost impossible. Take care when cleaning your CCTV lens to avoid damaging its special coating that prevents light reflection....

Updated February 10, 2017 Turn on the laptop and open the disc drive. Insert the lens cleaning disc into the disc drive. Close the drive tray and play the disc. Follow the instructions provided by the manufacturer to clean the lens. Open the disc tray and remove the disc. Locate the lens. Use a flashlight if necessary to see inside the drive. Dampen a cotton swab with isopropyl alcohol. Squeeze out any excess alcohol....

If your HP printer just isn’t printing as well as it used to, it may be that your print heads need cleaning. After being used for a while, the print heads can sometimes get clogged. This can cause streaky or incomplete print jobs. Fortunately, HP printers come with a built-in cleaning function. You can start this process right from your computer with the correct software. Windows users will need HP Toolbox, whereas Mac users will need HP Inkjet Utility....

Word documents are text-based computer documents that can be edited by anyone using a computer with Microsoft Word installed. PDF documents, on the other hand, are permanent–you cannot edit them unless you use special software, and they are meant to be viewed using Adobe Reader software. If you have multiple Word documents, you can combine them into one document and then convert that document to the PDF file format. Tips Writer Bio

Nagios is a software tool used for monitoring and managing Internet Protocol (IP) network servers, device performance and availability. While there are ways to configure automatic IP address assignment to a Nagios server, manually configuring a static IP address and subnet mask is best for Nagios server security and management. Tips Writer Bio

Your desktop computer may have multiple optical disc drives. You have the original CD drive for burning CDs. You installed a DVD drive to burn DVD home movies. The PC could have at least two disc drives with drive letter assignments in the Windows operating system. These drives are also detected by Windows Media Player (WMP), which creates confusion when you only want to burn from one disc drive. Microsoft has included a step in the WMP CD burning process to help you choose the desired drive....

Unlike wired keyboards, Logitech wireless keyboards must be paired with the computer for them to work. They use a wireless USB receiver to communicate with the computer via USB ports. Logitech wireless keyboards are convenient because they allow you to move around without the limitations of cables. As long as your computer meets the keyboard’s system requirements, connecting a Logitech wireless keyboard to a computer is a quick process that can be done anytime....

One of the most universal DIY audio/video projects consists of attaching an RCA connector – sometimes called a “phono plug” due to its origins on record players – to a length of wire. In some cases, it’s because a piece of audio equipment uses the RCA connection for its speaker output and you can’t connect upgraded speakers without it. You can also use speaker wire with RCA connectors as a custom-made patch cord to connect between your audio components....

You can share a cable modem among several computers in multiple ways. In many cases, three or four PCs can be connected directly to the modem via Ethernet cables. Many more computers can be connected via an Ethernet router. For greater flexibility, the modem can be linked to a wireless router, which communicate to PCs equipped with Wi-Fi cards. Which method you use depends on how much you’d like to invest and how far from the modem your PCs are located....

Floppy disks are quickly becoming obsolete, along with the last of the computers with floppy drives installed. A great way to back up the information on your floppies is to copy the disks’ images to your computer. Free programs like ImgBurn and Free ISO Creator can help you do so quickly and effectively. Writer Bio

If you have don’t have a DVD burner on your computer but you would still like to burn video discs to play on your home DVD player, you can do this by making a VCD. A VCD – short for “video CD” – is simply an encoded video burned on a CD that is designed to be played by DVD players. A CD holds substantially less data than a DVD but will still get the job done....

MPEG video is a common video file format. However, if you want to have all the advantages of DVD video, such as quality and versatility, converting those files to DVD is a simple and good option. VIDEO_TS isn’t the format for DVD itself, it’s just the way files are stored in the folders on the DVDs. Most people looking at a DVD will see this folder, but converting files to the actual DVD format is not difficult....

Corel WordPerfect includes a PDF converter that imports PDF files directly into the program. You can import the original PDF file with or without any formatting into WordPerfect. All pages within the PDF are imported by default. However, you can customize the page range you want to import beforehand. During the conversion, you can also instruct WordPerfect to recognize text on scanned pages automatically, to recognize and extract text from all images, or to not recognize text in images....

VLC Media Player is a free video player and converter made by VideoLAN. Offering conversions to and from dozens of formats, you can convert your VLC video to a QuickTime file type using the program’s transcoding process. QuickTime files are identified by their “.mov” file extension, also known in VLC as an “Encapsulation Format.” Note that VLC Media Player processes your “.mov” with what is known as an “H.264” compression type, resulting in the highest quality video with the smallest file size....

WordPerfect letters, memos and other documents cannot be opened directly with Microsoft Word and must be converted using Word’s Batch Conversion Wizard. The wizard is available in each version of Word. The wizards works by walking you through the process so you don’t have to download a third-party utility or convert the WordPerfect files manually. Once converted, you can save the files as Word documents or in another format like Rich-Text or Text format....

Despite incompatibilities between the devices Verizon and AT&T use, you can use a variety of methods to avoid manually re-typing all your contacts into your new phone. These can include specialized computers at AT&T stores to automate the entire process, using a smartphone’s own software to copy your contacts to the new device, or using Verizon and AT&T’s online backup tools. Writer Bio