This is the Windows 7 version of how to find your local IP address, Vista is similar.

I keep talking people through the process of finding their local IP address, not their internet facing one, just the one issued by their router. This post shows one way of checking it on an XP computer the next one does Windows 7, Vista is somewhere in between.

I love this infographic from Pirelli

Thanks to Sidepodcast for pointing it out to me

Ever found yourself searching for the way to safely remove the USB stick in Windows 7, it is lost in the status bar?

Getting to this is very picky at times
So the way is to create a desktop shortcut as follows:
Right click the desktop select New then Shortcut In Location "rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll" – it is case sensitive
Give it a nice name
You can give it a nice icon if you want, Right Click the icon and select Properties
Click Change Icon
Browse to shell32.dll and pick your icon
OK and OK
When you double click you get so you can select the device you want to remove.

This tip was inspired from the official Windows Magazine.

At a recent Banbury Tweetup (usually first Thursday of the month at the Inn at Farnborough, next one on the 9th June 2011) we discussed the security issues of broken computers and hard disks. You should always remove the hard disk or use a secure wipe tool to erase all the data otherwise it might turn up in some sort of identity theft scam later in your life.

Just because a drive cannot be read by your computer (USB drives dropped on floor or USB stick/camera SD drive broken in half ) or your mobile phone sims appears duff does not mean someone could not spend time and read your life story or business secrets from it.

Did you know that an awful lot of laser printers also have hard drives/writable flash media in them, saving your documents for possible reprinting later or just caching them.

So no matter what hardware you recycle remember that you need to be careful about any personal/business information still on the hard disk or flash memory installed in them.

Remember this BBC news item, it could still happen today.

There are services that can wipe and dispose of your drives safely.