“For Windows 2000 Users / Network Admins.” If Windows 98 doesn’t offer enough security for you, and if Windows Millennium Edition leaves a bad taste in your mouth, you’re probably using Windows 2000 at home and/or at work. We’ve assembled fifty nifty network tricks and helpful hints for tweaking your way through this tried-and-true Microsoft operating system. Some of these tweaks even apply to Windows NT4 and Windows XP! [ 50 Tips for $7 / Download ]

Does your DVD playback have you hopping mad from frequent skips and stutters? DVD video can really stress a PC out if you don’t have plenty of hardware horsepower. The most obvious thing to check is the overall condition of the disc (cleanliness). If that checks out, then move on to the hardware and software side. Background tasks that munch on your CPU and eat up RAM are often the culprit, so close down everything that absolutely doesn’t need to be running. Sometimes it’s a matter of finding the one task hampering performance, but it could be a culmination of several as well. High display resolutions also tend to slow down video performance, so a drop in resolution to as low as 640×480 with 16- bit colors might be all that’s required to clear the road. As a last resort, you can try increasing the task priority under Windows 2k or XP, which will give the DVD software preferential treatment when competing for CPU cycles. In the Task Manager, right-click on a process and change the priority to High. Never set a process priority to RealTime, however. Doing so to a busy application could chew up so much CPU time that you likely wouldn’t have any control over the system.”