By now, you’ve probably heard of Intel’s new second-generation Core microarchitecture, best known by its code name, “Sandy Bridge.” It’s packed with technologies that can improve the speed and efficiency you edit photos, transcode videos, and perform other media-related tasks. Because it’s also intended (at the moment, anyway) for the mainstream market, it’s also relatively inexpensive. That means with a bit of shopping and a small time investment, you can construct a solid everyday PC that can move your photos and videos faster than that elaborate paperweight you may be using now.

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What follows is one way you can do this, using easily available (and generally inexpensive) components. In fact, this is the exact procedure and hardware we used for constructing our new Sandy Bridge test-bed system, which has been serving us well for over a month now. As always, you can swap out individual parts if they don’t meet your specific needs or budget, but what follows is a good, basic strategy for putting together a good, basic computer using Intel’s latest technology.

(Note: If you’ve been following the tech news for the last month and a half or so, you’ve heard of the Cougar Point B2 stepping glitch that caused some serious headaches for Intel with its motherboards and frustration with early adopters of Sandy Bridge. Intel has rectified the problem in its motherboards now, so you shouldn’t expect any degradation in hard drive speeds.)

For the motherboard and processor, we stuck with the Intel Desktop Board DH67BL ($107 list) and the Intel Core i7-2600K CPU ($317 list)—the microATX motherboard would be easy to install and give us all the general features we needed, while the Core i7-2600K would provide faster Intel HD Graphics 3000 integrated video for our non-media needs. The memory we chose was a 4GB kit of Kingston HyperX H20 ($94)—our PC won’t be using liquid cooling, but this will give us more options should we decide to add it later. The power supply we settled on was an Ultra X4 500-Watt Modular PSU ($99.99), decently powerful and likely to help keep our computer interior tidy. We went with our standard Lite-On optical drive ($17.99) and 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor hard drive ($149.99) for storage.

We wanted to give ourselves more options, though, and since photos and videos were what we had in mind, that screamed out for as much convenient storage as possible. So we chose for our case the Thermaltake Dokker ($69.99), which has a built-in external hard drive dock on top. This would let us insert any 3.5- or 2.5-inch SATA drives at any time—even while the computer is on. We always have plenty of spare drives scattered around here, so this will let us use them to our hearts’ content.

Takeaway: In this edition of the Windows Desktop Report, Greg Shultz explains how you can activate and use the real Administrator account in Microsoft Windows 7.

As you know, the User Account Control (UAC) system is the heart and soul of the security system in Microsoft Windows 7. It is designed to protect your system from inadvertent or malicious incidents that could compromise stability or security while you are logged on using an account with administrative privileges, where you have full access to the system. Of course, you can perform administrative operations simply by working through the UAC prompt. Or, if you totally dislike the UAC system, you can also easily disable it. For example, you can select the Never Notify setting on the User Account Control Setting window.

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However, there certainly are times when it would just be nice to log on to your Windows 7 system with a good old-fashioned, full-fledged Administrator account. When you do, you’ll never encounter a UAC prompt.

In this edition of the Windows Desktop Report, I’ll explain how you can activate and use the real Administrator account in Windows 7.

This blog post is also available as a TechRepublic Photo Gallery and TechRepublic download.

Caveat
Now keep in mind that Microsoft has gone to great lengths to prevent you from using the real Administrator account and, as you can imagine, strongly discourages the technique I’m about to show you here. As such, I must emphasize that you should use the real Administrator account very sparingly — never make it your default modus operandi! With that being said, I also have to warn you that you use this technique at your own risk.
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Activating the account
While you might think that since Microsoft discourages the use of Windows 7’s Administrator account, it is hidden deep within the bowels of the operating system. However, that’s not the case at all. In fact, to find the Administrator account you have to look no further than the Local Users and Groups tool.

To begin, open the Start menu, right-click the Computer icon, and select Manage from the context menu. When you see the Computer Management console, go to the navigation panel on the left and click the arrow next to Local Users and Groups to expand the branch. Then, click the Users folder. At this point you can see and select the Administrator account, as shown in Figure A.

Figure A
Select the Administrator account.
With the Administrator account selected, click More Actions under Administrator in the Actions panel on the right and select Properties from the menu, as shown in Figure B.

Figure B
Use the More Actions menu to access the Properties command.
When you see the Administrator Properties dialog box, just clear the Account Is Disabled check box, as shown in Figure C, and click OK.

Figure C
The Administrator account is disabled by default.
Keep in mind that now that the Administrator Account is activated you can also work with the account in the User Accounts tool in the Control Panel.

Setting the password
By default, the Administrator account has a blank password, so the first order of business after activating the account is to set a password — preferably a complex password consisting of at least eight characters and using uppercase, lowercase, and numbers or special symbols.

With the Administrator account selected, click More Actions under Administrator in the Actions panel and select the Set Password command. You will be shown a warning that explains that resetting a password from outside the account itself can cause irreversible loss of information, as shown in Figure D.

Figure D
When you select the Set Password command, you will see this warning.
However, since the Administrator Account has never been used, you can click Proceed with impunity. When you do, you’ll see the Set Password for Administrator dialog box, shown in Figure E, and can type the new password in both text boxes. Then, click OK.

Figure E
You will be prompted to type the password for the Administrator account.

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Logging in as the Administrator
Now that you’ve activated the Administrator Account and set the password, using the account is as simple as logging off. When the Log Off operation completes, you’ll see the Welcome screen and a user icon for the Administrator Account, as shown in Figure F. To log on as the Administrator, just click the icon and provide the correct password.

Figure F
You will now see the Administrator account on the Welcome page.
When you do, you’ll never encounter a UAC prompt. Again, I must emphasize that you should use the real Administrator account sparingly and never make it your default mode of operation!

What’s your take?
As you can see, it’s a relatively easy operation to activate the real Administrator account in Windows 7 once you know the technique. Now that you know how it’s done, are you likely to use the Administrator account? Have you disabled UAC? If so, do you think that you’ll re-enable it and use this technique instead? As always, if you have comments or information to share about this topic, please take a moment to drop by the TechRepublic Community Forums and let us hear from you.

What if your search engine yawned when you typed in a query? What if it screwed up the spelling of the words you entered, so that your search for “pineapples” produced results for “pinepaples”? Then you’d be using Google Sloppy — and you’d probably renew your appreciation for regular Google.

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That’s the idea behind Google Sloppy, also known as The Search Operators, the brainchild of Yuin Chien, a MFA at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. The conceit of the site is that it’s being run by three “humanistic” operators — one who’s falling asleep, one who misspells queries, and one inexperienced, incompetent intern.

“The machine isn’t perfect, it makes mistakes, and it needs rest just like everyone,” writes Chein. “Having a lazy Google is surprisingly comforting to some!”

Apparently so, because the site has become one of the day’s hottest Google trends — not bad for a project cooked up by a grad student. Are users pranking friends, reminding themselves of Google’s worth, or simply enjoying the novelty? We asked Google Sloppy, but it simply told us it couldn’t find any results for “why is Slopp popluar.”

The Search Operators from Yuin Chien on Vimeo.

Like the rest of us, Microsoft is ready to move beyond Internet Explorer 6. The software giant has launched a new website, The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown, that bears the slogan: “Moving the world off Internet Explorer 6.”

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Here at Mashable, we’ve written at length about the problems created by the continued usage of IE 6. With the exception of specialized corporate/government environments and intranets, the arguments for continued usage of IE 6 are all but over.

On its new website, IE6Countdown.com, Microsoft is making its most concentrated effort yet to get users to move away from the decade-old browser. As the site says in its preamble, “10 years ago a browser was born. …It’s time to say goodbye.” The goal of the website is to get Internet Explorer 6 usage to drop to less than 1% worldwide.

Current IE 6 usage on a global level is 12% — though in many parts of the world, that figure is less than 5%. In the U.S., Net Application’s most recent numbers indicate that 2.9% of web users are still using IE 6. That’s a great start.

The website has links to reasons why users should upgrade, documentation for corporate networks that need to migrate to a new browser and banners that webmasters can embed in their sites, alerting users that they should upgrade.

This is all well and good, but we sure hope that there is a multi-lingual version of this campaign. We say that because the bulk of iE 6 usage comes from China, where 34.5% of users are still on IE 6. South Korea, India, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam also still report more than 10% IE 6 usage.

Frankly, we’re happy to see Microsoft take the time to push for the death of IE 6. It’s a long time coming and the faster we can move on to more modern browsers, the better the web ecosystem as a whole will be.

When was the last time you used IE 6? Let us know in the comments.