I had an interesting conversation with a friend recently. His 5 year old Jeep had been having some mechanical problems so he wanted out.

“I want one of those new Prius hybrids. What do you think?”

I was always the go to guy for this kind of thing. Anything having to do with cars, I’m your man. I’ll be able to tell you the unbiased facts and my biased opinion.

I smiled at his desired choice then told him that choosing a car was an emotional personal choice. “You really have to dig deep down to find the answer. I can’t tell you what to buy…”

If you've got a grip with your computer, or a burning question that needs answering, or you just want to speak your mind, then drop us a line at questions@urbanheights.com .

1. When I turn on my computer (Windows XP) I notice that multiple applications startup, which slows everything down. Is there a way that I can tell my computer what applications to start up?

This typically happens when many applications are installed on a computer. Most software adopted the idea of "Quick Start",meaning the application runs a smaller version of itself in the background (which usually appears in the System Tray) to make the software seem as though its starting faster. This concept is a good idea for 1 or 2 applications but becomes an overkill when you have say, 14 applications installed on your computer. Below I listed several ways you can clean you computer.

Finally!!! Firefox 1.5 and it’s extensions

Browsers, Browsers, Browsers. You may think that it doesn’t really make a difference which browser you use to surf the web but besides increasing the speed of your line, it is a major player in adding that extra level convenience. I remember about 5-6 years ago, I was a faithful user of Netscape’s browser for the web. Then, some executives at Netscape of course, came up with the idea of including your mail, AIM, and browser all in one application. With that innovative idea they added a five minute startup time for a simple web browser and I’ve be using Internet Explorer ever since. However, now we have an application by the name of Firefox 1.5, and it has really impressed me enough to want to switch my browser again. Firefox is an open source (free) browser that is maintained by Mozilla.

About the guide:
With portable media players becoming more popular, we at urbanheights.com thought it would only be appropriate to whip up a guide that will allow you to view DVD's on these devices. The Sony PSP and the Video iPod were the devices chosen for this guide because of their popularity and the lack of instructions on getting DVD's onto their devices. While there might be other solutions then the one's shown in this how to, the software shown is completely free, with all the links needed to download the software included. The software can also rip copy protected DVD's, though urbanheights insists that you only use your own legally owned DVD's.