Tom’s of Maine’s Maximum Strength Sensitive Toothpaste is made without saccharin, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, colors, or flavors. In addition, there are no animal ingredients and no animal testing.

Tom’s Sensitive toothpaste has the same active ingredient, potassium nitrate (5%), as other leading brands, without all of the artificial add-ons like preservatives and colors. Sodium fluoride helps prevent tooth decay.

Soothing Mint is my favorite flavor because it’s more calm and subtle than the artificial mint other store brands flavor with.

Final Opinion:

Although I still prefer toothpastes that are SLS-free, Tom’s of Maine’s Maximum Strength Sensitive toothpaste is a great option for those who want natural toothpaste but need sensitive care. I think that the toothpaste did decrease my teeth’s sensitivity to cold and heat in just a few weeks of use.

Find out more about this great toothpaste at: Tom’s of Maine

It is Slow

How slow? Well, I was unable to test Internet Explorer 7, the version you likely have installed on your computer, but did test the brand new Internet Explorer 8 which is vastly improved over its predecessor (but still awful). All I did was load USAToday.com and measured how long it took. I did this tons of times and then averaged the result to determine the average time all major browsers took to view a webpage. IE8 lost. Internet Explorer took ~6.3 seconds to load the page while the fastest browser, SRWare Iron, took about ~1.3 seconds. That’s a five second difference and almost 5x times faster. Think of it this way, if you clicked on 100 pages (not visted 100 websites but just clicked 100 while on the internet) you would have wasted over 8 minutes watching the page load if you were using Internet Explorer instead of a faster browser. That time adds up quickly.

It is REALLY Slow

Page load time varies on different sites because of server speeds and website content. Today, many of the most popular websites run using large amounts of javascript – a language that makes things like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Windows Live work. Having a browser that runs this quickly makes managing email and other tasks much easier and efficient. So how does Internet Explorer fare in this arena? Poorly.

The fastest browser I test, SRWare Iron, runs javascript anywhere from 34x – 58x faster than Internet Explorer. Not impressed? Consider that if you were Iron and it normally took you 5 minutes to drive to the grocery store it would take Internet Explorer anywhere from almost 3 – nearly 5 hours to do the same thing. There is no doubt about it, that is slow.

It Can’t Display Pages Correctly

There are a set of web standards laid down by intelligent organizations and web designers that everyone attempts to comply to in order for the web to appear consistent. These people have created a test called the ACID3 test to gauge how well web browsers abide by the standards. Microsoft apparently has a secret vendetta against all of them because they have failed miserably.

This is what the test should look like when finished correctly:

And this is what Internet Explorer 7 does to it:

It is a Security Risk

Internet Explorer may not be any more secure than the other major browsers (Safari was recently hacked in seconds in the 2009 pwn2own competition, IE and Firefox were hacked hours later) but it is at a much greater risk because of its large market share which makes it an efficient target for hackers. Possibly more important is the additional fact that IE is generally used by the technical illiterate (barring extraneous circumstances) who are the easiest target for nare-do-wells. Don’t put yourself in this category, please download Firefox, Google Chrome, or SRWare Iron.

So there you have it, Internet Explorer 7 really is terrible. We’ll be looking at fantastic alternatives over the next few days so check back.

If you want more detailed information and to learn where this data came from, check my original benchmarking article on my website: The Ultimate Browser Showdown.

Over the next few days I’ll be detailing some of your best options when choosing a new web browser. Additionally, I will give simple step-by-step guides on how to install, import, and configure these browsers in order to maximize your internet experience. For the curious, we’ll be looking at Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and SRWare Iron. This list is intended for Window’s users but I will mention a few options for Macs as well. So check back soon and together we can improve the internet for everyone.

More than ever, being chic involves understanding your impact on the global environment. While this does include conserving in obvious areas like riding a bike or taking a bus instead of driving, there are many hidden costs to every part of our daily life. Recently, water has become an important issue domestically and abroad. A new chart put out by Good Magazine highlights how many common daily actions affect water usage. More importantly though, the chart offers alternatives which show just how much water you can save.

The chart reads from waking up to going to bed and offers scenarios throughout your day centering around meals and hygiene. Some of the suggestions should be taken with a grain of salt but in general, the chart offers a powerful insight into just how much water we unwittingly consume in the course of a day.

[Good Magazine Chart]

So you’re friend has a Mac and can’t resist showing it off for you. You feel inferior because, while you know your PC probably performs exactly the same, you know your friend had enough cash to blow on a product that cost twice as much as yours and the only difference is the glowing fruit on the back – and the nifty shelf where his icons hang out. Fortunately, you’re in luck. Not because I have some marketing scheme that will net you the difference to waste on an apple product, but rather an amazing, some would say superior, Windows alternative to the Apple OSX dock.

There are many programs that serve the same function and have the same look as what you find on an apple but the best by far are RocketDock and ObjectDock. The two programs, once installed, will auto-start with your computer. They’ll reside wherever you tell them to and serve as a location to stick icons, hide shortcuts, and even provide an alternative to the windows taskbar. You can set them to always be on the screen or hide just off the edge and appear on mouse over (as I do). With plugins on RocketDock or the standard build of ObjectDock you can turn the program into a complete replacement of your taskbar minimizing windows straight to the dock, just as in OSX.

The major difference between the two programs is that RocketDock is completely free while ObjectDock exists in a free and pay version with upgraded features. Additionally, RocketDock has a large community developing pugins and extensions that can be downloaded from their website. It should be mentioned that both programs are skinnable offering skins on their websites though I find the best selection resides at deviantART.

I personally use RocketDock as I feel it more than covers my needs and uses a smaller memory footprint than ObjectDock (only around 5.3mb). The greatest advantage a dedicated docking program offers is the ability to view icons and launch programs without having to minimize to the desktop. This enables powerusers to shave off a few seconds from their computing session and is the same experience that mac users currently enjoy.

Simple, lightweight, attractive, and fast, these programs greatly enhance the navigation experience of your computing.

[via ViaTorci.com]

The first step to finding a new wallpaper is determining what resolution your screen is. If you don’t know off the top of your head, you can find out easily. On XP, you can achive this by going to your desktop, right clicking, selecting Properties, navigate to the Display Properties dialog box, click the Settings tab. Look under screen resolution and note the number. Microsoft provides a visual guide HERE.

On Vista the process is similar but a bit simpler. Go to your desktop, right click, select Personalize, click Display Settings, and note the resolution. You can follow Microsoft’s guide HERE. Once you know your resolution you’ll what to find an image of the same or larger resolution.

The key to finding a good wallpaper is finding large, high-quality images. Many of these images have been collected and posted to websites that have the sole purpose of providing wallpapers. The best site, in my opinion, to find wallpaper is Social Wallpapering. Social Wallpapering has user contributed images that are voted up by visitors ensuring you see the best pictures first. They allow you to sort images into widescreen, standard, and dual monitor setups and narrow further by generic categories.

Similar to Social Wallpapering but more generic is Deviant Art. Deviant Art is an art website that has a large wallpaper area. This site tends to offer more art and graphic design than many other similar websites.

InterfaceLIFT is another fantastic wallpaper repository that allows you to sort by resolution as well as a myriad of other options. This site is generally considered the definitive wallpaper resource.

If you know you want an image of something specific, like doorbells, then your best bet may be to use Google Image Search with their newly introduced “imagesize:” tag. Just type “imagesize:”, then WITHOUT any space your resolution (mine would be 1680×1050), and finally your desired subject. So if I was searching for doorbell related images that are 1680×1050 I would type “imagesize:1680×1050 doorbell“. Just be careful as many of these images are copyrighted and while they may be fine for personal use you’re better off safe than sorry.

There are of course other options like Flickr and similar but the above are my favorite resources.

Once you’ve downloaded your new wallpaper, proceed to swamp out your old desktop for your beautiful new image. If you’re not sure how to change it, refer to HERE for XP and HERE for Vista.

[via ViaTorci.com]

I’ve made only a few modifications currently but plan on detailing them through a few articles that show, yes, tips and tricks on customizing your desktop to impress others, improve your workflow, and decrease resource usage (or at least end up without a net increase).

Here’s what will be working towards, my current desktop (click for larger):

[via Viatorci.com]