It's an age-old question: When you're done using your laptop, or just taking a break from work, should you put it to sleep, let it hibernate, or turn it all the way off?

Allow me to answer by way of a mnemonic: hibernate is great. You see, sleep mode (a.k.a. standby) puts your system into an off-like state, allowing you to pick up where you left off after just a few seconds (unlike rebooting, which can take minutes). But a PC in standby mode continues to consume battery power, so it's not uncommon to return to a "sleeping" PC to find that it's just plain dead.

Today I saw something that made my eyes go wide: A friend reached for the mouse, clicked the Start button, and then went back to the keyboard to type the name of the app he wanted to launch.

I asked him what I considered an obvious question: "Why didn't you just press the Windows key?"

Warning! Warning! (Sorry, just watched a "Lost in Space" marathon. Picture my arms flailing wildly.) YouTube may be home to countless cutesy cats playing the piano, but the video-streaming service definitely has its seedy side.

Specifically, YouTube doesn't filter user comments, and some of them are downright atrocious. I've seen hate speech, profanity, and ridiculously excessive punctuation. Okay, that last one's merely annoying, but the fact remains that YouTube can expose your kids to decidedly inappropriate language.

I'd argue that the first thing a user wants upon migrating to a new PC--or, in this case, a new operating system on the same PC--is his bookmarks.

Fortunately, that's perhaps the single easiest chunk of data to move as part of our "slow" migration to Windows 7. All you need is Xmarks.

I like most of what Windows 7 brings to the table, but there's one thing I definitely don't like: the new taskbar. Specifically, I miss the text labels that accompany each running program.

Without them, it takes me an extra second or two to figure out what's what. Fortunately, there's an easy way to make the Windows 7 toolbar look a lot more like the one in Vista (and, for that matter, XP). Here's how.

Now that you've got Windows 7 up and running on your newly partitioned, dual-boot PC, it's time for the next big step in any OS migration: reinstalling your software.

I've always hated this part, as it involves digging out CDs, downloading apps from lots of different sites, and then manually installing everything. Takes forever.

Reader Kevin has this question: "Is there a way to have Firefox refresh automatically, without hitting the refresh button? It would be very nice when Woot.com is having a 'Woot off' or when watching an item on eBay."

You know what, Kevin? That would be nice! All you need is a handy Firefox extension called ReloadEvery, which can automatically reload a browser tab at designated intervals.

Hey, Facebook: Ever hear the saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Guess not, because your recent front-page "fix" has many users fuming. (Maybe that's because you sprung it on us without warning or explanation.)

Anyway, for those who don't like the mysteriously disparate "News Feed" and "View Live Feed," there's a simple way to make Facebook work more or less like it used to. Here's how:

Here's what happened last week in case you missed it: Instead of performing an in-place upgrade to Windows 7 or wiping my hard drive and starting with a fresh install, I'm making the move at my own pace.

The hardest part was partioning my hard drive (as described in Part 2), which, thankfully, has ample room for both Windows Vista and Windows 7. And the only hard part there was running a third-party disk-defragmenting utility so Vista would give me all the available space.

As I wrote the other day, I'm making my way to Windows 7 a little bit at a time. It's getting a fresh install on a new hard-drive partition, then a gradual load of software, settings, and data.

If you're interested in taking the same approach, your first step needs to be partitioning your hard drive. Vista has a built-in partitioning tool, but you may need third-party software to take full advantage of it. (Windows XP users should check out Easeus Partition Manager, a free utility.)

This morning I wanted to give my uninterruptible power supply (or UPS) a big, sloppy kiss--and would have, if not for the risk of electrocution.

See, my neighborhood experienced a brief power outage--right when my PC was in the process of booting.

I'm a dip-a-toe-in-the-water kind of guy. Although I've been playing with Windows 7 for a couple months now, I'm not quite ready to dive in. I want to make a more gradual move, keeping my Vista-based PC up and running while I slowly transition to the new OS.

Why? I have my reasons. For one thing, I don't want any driver- or software-related surprises. An all-at-once move could leave me with programs that don't run or even a system that won't boot.