One drop. Five minutes in a pocket with your keys. Three months of regular use. This is all it takes for an iPhone's backplate to go from a mirror-like shine to a scratched-to-hell eyesore. Here's how to fix it.

MacRumors forum member Shenaniganz08 salvaged an iPhone 3G from eBay, sanding, buffing and polishing it back from the brink of a life in a case, which would be dumb, because cases are dumb. (I mean, not really, but that's kind of the premise of this whole process, right? Anyway.) Here's what you need:

• Sandpaper 320(or 500),800,1000,1500,2000,2500,3000 grit
• 3M Rubbing compound
• Machine Polisher ( Power Drill or small buffer)
• Microfibers
• Sticky tack and or tape

What's great about this is that you don't need to buy almost anything. Half the stuff you need—the microfibers, the polishing disc and the rubbing compound—is included in a $15 3M headlight restoration kit , and you can use just about any crappy household drill for the buffing stage.

In any case, the results are stunning, and the documentation meticulous, so if you've got a few hours, a few bucks and an iPhone that looks like a piece of shitty sea glass, why not? [Macrumors via Gadget Lab]

Windows only: Portable utility Mute on Lock turns off your system speakers whenever you walk away and lock your workstation, but it also provides a quick shortcut key for toggling your speakers on or off.

Once you've downloaded and launched the no-installation-required utility, your speakers will turn off immediately after pressing the Win+L shortcut key to lock your workstation, and then turn back on once you've unlocked your PC. If you head into the settings page, you can set up a custom shortcut key to mute or unmute the sound, or customize what the tray icon does. Definitely a handy utility for those of us that lock our workstations religiously, and it doesn't take up a lot of resources either.

Mute on Lock is a free download for any version of Windows, though readers should note that you might have to use the Windows Compatibility Mode feature set to Windows XP to get it to work properly on Windows 7.

If you are in the market for printer that is perfectly suited for a small office or home office, printing principally letters, forms, e-mails, or other letter-sized black-and-white documents, this review may of particular interest. When laser printers first became available they were quite costly (in the thousands of dollars) as well as being large, heavy, and expensive to operate. That is no longer the case, but which one is now the "best buy?"

You can go to Best Buy (no pun intended), or simply look in the Sunday newspaper and you will see many varieties of printers-- principally laser and inkjet, multifunction and single-purpose -- available with a staggering array of features and prices. As mentioned earlier, if you operate a home office or a small office (or even a medium-size office) and have a frequent need for printing high-quality black-and-white output, the best solution is a dedicated laser printer, not an inkjet printer. So which one should you buy? At the BestStuff.com and Best Magazine offices we do a lot of printing. Over the past few years we have tested many printers, and we think we have a good answer for you; it is the Brother HL-5340D laser printer.

We recommend this printer for a number of reasons. The price is right, the print quality itself is great, and the print output is very fast (up to 32 pages a minute), AND they just never break down. In fact, one of the older Brother printers that we've used for about four years has never even had a paper jam--- which is amazing!

For those of you who are interested in more detail, here goes:

• Fast results. Operating at print speeds of up to 32 pages per minute, this printer is ideal for a busy office.
• Outstanding print quality. The HL-5340D delivers up to 1200 x 1200 dpi resolution so that all of your printed materials are high resolution and look their best.
• Easily print two-sided documents. Produce professional-looking two-sided documents, brochures and booklets using the automatic duplex printing feature. This feature can help reduce your paper use and save money.
• Versatile paper handling. An adjustable 250-sheet capacity paper tray easily handles letter or legal size paper and a 50-sheet capacity multi-purpose tray is for printing letterhead and custom paper sizes. You may also add up to two optional paper trays for additional capacity.
• Straight-Through Paper Path. A convenient fold-down, 50-sheet capacity multi-purpose tray and rear paper exit provide a straight-through paper path for printing envelopes, thicker media and custom paper sizes.
• Maximum compatibility. Offering PCL6 and BR-Script3 (PostScript3) emulations, the HL-5340D can support virtually any office or graphics application.

We have been testing this printer for about six months, and just like its predecessors, it has yet to disappoint in any way. Most amazingly this printer lists for only about $200, but is frequently available on sale for little as $159 at places such as Best Buy (online only) and your neighborhood Office Superstore. This printer is the perfect blend of price, performance, and reliability… and that is about as good as it gets.

John Lentz

If you are in the market for printer that is perfectly suited for a small office or home office, printing principally letters, forms, e-mails, or other letter-sized black-and-white documents, this review may of particular interest. When laser printers first became available they were quite costly (in the thousands of dollars) as well as being large, heavy, and expensive to operate. That is no longer the case, but which one is now the "best buy?"

You can go to Best Buy (no pun intended), or simply look in the Sunday newspaper and you will see many varieties of printers-- principally laser and inkjet, multifunction and single-purpose -- available with a staggering array of features and prices. As mentioned earlier, if you operate a home office or a small office (or even a medium-size office) and have a frequent need for printing high-quality black-and-white output, the best solution is a dedicated laser printer, not an inkjet printer. So which one should you buy? At the BestStuff.com and Best Magazine offices we do a lot of printing. Over the past few years we have tested many printers, and we think we have a good answer for you; it is the Brother HL-5340D laser printer.

We recommend this printer for a number of reasons. The price is right, the print quality itself is great, and the print output is very fast (up to 32 pages a minute), AND they just never break down. In fact, one of the older Brother printers that we've used for about four years has never even had a paper jam--- which is amazing!

For those of you who are interested in more detail, here goes:

• Fast results. Operating at print speeds of up to 32 pages per minute, this printer is ideal for a busy office.
• Outstanding print quality. The HL-5340D delivers up to 1200 x 1200 dpi resolution so that all of your printed materials are high resolution and look their best.
• Easily print two-sided documents. Produce professional-looking two-sided documents, brochures and booklets using the automatic duplex printing feature. This feature can help reduce your paper use and save money.
• Versatile paper handling. An adjustable 250-sheet capacity paper tray easily handles letter or legal size paper and a 50-sheet capacity multi-purpose tray is for printing letterhead and custom paper sizes. You may also add up to two optional paper trays for additional capacity.
• Straight-Through Paper Path. A convenient fold-down, 50-sheet capacity multi-purpose tray and rear paper exit provide a straight-through paper path for printing envelopes, thicker media and custom paper sizes.
• Maximum compatibility. Offering PCL6 and BR-Script3 (PostScript3) emulations, the HL-5340D can support virtually any office or graphics application.

We have been testing this printer for about six months, and just like its predecessors, it has yet to disappoint in any way. Most amazingly this printer lists for only about $200, but is frequently available on sale for little as $159 at places such as Best Buy (online only) and your neighborhood Office Superstore. This printer is the perfect blend of price, performance, and reliability… and that is about as good as it gets.

John Lentz

Windows/Mac: Unfortunately the iPhone and iPod touch lack the ability older iPods had to run in Disk Mode. That's where iPhone Explorer steps in, allowing you manually manage files on your device, or just use it as a flash drive, without jailbreaking.

iPhone browser is a lightweight application that has an easy drag-and-drop interface that lets you browse the contents on your iPhone. You can manually transfer your photos, music or movies from your device back to your computer, or just add files to the iPhone and fill up the unused space as extra storage. There's even an image preview for transferring photos. The best part about the whole thing, though, is that you don't need to jailbreak to use it. If you do have a jailbroken device, though, iPhone Explorer becomes even more useful—It can access the root of jailbroken phones and browse the files inside, with no need for complicated SSH setups.

The only issue I had was that multiple selection didn't work so well—whether I was trying to transfer files to or from my iPod touch, doing it one file at a time worked much better than trying to do more. So if you need to transfer large batches of files, you may be better off putting them in a folder beforehand to avoid crashes.

iPhone Explorer is a free download for Windows and Mac OS X 1.5+, requires iTunes 8 or 9 to use.