PCIN.net Update

Archive for the ‘Computer Tips’ Category

One of the blogs I follow is the Workers’ Edge blog by Dennis O’Reiley of CNET News. Dennis offers “tips and tricks for the cubicle-dweller”. I don’t work in a cubicle, but I do appreciate some of the productivity software tips he gives.

A couple of the most useful Outlook tips were:

• Remove the attachments from your Outlook e-mail
• Clear duplicate files from Outlook the free and easy way

If you work in a corporate environment and have a quota on your mailbox, then both of these utilities might help you free up some space (although if you are in a corporate environment, you may need your administrator to install them for you.

I’m still a pretty big Windows XP fan. I like the look and feel of it, and it does what I need it to do with minimal interruption. However, that doesn’t mean it is perfect. Here is an older PC World article that shares a list of features that would be good to have:

Some of the coolest OS features are nowhere to be found in Windows XP or Vista. Here are 18 brilliant features that Microsoft should beg for, borrow, or steal — plus tips on how you can add many of them to your PC now.

The lists contains the following (be sure to read the article for the full details, along with suggested alternatives):

1. Expose (Available on: Mac)
2. Virtual Workspaces (Available on: Linux, PC-BSD, Mac)
3. Back to My Mac (Available on: Mac)
4. Screen Sharing (Available on: Mac)
5. Time Machine (Available on: Mac)
6. ISO Burning (Available on: Mac, Linux, PC-BSD)
7. Stickies (Available on: Mac, Linux)
8. Podcast Capture (Available on: Mac)
9. Software Repositories (Available on: Linux, PC-BSD)
10. Desktop Cube (Available on: Linux, PC-BSD)
11. Application Dock (Available on: Mac)
12. Automated Screen Shots (Available on: Mac)
13. Multitouch Trackpad Gestures (Available on: Mac)
14. Cover Flow (Available on: Mac)
15. Pre-Installed Web Server (Available in: Mac, Linux, PC-BSD)
16. POSIX Compliance (Available on: BeOS, Mac, Linux, PC-BSD)
17. Standardized Menu Ribbon (Available on: Mac)
18. Single-File Applications (Available on: Mac)

Recently at work we installed Windows 7 Professional on our first PC. The user has one piece of software that won’t run in Vista or 7, so we are using Windows XP Mode. I was logged in as administrator and had everything working fine, but when the other user logged in, the Windows XP Mode they saw wasn’t the same. For those who don’t know, Windows XP Mode is essentially just a Virtual PC installation with Windows XP configured for you. Apparently, each user gets their own instead of sharing it. Anyway, I copied the necessary files and figured out how to get it working, but it wasn’t easy. Of course it wasn’t until afterward that I found some helpful hints.

• Microsoft Answers has a nice thread that explains how to reset the Windows XP Mode password
• XP-More is a piece of software “that helps manage Windows 7 Virtual Machines (XP Mode and any other). Specifically, it makes duplication of VMs a no brainer – no more raw XML editing and manually duplicating files”

Once or twice a week when I’m at work I need to connect to my home computer to look something up. I have my router configured to let my RDP session in, but if my wife or children are using the computer, I end up kicking them off. If it’s my children, they don’t know what happened, so they login again and end up kicking me off again. The reason behind this is that Microsoft did not allow multiple/concurrent connections to the “home” versions of their products as this is something you’d need more on a server. Since the time of Windows XP, there have been ways around this. There are those who express concern that the workarounds might be against the EULA, but people still give them a try. Recently, Download Squad posted about how to get concurrent connections to work in Windows 7 Home Premium.

I don’t do them much anymore, but over the years I’ve done quite a lot of software reviews. I’ve tried several different screen capture utilities with varying degrees of success. Sometimes I find myself using a computer that doesn’t have any such utility installed, so I use the old PrintScreen button to take a screenshot. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why taking a screenshot of Windows Media Player (while playing a video) would give me a blank screen.  I was never doing anything important enough for me to look into it, but recently I found out what the problem was. It has to do with “overlays”, and after following the instructions I found on the Quick Online Tips web site, screenshot captured! Good stuff!

Note: I’m not sure if this applies to all version of WMP, but it does work for sure on WMP 11.

What’s a bookmarklet? Well, the Bookmarklets.com home page describes them in this way:

Bookmarklets are simple tools that extend the surf and search capabilities of Firefox and Explorer web browsers.

Bookmarklets are free.

Bookmarklets allow you to:

* Modify the way you see someone else’s webpage.
* Extract data from a webpage.
* Search more quickly, and in ways not possible with a search engine.
* Navigate in new ways.

…and more. Over 150 bookmarklets are available.

Bookmarklets work on all platforms (Windows, Macintosh, Unix,…)

You do not have to download or install software to use Bookmarklets.

In the past I’ve used bookmarklets that have let me download YouTube videos, modify a New York Times article link so that I didn’t need to be logged in, and test a new Google search page before it was “live”. Essentially they are just little bits of javascript code that let you do something on a web page. Check out the Bookmarklet.com web site for a listing of what they have available.

I’ve had a draft for 21 months with these links in it, but never posted it…

I know that people are moving away from Windows XP, skipping over Vista, and heading to Windows 7, but these are still some good links. You’ve probably had the opportunity to reinstall Windows on a computer and then go to WindowsUpdate and find out that there are 100+ updates that need to be installed. Well, one of the ways to help reduce the number of updates is to install the most recent major service pack. For Windows XP that is SP3. If you got a computer before SP3, what do you do? You can “slipstream” it. A simple explanation is to say that this is the process where you can take the installation CD that you have, copy it to your hard drive, copy the XP SP3 files over the old ones, and then burn a CD again. This is a handy thing to do and you can read more about doing this with the Windows XP media here:

• Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows: Slipstreaming Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3)
• PC Magazine: Build an XP SP3 Recovery Disc

I haven’t tried it, but since the Vista files come on a DVD, apparently it isn’t quite as easy. However, TechRepublic has some detailed instructions.

As of the time of this posting, there is no Windows 7 service pack yet, but once there is, I’m sure if you search for Windows 7 slipstream you’ll be able to find some articles explaining how to do this same process.

Jeff Alexander has some great instructions on how to setup a USB flash drive so that you can install Windows 7 from it.

I wonder if the same instructions work for XP and/or Vista…?

Avery Dennison, the big office supply company, has an excellent service that lets you receive templates for their products by email.

Have you ever bought a package of labels or business cards, and then spent too much time in Word trying to figure out how to lay them out. If you email templates@averydennison.com with the product number in the subject line (nothing else in the subject line, nothing in the body of the message), within a few minutes you’ll receive a template via email.

For instance, the 3 1/2″ Diskette Labels is product 8196. I sent the following message…

… and got this back …

I always tease my wife if she’s typing something up. She spends 5 minutes doing the typing and an hour on Google Images looking for good clipart to go with what she is typing. I’m sure many of you are the same. I recently heard about a “hidden” feature of Google Images that might help. It let’s you search for specific sizes of images. For a while now there has been a drop down list where you could choose between small, medium, large, and extra large. Well, along with your search term, if you put in imagesize:1024×768 (or whatever size you want, you’ll only see results of that size. This is particularly useful for finding desktop wallpaper.

For instance, doing a search for…

imagesize:1024×768 Niagara Falls

…brings up hundreds of pictures of Niagara Falls that are that size.

Along with 1024×758, other common desktop wallpaper image sizes are 1680×1050 (widescreen), 1440×900 (laptop widescreen), 1280×1024, and 800×600. Also, icons are generally 32×32 or 64×64. Unfortunately, clipart could be any size, but you might try a small/medium size of 400×400 or 400×300 and see what you get.