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…?
Archive for the 'Computer Tips' Category
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…
…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.
A friend of mine was telling me about an environmentally friendly font, and it sounded like a hoax, but sure enough, there is such a thing. Apparently some people have developed a font that has “holes” in it, and therefore uses less ink. This is supposed to be better for the environment. Appropriately enough, it’s called Ecofont.
From Digital Photography School:
Digital Cameras seem to be one of the gifts of choice this year for Christmas if the questions in my inbox are anything to go by.
As so many new camera owners are starting out with photography in the new year I thought I’d compile a list of photography tips and techniques that new camera owners might like to work through in the coming weeks.
Some are very basic while others go a little deeper – but all have been selected from our archives specifically for beginners and new camera owners. Enjoy.
From PC Magazine:
We know that Vista takes some getting used to—new translucent interfaces, constant security prompts, and Sidebar gadgets, oh my!—but you can’t live in the shadow of Windows XP for much longer. With a little hand holding, we can make your Vista experience smoother (and more beguiling) than ever. Here are 198 tips and tricks to get the most out of Windows Vista.
Last night I wanted to download a YouTube video. I don’t have any utilities on my computer that will do this. My normal option is to use Zamzar. The one problem with this, is that sometimes it takes a while to get the email notifying you that the download/converstion is done. While I was waiting, I did a simple Google search, and found KeepVid. This is a site that lets you enter a URL at any of the big video sites, and it will then provide you with a link to download the video. I did this and had the video downloaded before Zamzar got back to me. For the video I wanted, I was provided with two links… one for an FLV file, and the other for an MP4 video.
From the New York Times:
Logging on to Gmail or other e-mail service has become a routine of daily life, completed without a thought. What would you do, however, if you woke up tomorrow, plugged in your user name and password as you always do, but then received an unfamiliar message: “User name and password do not match”?
If you’re a Gmail user, what you’ll want to do after a few more unsuccessful, increasingly frantic attempts is to speak with a Google customer support representative, post haste. But that’s not an option. Google doesn’t offer a toll-free number and a live person to resolve the ordinary user’s problems.
Discussion forums abound with tales of woe from Gmail customers who have found themselves locked out of their account for days or even weeks.
From PCWorld.ca:
Is your PC tired and sluggish? Has its get up and go got up and went? If you want a faster system, you could certainly break the bank and buy a new machine. Or you could read this article instead.
We’ve found 50 downloads that will make your PC run more quickly and smoothly, help you use the Internet more effectively, and push Windows to work at optimum speed with the interface you want, not what Microsoft gave you.
PCWorld.ca had an article about how to do things faster on your computer:
22 smarter, more efficient ways to make short work of common tech tasks–from reinstalling Windows to crushing spyware to setting up a Web site.
Recent Comments