Thursday, March 24, 2005

Reveal Codes
As an old WordPerfect user, the one feature I miss having now that I am a Word user is reveal codes. There are many times when something has gone wrong with my document and I am at a loss on how to correct it. I usually revert to a select all and copy, then I paste to a notebook file, and then copy paste back to a new Word document. It sure would be nice to reveal codes and find the problem. Well there is a way to get reveal codes in Word! A program called CrossEyes by Levit James does that and more. You can download a trial version at http://www.levitjames.com/crosseyes/demo/crosseyes_eval_request.asp
Locking Up
When I leave my car in a parking lot, I always lock it up. I do the same when I leave the house. But, what about when I leave my computer unattended? Sure, I could power it off, but that means waiting for it shut down and waiting again for it to boot back up. I could log off, but that requires shutting down all open windows. There is another choice. Simply type Win+L (that is the Windows key between the left Ctrl and Alt keys) and the sign on screen appears. All your applications are still open but without your password they cannot be accessed.
SendTo
I find the right-click, Send To function to be very useful. However, the list does not always contain the places I would like to send my file or folder to. It also contains some entries I will never use. Well this is easy to fix. Click Start > Run, then type sendto and press Enter. The Send To folder opens. Delete what you no longer want to see in the list and drag the shortcuts you want to add to it.

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Behind the Scene
If your machine is anything like mine, it has gotten sluggish since you first turned it on. And if you look at the tasks running in the background, you will see why. I cannot believe how much stuff is in memory eating up cycles all the time. What should be there and what should not, is the question.

To view the list of running processes, right-click on the taskbar and select Task Manager. Then on the Windows Task Manager dialog box, click the Processes tab. Right now I have 56 running processes! By looking at the Image Name, you can tell what is running, but the name usually is meaningless and sometimes what it seems to mean is nothing like what it really is.

Check out http://www.answersthatwork.com/. They have a number of useful things for you to solve problems. One is the Task List. It shows all the possible entries in your Task List and tells what they are used for. Now you can go through your list and intelligently decide to remove an item or not.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

My Computer
I like to use as few mouse clicks as I can as I navigate around in Windows XP. And when I need to open My Computer to explore my USB Drive, I find it a pain to have to click Start > My Computer then wait for the window to open to find the icon for my USB drive. I know I can use the Win+E shortcut to open the Explorer, but even that takes a while.

Try this out. I think you will like it as much as I do. Right-click Start, then click Properties. On the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box, click customize, and then click the Advanced tab. Scroll down to find My Computer, and then click the option button “Display as a menu”. Then OK and OK to apply it.

Try it out. Click Start > My Computer and notice you now have an instant additional menu that displays all the drive icons. No more waiting for the My Documents window to open.