TECH TIPS
from the Technology Committee [click to view their home page]

Edition 3  |  Edition 4  |  Edition 5  |  Edition 6

This Edition's Categories:

Web Browsing / Email     |    Computers & Hardware     |     MS Power Tips

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Web Browsing / Email

Bandwidth Usage

Ever wondered what speed you are getting while on the Internet? You can check your download speed by visiting http://www.speedtest.net/. This is a great way to figure out your download and upload speeds. Download speed is the speed at which you can download content from the Internet. If you are a business hosting a server, upload speed is the speed at which your clients can download data from your server. Typical cable modem download speeds range from 4Mb/s to 8Mb/s. FiOS is very fast, and can go up to 35Mb/s for downloads.

Sam Giraffe, Giraffe Tech LLC — www.giraffetech.biz

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Computers & Hardware

Back to the Future

Do you use existing documents as a template for new documents? Did you ever accidently do a 'Save' instead of a 'Save As…', and overwrite your original document?

A great way to recover from this is by installing a "Yesterday Drive." A Yesterday Drive is a simple external drive that sits on your network or computer, and makes an exact copy of all your files, in the wee hours of the night. Many inexpensive external drives come with software that lets you schedule a variety of automated backups. Just make sure you get a drive that exceeds the data storage capacity of all the files or disks you want backed up.

If the drive is set up as a volume on your server or computer, and you are not using data compression when the files are saved, then you should be able to simply browse the Yesterday Drive and access yesterday's files to replace today's inadvertent errors.

Michael Miller, CorpNote Online Greeting Cards, Invitations and Surveys — www.corpnote.com

Add a second monitor for the busy professional

This tip is for the professional worker. Add a second display to your PC to make your computing life easier.  Windows XP makes it extremely easy.

1. Plug the second display into your computer. (Many video cards today have a second Video Out port; if not, you'll have to install a second video card.)

2. Right-click on your desktop and click Properties to bring up the Display Properties window. Click on the Settings tab.

3. See the grayed-out box to the right of the black box? That's your second monitor. Click on it and then click the check box next to "Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor" to enable it. From here you can adjust the resolution of the secondary display. The goal here is to have a desktop that spans both of your displays, so if your second screen is physically located to the left of your primary one, drag and drop the #2 monitor to the left of the #1 display.

Michael DeCamillis, Dolvin Consulting – www.dolvin.com

Safely Remote USB Drives

You can connect a USB device to your computer while the computer is turned on. However, plugging in or unplugging a USB device while the device is in use could result in damaging the files on the device.

To safely disconnect a USB device from the computer, left-click on the USB icon in the Windows Taskbar icon area and dialog box will appear. Select the device you want to stop and left-click. A message will appear indicating when it is safe to remove the USB device.”

Adam L. Goldstein, ATech Services, LLC – www.atechsvcs.net

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MS Power Tips

View Document Contents without opening them in Vista

Have you ever searched for a particular document, and had to open many documents before finding the one you want? With Vista you can preview file without opening them in the applications that created them. 

Open Windows Explorer (press Windows key and E on the keyboard) and browse to the folder that contains the file(s).  Press the ORGANIZE button just above the file names, mouse over the LAYOUT menu, then click PREVIEW PANE. As you select your documents, they will appear in the preview pane to the right of the file names, so you can read them. You can expand the window or the preview area to see more of the file.  (You will not be able to edit, just read.) Renee Altman, Personal Computer Training, Inc — www.pctraininginc.com

Windows Briefcase

The Briefcase feature in Windows XP helps you keep your files updated by automatically synchronizing multiple copies of individual files. This feature is very helpful when you use two or more computers to work on files, and when you need to frequently transfer files between computers by using a direct cable connection or a removable disk. Briefcase stores and displays the update status of files. It keeps track of whether a file is linked to the original file on your main computer, or whether it is an orphan file. To learn more about how to use the Briefcase feature in Windows XP, go to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307885. David J. Mason, Fastteks On-Site Computer Service — www.fastteks.com

Vista Snipping Tool

Included with Microsoft Vista is handy utility, Snipping Tool, which allows you to capture any portion of your screen, then save, copy annotate or share the image.  I use it often to snip a portion of a web page or a section of an excel spreadsheet and send it in email.  Captured as an image, there is no need to worry about the formatting issues that can occur when you cut and paste.

Options include the ability to free-form snip, rectangular snip, window snip or full screen snip. This utility also includes options for choosing the image file format.

Microsoft Vista users just type “Snipping Tool” in the search bar in the Windows main menu. Initially it will ask if you want to add it to your quick launch bar... select “yes” to make this useful tool easy to get to.

Michael Petriello, 1 800 905 GEEK — www.geeksoncall.com