The 12th Carnival of Computer Help and Advice

Seasonal greetings and welcome to the twelfth monthly Carnival of Computer Help and Advice. Another digest of blog articles that help you to avoid problems with and to get the most out of your PCs.Dan Coveney of Print n Post offers advice to anyone thinking of Buying a laptop in the January sales. On...

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Windows Hopping reprise

Hopping Between WindowsHave you ever needed to swap windows while you are using the keyboard? Have you needed to jump quickly from that email you are composing to the report you are supposed to be writing? Then try holding down Alt key and pressing the Tab key. Select the window you want and release...

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The 11th Carnival of Computer Help and Advice

Welcome to the eleventh monthly Carnival of Computer Help and Advice. Another collection of blog articles to help you avoid problems and get the most out of your PCs.We start this month's carnival with a heads-up for WordPress bloggers. Madeleine Begun Kane extolls the virtues the Life-Saving, Spam-Fighting...

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Jargon Busting: Anatomy of a window (Part 2)

A number of weeks ago I posted an article naming the various elements that you will find in in Windows programs. This is the second part of that series. Unfortunately, whereas in the last post the displayed elements were interactive, in this post they will only be images.Scroll BarA control for shifting...

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Digital Cribs Competition

Cisco are running a competition called Digital Cribs: Heaven or Hell? To enter you have to submit a video that either demonstrates your technological heaven or your consumer electronic hell. There are grand prizes of $10,000 for both categories, as well as ten $500 gift cards for the other finalists...

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Five free file conversion sites

There is already a bewildering selection of different files types and this will only get more confusing as more innovative file formats become available. You may be able to install conversion utilities for some applications such as Microsoft Word and you can download various freeware file conversion...

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The 10th Carnival of Computer Help and Advice

Welcome to the tenth monthly Carnival of Computer Help and Advice. Another collection of blog articles to help you avoid problems and get the most out of your PCs.We start this month's carnival with Michael guide to Whats inside a computer? from Too Easy Tech.Next up is, Money 2000 to Money Plus: Will...

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How to run a program every time Windows starts

In a previous post I explained how to stop programs running when Windows starts up, but in this post I will explain how to make one run every time you boot up. There are a variety of ways of telling Windows to run a program when it starts, but using the 'Startup' folder on the Start menu is probably...

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Jargon Busting: Anatomy of a window (Part 1)

All the various controls on a Windows program have names that are not always intuitive. In this post I will identify the most common controls and list the various names that they are known by. I will not bother with buttons or menus as everyone should know what they are. All the controls on this post are interactive, rather than just being images.Text box, Text field, Text Entry, Input BoxA control...

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The 9th Carnival of Computer Help and Advice

Welcome to the ninth monthly Carnival of Computer Help and Advice - a digest of recent blog articles about making interaction with computers safer and easier.Starting this month, the Carnival will now include hints and tips for bloggers. The article explains how to Auto Create Navigation Tabs for New...

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Keyboard shortcut of the week: Alternative windows hopping

In a previous post I mentioned that you can hop between open windows by holding down the Alt key and pressing the Tab key repeatedly. A little dialog box will open that in Windows XP or 2000 looks like this:And in Windows Vista looks like this:There is an alternate way of hopping between windows that...

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How to format a drive

External hard drives and USB memory sticks (aka pen drives) have become more popular in recent years as people want to be able to store all their media files and easily move them from computer to computer. Most of these devices will be bought already formatted. This means that they are ready for files...

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Keyboard shortcut of the week: Chrome

Regular readers will know that I have recently started falling out of love with Mozilla Firefox (but not enough to switch back to Internet Explorer). The latest version does not seem to have addressed any of my gripes, and actually appears to have made many of matters worse. Not only is Firefox's memory...

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Problems running old games

Whether due to dissatisfaction with modern games or wishing to recapture one's youth, retro-gaming is becoming increasingly popular. However, you may have problems running games designed for DOS or earlier versions of Windows. One possible solution is to make Windows run the program as if it were an...

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The 8th Carnival of Computer Help and Advice

Welcome to the eighth monthly Carnival of Computer Help and Advice. Another collection of blog articles to help you avoid problems and get the most out of your PCs. I would like to thank everyone who contributed. If you would like to host the next carnival leave a comment on this post or use the contact...

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Keyboard shortcut of the week: a view of Word

There are a number of ways in which you can view a document in MS Word. You can switch between these different layouts by selecting them from the 'View' menu, or you can use keyboard shortcuts to quickly switch between them.My preferred choice is 'Print layout', which can be selected by holding down the Ctrl and Alt keys and pressing P.To select the 'Normal layout' hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys...

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Bloody Computer! One Year Old

'Bloody Computer!' reaches its one year anniversary today. So, as I have done for other landmarks, I present another set of 'top 3' lists as well as other facts to go with those marking fifty and one-hundred posts.In the last year this blog has achieved a Google PageRank of 4; a Technorati ranking of...

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Another three top freeware applications

It has been a while since I suggested any freeware, but I have recently had need to find a decent video converter, a good FTP client, and some way to back-up my blog.The free version of Any Video Converter is the best tool that I have found for converting between a variety of video formats including...

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Keyboard shortcut of the week: New, Open, and Save

Just about every Windows application works with documents, which you will create, open and save at various stages. These three functions have associated keyboard shortcuts that work with most if not all the applications that you use regularly. I use the word document here to refer to anything that can be created or edited with software, whether that is a piece of music, an image or some other project.New...

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The Seventh Carnival of Computer Help and Advice

Welcome to the seventh monthly Carnival of Computer Help and Advice. Here is another selection of some of the best blog posts offering aid with computer issues published in the last month. I would like to thank everyone who contributed. If you would like to host the next carnival leave a comment on...

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Speak now or forever hold your peace... well until next month anyway

This is the last chance for somebody to volunteer to host this month's Carnival of Computer Help and Advice. If you would like to play host to this digest of some of the best of this month's blog posts that share their author's sagely wisdom leave a comment on this post, contact me through the carnival's...

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Tweak UI: free MS Power Toy for Windows XP

I should start with an apology for not having posted anything here for a while. I have been rather busy for the last few weeks, but I am back now posting more PC help and advice starting with the most powerful of Microsoft's Power Toys for XP: Tweak UI.You can download the software from here (or here...

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The Sixth Carnival of Computer Help and Advice

Welcome to the sixth monthly Carnival of Computer Help and Advice. As ever many blog authors contributed their posts and, as always, limitation of space means that some did not make it into the carnival. Many thanks to all those who contributed.Some troublemakers try to fool the novice with bad advice...

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Keyboard shortcut of the week: a few for Firefox

Here are a few keyboard shortcuts for Firefox to mark the release of version 3 of that browser (which I express my initial opinions about at the bottom of this post). These should all work in Windows and Linux, for Apple Macs simply substitute the Ctrl key with the Cmd key.Full screen modeTo hide the...

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Firefox 3 Download Day two hours away

We are about two hours away from the start of Firefox Download Day, which is either an attempt to bring people of all (or at least most) nations together in an attempt to set a Guinness World Record for the most downloads in a day, or a shameless promotion of the latest version of Mozilla's web browser....

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Command Window Here: Free MS PowerToy for XP

In the last post I have instructions for using the Command Prompt to navigate to a particular folder; however, there is an easier way to do this in Windows XP by installing a PowerToy (this feature is already available in Vista).To install this feature, look for 'Open Command Window Here' the list of PowerToys on the right hand side of the page and click on CmdHere.exe to download it (or simply click...

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How to save a list of files in a folder

There are a number of programs available that will create a text file from a list of files in a folder, but here is a quick and easy way of doing the same using the Command Prompt.Firstly, open up the Command Prompt (aka the MS-DOS Box). To do this either click on 'Run' in the 'Start' menu, or hold...

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