Computer Tips and Guides

Posts Tagged ‘Original Source’

Preme Adds Unique Shortcuts to Windows 7

Windows only: Preme is a Windows 7 shortcut utility that adds new and unique keyboard and mouse shortcuts, including a handful of useful ways to interact with windows using your mouse’s scroll wheel.

For example, hold your mouse over any window’s title bar and scroll down on your mouse wheel to minimize that window; middle-clicking the same title bar area (or just tapping the Escape key twice) will close the active window. The utility aims ..read more

KeepNote Organizes Your Notes on Any Platform

Windows/Mac/Linux: Portable, cross-platform note-taking application KeepNote stores your notes, thoughts, outlines, and more in a simple hierarchical format, complete with rich-text formatting, images, attachments, and even plugins.The application itself is simple enough to use: just add “Pages” on the left-hand pane, and then write or paste anything into the note itself—but you can organize the tree menu with icons, folders, and add new nodes easily from the keyboard.

Since the notes are each stored in ..read more

How to Make Gmail Play Nicely with Your Desktop Email Client

If you use Gmail as your email backend but prefer a good old-fashioned desktop email client for handling your day-to-day email, you’re probably aware that many clients—like Outlook or Mail.app—don’t play that nice with Gmail. Here’s how to fix that.While Thunderbird no longer needs any extra work to become the ultimate Gmail IMAP client, mail clients, such as Mail.app or Outlook, do not exhibit normal behavior when using Gmail’s servers.

Gmail ..read more

Chrome Notepad Syncs Notes Across Multiple Computers

Google Chrome: Chrome Notepad is an effective extension that syncs notes and even the last place you left off in your document across multiple computers, using Chrome’s built-in bookmark sync functionality.

There’s not many note-syncing extensions that remember the last caret position you left off on, but Chrome Notepad will sync that information across any Chrome installation.

The size of the notepad is configurable. In order to enable syncing, you’ll need to turn on bookmark syncing ..read more

Use Google Docs for Quick, Disposable Collaboration Without a Google Account

Real-time collaboration tool Google Docs is handy for simultaneously working on projects with multiple people, but it requires a Google account for all users. The new Google Docs Demo creates quick collaborative documents with a 24-hour shelf-life, no Google account necessary.The Google Docs Demo includes the ability to create documents, spreadsheets, and drawings. The document is shareable via a copy-and-paste link, which can be sent to any user. Documents created ..read more

WMP Plus Adds a Number of Customizable Tweaks to Windows Media Player

If you haven’t learned to love Windows Media Player yet, free plug-in Windows Media Player Plus might change your mind. adding tweaks like find as you type, disabling group headers, a new tag editor, and the Explorer context menu within your library.

We’ve already learned that Windows Media Player’s performance is pretty darn good, but there are still a few things in the program that many count as annoyances. Thankfully, ..read more

One of the more interesting errors in Windows Vista happens when you try to connect to a shared network printer. Most of the time you’ll receive an “Access is Denied” error when trying to connect even though you can see the printer on the network and everything else is working properly.

Everything else on the network appears to work properly, shared files, internet access, etc. However, you just cannot access the shared printer and print.

The solution is to add the printer ..read more

Five Best Personal Web Hosts

The web’s full of services happy to host your photos, blog posts, and other online data, but if you’re control- or privacy-minded, you can do better. If you’re thinking about hosting your own site, check out these five popular personal web hosts.

A few things are worth noting about nomenclature used by web hosts, especially those catering to individuals doing small-time hosting. The term “unlimited” is bandied about a lot in the small web hosting circles. The ..read more

One of the more common questions I am asked on a daily basis is how to get Internet Explorer out of Full Screen Mode. Kiosk mode or Full Screen mode is enabled if the bottom task bar (including the Start button and clock) disappear along with almost everything at the top of the browser window as well.

You can see an example of full screen mode by viewing the screenshot below. You notice the top bar just contains standard buttons bar ..read more

Top 10 Hard Drive Upgrades and Fixes

You should never feel like your hard drive is holding out on you. Anyone should be able to back up, recover files, boot multiple systems, upgrade, or otherwise improve their storage space. These tips explain the possibilities and procedures.

10. Quiet It Down

Over time, the moving parts and powered pieces that move your magnetic disks around at lightning speed will wear, age, and get noisy. In a desktop computer (a Windows PC, generally), you can ..read more