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Make the most of Explorer's new features in Windows 7
Explorer has some new features that aren't in previous versions of Windows and while some are fairly obvious and you will notice them straight away, others are less obvious and you might have mised them. There are new types of content, such as libraries, and there are new views of the content. There are extra menu commands and extra features when you right click for context menus. Get to know Explorer's new features and you will work better and more efficiently. And it's more fun. Let's take a look at some of the new features that you might have missed. Use a TomTom sat nav with an Apple MacSat nav systems can be updated with the latest maps and corrections and with brand new maps covering different areas. They can have extra information added to them such as points of interest, various attractions, theme parks and shopping centres. They can have extra voices installed, new graphics, and so on. The usual way to add this is to plug the sat nav device into the computer and then to run some software on it to update it and download the new features. In this article we will be looking at the popular TomTom sat nav systems on sale in the UK. However, the principle applies to all sat nav systems and other countries. No matter where you live or what device you use, it will be very similar. Make sure you have the latest RSS feeds in Mail on the Apple MacRSS feeds are a great way to make sure you don't miss the latest updates and news on your favourite websites. If you are browsing a site and see an orange RSS feed button on the page or the blue RSS feed button at the right-hand side of Safari's address box, you can click it to see the feed. In the Actions section of the panel on the right hand side of the pane is a Subscribe in Mail link. Clicking it adds the feed to Mail. When you start Mail it goes online and fetches the latest updates for the RSS feeds you have subscribed to, but not always and sometimes it's not up to date. There's a simple way to make sure the feeds are updated though. Set the sources for software installation in LinuxThe usual method for installing Linux on a PC is to download a .iso image, burn it to a CD or DVD, and then to boot from it. You can boot to the desktop if it is a live CD or DVD and then run the installer, or you can boot straight to the installer. It depends on the distro and some have both options. After installing Linux you might then want to add some software, depending on how much it came with. This could be installed from the CD or DVD, or it could be downloaded. It is better to download it because it will be more up to date, but you may find that Linux prompts you to insert the CD or DVD instead. This appears to happen with Mandriva 2010. Getting software to download instead of being read from the CD/DVD is easy. Add System Monitor to the panel in LinuxSometimes Linux programs go wrong. Although some people like to claim that Linux is ultra stable and applications never crash, the fact is that they do. Just as apps crash on Windows and the Mac. System Monitor can help you to keep an eye on what is happening in the computer and to make sure that everything is running smoothly. You can use it to spot problems. Avoid spam - junk emails - in Apple Mail OS XDespite the fact that some of the biggest spammers have been shut down in recent years, spam, or junk email, continues to thrive and as soon as one person is taken down another ones takes their place. Spam is a continuing problem and for some people it can be overwhelming. Junk email can account for 90% of the incoming messages for some unlucky people, so what can be done about it? One way of dealing with spam is to pass your pass your messages through a filter and any that are obviously junk emails are moved either to the trash or to a junk folder. Mail contains junk email filters, but there are also third party plug-ins that you may prefer too. Let's take a look at the options available to you. Publishers try to defend high ebook pricesThe price of ebooks is rising. Amazon tried to fix the price at just under $10, but publishers weren't happy with this arrangement and when the Apple iPad was launched in January, they took the opportunity to put pressure on Amazon to raise its prices. It looks like ebooks will typically be priced at around $13-$15 and they broke down the costs involved with ebooks and traditional paper books in a recent New York Times article. They said that people have unrealistic expectations of how low the price of ebooks should be. However, the figures they present, which show that there's little difference in profit between ebooks and paper books, are all wrong. Fix Mail problems in Apple Mac OS XMail on the Apple Mac is by far the most popular email client and it is a great program. Not because it is packed with features, but because it can easily be extended by means of plug-ins. There are lots of them and they add a wide range of features and functions that aren't available in the bare bones program. However, sometimes they clash and two plug-ins won't work together. They might even stop Mail from starting completely. Snow Leopard is sufficiently different to Leopard that plug-ins won't work unless they are modified. Consequently you may have incompatible plug-ins or you might download and install plug-ins for Leopard that prevent Snow Leopard's Mail from working properly. Fixing problems with plug-ins and repairing other Mail faults is easier than you might expect. Here's how to do it. Modifier keys change mouse actions when clicking in Windows 7When you left click the mouse on a file, folder, shortcut, taskbar, the desktop and so on, a certain action will be performed or a menu will be displayed. When you right click the mouse you get an alternative action or menu. That's straightforward enough, but did you know that you can change the actions or menus by holding down a modifier key as you click. Hold down Shift, Ctrl or Alt as you left or right click something and you will often get a different action or an extended menu. It's a quick way to access certain features and functions, so let's take a look at some examples. Defragment the registry to boost performance (Windows)It is well known that defragmenting the contents of the hard disk drive in the computer can speed up disk accesses slightly and hence boost the performance of Windows. Less well known is the fact that you can increase the efficiency of Windows and speed it up a bit more by defragmenting the registry. How fragmented does it get though, and how much of a speed boost can you expect? What are the pitfalls? Prune the Grub list when it grows too long in LinuxIf you have installed Linux on a Windows PC so that you have a dual boot system, you will have used a boot loader to display a menu when the computer is switched on. This menu lists the operating systems and allows you to select the one you want. Grub is commonly used and it works fine. The problem is that after installing some updates to Linux you will find that extra entries have been added to the Grub menu. Whenever the Linux kernel is updated, the old one is kept as a backup and it stays on the menu. So the Grub menu list grows and you can end up with half a dozen or more. This makes the Grub menu unwieldy and confusing. It also wastes space on your Linux partition because there are lots of Linux kernels that you never use and they need about 100Mb of disk space each. Here's how to remove those redundent entries and prune the Grub menu list. Missing the taskbar network activity icon in Windows 7? Add it!Windows XP and Vista had a useful icon at the right-hand side of the taskbar that indicated when the computer was connected to the internet or a local area network (LAN) and it would light up when there was any activity taking place. It was a useful indicator that something was actually happening because when you are waiting for a web page to load, a video to start, or a file to download, it isn't always obvious. Windows 7 doesn't have the animated network icon at the right-hand side of the taskbar and so sometimes the computer just sits there and you don't know whether the network is working and it's just slow or whether the connection has died completely. How do we get the animated network activity icon back? There are actually several solutions. Diagnose problems with Activity Monitor (Apple Mac)Activity Monitor is probably regarded by many Mac users as a bit techy and geeky, and only really useful for experts that like to tinker with the inner workings of the operating system. However, it is actually quite an interesting and useful tool that can be used by almost anyone. OK, you do need a little knowledge, but not that much and everyone should take a good look at this utility because it can help you to solve problems when your Mac isn't working quite as well as it should be. Encrypt your USB flash memory drive (Windows)USB flash memory drives, sometimes called thumb drives or pen drives, are great for when you need to carry files around in your pocket so that you can use them on any computer. They have completely replaced the floppy old disk becaus they are much more convenient, faster and have a higher capacity. However, they are also very easy to lose. Hands up if you've lost one! Of course, this would enable anyone that finds one - or steals one for that matter - to access the files that it contains. What if there's personal information stored on the device? The solution is to encrypt the contents. Rearrange taskbar icons and pin programs (Windows 7)The taskbar in Windows 7 is quite different to that in Vista and XP. There are several fixed items on the left after the Start menu, such as Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, and Media Player. As you run programs, more items are added to the taskbar, but these are only temporary items. However, there is a way to make them permanent additions and to rearrange their order. Many items at the right side of the taskbar like the speaker volume, security software and so on, are hidden and are only displayed when you click the little upward pointing arrow. They then appear in a pop-up box. There is a way to rearrange the order of these items too. Music prices up, sales down...Music sales at the iTunes store have apparently been falling for the past year and it is interesting to speculate why this might be. One obvious reason is that we are still in the middle of a recession and many people are spending much less than they used to. We all need to cut back a bit and save money, so buying a bit less music might be the result. However, another reason is that the iTunes store used to have a flat fee for all music tracks, but that policy was abandoned last spring and some prices have risen. Check out the improved font handling (Windows 7)There have been some interesting and useful tweaks to the way that fonts are viewed and installed in Windows 7 and it is now easier and more convenient. It never was that difficult to install fonts, but now whenever you preview a font, there is an install button that does all the work for you. It's not exactly a killer feature, but it's a nice tweak. Use modifier keys for screen corner hotspots (Apple Mac)I thought my MacBook was on its way out and was developing a serious fault. I would be using it normally and it would be working fine, but then all of a sudden the display would go black. After hitting a few keys it would return. It was very strange. After several weeks of this I eventually realised that I had turned the screen corners into hotspots that instantly put the display to sleep to conserve power. I must have been accidentally activating this feature by putting the mouse cursor into a corner and the Mac was simply doing what it had been configured to do. Setting up the screen corners to automatically activate the screen saver, put the display to sleep, access the Dashboard or Spaces is easy. The way to avoid accidentally triggering these features is to use a modifier key, but it's a hidden feature that is not obvious. The myth of defragmentingWhen files are stored on the hard disk drive they can become fragmented, which literally means that they are broken into small fragments. These can be stored anywhere on the disk surface and when you want to access a fragmented file the disk has to jump all over the place fetching the various parts and this seriously affects the performance of the system. Windows needs to be regularly defragmented to boost the speed. Apple Mac OS X and Linux systems don't need defragmenting. These are common beliefs, but really they are myths. Windows doesn't need defragmenting as often as people think, Apple Mac OS X and Linux systems are not immune from fragmentation, and fragmentation doesn't affect performance that much. Are the Kindle and iPad eBook readers really worth it?eBook readers are cool gadgets and Amazon has sold more than a million Kindles according to some sources and it says that sales of eBooks were actually better than real books last Christmas. Amazon isn't the only supplier of eBook readers of course, and there are Sony devices and many more. Now there is also Apple's iPad. However, you have to wonder whether there is really a mass market for them when you consider how much the device costs and how much eBooks cost. You'll pay hundred of pounds/dollars for the device itself and then sometimes the eBooks are more expensive than the paper editions. That's crazy! Which is more secure, Windows PCs or Apple Macs?This is a debate that has been going on for years and will no doubt continue for several more. The reason I bring it up is an article that was recently posted on Cnet News. It's a very good article that is well worth reading, but it doesn't really matter which operating system is the most secure because any system is only as secure as the weakest link. This is, of course, people. People use computers of all types and this makes them all equally insecure. Faster more reliable internet with OpenDNS or Google (Linux)You don't have to use your ISP's domain name server and you can in fact use another one - if you know it's address. OpenDNS is a free domain name server that anyone can use. It aims to be faster and more reliable than your ISP's domain name server, and what's more, it has some cool features too. When your computer uses OpenDNS to convert URLs into IP numbers it will do it slightly more quickly and this makes using the web more responsive, especially when your ISP is overloaded with DNS requests. It is not the only service of this type and Google also runs free DNS servers that anyone can use instead of the ones that their ISP run. Use Spotlight for quick and easy calculations (Apple Mac)When you need to do a quick calculation, such as working out a percentage of something, the cost, the amount, a total of items, the tax or even something a little more complicated, you can call up a calculator on your Apple Mac. You have three choices - the Dashboard calculator, the Calculator app, and Spotlight. Er, Spotlight? Yes, it does calculations! Run old programs in compatibility mode (Windows 7)Windows 7 is pretty good at running old software and it doesn't have many problems with programs written for previous versions of Windows like Vista and XP. If you do come across a program that doesn't work, you should try two things. First, try running it in administrator more and second, try running it in compatibility mode. Hands off! Don't touch! It's my iPad! Buy your own! (All)Smartphones, iPhones and iPod Touches are personal devices that are meant to be used only by one user. They are perfect for individuals because they are small, fit in your pocket, cheap, and everyone has their own. A computer on the other hand is large, expensive and is designed to be shared by several people. Everyone in the household can have their own account with their own settings, their own music, photos, apps, bookmarks, usernames and passwords to websites, and so on. So is the iPad a personal device that is designed for one person to use or is it a device that the whole family can use? It's a very important question and you might not like the answer. Picture yourself using an Apple iPad (All)Can you picture yourself using an Apple iPad? Where? When? What will you be doing on it? Are you at home sitting on the sofa viewing your photos? Are you on a train commuting to work and browsing the web? Are you in a coffee shop catching up with your email? Yes, of course you can picture yourself doing all these things, but before you pitch your tent outside the nearest Apple store to be the first in the queue for the iPad, you also have to consider the alternative ways of performing these common activities. Apple iPad vs Dell Inspiron 15 (All)Apple surprised everyone with the price of the new iPad and it is just $499, which is probably a couple of hundred less than people were expecting. Of course, the iPad looks fantastic and it is a very desirable gadget, but seriously though, if you had $499 to spend, would you really buy an iPad? Windows libraries seem to have a bug (Windows 7)A new feature in Windows 7 is libraries. In previous versions of Windows we had the My Documents folder, the My Pictures folder, My Music and so on. In Windows 7 those folders still exist, but the default view is the Documents library, the Music library and so on. There's a difference and a library is a special type of Explorer view that shows the files in multiple locations. By default, the Documents library lists all the files in your private My Documents folder and also the Public Documents folder. The same is true of the Music, Pictures and Video libraries. It's a great feature, but it also seems to have a bug that you need to be aware of. What the Windows Experience Index rating means (Win7/Vista)How fast is the computer? Is it any good at running Windows? Is it able to play the latest games? What about general applications and office software? These are questions that everyone asks when they buy a new computer or are thinking of buying a new computer. The answers to those questions can be discovered by running a performance test. There's one built into Windows 7 and Vista called Windows Experience Index, but interpreting the results isn't quite so straightforward. In fact, the overall Windows Experience Index figure is actually meaningless. You need to analyse the details to discover what the computer is useful for. Force quit a crashed or locked up program (Linux)Did you switch from Windows because you were fed up with programs crashing? Unfortunately, they crash in Linux too, but Linux fanatics don't tell you that. All programs in all operating systems can crash because of bugs or bad programming and there's nothing you can do about it. Operating systems vary in their ability to handle programs that crash, lock up and freeze though. Here's what you can do in Linux. Find Address Book contacts in Google Maps (Mac)Address Book is a handy tool for keeping track of your friends, work associates, and businesses and a variety of information can be stored abut each one. If you have entered the address of a person or company you can easily find where they are using Google Maps. You don't need to start Safari, go to Google Maps, and then manually copy the address into the search box in order to find it and you can go straight to a map from within Address Book. Discover hidden features and functions (Windows 7)It is sometimes said that 90% of prople only use 10% of a program's features and this is certainly true of Windows 7. The problem is that there are so many hard-to-find features, hidden functions, obscure dialogs and options that most people simply don't know half of what's available. If people knew what was in Windows and where to fund stuff, they might actually make use of it. You could set out to find all the hidden features by exploring every program, Control Panel item and dialog, but there is an alternative way to find things and that is to use the search capability of the Start menu. It's interesting and it's fun. Disable Flash in web pages for extra speed (Mac)Adobe Flash is a very clever program that enables web pages to easily display a variety of content that would otherwise be difficult or impossible. It enables the display of vector graphics, animation, fonts, images, video, audio and so on. When you consider how small Adobe Flash Player plug-in is, it is surprisingly powerful. However, it does create problems for users as well as solving them for web designers. You need to be aware of the pitfalls of Flash and what can be done about them. Is there a market for the Apple tablet? (Mac)News stories about the Apple Tablet are everywhere and even with CES running at the moment (one of the biggest electronics shows around), hardly a day goes by without someone somewhere writing about it. However, will it be a mass market big seller like the iPod? Now that's a difficult question to answer. Top 10 desktop / Sidebar gadgets (Vista/Windows 7)There are hundreds of gadgets available, but which ones are the best? Do they all work with Windows 7? And what about 64-bit Windows 7, which is becoming increasingly popular? Of course, everyone will have their own favourite gadgets, so any top 10 list will be purely personal. However, it is a useful place to start when you are looking for gadgets for your own desktop. Enable the secret God Mode! (Windows 7)Did you know that Windows 7 has a secret God Mode? Want to know how to enable it on your computer? Then read on! God Mode isn't quite what it seems to be though and the name implies that it is an all-powerful tool that gives you the ability to do things that you wouldn't normally be able to do. The truth is that it is simply a special folder and it is one of many special folders that you can create. It is not one that is very well known though and it has some very useful features, so it is well worth using. Install VirtualBox Additions in Mandriva 2010 (Linux)Just installed Mandriva 2010 - the Free edition on a 4.3Gb DVD - and as usual, it was installed into a virtual machine. After all, you can't install every Linux ditro that's released on your every-day work computer. VirtualBox was used and it was a surprise to see that the VirtualBox additions were installed by default. Just install the distro and it works straight away. You can move the mouse between Mandriva in the VirtualBox window and the ordinary desktop, copy text on the clipboard from one to the other, and you can even mount a shared folder on the host operating system in the usual way. Brilliant! Open a command prompt anywhere (Windows 7)Many Windows users never have any need to open a command prompt window and everything they need in available on a menu, icon or button somewhere. The command prompt can be useful for some advanced functions though and you can open a command prompt window by clicking Start, All Programs, Accessories, Command Prompt. (It is sometimes useful to open it as an administrator - right click the Command Prompt menu and select Run as administrator.) A window opens with an old fashioned Dos-like prompt. Set Windows as the default OS in Grub (Linux)The boot loader that Ubuntu and some other Linux operating systems install is Grub and you'll see a text menu displayed on the screen when you switch on the computer. If you do nothing then Linux is automatically started after a few seconds, but you can manually select Windows and boot that instead. If you are happy with this arrangement then you don't need to do anything, but if you want to change the default so that Windows starts automatically if no keys are pressed when the Grub menu appears or if you want less or more time to decide which OS you want, you need to edit the Grub configuration file. Edit the menu contents (Linux)Rearranging the items on the menus and submenus, adding extra items and removing unwanted ones is actually quite easy when you know how. Right click any of the menus in the panel, such as Applications, and then select Edit Menus. A window opens that contains the menus and submenus on the left and the contents of each menu on the right. Menu items that are ticked are visible and ones that don't have a tick are hidden. You can therefore show or hide any menu item. Edit the Start menu contents (Windows 7)The Start menu can easily and quickly become a bit of an untidy mess when you start to install software. Each program adds its own menu entries and you end up with a long list of items with no structure. Of course, there are already submenus for Accessories and a few other items, but these aren't enough. After you have installed half a dozen programs you will want to organise the Start menu items into folders to impose some sort of order on them. For example, you could have an Internet folder for any software that is used with the internet, like web browsers, instant messengers, email, and even web page designers. You could have a utilities folder for useful tools, and an Applications folder for programs like office suites, photo editors and so on. Customise the welcome screen (Ubuntu)Unfortunately, the welcome screen where you log in has been completely redesigned in Ubuntu 9.10. There are hardly any configuration options and there are none of the great features outlined in this article. You can only carry out these tweaks if you have Ubuntu 9.04. This is a shame because the login 9.10 screen is boring and fixed. Linux is usually highly configurable, but it seems that is not the case here. Start apps with Command-Option to fix faults (Mac)If you find that an application is not running as it should be, is faulty, or even crashes, it could be because of an incompatibility with a plug-in, add-on or extension. If we could somehow start the application without all these, it might just solve the problem. Well, we can. Hold down the Command and Option keys as you click a program to start it without all the extras. Back up your email (Windows)Making backups of important files and data is always a good idea, so if you want to back up your email, which folders and files do you back up? Remove Meeting Space if you don't need it (Vista)Windows could be used by anyone and for any purpose, so when it is installed you get a general set of features that are applicable to a wide range of users. This means that there will be some features and functions that you never use. Windows would be slimmer and faster if it only included the things that you actually need... Turn the sudden motion sensor on/off (Mac)It is possible to check the status of the sudden motion sensor by typing a command into the Terminal window. Run Terminal in the Applications\Utilities folder and then enter Change the priority of programs (Linux)If a program gets more processor time, it will run faster because more time is spent running it. However, this means that less processor time is left for everything else and so other programs will consequently run more slowly. Sometimes this is useful and if you want a task finished as quickly as possible and you don't want to do anything else at the same time, you can increase the priority. 14 ways to eject a stuck CD or DVD disc (Mac)Unfortunately, Macs have slot-loading CD/DVD-Rom drive mechanisms and sometimes the Mac simply refuses to eject a disc that is in the drive. So let's look at the varius techniques for ejecting a disc and hopefully one of these should help to solve a stuck disc problem. Older articles...
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