Computer Tips and Tricks
A few tips and tricks to enhance your computer
experience. Time well spent.
These various tips and tricks are
just examples of how you can create a more fun and organized PC to help
optimize your computing time and enjoyment. The following tips were
performed on a P-III class system running the 98 version of Windows. There
are many different PC configurations and each user has different levels of
computer knowledge that it would be impossible to say these will work for
you. We are not responsible for any problems you may encounter as a result
of using these tips and tricks. You will be proceeding at your own risk.
can be easily moved as one unit by holding down your left mouse button
then forming a square around the icons you wish to move. Let go of the
button and click and hold on one of the icons and you'll be able to move
all of the highlighted icons at once.
can easily be changed by right-clicking them and selecting
properties. Click change icon and you'll be presented with a
generic list of icon graphics to replace the current one or you can browse
your entire computer for anyone you like. Be careful, once you change the
icon, you may have trouble finding the original again (usually in the same
folder as the program the icon points to) This only works for shortcut
icons. For other icons, such as my computer etc. you may change
them by right-clicking any empty space of your desktop and select properties,
then choose effects.
is a great place to put important shortcuts to essential web-sites,
folders, or often used control panel options. For example to place
an Add-Remove Programs shortcut in the Start menu. Click Start,
go to settings and then click control panel. Drag (left
click hold and move) Add-Remove Programs, or whichever you want, to
the Start button and let go. The shortcut will automatically be
placed in the Start menu. Now whenever you press Start it
will be in the top selections. If there's more than one there, you can
arrange the order by left-click-hold and move up or down.
were fine for 14 inch monitors and surprisingly many people with larger
17-21 inch monitors still use 800 by 600 res and lower! On a 17 inch 1024
by 768 seems to be perfect, creating lots of room on the desktop and still
keeping everything big enough to read. Change your resolutions by
right-clicking your desktop, select Properties, then click the Settings
tab. Now if your video card supports it, adjust the slider to the
resolution you want to try. Now click Apply, then a box will pop
up, click OK. Now the screen will probably go blank for a second,
then you will be asked if you wish to keep this resolution. Keep adjusting
to various resolutions until you find one you're comfortable with. By the
way, if you've been using low resolutions on a large monitor for a long
time, no one may be able to convince you that high res is better simply
because you're so gosh darn use to low res. Of course, if you have
problems with eye fatigue, headaches, etc. you may be better off with
lower resolutions to help reduce the eye strain.
can
also be changed while in the Display Properties Settings. Depending
on the depth of your video card you can increase the detail of the color
that you see on your desktop, art programs, or even pics on the web.
However, if you have a slower processor (P-II class) with limited RAM
(64MB & under), you're probably better off with a max of High Color
16 Bit. The higher True Color settings may affect performance
on slower machines. Faster machines can shoot for the True Color
ranges depending upon your video card of course.
can
be changed to point to custom sound files you may have downloaded off the
Internet. Or simply select a favorite sound already on your system. You
can even have no sound played during startup if you wish for your system
to boot faster. Go to Start, Settings, Control Panel,
and open Sounds. There's many different sounds in this list and
it's out of the reach of this simple tutorial to explain them all. Start
Windows is obviously your startup sound and Exit Windows is
your shutdown sound. You can select none to speed up slower
machines or become obsessed and find cool voice sounds on the Internet
that say something like "Initiating Computer Setup" or even
sound-bites from your favorite movies. You can fool around and try
different sounds for opening and closing files, etc. but write down your
original sound files or else you may end up with an annoying sound every
time you open a file.
Click
Here |
|
