by Tina Gasperson
When you launch Microsoft Word and start a new document, the blank “page” you see is the so-called “Normal” document template. The template is a collection of default settings: margin widths, page size, default font, heading sizes, etc. The template is transparent. When you save your new document, it saves as a document, and doesn’t change any of the settings contained in your “Normal” document template.
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by David Hakala
DAEMON Tools is a Windows software suite that makes files that are exact images of CD and DVD discs. You can store these disc images on your hard drive and use them exactly as if they were physical discs in your CD/DVD drive. You can also burn disc images to CD or DVD discs as backups, or even transfer disc images over the Internet.
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by Cameron Laird
Expect can save you time–hours, or even weeks, of time. If you work at the command line, and ever find yourself annoyed at how tedious some task is, you’re a potential Expect customer. Expect automates interactive applications including telnet, ftp, password updates and more.
The cost to start is small, too: modern Mac OS and many popular Linux distributions include it, and convenient installable packages are available at no charge for Windows and all leading Unix releases.
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by Tina Gasperson
Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is the application that allows Java programs to run on your computer, whether online or offline. The JRE executes JAVA code and makes sure that whatever application you want to run looks and feels right on your system, whatever your operating system version and whatever hardware you have.
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by Gabe Goldberg
When calling businesses, it’s common to hear the announcement, “This call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance.” Everyone ignores or accepts the fact that a supervisor may listen in or evaluate the call after it’s finished.
But wouldn’t it be helpful to occasionally have access to a recorded call? For example, I might like to replay a complex call with a doctor, teacher, or lawyer, or I might refer back to a customer service call if I feel that promises haven’t been kept.
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by Tina Gasperson
File shortcuts are very handy and efficient ways to locate and open files and applications on your Windows computer. All the items under your Start menu are shortcuts, and a great number of the icons on your desktop are also shortcuts. Did you know that you can create your own custom shortcuts? It is quick, easy, and painless, and will help you to customize your desktop computing experience.
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by Tina Gasperson
With the advent of digital photos, creating special presentations has become a fairly easy task for the home user. Why just print your photos out on photo paper? Now you can make a captivating multimedia show that will entertain your family and friends much more than flipping through a paper photo album.
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by David Hakala
Q: My five-year-old computer running MS Windows XP turns off very slowly. It takes minutes to shut down completely. Any economical suggestions or recommendations? — Alan
Alan, you don’t have to spend a dime, just a little time.
When Windows shuts down, it must save many system settings to use when it starts up again. It saves these settings in a group of files collectively known as “the registry.” Over time, the registry becomes cluttered with invalid settings as you add, remove, and relocate files, shortcuts, programs, etc. Cleaning up such clutter will help Windows shut down and start up much faster.
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by Dee-Ann LeBlanc
Every operating system comes with a preset list of what programs should open what files. That doesn’t mean, however, that these are the programs we want to use.
Say that you want to use the Bean text editor rather than TextEdit. Every time you wanted to open a text file, you could navigate to the file in the Finder, select it, right click, choose Open With, and then either select Bean from the list, or choose Other to find Bean and choose it.
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by Dee-Ann LeBlanc
There’s two programs that once Mac users have them, they just can’t live without them. These programs are 1Password and Quicksilver. In both cases, these apps make your computing life a whole lot easier. In the case of 1Password it also makes you safer.
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by David Hakala
Q: I think I have trained my Dell Vostro/Vista to recognise my voice, but how do I actually put it into practice? I will shortly be having to type a quite lengthy report and it would be really useful to merely speak to my laptop since my typing speed is bit tortoise-like! – Nigel
Speech-to-text, or speech recognition, is a feature built into the Vista operating system. Like all the many components of a general-purpose operating system, Vista’s speech recognition is not the best of its breed. Third-party speech recognition software such as Nuance’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking are more reliable than Vista’s built-in stuff. For a “quite lengthy report” and regular use, I would highly recommend investing in top-quality speech recognition software.
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