Tiplet expert tips & tech support

January 26, 2009

Using the Vista Sidebar and Gadgets

Filed under: Vista — Tags: , , — admin @ 9:00 am

by David Hakala

“Gadgets” are small programs that do useful things like tell you the weather at a glance; remind you of appointments or tasks to do; or quickly add up a few numbers like a pocket calculator. The cool thing about gadgets is that you don’t have to remember where they are or take time to open them. They are right there at your fingertips all the time, in the Windows Vista Sidebar.

The Sidebar is a pane at the side of the Vista screen where gadgets are kept and organized. The Sidebar makes great use of wide-screen monitors and also looks good on standard monitors. You can easily customize the Sidebar’s location and whether it is “always on top” of other applications or hides beneath a maximized application.
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January 24, 2009

How to View and Convert .docx Files Online

Filed under: online computing,Vista,Windows — Tags: , , , , , — admin @ 9:00 am

by David Hakala

Docx is the new file format used by Microsoft Word 2007 by default. It cannot be opened by previous versions of Word. If you do not want to install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats, there is an alternative way to convert docx files to previous versions’ doc format.
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January 14, 2009

Setting up Windows Mail under Vista

Filed under: e-mail,social networking — Tags: , , , , — admin @ 2:00 pm

by Ross M. Greenberg

Getting Windows Mail to function properly under Vista is easy – especially if you use the Windows Mail Setup Wizard. It runs automatically when you first run Windows Mail. Windows Mail, by the way, Is the Vista replacement for Outlook Express, including the ability to read and post to NNTP newsgroups, something Microsoft’s Outlook product is still lacking.

Fill in the appropriate details for each page that that pops up in the wizard: your name and e-mail address, etc. The type of e-mail you expect to exchange with your Internet Service Provider will generally be POP3 (Point of Presence). Next you must enter the user name and the password assigned to you by your ISP – your machine logs on to the ISP’s machine to retrieve e-mail waiting for you. Make sure to check the “Remember Password” the box on this is screen – as Windows Mail will be logging in unattended on a regular basis. You can fine tune how often your system will check for mail a later.
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January 12, 2009

Setting up a Home Network on Vista

Filed under: computer networks,Windows — Tags: , , — admin @ 6:00 pm

Ross M. Greenberg

Out-of-the-box Vista is an extraordinarily easy system on which to base your home network. My setup here is with a high-speed DSL, wired to my Vista Ultimate with wireless connections to my son’s Vista Home Premium and my wife’s XP Media Center.

The first thing to do is to make sure that the XP machine is using the NTFS file system. This is the newer file system that allows for more granular file permissions – permissions can be set to deny or allow remote file access to directories, shares, individual files and so forth. This is based upon the credentials a remote user or a remote machine uses to access another on the network. To offer a full transparency of access it is vital that the users of one machine have the same login ID and password on each machine on the network. Secure information, such as the password, does not have to be visible in plain text or accessible to other users.
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January 8, 2009

Repartitioning a Drive With Vista

Filed under: computer performance,Vista — Tags: , , , — admin @ 9:00 am

by David Hakala

Sometimes it is desirable to change the size of a drive partition. Perhaps you underestimated the amount of space that a partition needed, or you want to shrink a partition to make room for another one.

Windows XP lets you create new partitions using any unallocated space on a drive. But changing the size of existing partitions is a pain. You have to back up all your data and programs; boot from a DOS CD (or floppy, if you still have one of those); use the FDISK utility to change existing partitions; reformat the partitions; and reinstall all that data. There has to be a better way!
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January 7, 2009

Create a Bootable Customized Vista Install DVD

Filed under: Vista — Tags: , , , — admin @ 9:00 am

by David Hakala

The Windows Vista installation DVD comes with many enabled features and components that most users don’t need. Depending on how old your installation DVD is, it lacks important updates and service packs that you will have to download and install if you re-install Vista. Of course, it does not contain the latest third-party device drivers. You will have to download and re-install those, too.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an installation DVD that installs Vista exactly the way you want it? Here is how to make one.
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January 5, 2009

Top 10 Vista Speed Tweaks

Filed under: computer performance,Vista — Tags: , , — admin @ 9:00 am

by David Hakala

1. Turn off Search Indexing. It constantly consumes significant resources just to make occasional searches a little faster.

Click Start, then Computer
Right-click on C: drive
On General tab, uncheck “Index this drive for faster searching”
On the resulting dialog box, check “Include subfolders and files”

2. Turn off Remote Differential Compression. It constantly monitors changes in files across a network to minimize bandwidth use by transferring only changed parts of a file instead of the whole thing. The constant monitoring slows system performance.

Open Control Panel
Switch to Classic View
Select Program Features
Choose Turn Windows Features On and Off
Scroll down and uncheck Remote Differential Compression

3. Turn off Automatic Windows Defender Operation. It is weak protection against malware; use a third-party defender.

Open Control Panel
Select Windows Defender
Choose Tools from the menu bar
Select Options
Uncheck Autostart
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December 31, 2008

Speed up Web browsing with OpenDNS

Filed under: Internet — Tags: , , , — admin @ 4:45 pm

by David Hakala

You may get a pleasant Web surfing speed boost by switching from your ISP’s Domain Name Server to the free OpenDNS. You’ve nothing to lose by trying and the switch is easily done and undone. Here is why OpenDNS may be right for you.

When you enter the name of a Web site in your browser, i. e., “google.com”, the easily remembered name must be translated into a cryptic IP address, a standardized number that uniquely identifies every device connected to the Internet, such as Google’s Web server. For instance, Google.com’s IP address is 74.125.45.100. (more…)

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