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In Windows 7, when you access the control panel window from the Start Menu, by default you open the window using the Category view, and what you see is a shortened list of possible actions you can do from the Control Panel screen. You can change the view to Icons to get a longer list,
Do you frequently use Google’s online services such as Gmail, Calendar, and Reader? Do wish there were a way you could view all of these services in one page? If you use Mozilla Firefox as your browser, you’re in luck. Firefox has a free Addon called “Integrated Gmail” which allows you to view these services
Sometimes you need to find out your IP address for networking, troubleshooting, gaming, or tech support purposes. There are two IP addresses you may need to consider — your “external” IP address (the IP address the rest of the world sees to locate your computer or network) and your “internal” IP address (which identifies your particular computer in a shared network). Finding your external IP address is easy. If you are connected to the web, just launch your browser and type: “whatismyip”, and your browser should redirect you to the website whatismyip.com which will provide you this information for free. To find out your internal IP address, just go to the Windows command prompt, or go to the Windows Start Menu and click on Run, then type “cmd”. Next, simply type “ipconfig” in the command prompt and then look for the string of numbers right next to “IP Address.”
Do you ever wish you could save files you find online directly to a cloud storage service provider? With this handy new free tool called Cloud Save you can. Cloud Save is available for the Google Chrome browser at the Google Chrome webstore. After you install the extension in Google Chrome, you will find a new menu item when you right-click or try to download files in your browser. The menu item allows you to send the file (without having to download to your harddisk) directly to popular web-based services including Dropbox, Google Docs, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and more. Simply right-click a file, then decide where you’d like to send it. Related materials: Google Chrome webstore
When presenting in front of an audience, sometimes it’s necessary to pause your PowerPoint slideshow for a few minutes to highlight a point, answer audience questions, or to simply take a break. Instead of leaving the presentation or covering the projector lens with a piece of paper, you can press “B” to show a black screen or “W” to show a white screen.
Have you ever struggled with fitting the contents of your Excel spreadsheet on one page? There are several ways to get around this, one of which is to use the Print Preview option in Excel. While in Print Preview mode, click the Margins button or tick the Show Margins checkbox to display the margins in Excel. You can now drag the right, left, top, and bottom margins just the way you want to be able fit the data onto the page.
Want to change the default download location for Mozilla Firefox? Perhaps you want to have it default to your desktop, or a special folder on your hard drive? To do so, go to the Options menu in Firefox, then under the General tab look for the Downloads section. Browse to a location in the “Save files to” option screen, then click on OK and you should be good to go. Alternatively, you can have Firefox prompt you for a location for every download by choosing the option “Always ask me where to save files” instead.
On some computers with really large drives, the Recycle Bin’s default size setting (10% of your hard drive space) can be too much and may be an inefficient use of space. Over time, you may need to recover this extra space, and it’s easy to do so. Just right-click on the Recycle Bin and move the slider to the left to reduce its allocated disk space. Click on OK, and you might be surprised at just how much space you were able to recover.
