Kind Of Drag

Are you used to selecting text on web pages by holding the left mouse button at the start of a block and dragging your mouse until the end of it? That's kind of a drag, isn't it? Try this : Left click at the start of the text block that you want to select. You can let go of the left mouse button after left clicking. Go to the end of the sentence or block of text you want to copy and hold your SHIFT key down and left click again.

Rename a series of files at once

Do you have a group of files that you want to rename to the same name, with numbers to differentiate them? For example, maybe you have five photos of your baby that you downloaded from your digital camera. They currently have the name given by the camera (probably a meaningless bunch of numbers and letters). In Windows Explorer, you can highlight all of them, either by holding down CTRL while you click each one you want to select, or by clicking the first in a list, holding down SHIFT and clicking the last in the list to highlight all those in between. Now right click the highlighted list and select Rename. Type the new name (for example, Sandy 11-10-2003). Now all the files you selected will have this filename, with numbers appended in parentheses.

Printing Selected Text Instead Of An Entire Web Page

Like to print only a piece of text?
Highlight just the text you wish to print by holding down your left mouse button and dragging the cursor over the text. Go to 'File' and 'Print' and put a dot in the circle next to 'Selection' and it will only print the part you highlighted

What fonts have to stay in Windows:

Do you have too many fonts installed and would like to remove the ones you don't want? Here


Know your Keyboard shortcuts: Here

Renaming Picture Files -

Like to take digital pictures? Do you end up with lots of photos that are all listed with duplicate letters and numbers for file names.  You can name each file individually.  Highlight the ones you want to rename (Using XP) by clicking on the first one of them, then hold the shift key down and click the last one to highlight several files and then right click on the first one and select rename.  Then type in a general name like xxxxx (remember to type in the extension such as .jpg, .bmp, etc...) then click on a blank place near the file.  After a little delay--it names all the files at once--like--xxxxx, xxxxx(1), xxxxx(2) etc.  It is a real time saver.

Lightening Protection -

A lightning bolt can travel several miles/kilometers through empty air, so there's no way that the tiny gap inside an electrical switch---a space of just a few millimeters or fractions of an inch--- will somehow stop the surge. In fact, a lightning strike will blast through an "off" switch almost as if the switch wasn't there at all. Physically unplugging the PC is the only 100% sure method to protect against the worst kinds of electrical problems.

An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) or a good surge arrestor can help protect against routine electrical problems, and even lightning strikes IF (unlike Frank's case) the strikes aren't too close and IF they don't actually hit the wiring: The surge arrestor shunts the excess power directly to the ground instead of letting it blast through your PC. But even high-quality surge arrestors may fail with very close lightning strikes, or direct hits to the power lines even if the strike is some distance away.

UPSes and/or good surge protectors are still worth having because most electrical problems that can damage a PC are not from direct (or nearly so) lightning strikes. Good protective devices *can* help against most routine power problems. But note: I'm not referring to those cheesy $8 power strips, even if they call themselves "surge arrestors" or "protectors" or some such. Those glorified extension cords are next to worthless for surge protection. A real surge protector costs at least a few tens of bucks; and may include a small battery to let you ride out a brief brownout or blackout. Some of the better uninterruptible power supplies can also protect your modem and LAN connections, and even automatically perform a safe, proper system shutdown of your PC in the event of an extended outage. Some also come with built-in insurance policies that will pay to replace your equipment, should it be damaged while protected by the UPS/surge arrestor.
(The policies usually don't cover data loss, though: You still need to make images/backups on your own. Also: Note that "inside the box" backup methods such as RAID arrays or second hard drives will likely be toasted by a major surge, along with everything else inside the PC, leaving you with no useable backup at all. The safest backups are those that you can store away from your PC, so that anything bad that happens inside the box can't also affect your backups.
See http://www.langa.com/backups/backups.htm )

Printer Tip

printers default to Normal. Changing it to Draft for text things saves a lot of ink.