October 20, 2010

Your Little Printer Friend

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

The easiest way to cancel a print job is to press the big, red Cancel (or X) button on your printer’s console. The second easiest way is to find the wee li’l printer dude in the Notification Area, open it, and delete the document from the printing queue. But sometimes the li’l printer dude disappears before you can open him.
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October 18, 2010

It’s Happening Again

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

In the past week I’ve gotten three of them. Honestly, I thought those days were over.
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October 15, 2010

Roll Your Own Windows Recovery Disc

Filed under: Main — Tags: , — admin @ 12:01 am

Your PC should have come with a Windows disc. The best disc is the installation disc. The next best disc is a recovery disc. The least best disc is no disc at all. Even when you find yourself in that least-best situation, all hope isn’t lost. It’s possible in Windows 7 and in Windows Vista to create a Windows Recovery Disc. In fact, it’s stupidly simple.
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October 13, 2010

Printing a Directory

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

There is no way in any graphical operating system I’ve ever used to print out a list of files in a folder. In the older days, at the command prompt, back when it was called a directory of files and not a folder, the command was simple. But not today!
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October 11, 2010

Text Mode Task Manager

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Here’s a really nerdy blog post for you: There is a command line version of the Windows Task Manager. Unlike the Task Manager window, with all its graphical fun and folly, the command line task manager is all about business.
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October 8, 2010

What Do You Do With a Second Monitor?

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

I’ve put two monitors to work on my computers since 1988. That’s about how long the technology has existed, but the real question is: Why bother at all?
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October 6, 2010

UPS and Downs

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

There was a power outage at my house last weekend. Three of my computers are on UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) systems. Two of them survived the blackout.
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October 4, 2010

Text Editing With Swype

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

The Swype keyboard is brilliant for quickly typing text, but you may think that it falls far short when it comes to editing that text. Au contraire, mon frere!
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October 1, 2010

My First Four-Color For Dummies Book

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Droid X Book
I’ve been writing For Dummies titles ever since, well, ever since the very first book, DOS For Dummies. Just last month my first four-color For Dummies book, Droid X For Dummies, was published.
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September 29, 2010

Once-Vital Utilities of Yesteryear

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

The year 1988 was quite a while back, over 20 years. Running a PC back then was different than it is today. Not only was DOS the king PC operating system, but there were a slew of utilities you routinely ran on your DOS computer, stuff that may seem trivial and stupid today.
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