Alvin's Educational Technology Blog

Any time you need to know more information about a file, you can check the “properties” of the file.  A right-click of the file followed by selecting Properties from the list will open information about the file size, create date, security settings and more.

 To save time you can press the Alt-Enter key combination to open the file properties.

If you use file permissions on your files, you can select a list of files and press Alt-Enter.  Once the Properties box opens you can change the security settings for all the files.

It is important to keep your computer’s operating up to date. Go to the Control Panel and double-click the Automatic Updates icon. There are several options to select from.

1 – Configure your computer to automatically check for updates. If there are updates, your computer will automatically download and install them. If you have never thought about updates before reading this post, this is the option for you.

2 – Automatically download new updates but let me select the time to install them. This is the one I use. Because my computer does work for me while I sleep, I don’t want an update automatically rebooting my computer and killing a scheduled process. My computer alerts me when new updates are available and I install them when I am ready.

3 – Just tell me when an update is ready, but don’t download anything else. If you have limited bandwidth (dial-up) this one may work best for you. Microsoft will tell you an update is ready. At that point, you can go to your neighbor’s house and ask him to download the big files on his high-speed connection. Save the files to a CDR and take them back to your house and install them.

4 – Turn off Automatic Updates. I can only think of two reasons for going with the last option. First – your computer isn’t connected to the Internet. Second – someone else may be installing all the updates for you in a way that is transparent to you.

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As web users, we spend a lot of time typing things into a browser.  I have talked about reducing your typing using Ctrl-Enter. Here is another “URL” time saver. 

I have seen many people spend too much time entering a URL. The box at the right shows a “selected” URL.  A “selected” URL is one that has been high-lighted. Once it is high-lighted, you can immediately start typing the destination URL.  You don’t have to press the Delete key.  Typing anything will replace all that is high-lighted.

Today I had to restore a machine using my bare-bones XP image.  A long time ago I did a clean install of XP and then created a Ghost image of that install.  The install took almost an hour.  The imaging process takes ten minutes.  I haven’t installed XP from the disks in years even though I do a fresh image at least once a month.

One of the first things I noticed after the install was that Windows Messenger was automatically running.  I don’t use Messenger.  I also don’t recommend running programs all the time if you are not going to use them.  Even though the program is running in the background it is taking up CPU cycles that can be used to make your active applications run faster.

Here is a Microsoft article that explains how to stop Messenger from loading automatically when Windows starts.

When it comes to doing things quickly, the faster your computer, the more efficient your tasks. Your computer will run faster if you don’t have wallpaper loaded.

Adding a wallpaper image on top of everything else your computer does will slow everything down a little bit.  The speed may not be effected a lot, but your computer will be slower.

More important, wallpaper on your desktop is something that is rarely seen while you use your computer.  You probably can’t see your wallpaper right now.  There are plenty of screen savers that will load a whole list of pictures for you when your computer is idle.  You will enjoy them more when you don’t have a program running right over top of them.