Alvin's Educational Technology Blog

Know when to single-click versus double-click.  All icons on your desktop or in Windows Explorer will require two clicks to activate.

After a program starts, most buttons (tool bars, menus) will require just one click.

While using your browser, everything will require one click.  This is true of links to web sites.  Don’t waste a second click on them.  The first one is all it takes.

You can modify your Windows settings to make most items that are normally a double-click into a single-click.  Look in the Folder Options of Windows Explorer.  This is especially useful if you shake from too much caffeine consumption and have a hard time getting that second click on the same spot as the first.

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One of the slowest loading, most used programs is Adobe Acrobat.  On top of loading at a snail’s pace, it will prompt you all too often for updates.  The best thing to do is stop using it.

You will still undoubtedly need to open PDF files.  After you un-install Acrobat, install Foxit.  It will load many times faster than Acrobat and it won’t prompt you for an update every time you open it.

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Open Word and save a file.  If you let your computer make all the decisions you will end up with a file named Document1 in the My Documents folder.  Excel isn’t much better at deciding things for you.  It will name your spreadsheet – Sheet1.  Apparently a name like this is good enough for some people as 1.4 million spreadsheets in the Google database have this name.

Give your files names that mean something.  If you are creating a resume for a Google job, name it “Resume for Google job.doc”.

Downloading files is another story.  Depending on your browser and how you have things setup, it may automatically save downloaded files to an obscure location like

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp\{00CF420F-4511-461E-BD60-D835BD4D2698}

where you will never find it.

Never click “Save” until you are certain the location is OK for your file.

I have talked before about organizing documents in folders.  I have a similar strategy for downloading files.  I have a folder called “download” on my hard drive.  Everything goes in there.  Some downloads get a sub-folder.  I have a folder called WordPress which holds all the updates for my blog software as well as any new themes and plugins.

Computers are poor at anticipating how we want to manage our information.  Don’t let the computer make the important decisions.  Be intentional when you save files.  This will increase your probability of finding the files later.

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