Alvin's Educational Technology Blog

Did you know the power button can actually be used to turn the computer off? You can control the specific action of your power button – Control Panel – Power Options – Advanced settings. The default is to shutdown your computer. You can also select “sleep” mode, “ask me” or “do nothing”. You are probably best off to leave it at shutdown, but it is nice to have options.

Laptops are a different monster. My laptop has three different advanced power settings – Power Button – Hibernate Button – Close Lid. I have modified my “close lid” option. I tend to close my computer while I wait for the computer to do something. By default, closing the lid puts the computer to sleep. Because of this, I always change the setting to “do nothing” when the lid is closed.

Five Second Rule – If you have ever crashed your computer beyond recovery, you can always hold down the power button for five seconds. This will turn off the power, no matter how you have those settings in the control panel.

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I must mention some things that I thought were obvious. Today I was working with someone that did not know the scroll wheel on a mouse could be used to move a browser page up and down. To scroll down the page, he moved the mouse to the scroll bar on the right side of the screen and dragged it down.

When I showed him that the page could be moved up and down without moving the mouse, he thought it was the best thing ever.

Not only can the scroll button be used to move the whole page up and down, if the cursor is inside a text box with its own scroll bar, the text box can be scrolled with the wheel.

My mouse has left and right functionality too. Not all mice can do this, but mine will scroll the page back and forth if there is a scroll bar across the bottom of the page. I also talked before about using Ctrl-scroll to zoom in and out.

This functions work in any application that has a scroll bar on the side of the window.

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Last year, when it was time to buy a new computer, I didn’t. Instead I purchased a new video card and a second display. I already had one 19″ flat panel. I picked up another one that matched. The video card is a high end nVidia with two digital outputs.

There are two basic configurations with two monitors: one big screen with the task bar going all the way across or two independent screens. I use the latter. I can still drag applications from one screen to the other, or stretch something across two screens. The main difference is maximizing an application only fills one screen with my setup.

I usually have my email running in the left monitor and EI in the right window. I only run Firefox in the left window. I can look at a spreadsheet in the left window while typing in a document on the right. When I create web pages in the right screen, I can instantly preview them on the left screen. Overall, my efficiency has gone up measurably not to mention my score in Supreme Commander. Forbes says they have seen a 50% increase in productivity from copy editors with two monitors instead of one.

Bill Gates actually has three monitors on his desk. Maybe that’s the secret to being a billionaire.

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