Alvin's Educational Technology Blog

Here is something that can speed up your Windows login.  It’s called auto-login and you may already be using it. It is the default setting on a Windows machine with just one configured user account.

When you boot Windows, it has the ability to automatically login with user credentials that have been preset.  To make these settings, click Start, Run and type

control userpasswords2

This will open the User Accounts window.  Uncheck the box in front of “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer.”

As soon as you click OK, you will be prompted for the user credentials to use for auto-login.  Enter your username and password.  The next time your computer reboots, it will automatically login using this user account and password.

This is an efficiency tip I don’t use very often.  To me, it is more important to have a secure computer where someone cannot get to the files without knowing a username and password.  Good security is rarely efficient.

I have a computer that is a build-it-yourself Tivo that I use to record television so that I can watch programs on my computer.  I have login scripts that handle the scheduling of what gets recorded.  I setup auto-login on this machine because it gets rebooted a lot and does not have a keyboard, mouse or monitor.  Any configuration is done via VNC.  The auto-login is useful on a machine like this.

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Many households now have more than one computer.  More people are buying a laptop to go with family desktop.  Add a router and you have a network.  Once you have a network, there is no reason to use “Sneakernet” to move your files from one computer to another.

Turn on File Sharing.  This will let you get to files on Computer 1 from Computer 2.

Depending on your needs, you can control the access of network users to resources that are shared.  The control falls into two general categories and is “set” by the computer doing the sharing.

Read
Read & Write

Read access permits a network user to open a file for viewing, but the network user cannot change or delete the file.  If the network user has Read and Write access, the network user can view, change and even delete the file.

I share all my music and photos over the home network in Read mode.  I don’t want someone accidentally deleting something.  If a network user wants to modify a photo, that photo can be copied to a computer where the copy can be changed, but the original is unaltered.

Sharing files on your home network does not share them with people on the Internet if you have a router/firewall.  Someone would have to break into your home network to get to your shared files.  An added layer of protection is to require a valid username/password for network users to access files that are shared.  In this way, a user not only has to be on the network, but also has to know a working username and password on the computer sharing the files.

Behind a firewall, your shared files are pretty safe from the Internet.

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If you use Word, learn the spell-check short-cut key: F7.

On the fly, Word will underline in red any word that is misspelled.  To run through the whole document, press F7.  Word will start at the cursor and go through the entire document prompting you for any needed corrections.

If you are using another program, check the Help screen for the spell-check short-cut.

You can add a spell-checker into your browser.  Here is ieSpell for Internet Explorer.  A similar tool is built into Firefox.  Right-click in a text box where you have entered text on a web page.  Select “spell check” from the drop-down list.  I’m using it now in my blog editing form.

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Saved Embarrassment = Priceless

Do you use the “Christopher Columbus Method” of typing?  That’s the “find your key and land on it” method.  The Ohio Department of Education says you should learn to touch-type in third grade (check the bottom of page 90). 

I learned to type in graduate school.  You are probably guessing that I didn’t take Typing 501.  You’re right.  I was trying to communicate with people via the computer.  One day I realized that I was wasting a lot of time “looking” at the keys and then looking up to see my mistakes. 

This was long before the days of Mavis Beacon, or at least my knowledge of typing software.  Besides, I was a graduate student.  That translates into “poor” and there wasn’t a lot of open source free software to use either.

One day I decided I was no longer going to look at the keys.  That lasted about a minute.  Fortunately I had an IBM keyboard with removable keys.  I took them all off and rearranged them.  Looking at the keys no longer helped.  That’s when I learned to touch-type.

Today, I can type about 35 words a minute.  That isn’t bad for an old guy that never took a formal typing class.  Now my eyes are free to watch for those misspelled words.  Unfortunately, learning to type did not improve my spelling.

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