Alvin's Educational Technology Blog

In my undergraduate days we used an editor affectionately named the “chainsaw editor”.   It didn’t have a spell checker.  It couldn’t create margins.  Most of the time it wouldn’t even save your work.  As a result, we re-typed a lot of things.

Today, most programs than can be used to create content have an “auto-save” feature.  Word has one:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/107686

Even this web-based blog editor has one.

Auto-save will automatically save your work as you work even if you don’t do periodic saves as you create your project.  It can be very irritating to invest an hour only to have a crash or other problem (like a power outage) kill your project.  Auto-save can recover your work from the last auto-save point.

My rule of thumb is fifteen minutes.  I don’t mind re-doing something that takes five or ten minutes, but fifteen becomes a nuisance.  I set all my auto-saves to a fifteen minute save cycle. 

You may have to check the help files of the different programs you use, but most of them will have an auto-save feature.  Turn it on!  It can prove to be a real life saver.

TSPY=2.25

In an earlier post I explained why never turning your computer off is better.  When you walk away from your computer, make sure hibernate is turned off.  To do this, go to the Control Panel – Power Options – Hibernate and ensure the Enable Hibernation box is NOT checked.

I have had too many problems with my computer not waking up properly after being in the hibernated state.  A better option (when you walk away from your computer) is to use Standby mode.  Do this by initiating a normal shutdown, but select Standby instead of Shutdown or Restart.  Your computer will wake up almost as fast and you won’t have the problems associated with hibernation.

TSPY=0.20

If you have ever used a drawing program with a “snap” feature, you will understand the benefit of allSnap.  In a drawing program, the snap feature will pull a close object exactly to the snap point.  It makes lining things up simple.  The utility allSnap does the same for your opened program windows.

Snapping happens in one of the following ways:

1 – Snap window to the edge of the screen.
2 – Snap window to the top of the screen.
3 – Snap edge of window to the edge of another window.

That last one makes it easy to place two windows side by side without overlap.  I do this all the time when I compare two spreadsheets or documents.  Snapping works when you move or resize a window.

If you have two monitors, allSnap treats the center as a snap point making it easy to snap to the center without slipping into the other screen.

TSPY=0.25