Commonsense

Commonsense Tips for Using Your Computer

I tend to hit the Add To Favorites button – a lot. Today I spent about two hours organizing my favorites. What's been frustrating for me is they are never in alphabetical order! Here's a tip to organize your favorites in IE in alphabetical order. Click on Favorites, Click on Organize Favorites, Right click on the first folder and choose Sort By Name. No kidding, that's it.

In IE you can have more than one window open. To move between windows, simply Alt Tab on your keyboard.

In an IE window, you may have more than one tab open. To move between tabs, simply Ctrl Tab.

I have three yahoo email accounts. One is used heavily and I need to be on it all day. The other one I'm phasing out and need to check it once a day (I check it first). The third I like to have open because it's tied to my blog and I also receive RSS feeds there too. I got really tired of opening and closing yahoo mail to get between the two. So I finally downloaded Google Chrome (Google's Browser found at www.google.com/chrome ). I can keep my blog and yahoo email open in it – and the other yahoo mail open in IE. Life is easier now.

If you are writing in Word and bouncing between the internet and Word – save your document often. There's nothing worse than losing several hours of work! A simple Ctrl Save will save your work. Old school advice!

Speaking of MSWord - I useOpen Office and their programs are almost the same as Word, Excel, Power Point - and it's free. 

Have a webcam built right into your computer and have no clue how to use it? Don't feel bad – there's a lot of people like that! Go to www.viddler.com, create an account (it's easy) – and then you just Record!

Backup your files at least once a month. If you have Vista – click on the little Windows icon on the lower left of your screen, where it says Start Search type the word backup and hit enter. Choose Back and Restore Center. Then back up your files. It is recommended you do this at least once a month. If you are working on your computer a lot – do it once a week.

Commonsense photo courtesy of Guillermo Esteves  via flickr.com