Computer Tips and Tricks

1. Start >> Right Click on My Computer and select Properties. 
2. Click the “Advanced” tab 
3. Select “Settings” in the Performance section.
4. Disable any or all of the following: 

• Fade or slide menus into view 
• Fade or slide ToolTips into view 
• Fade out menu items after clicking 
• Show Shadows under menus 
• Slide open combo boxes 
• Slide taskbar buttons 
• Use a background image for each folder type 
• Use common tasks in folders
• This info was found over at 5starsupport.com and is a good fundamental listing of common things to do to take off some of the bells and whistles that could impact slower systems
  

Technorati Tags: performance, tricks, tweaks, windows, xp

Super Charge the Windows Photo and Image Viewer by adding this free toolkit.
http://www.photo-toolkit.com/features.html
Just download it and it is integrated into the Windows image viewer.

Technorati Tags: image, image editor, photo edit, photo editing, picture, viewer

This one drives me crazy. Have you ever just wanted to shutdown your machine but it takes for ever! Maybe, you are leaving from work, or going out or there is a quick storm approaching and you need to just shutdown. Either way, it sometimes can take a while. This tip comes from PC Tips N Tricks:

Actually windows XP takes time to close all running programs and applications before shutdown, but you can minimize this time if you have little knowledge about editing windows registry.

Follow the given steps to reduce the shutdown time:

· First click on Start button then type Regedit in Run option. Here locate the location to:
HKEY_Current_User\Control Panel\Desktop    or 

My Computer\HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Desktop

· Here in right side panel, double click on AutoEndTasks and here its default value is 0. Now change it to 1.

· Now in same side panel double click on value name WaitToKillAppTimeout. Its default value data is 20000; now change this value of WaitToKillAppTimeout to 3500.

· Now close the registry editor and restart your computer after any changes to go into effect.

Technorati Tags: registry edit, shutdown, windows xp

I know, I know. The Internet is all a buzz about Google’s new Chrome Browser

which could be a replacement for Internet Explorer or Firefox as a web browser. Everybody is talking about it. Technically, It has a ways to go before surpassing Firefox in my opinon, but that’s because I like some of the extensions that you can use in Firefox. In other words, I can “Add-on” other applications to run inside the Firefox Browser. But that being said, I like “Chrome” because it’s fast. It takes up less memory. It is capable of terminating a failed TAB page instead of the whole application so you don’t lose all those open pages. What’s not to like about that? It also has a thumbnail view of the websites you have recently visited when you first pull it up. That looks like a direct decendant from the Opera browser, but hey, that’s one of the cool things about Opera.

All in all, I think you should give it a whirl and it’s a very good first release of a browser which I’m sure has some good development talent working on it and we can expect more good things from Chrome. Also, I think all you guys should get away from Internet Explorer. I mean there is so much more to take advantage of out there.

Technorati Tags: browser, chrome, firefox, google chrome

How would you like a FREE Terabyte of online disk storage?
Not only that, you can get a nice interface to move your photos to Flickr or your videos to Youtube. Hop on over to
www.oosah.com and sign up now. Get it while it’s in Beta and it seems to upload pretty well and the interface works good.

Tags: photo, online, disk, storage

What is your home page when you open your browser? Is it Google? I’ll bet most people will say yes and I’ll also bet you might could use some of these Google tips.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk6vZiGiaiQ

Technorati Tags: browser, google, tips, tricks

This is a cool tip that I found over at PCTipsBox and gives you the functionality of turning aero on or off from the desktop. Nice.

Run REGEDIT and go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\Shell. Right-click the Shell part, select New > Key and call it
Aero On.

Right-click the Aero On key you’ve created, and create a new key called command. Double-click this (in the right-hand side of the screen) and give it the value Rundll32 dwmApi #102.

Right-click the Shell key again, select New > Key, and call this Aero Off. Create a command key below it, as you’ve just done, and give it the value Rundll32 dwmApi #104.

Now, right-click an empty part of the desktop to see your options, and select Aero On when you want fancy effects like Flip 3D, and Aero Off when you’re after raw speed.

Technorati Tags: aero, desktop, off, turn, vista