Thought I'd get this area of the board up and running.
What's your favourite Windows based tip, or most commonly used short-cut?
Mine is probably the trusty old 'Prnt Scrn' button. Simply press that little beauty, open up Photoshop, Word etc, press PASTE and presto - a nice big screenshot of the current screen!
this lady went to a curtin shop and asked if the would make a curtin for her computer and they said do u mean a dust cover she replied no I mean a curtin, shop keeper said y do u need a curtin for? she replied my computer has windows........
If you are looking for a particular word on webpage press 'Ctrl' and F and type the search word/s into the box and hit find.
Your search term or words will be highlighted.
2nd tip-- If you are using internet explorer as your web browser and would like a more user friendly and safer browser try Firefox for free. http://store.mozilla.org/?r=mozorg1
I wonder how large the number of people running older OS's are now. I run two partitions. One has 98 and one has XP. I liked XP until SP2 because it changed it from a decent OS into something that runs as slow as a 10 year old machine. I didn't find the stability to be much more significant but have seen it more stable on other machines. I don't use my XP partition much but I'm glad I have the install disk because I'm waiting on the next Windows release at which time I'll upgrade to XP and wait for all the new bugs to be worked out of the new Windows... how stupid does that sound but my guess is that it will save me a lot of headache. The release date has been pushed around so much it's kind of ridiculous, but I think it's due the end of next year now. I wish that just ONE Linux distribution, and not a commercial one either which I've found to be poorly managed rip offs, would release software that's as simple to install as it is in Windows. I've been put off from even trying to learn because it seems that you need to already know the OS really well to learn the OS really well. There's no "idiots guide to Linux" and there really ought to be. If these people really wanted to make an impact into the market with opensource software (I again hate commercial linux distros.. it's an oxymoron) then people should concentrate on making one that works with simplicity and not trying to make a differant one that is just as complex but has feature B instead of feature A all the time arguing which one is better. News flash: Until I can download a file and install it without opening command lines, altering 5 files in 4 differant locations, knowing when a reboot is needed, configuring the reboot process, and so on, both feature A and feature B suck. Instead these morons let 3 or 4 people get together and sell a subscription to proper software downloads preconfigured for the particular distrobution, giving the distro a new name after slight changes to the code, and the 3 or 4 people profit while everyone who put in all the work are still arguing on IRC channels. The truth is that I just want one that will run my modem and then I can figure things out, but my modem is a fairly new one and I haven't found a compromise between a distro with lots of interest and an easy solution to installing a driver.
That's my Windows tip, is to not install Windows until it's been released for long enough for bugs to be worked out, and to praise people of the Linux community while at the same time acknowledge that if no one creates a significant rival OS within the next year then they're all idiots because now would be the time before the next Microsoft release. The OS's are already there, just got to make software install in a friendly manner. Also, I usually hold down shift after right clicking and before selecting "delete." It deletes a file off the drive without sending it to the recycle bin first. The recycle bin can be disabled but most of us share computers.
I I liked XP until SP2 because it changed it from a decent OS into something that runs as slow as a 10 year old machine.
I had this problem too but reformatted my disc and reinstalled winxp os and then the SP2 update before reinstalling all the other programs.
After you've had a OS running for some time the Registry ends up in a right mess with every program installed rearranging things to suit themselves - then when you upgrade to SP2 things all get rearranged again and no-one is happy.
After reinstalling WinXP on a refreshed disc with SP2 the computer was zipping along at a great pace - I’d forgotten just how quick it used to be.
Regardless of SP2, I think it is a good idea to reformat and reinstall everything every year, because as I said earlier, after a time the registry ends up a real mess and everything starts to slow down.
I don't use my XP partition much but I'm glad I have the install disk because I'm waiting on the next Windows release at which time I'll upgrade to XP and wait for all the new bugs to be worked out of the new Windows... how stupid does that sound but my guess is that it will save me a lot of headache.
I don't know how long you want to wait. Windows XP came out in 2001 and Microsoft is making the original version obsolete as of September 2006.
Which mean that unless you have the latest version with Spack2, you won't be able to update Spack1 through the updates to Spack2. I think Cactus might have a good point about doing a clean install with XP. That is what I did.
Prior to XP, I was running Win98 for 5 years and it was very instable. I had to reboot my computer every 6 or 8 hours to recover my memory. I don't have that problem with XP. Actually XP never crash on me.
I did the same thing, reformat, clean install, grab all the updates. 98 is still noticably faster. They may say they are making it obsolete, but you have to remember that there is very little out there that makes 98 obsolete and it's very old. Every hardware manufacturer still includes 98/ME drivers and almost all software that runs on XP will run on 98. Some of it that only specifies XP will still run on 98 and it's more stable for me. I think it's ridiculous that Microsoft says XP will be obsolete in a year. If it is, then it will be because they designed it that way, so that people will be pressured to upgrade over security fears then be forced to by all new business software... it's what they did last time and quite frankly I won't have any sympathy for them when entire governments are pirating their software again because they can't afford it as countries that are not rich. If I don't have to submit to that marketing pressure and don't want to because I'm happy with I have then I wont. Wouldn't it be stupid to use something I don't like?
I don't have memory or system resource problems on 98. On XP I do. It isn't really more stable for me nor is 98 too unstable on my machine, so what's the problem with using a machine that's faster, just as reliable, and does the same thing?
I did the same thing, reformat, clean install, grab all the updates. 98 is still noticably faster. They may say they are making it obsolete, but you have to remember that there is very little out there that makes 98 obsolete and it's very old. Every hardware manufacturer still includes 98/ME drivers and almost all software that runs on XP will run on 98. Some of it that only specifies XP will still run on 98 and it's more stable for me. I think it's ridiculous that Microsoft says XP will be obsolete in a year. If it is, then it will be because they designed it that way, so that people will be pressured to upgrade over security fears then be forced to by all new business software... it's what they did last time and quite frankly I won't have any sympathy for them when entire governments are pirating their software again because they can't afford it as countries that are not rich. If I don't have to submit to that marketing pressure and don't want to because I'm happy with I have then I wont. Wouldn't it be stupid to use something I don't like?
I don't have memory or system resource problems on 98. On XP I do. It isn't really more stable for me nor is 98 too unstable on my machine, so what's the problem with using a machine that's faster, just as reliable, and does the same thing?
When are they releasing their new OS by the way?
Well... I don't understand why you don't have any proplem with 98 and are having problems with XP. It is a mystery to me. I guess it could have to do with what sort of software you are using on 98. I do have lots of it. And Dreamweaver in particulary is chewing a lot of memory. The fact is that XP has a much better memory management and actually recover its memory once you close your programs. 98 did not do that. I had to reboot my PC to recover my memory.
I have only used XP since last January and never did use it without Spack2. In case you don't know this, I have to tell you that none of the drivers for Window 98 works on XP. I had to update every single drivers to get my hardware to work properly. This could be your problem if you did not know.
I did get a letter from Bigpond a week ago to inform me that it will not support Win98 anymore for its ADSL connection.
On the subject of XP Spack1 becoming obsolete. I think it might have to do with the tremendous amount of updates required to keep it up to date. Spack2 is about 75MB alone. And on top of that, you have about another 40 updates taking another 50MB. It took me almost 4 hours to install all those updates.
Now that I think of it, I've actually done quite a bit of tweaking on 98 including running 2 instances of explorer to handle the filesystem and the shell separately which has made the differance of night and day when it comes to stability. I've tweaked the settings when it comes to freeing up programs no longer in use and run a memory manager for times when I need it but it rarely uses it. I almost never need a swap file and for a very long time had never used it until I started doing huge projects in The Gimp. Also, as far as system resources other than simply memory goes, 9x OS's have the problem of not freeing anything back up while 16 bit programs are running. I think perhaps that since today 16 bit programs are obsolete, the problem has solved itself or perhaps it's a simple matter of how today's hardware is able to handle that. Anyhow, I'de forgotten about all the tweaking.
I dont know what al, the fuss is about, I have been using Win 98 for years now and never had a problem.........I do a lot of music converting from a turntable, always using music match jukebox............i have a very fast broadband connection, with iinet....no problem...........the only thing I dont do is play huge games........ My wife uses XP on her pc, she is into family history researchand, well it is better for all the inbuilt programs, and finding drivers, etc......but I cant see me lashing out to buy xp for my pc just yet........
If your not using anti- virus program and want FREE well recognized anti virus program- then this is one to be highly recommended by E-trust-- which is NOD 32 licensed product.
It does as good job as Mcafee and Symantec virus scanners.
That was helpfull, the link to the antivirus. Not just a scanner but monitors what's going on. Simple but can't argue with free.
I tried to upgrade to XP again. Not upgrade, but reinstall and taking the advice of installing all the updates first and then putting programs on it. It was still slow. I think the problem was that XP decides how it's going to prioritize instead of letting the user control it and I've got 98 seriously tweaked but on top of that I've apparently got a hardware issue that was interfering with it pretty badly and causing reboots left and right because the OS behaves like that on some errors while 98 doesn't seem to care. It's very strange.
Looks like I'll be buying a new computer when the next release of Windows comes out.
My tip, and this one is for people using 98 or ME, get download cacheman and run all the automatic wizards, if you have a fast CPU set up for no read ahead, and if you have ram to spare force a good size buffer in the areas that aren't covered by the program wizards.
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