Newsletter Archives

October, 2006

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PC Tips & Tricks #10
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Fuzzy Letters?

Simply download and run the setup.exe file. At the end of the installation, select the “Launch the program” checkbox. After that, you’ll want to turn on ClearType and run the wizard to clarity and darkness of your computer’s font settings. It’s really easy. Simply select the letters that look best on your screen to you. Go ahead, give it a try. The Introduction tab should be all you need but there’s an Advanced tab if you want even clearer type.

Help! My PC’s Frozen
If you’re computer ever freezes on you, you should do the following:

1. Try to close the program that’s not responding by clicking on the X in the upper-right. (You’ll likely lose any work you haven’t already saved.)

2. Didn’t work? Ok. Try saving the work in any other programs and closing those. And then go back to the original problem program. Freeing up some memory may allow you to save the work on the problem program. You should probably still restart it after saving your work just to be safe.

3. Still no luck? Press CTRL+ALT+DEL (all three at the same time). This will bring up Windows Task Manager. Click on the Applications tab, select the program that’s not responding and click End Task. You’ll lose any unsaved work by doing this.

4. What? The computer didn’t respond when you hit CTRL+ALT+DEL. Drastic times call for drastic measures – press your computer’s power button for about 5 seconds. This should only be done as a last resort as it will force you computer to shut down. Again, expect to lose any unsaved work.

Email Etiquette Tips
Everyone enjoys a good laugh and there are plenty of funny emails circulating around the internet which your friends and family will enjoy as much as you. But you’ve probably been annoyed by the following:

1) having to scroll down for five minutes through half of the world’s email addresses to find the joke or

2) clicking one attached email only to find another attached email only to find another attached email only to find… You get the idea.

Save your friends from these annoyances by practising the following email etiquette:

1) Forward only the email with the content (i.e. joke) you want them to read.

2) Highlight everything other than the message and delete it in the forwarded message.

3) Want to get rid of all of those annoying “> >” at the beginning of each line? Cut & paste the text into WordPad (Start/Accessories) and then Replace (Edit/Replace) them with… You guessed it! Nothing!

Then just cut & paste the cleaned up message back into your forwarded email. This should take less than a minute but your friends will appreciate as much as you will.

Another netiquette tip – DON’T WRITE IN ALL CAPS! It is the writing equivalent of shouting. There’s a Shift key on your keyboard for a reason. Use it appropriately.

You can find out more on netiquette by visiting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netiquette.

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