Backing up Personal Computers

As a result of the Back up, back up, back up! entry, several have asked what and how to back up stuff on a personal computer since the article focused on business computers. Backup on business computers is typically not the user’s concern unless it’s a small business. A business should have a policy in … Read more

Back up, back up, back up!

This is not your typical lost data story. I was a good girl and I kept my files on the network drive just like the company recommended. The only thing I put on my hard drive was junk files – things that wouldn’t bother me if the hard drive crashed. But not on the network … Read more

Windows Task Manager in English

You use Ctrl+Alt+Del to see what’s running on your PC, to close crashed programs and processes, and to check performance. You probably avoid a few processes whose names mean nothing to you, but they’re essential to Windows. svchost.exe sure likes to appear all the time and multiple times at that. What’s taskmgr.exe? Oh yeah, it’s … Read more

Creating Fast Email Replies Pt II

We’re going to do an easy one since I was down and out over the past weekend. Part I covers using mail merge. This one is creating a simple template with no merging. The text is the same and all you have to do is add information and send it. We’ll do it for Mozilla … Read more

Creating Fast Email Replies Pt I

As an editor for a few newsletters, I write to readers who write or complete feedback surveys. One of the newsletters gets several hundreds of responses with every issue. If that sounds overwhelming, the first issue alone got over 1000 responses! I use a few methods for handling large email jobs and use whichever depending … Read more

Web Search Garage

Those familiar with Calishain’s ResearchBuzz know of her expertise with search engines, Google especially. Her previous book is Google Hacks. This is a book of a different nature and doesn’t focus solely on Google. Anyone who uses the Internet to do searching and research will find this book valuable. I’ve been using operators and special … Read more

Windows Error Reporting Part 2

Previously, I provided an overview of Windows Error Reporting. Someone wrote and said he never received resolutions to his problems when submitting an error report. I don’t know if this happened to him or not, but it may not be obvious that Microsoft is providing a possible solution. I got an error after writing this … Read more

Windows Error Reporting

I get, “The system has recovered from a serious error” message from time to time (see the screenshot) with two buttons: “Send Error Report” and “Don’t Send” regarding sending the report to Microsoft. The error message appears when an application runs into a problem it can’t handle. When this happens, XP stops the app and … Read more

Buy a Laptop

Shopping for a laptop is overwhelming because of the numerous choices. No one can tell you what you need or don’t need, except maybe your spouse, parent, kid, local geek, or know-it-all who knows you. But it’s still good to know a few things about buying a laptop. An educated customer is a happy customer, … Read more

Behave, Word, Behave!

If you copy something from a Web site or elsewhere… or you reuse a document and the formatting is making you crazy with its weirdness, then stop the insanity. The first option to make the document behave loses some of the formatting. You can always undo the changes if you don’t like it by pressing … Read more