Time-Saving Tips From the Pros
Our five experts share their favorite secrets for working faster, not harder--from file management shortcuts to photo editing tricks.
Illustration by John Cuneo
Speed Up Windows
By Scott Dunn
Illustration by John Cuneo
Hibernate to Accelerate
Enable Hibernate in this box to save time booting your PC. Make sure you have enough disk space to use the feature.
Now for my favorite time-saving tip: Shutting your PC down every night is a good way to save energy, but it's no way to save time. Windows' hibernation feature avoids the slowdown of exiting and restarting Windows. When you need the PC again, it quickly restores any applications you were running to the way you left them. Unfortunately, not every computer can hibernate. Win 9x PCs with FAT32 hard drives, for example, can't do it. How do you know if your system qualifies?
In Win 2000 and XP, log on as the administrator. In the Address bar of any folder or Internet Explorer window, type control panel\power options (control panel\power management for Windows 98), and press <Enter>. If the resulting dialog box has a Hibernate tab, you have passed the first hurdle. Click that tab and see whether your machine meets the requirements under Disk space for hibernation. Finally, check the Enable hibernation box, and make sure that you don't get any error messages. The next time you choose Start, Shutdown (in Win 98, Me, or 2000), select the Hibernate option in the Shutdown Windows dialog box and click OK. In Windows XP, choose Start, Turn Off Computer, and then press <Shift> to transform the Stand By button into the Hibernate button. The Stand By setting doesn't completely shut down your system, as hibernation does; it's a lower-power mode that's useful when you'll be away from your PC for a while.
Limber Up Your Log-on
If you can't use the hibernation feature, the best way to speed up logging on to Windows is to reduce the number of applications your system launches each time you enter your account. In fact, you should do this even if you can use Hibernate mode. There are many ways to discover all the hidden programs that get launched at start-up, but I prefer Mike Lin's freeware Startup Control Panel . Browse the tabs, uncheck unneeded items, and experiment until your PC starts up with just the apps you want.
Have Explorer Made to Order
I seem to launch and close Windows Explorer a thousand times a day, and I don't have the spare time to dig through the folder tree each time to find the folder I want. So instead, I create custom shortcuts that launch specific Explorer windows set to the folders I use most often. You can customize other attributes, too, such as whether the shortcut launches a window with the file tree pane. For the full scoop go to "Open Explorer to the Folders You Use Most."
Master the Mouse
Moving a slow mouse cursor all around the screen can be a drag. So if I'm working on a PC with a poky pointer, I head for the Mouse control panel. In the Address bar of any folder or Internet Explorer window, type control panel\mouse and press <Enter>. The tab you click depends on your mouse driver: It may be named something like Pointer Options or Motion. In that tab, look for a control that lets you adjust the pointer speed. Drag the slider toward Fast if getting the pointer to its destination takes too much effort. Move the slider back toward Slow if you find you're losing accuracy.
Many mice also support an option for moving the pointer disproportionately farther as you drag the mouse faster. To activate this feature, look for an Acceleration setting; you may have to click an Advanced or an Accelerate button to see it. For some mouse drivers, this feature is named Enhance pointer precision. Check this option (if applicable), and pick a sensitivity level. Experiment until you find speed and acceleration levels that feel comfortable to you.
More Speed Up Windows
Set Dialog Box Defaults
Save time when saving files by using the Modify button to change the default location where a file type is stored.
In the past, whenever I needed to open or save a file, I wasted time in Windows dialog boxes. But now I've set them to automatically open to the folder I want, so I don't have to double-click my way through a maze of folders to get there. You can arrange this in a couple of ways. First, you can set your application's shortcut so that it defaults to the folder you want: Click through the Start menu or find the shortcut you want in the Quick Launch toolbar. Then right-click that icon and choose Properties. In the Start in box, type the path where you keep most of your work files (that is, the folder you're likeliest to want to see when you open a file dialog box). Click OK. You may need to take different steps for Microsoft Office applications. For example, in Word and Excel, choose Tools, Options. In Word, click the File Locations tab, select a file type, and use the Modify button to adjust the path; repeat this process for each file type you want to customize. In Excel, click the General tab and edit the path listed for Default file location.
Save Time Searching
I regularly search for files in the same few destinations. Fortunately, I can make future searches more efficient by saving the parameters that I use most frequently. At the desktop or in any folder window, press <F3> to start your search. Enter your search settings, including wild-card characters if desired (for example, *.mp3 to look for music files). Click Search or Find Now to engage your settings (you can click Stop at any time). Then choose File, Save Search. Windows 98 saves an icon for the search settings on the desktop. Later versions of Windows let you specify where to put the icon. Either way, you can move it to a convenient place (such as the Start menu) if you choose. Just double-click the icon any time you need to perform that same search in the future. If the saved search request has all the parameters you want, you can start the search anew just by pressing <Enter> immediately after the Search or Find window opens. Otherwise, tweak the request parameters as necessary, and then launch your search.
Resize Toolbars Instantly
To get the optimum fit for all the toolbars on my taskbar (Quick Launch and so on), I double-click the divider bar to the left of each toolbar, and--zam!--the toolbar instantly resizes to show all the icons. You may need to double-click the same divider a couple of times to cycle through the possible arrangements. This tip also works for toolbars that share space on the same line of any folder or Internet Explorer window. If you're using Windows XP, you may have to start by right-clicking the taskbar or toolbar and then deselecting Lock the Taskbar or Lock the Toolbars to unlock these items before resizing them. To relock the items later, simply reactivate the locking option.
Deal With Details
If you're like me, you prefer Explorer to display files in Details view (select View, Details). The problem is that futzing with the width of columns for size, file type, date, etc., takes too long. Don't do it. Press <Ctrl>-<NumPad +> (use the plus key on the numeric keypad) to instantly resize all columns to the best fit. To resize a single column, double-click the divider line to the right of the column heading.
| Open or close the Start menu | <Ctrl>-<Esc> or <Windows> | |||
| Switch back to a running program | <Alt>-<Tab> | |||
| Switch to another running program | Hold <Alt>, press <Tab> repeatedly | |||
| Open My Computer (Windows Explorer) | <Windows>-E< | |||
| In Explorer, move to the current folder's parent folder | <Backspace> | |||
| Rename selected folder or file on the desktop, in an Explorer window, or in a dialog box | <F2> | |||
| In Explorer, search for a file | <Ctrl>-F or <F3> | |||
| Search for a file in a new window | <Windows>-F | |||
| Minimize all open windows (press again to restore them) | <Windows>-D | |||
| Open the Run dialog box | <Windows>-R | |||
| Open the current window's Control menu | <Alt>-<Spacebar> | |||
Contributing Editor Scott Dunn writes the Windows Tips column for PC World.
Accelerate the Internet
By Daniel Tynan
Get Broadband, Bubba
Illustration by John Cuneo
Tune Up Your Search Engine
My Internet life falls into two distinct periods: Before Google and After Google. Back in the BG era, I used to hop from AltaVista to HotBot to Lycos, looking for stuff on the Web. But now I use only Google--it's just faster and better. And I've found ways to save even more time by using Google Preferences.
First I tell Google to search for results written in English, so I won't have to wade through pages in Esperanto. Then I set it to display 50 results per page instead of the usual 10; loading the page takes a smidgen longer, but I can scan the list quickly without clicking Next five times. If what I'm looking for isn't in the top 50, I fiddle with the search terms and try again. Finally, I tell Google to open all search results in a new browser window. If the first hit is a miss, I don't have to reload the search page and start over; I just close the window to get back to my original results. (FYI, non-Googlites can do all this stuff on AlltheWeb.com, too.)
Change Browsers and Dance
Alternative Web browsers like Opera (top) can help speed up your Web surfing with features like tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, and helpful keyboard shortcuts. Avant Browser brings many of those features to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Nobody but Bill Gates says you have to use Internet Explorer. Me, I find Opera a tad faster on the draw. When you open a new page, Opera displays it over the previous one, with tabs along the top for fast navigation between them. Plus, you can save a session of tabbed windows and come back to it at any time. (To get tabbed browsing in IE, you have to install an app such as Avant Browser.) Opera also has a built-in pop-up blocker, which saves time you'd otherwise spend closing unwanted windows. The ad-supported version is free; $39 buys you an ad-free browser with tech support and Web mail. You may encounter occasional glitches (Washingtonpost.com, for example, doesn't render well in Opera), but overall it's a significantly faster ride.
Squash Spam
I used to spend at least an hour a week deleting spam from my in-box. Then I discovered filters that would do the job for me. The best, like Qurb and IHateSpam, plug directly into Outlook and catch 80 to 90 percent of the junk, funneling suspect messages into a folder. (Spamnix does the same trick for Eudora; and Spam Killer 5.0 works inside Outlook Express.) Of course, they're not perfect--I still have to delete missed spam from my in-box and review the folder for legit mail that's been caught by mistake--but I spend minutes on the job instead of hours.
More Accelerate the Internet
Feed Me, See More
I am a news junkie. I subscribe to a dozen e-mail news summaries, in addition to roaming all over CNN.com and Google News. In fact, I really need to get out of the house more. Recently, I discovered NewsGator, a $29 RSS news aggregator that sends headlines directly into Outlook. (RSS has several different definitions, but the one I like is Really Simple Syndication.) Now I can read The New York Times, BBC News, various and sundry newsgroups, and PC World (of course) from inside my e-mail program. This saves me tons of time surfing and scanning newsletters--though I still need to get out more. Stand-alone newsreaders, like the free FeedReader, will also do the trick.
Get On the List
A small, well-moderated mailing list (but not a big unmoderated list; see "Time Wasters") is a great way to keep up on topics that interest me, like spam or Elvis. To avoid spending all day reading the lists instead of doing actual work, I've created rules to funnel mailing list messages into folders, where I can scan them later. To make a rule in Outlook Express 6.x, select Tools, Message Rules, Mail, and click New. Choose a Condition (like Where the subject line contains specific words) and an Action (like Move it to the specified folder). As you select conditions, Outlook will add them to the Rule Description. Click the words highlighted in blue, and fill in the dialog boxes for the specific words and the name of the folder. (If you haven't created the folder yet, you can do so now. Select the folder you want to nest it in, click the New Folder button, type the name of the folder, and click OK.) Finally, create a name for the rule (like Elvis Is King), and click OK twice.
Deliver the Goods
Two things I really hate are waiting in line and shopping. That's why I use the Internet to set up delivery of stuff I'm always running out of, so I don't waste time at the store. Every month I get coffee (Peets.com), vitamins (Drugstore.com), flea powder (Petmeds.com), and mascara (Gloss.com) delivered to my door. (Okay, the mascara is for my wife--really.)
Online shopping also saves me time in other ways. To avoid standing in line at the movies, I buy my tickets in advance at Fandango.com or at MovieTickets.com. When I'm stumped for a gift at the last minute, Surprise.com always has a raft of good ideas. I even buy my shoes online at Zappos.com. Sure, you pay a little extra for shipping when you shop online, but the time you save is worth it.
| Open a new window in any browser | <Ctrl>-N | |||
| Call up the Open dialog box to go to another Web site in any browser | <Ctrl>-O or <Ctrl>-L | |||
| Go to the Address bar | <Alt>-D | |||
| Add www. before and.com after any text in the Address bar, and go to that site | <Ctrl>-<Enter> | |||
| Refresh the current Web page | <F5> or <Ctrl>-R | |||
| Ignore cached version of the current Web page and reload the page from the server | <Ctrl>-<F5> | |||
| Stop downloading a Web page | <Esc> | |||
| Open the Find dialog box | <Ctrl>-F | |||
| Show or hide the History bar | <Ctrl>-H | |||
| Toggle full-screen mode on or off | <F11> | |||
| Go forward or backward | <Alt>-<Right Arrow> or <Alt>-<Left Arrow> | |||
| Select a link in Mozilla | Begin typing the text of the link | |||
| Except where specified, all shortcuts are for Internet Explorer. | ||||
Internet expert Daniel Tynan is a contributing editor for PC World.
Time Wasters: Watch Out for Web Time Sinks
Metasearch engines: AskJeeves and Dogpile seem more efficient because they send queries to multiple search sites at once. But such searches take longer and can produce useless results, due to differences in how search engines work.
Portals: Sites like Lycos, MSN, and Yahoo are great for people who have time to dig through the clutter to find the stuff they care about. I don't.
Unmoderated mailing lists: Big public mailing lists--the kind you'll find at Yahoo Groups--fill my in-box with other people's inane conversations and jokes. For every post that's worth reading, there are 99 duds.
Instant messaging: Yes, I know, it's the new e-mail. But mostly it's a way of bringing water-cooler conversations to your desktop. Fine in small doses, but a day-killer when overused.
Daniel TynanOptimize Office
By Woody Leonhard
Get the Latest Version
Illustration by John Cuneo
Office 2003, XP, and 2000 users should run to Microsoft Office Online. Microsoft packs this page with lots of news about different patches that may or may not apply to you. To get the latest update for your version of Office, use the Check for Updates link. Click it, follow the instructions, download the scanner if need be, select the updates you require, and then click Start Installation.
Office 97 users should go to " Office 97 Service Release 2b (SR-2b) Download Information" to update to version SR-2b.
Add Folders to the Places Bar
Whenever you open a file in Office or save a newly minted file, you come face-to-face with the Places Bar: the strip of big icons that runs down the left side of the Open and Save As dialog boxes. Unfortunately, the default Places Bar icons that ship with Office rarely suffice. Think of how much time you could save if you could put your own icons on the Places Bar and drill down to your most-used folders quickly. Well, you can...if you know the right trick.
In Office 2003 or XP, start by clicking File, Open, right-clicking the Places Bar, and choosing Small Icons. That gives you room for ten icons. Then navigate to a folder that you want to appear in the Places Bar, and click it. In the upper-right corner of the dialog box, select Tools, Add to "My Places". Once the icon is on the Places Bar, right-click it and choose Move Up or Move Down to rearrange the list.
Regrettably, Office 2000 doesn't let you use small icons, and none of the versions of Office allow you to delete the five default icons. To perform those operations, you need to use a tool like the WOPR Places Bar Customizer (shareware that's included in my "Woody's Office Power Pack," $15).
Disable Automatic Hyperlinks
So you're typing along, and you find that you need to put in an e-mail address or a Web address--say, billg@microsoft.com or www.pcworld.com. But the instant you finish typing the address, Office takes over and converts it into a garish blue underlined hyperlink. The link is "hot," so if you're using Office 2000 or 97 and you accidentally click on it, your screen goes blank while Office zones out to never-never land and tries to retrieve something that you don't want.
Best way to save time: Tell Office to keep its paws off the link names you type.
In Office 2003 or XP, if you're quick, you can click the Smart Tag that appears immediately after the address or URL gets converted to a hyperlink and choose Stop Automatically Creating Hyperlinks. The application will comply--but you have to repeat the action in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Alternatively, in each application of any version of Office, you can click Tools, AutoCorrect (or AutoCorrect Options), AutoFormat As You Type, and then uncheck the box that's marked Internet and network paths with hyperlinks.
More Optimize Office
Customize Icons to Work Your Way
Use this screen to tweak your Office toolbars by adding icons for your favorite commands.
I'm convinced that Microsoft chose certain icons for the Office toolbars just so that its marketing folks could run fancy demos. Why else would the standard Word toolbar have an icon that adjusts the number of snaking newspaper-like columns in a document--an action most people perform once every decade or two--yet omit icons to insert symbols and to bring up the enormously powerful Office Clipboard?
You can take control over the wimpy standard toolbars in all Office applications by clicking Tools, Customize, Commands. Make sure the 'Save in' box says 'Normal.dot', so your changed toolbar will appear in any "normal" document. To add an icon to a toolbar, find the one that you want in the Categories and Commands lists (to get the insert symbol icon, for example, click Insert in the Categories list, and then click Symbol in the Commands list); next, drag the command onto the desired toolbar. Drop it in whatever location you prefer. While you're working in this menu, you can remove an icon you no longer want on a toolbar, by right-clicking it on the toolbar and choosing Delete. Click Close when you're finished.
Don't worry if you go too far and hopelessly scramble one of your toolbars. You can get the old one back by clicking Tools, Customize, Toolbars. Click once on the toolbar that's giving you fits, and click Reset to restore the toolbar to its original state.
Show Paragraph Marks and Tabs in Word
Collectively, Word users lose thousands of hours every day because their paragraphs don't line up properly, or bullets suddenly appear, or the text turns bold or italic, or some other odd form of formatting crops up in an otherwise normal document. All such formatting sits inside paragraph marks that hide within the document. Whenever you copy, move, or delete a paragraph mark, Word propagates formatting in often-inscrutable ways. Inscrutable, that is, if you can't see the paragraph marks.
Word has an icon on its standard toolbar that looks like a backward P. If you click that icon, Word reveals all the paragraph marks (and tab marks) in your document. Unfortunately, Word also insists on putting tiny irritating dots wherever there are character spaces. Though the character-space dots can help you spot double spaces (a common typographical error), they quickly become overwhelming when you just want to look at clean pages of text. Most people click that icon once, gasp, and quickly turn it off.
You can make Word show you paragraph marks and tabs--and not drive you batty with annoying dots--by clicking Tools, Options, View, and checking the Paragraph marks and Tab characters boxes. Reverse the process to turn them off. It's also relatively easy to alter the operation of the backward-P icon so that it doesn't show the dots, by using a few simple macro commands. Point your browser at "Woody's Office for Mere Mortals" for details.
Stop Flip-Flopping Menus
If you haven't done this already, prevent Office's spring-loaded "adaptive" menus (which conceal infrequently used commands) from flopping around like catfish on a hot Mississippi River bank. To turn off that feature, click Tools, Customize, Options. Then in Office 2003 or XP, check the Always show full menus box. In Office 2000, clear the box marked Menus show recently used commands first.
Override Outlook's Draconian E-Mail Security Update
Microsoft has decreed that certain versions of Outlook will hide specific kinds of files attached to e-mail messages. The edict came down shortly after the LoveLetter virus hit and (according to legend, anyway) so many 'Softies double-clicked on the "ILOVEYOU" attachments that the virus brought down Microsoft's mighty internal e-mail system.
Microsoft's draconian approach to solving the problem? Don't let people see or touch certain kinds of files attached to incoming messages. Of course, Microsoft doesn't block Word documents or Excel spreadsheets, even though both of those kinds of files can contain viruses, too. Instead, the focus is on programs and other files (such as.exe,.com,.vbs,.scr, and.pif files) that will run immediately if you double-click them.
The time-gobbling problem arises when someone sends you a file that you're expecting, and you can't see it. You can work around the problem by sending a message back to the original sender and asking that person simply to rename the file (from, aprogram.exe to aprogram.exe.stupidoutlook, say) and resend it. But that's a hassle. For a much better solution, download Ken Slovak's free Attachment Options utility; it will force Outlook to show you all the files attached to your e-mail messages.
Woody Leonhard writes several Office tips newsletters for his Web site, wopr.com. His latest book is Windows XP Timesaving Techniques for Dummies (For Dummies, 2003).
Time Wasters: Avoid Outlook's Useless Spam Filters
The most cruel Office joke of all is junk mail filtering in Outlook 97, 98, 2000, and XP--it's a waste of time, from beginning to end. All those versions of Outlook compare the text in your incoming messages with a list of "offensive" words found in a file called filters.txt; if the message contains a bad word, it gets bounced into the Junk Mail folder. Truth be told, however, such junk mail filtering has been a complete flop. Microsoft hasn't bothered to update the bad-words list in years, even though Outlook has a (nonfunctional) "download updates" button in its Junk E-mail Organizer.
Microsoft has improved the situation substantially with Outlook 2003; and if you get the latest version, you should definitely turn the spam filter on (click Tools, Options, Junk E-Mail and choose an appropriate level of filtering). Reasonable people differ over how well spam filtering in Outlook 2003 works--Microsoft keeps most of the details close to its vest, and the only options are for 'Low' and 'High' filtering--but the utility certainly beats its predecessors.
See the Internet section on "Squash Spam" for two spam filters that save you time.
Woody LeonhardKeyboard Corner
Office Orientation
| In all Office applications | |
| Launch spelling checker | F7 |
| Open Save As dialog box | F12 |
| In Word | |
| Return to default formatting | Ctrl-Space |
| Add or remove one line-space above current or selected paragraphs | Ctrl-0 |
| Single-space current or selected paragraphs | Ctrl-1 |
| Double-space current or selected paragraphs | Ctrl-2 |
| Set current or selected paragraphs to 1.5 line-spaces | Ctrl-5 |
| Left-align current or selected paragraphs | Ctrl-L |
| Center current or selected paragraphs | Ctrl-E |
| Right-align current or selected paragraphs | Ctrl-R |
| Justify current or selected paragraphs | Ctrl-J |
| Insert date | Alt-Shift-D |
| Insert time | Alt-Shift-T |
| In Excel | |
| Recalculate sheets in open workbooks | F9 |
| Copy formula of cell above | Ctrl-' |
| Copy value of cell above | Ctrl-Shift-' (Ctrl-") |
| Open Format Cells dialog box | Ctrl-1 |
| Insert date | Ctrl-; |
| Insert time | Ctrl-Shift-; (Ctrl-:) |
| Select current column | Ctrl-Space |
| Select current row | Shift-Space |
Hurry-Up Hardware
By Michael Desmond
Illustration by John Cuneo
Bullet-Speed Boot Times
Every time you press the power button, your PC makes you wait. In the Windows section of this story (see "Speed Up Windows"), Scott Dunn discusses how to accelerate your start-up on the software side, but I'm a hardware guy. To get your hardware into fighting trim fast, shave redundant tasks from the boot process. Start the PC and while it's booting up, press the key (indicated on screen) that launches the PC Setup program; it's often the <Delete> key, but your system may specify a different key.
Start by bypassing the system memory check, which is the part of the Power-On Self-Test routine that counts the RAM in your PC. Go to the Boot area and look for a setting called Set Quick POST or the like. Change it to Enabled.
Next, to prevent your PC from looking for and spinning the floppy drive, remove the floppy drive from the top of your boot drive list. In the Boot section, look for an area called Set Boot Device Order or something similar. Use the keyboard arrow keys to select the IDE Hard Drive entry and promote it to the top of the list by pressing <Shift>-+. If you want to boot from a floppy later, you can always restore the floppy drive to the top of the list.
Exit and save your settings (many systems tell you to use the <F10> key for this); the boot process will resume. If you encounter any problems, simply reenter your PC Setup program and retrace your steps to return to the original settings.
Weather Blackouts With a UPS
Tripp Lite's SmartPro 550 USB power supply.
Even a flicker of the electricity in your workplace can deep-six your data. So get a small universal power supply from a vendor like American Power Conversion or Tripp Lite. If the power goes out, the battery in one of these breadbox-size units kicks in and keeps your PC going. With about 15 minutes of offline juice on tap, you can save all your work before shutting down. My UPS can shut my system down safely even when it's about to run out of power and I'm away from it.
How is this a time-saver? Simple: Every time the power cuts out and back in, I save 10 to 15 minutes that I would have spent scraping together half-saved files. Of course, the toll would have run into hours and even days if vital data had been lost.
Put Quick Access at Your Fingertips
Sony's FIU-600 fingerprint scanner.
The Internet has brought us password pandemonium: Every other Web site seems to want you to log in, but searching through my long list of secure passwords is a nuisance. I'm surprised that more people don't let their fingers do the walking, using simple fingerprint scanners like the Sony FIU-710 ($200) and FIU-600 ($140). You can install these tiny scanners in minutes, and they plug into any USB port. The lengthiest step involves entering the passwords for all of your Web sites in advance so that the device can send the appropriate information when you press your finger to the scanner. One nice feature: The Sony FIU models store your fingerprint and authentication data on the device itself--not on the PC's hard drive. As a result, you can take the scanner with you to log on to Web sites from remote locations. Very slick, and very quick.
More Hurry-Up Hardware
Boost Disk Performance With RAID
In a world of gigahertz processors and quadruple data rate memory, hard disks are a huge bottleneck. One solution is to install two hard drives as a redundant array of independent disks. RAID controllers like the $109 Promise FastTrack TX2000 use a process called disk striping to spread files across multiple drives, resulting in higher data transfer rates.
The PC World Test Center found that a RAID setup can shave up to 40 percent off the time needed to complete a 1.3GB file transfer, depending on the drive model. But other operations--such as finding a file in Windows--ran slightly slower.
To make RAID work, you'll likely need a PC add-in card (some newer systems have RAID functionality built in) and a pair of identical hard drives. You may also need to set jumpers on the drives and on the RAID controller card or motherboard. Once installed, a pair of 80GB drives will appear in Windows Explorer as a single 160GB drive. While adding a second drive may increase the odds of a disk failure (simply because you've added another drive that might fail), today's drives are reliable enough that mainstream PC makers are adopting RAID in their systems. A sensible data backup routine should ensure that you don't lose critical data.
Duo-ing Monitors Make Fast Work
At work, I open two Word documents, an Excel spreadsheet, three Web browser windows, and my e-mail software--on a slow day. But my dual-monitor setup lets me juggle those applications with ease.
I've been running dual monitors since 1997, and I can say that no single system upgrade has improved my personal productivity as much as adding that second screen. And with many graphics cards now offering dual outputs, side-by-side displays are a cinch to set up and use. Plug an extra monitor into the second output, and use the graphics card's software (often found in the Windows Display Properties dialog box) to activate the second display. A 17-inch CRT runs about $120 today, but you'll save desk space and reduce eyestrain with a 15-inch LCD that offers similar screen area for about $280.
Just make sure that you've matched your graphics card and your monitors. Most dual-output cards feature a standard 15-pin analog VGA output, which all CRT displays use, and a second digital output (usually the DVI format) tailored to digital flat-panel monitors. If you plan to buy a second monitor for your dual-output graphics card, be certain that your monitors match the available ports. Some LCD monitors offer both analog and digital connections, giving you extra flexibility.
Auto Document Feeders for Scanners
I refinanced my house recently and found myself scanning scores of pages to fax to the lender. Feeding every page into the scanner was a tiresome process that took me most of the afternoon. An automatic document feeder like the one found on the HP Scanjet 8250c can be a huge help. Integrated into the scanner top, the feeder acts like the paper tray of a printer, placing a new document or photo on the glass after the current scan is finished. Pair the feeder with scanning software that intelligently names each image, and you have truly hands-free scanning. Just be ready to clear the occasional paper jam.
Of course, feeders aren't cheap. HP charges $900 for the Scanjet 8250c with its 15-pages-per-minute feeder. By contrast, the baseline Scanjet 8200c--the same-quality scanner without the feeder--runs $500. Fortunately some models, such as the Scanjet 7400c, accept document feeder upgrades priced at a more reasonable $200. If you scan multipage documents on a regular basis, an automatic document feeder can be a blessing.
Michael Desmond is a freelance writer based in Colchester, Vermont.
Time Wasters: Serial ATA Won't Save You Time Yet
One hard-drive option that I won't jump for is a Serial ATA hard disk or controller. Serial ATA's 150 megabytes-per-second data rate is slightly higher than that of widely deployed ATA-133 drives (133 MBps). But let's be realistic. No mainstream drive comes close to flooding even an older ATA-100 connection: The bottleneck is in the disk heads and platters. Serial ATA certainly offers a more compact, manageable, and flexible connection between the drive and the controller, but from a time-saving standpoint, you'll never recoup the effort you expend installing a Serial ATA card.
Michael DesmondFaster Digital Photos
By Dave Johnson
Transfer Files Faster
Illustration by John Cuneo
SanDisk's ImageMate 8 in 1 USB 2.0 reader.
minutes. What do you need? A USB 2.0 memory card reader (such as the SanDisk ImageMate 8 in 1 or the Lexar USB 2.0 Multi-Card Reader, which handle nearly every common memory card format) and a USB 2.0 port on your computer. New PCs have USB 2.0 ports; if yours is still chugging along with USB 1.1, you can add a USB 2.0 PCI card to your machine for less than $30.
Improve Photos With a Single Click
Even great photographers take bad pictures. But they know how to improve their photos. Learn from the pros: You can fix your so-so images by using color correction, contrast and brightness, saturation enhancement, and sharpening--automatically. My favorite image editor, Jasc's $99 Paint Shop Pro 8, has a feature called One Step Photo Fix, found under the Enhance Photo button in the toolbar at the top of the screen. Photoshop Elements has a few automatic adjustments, too, like Auto Levels and Auto Contrast, in the Enhance menu. Next, use the Enhance, Variations menu to adjust your color balance. With each enhancement, you click the image that looks slightly better. When you're done, you'll have a color-corrected image.
Rotate Images Quickly and Easily
To rotate photos in Windows XP, first select the photos, and then right-click one and choose which direction to rotate it in.
I frequently turn my camera sideways so I can take portrait-style shots. In the past, I had to sacrifice a lot of time afterward rotating the pictures in an image editing program. But today Windows XP allows users to do this quickly and easily. Just open a folder containing pictures and select the ones you want to rotate. Don't forget that you can select multiple images by holding down the <Ctrl> key while you click the files. Right-click one of the selected files and choose Rotate Clockwise or Rotate Counter Clockwise from the menu to spin the pictures to their proper orientation. While you're there, choose Rename from the menu; it lets you give all of your files the same name (with a number at the end of each), so you can label all 100 of your vacation pictures Grand Canyon at once, making them easier to find. If you don't have Windows XP, try the next tip.
Batch-Process Your Photos
When i get home with my digital camera, it often contains a veritable mountain of images that need to be resized, color-corrected, sharpened, rotated, and perhaps converted to other file formats (like TIFF). I certainly don't do all this by hand--it would take all day. Instead, I rely on batch-processing software. Programs like ACDSee 5, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2, and Paint Shop Pro 8 all include powerful batch-processing tools. Just select a batch of photos, choose the operations you'd like to perform, and click the Go button; then pop out for lunch while the program works without you.
Print Without a PC
When I take a picture I like, I want to print it fast. I don't want to mess with transferring images to the PC and fiddling with an image editor--I just want one print, pronto. So I often print directly from the camera. Many photo printers from Canon and Epson support direct printing: Just connect your camera to a port on the printer, and print using the camera's controls. I use my old Epson's Stylus Photo 785EPX, which has a card slot built in. I insert the camera's memory card, pick the photo I want, and press a button, and out comes my print. A Kodak digital camera, on the other hand, slips into a desktop docking port that doubles as a 4-by-6-inch dye-sublimation printer; you simply touch one button, and 90 seconds later you have a print.
Dave Johnson writes the "Digital Focus" e-mail newsletter for PCWorld.com.