"Can you hear it?" Three Freeware Audio Applications

Winamp has long been a popular mp3 player developing a large user community. Members of this community submit a plethora of skins, plug-ins and other add-ons to the Winamp website. Winamp also offers support for iPods and other mp3 players, and functions as an adequate video player.If you have ever made an audio mix CD from mp3 files, you have probably been annoyed to find that all the tracks play at different volume levels, spoiling that overall...

Read More

Keyboard shortcut of the week: Excel

Following on from the megapost of word-processing keyboard shortcuts from earlier this month, here is a selection of keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Excel.You can navigate around the grid of cells by using the cursor keys.Hold down Ctrl and press Home to jump to the top right cell (A1).Hold down Ctrl and End to jump to the last cell on the spreadsheet with any information inIf you wish to edit the contents of a cell press F2As with word processing, you can hold down the Shift key to select: if you hold down Shift and press the right cursor key...

Read More

Word to the wise: webmail woes

This is an issue that has cropped up a couple of times at the university where I work.If you send yourself a document that you are working on, to continue working on it on another PC, remember to save the attached document onto that machine before you start to make changes to it. It is easy to forget this, open the document and start making changes. If you then hit the save icon it will not always save and when you then close whatever program you are editing the document in, your changes will be lost. This is particularly the case for documents...

Read More

Weekend website: What is this file?

So here is the scenario: you have been sent a file attached to an email. You double click on it - after making sure that it is not a virus or some other malicious file - and you are told that it is an 'unknown file type'. You need to find out what type of file it is, and what programs will open it.To do this you look at the last few letters after the last '.', e.g. word documents will end with '.doc' (you may not see these extensions for file types that your installation of Windows recognises - to see them: double click on 'My Computer'; select...

Read More

Keyboard shortcut of the week: Firefox

This week's keyboard shortcuts are all for Firefox - some of them may work in Internet Explorer. Recently, Microsoft have started copying features previously implemented by Mozilla in Firefox, possibly including the keyboard shortcuts. Please let me know which ones work in IE.To cycle through your tabs rightwards: hold down Ctrl and press the Tab key.To cycle through tabs leftwards: hold down Ctrl and Shift and press the Tab key.To open a new tab:...

Read More

What to do when your PC hangs

So, your PC isn't doing anything, the screen is a mess, the hard-drive is whirring away. Is there anything you can do, rather than just reach for the reset button?Here are my top tips for dealing with those times when Windows hangs.Don't keep clicking thingsWindows buffers (remembers) all these clicks and will implement them when it catches up, preventing you from continuing with what you want to do, and possibly causing havoc. Show a little bit...

Read More

Making Windows run faster: upgrade your PC

Mo' MemoryOne of the major causes of windows running slowly is a lack of physical memory (called RAM). When this physical memory becomes full, Windows shuffles the information used by inactive programs into a file on your hard-drive called a 'page file' (or sometimes a 'swap file'). This shuffling back and forth of information takes time and slows the operation of your PC down.Buying and installing more RAM is one way to give your PC a speed boost. There are many different types of RAM available, and you have to install the one that is correct...

Read More

Weekend website: More anwers than questions

Yahoo Answers offers you the chance to ask questions in a user-friendly open forum. The forum is broken down into various categories such as 'Pets', 'Health' and, of course, 'Computers & Internet'.CNET provide various forums (or is that 'fora'?) where you can ask computer-based questions; including one aimed at 'Computer Newbies' in particular.Both sites require registration to submit and respond to questions. I check both regularly for opportunities to share my *ahem* sagely advi...

Read More

Keyboard shortcut of the week: Shut `em down

After last week's mammoth collection of word processing keyboard shortcuts, this week, I present a short and sweet way to close any window.Simple hold down the Alt key and press F4... Hang on! Don't do it now... Oh, too la...

Read More

Five top freeware applications

Before spending your hard earned cash on software, it is always worth looking to see what is available for free. In this article I will look at five free applications that I use myself.First up, and probably most importantly, we have a virus checker. AVG anti-virus free edition has all the features I want from anti-virus software. It loads quickly, doesn't take up much system resource, updates itself regularly, and only bothers me when it finds a...

Read More

Weekend website: Media Convert

Anyone who has used Windows for a while knows there are a dazzling array of file types. Maybe the word processor you use at home is different from the one you use at college; maybe your job requires all reports to be submitted as pdf files; or maybe someone has sent you an audio file in Ogg Vorbis format and you are completely nonplussed. As not all applications support all file types you need an easy way to convert some files into a format you can use.The Media Convert site enables you to quickly convert files from one format to another whether...

Read More

Keyboard shortcuts of the week: Faster word processing

Do you wish to be able to use your word processor more quickly? Do you want to be able to edit a piece of text without having to reach for the mouse every few minutes? Then this week's mega-selection of keyboard shortcuts are for you. They should work in any text editor on Windows, whether a word processor or a comments box on a web page. I have included a text box as part of this article so you can play around with the various key combinations. For those interested, the text in the box is the opening paragraph of Candide by Voltaire.We will start...

Read More