First batch published November 2003 eBytes & Bits
by Kleber Stephenson
(c) 2003, published by New Riders Publishing
Occasionally publishers will donate to the club books or even programs for review. We pass these donations on to members who write a review of the product for our monthly newsletter. They're free for the receiving member; all the publisher asks is that we give them some publicity. We received this book from ____ . If you would like to be a reviewer for us, contact gift procurer Dewey Williams to see what goodies he has in his bag.
This book has 250 pages of tips, two illustrated tips on a page, so you get an idea of the detail and difficulty of the tips. It also tells you this is a great book to pick up, flip to a random page, and read 2 paragraphs. Since I intended to review it, I had to read it from the beginning (how many people actually read a computer manual for entertainment?).
As I started the first chapters, I felt the tips were either trivial, obscure, specific to a narrow interest, or simply cutsey customizations I don't bother doing to my computer. But the farther I got into the book, the more pages I dogeared to indicate a tip I wanted to try for myself or pass on to others.
Either way, with 500 tips you'll be sure to find enough goodies to help you out.
Bill Barnes, PCCC
In Internet Explorer (I know, that's not strictly Win XP, but it's in the book), go to Tools (on the menus) | Internet Options. On the General tab are buttons to delete your temporary files and clear the history. While there, click the Settings button to change the amount of space your cache uses.
"Be shifty with dialog boxes", pg 93 & 111
When there's a confirmation box with "Yes", "Yes to
All", "No", and "Cancel" buttons; do you ever
wish there were a "No to All" option? Just hold the shift
key as you click "No" and you will answer . . . to all.
When you go to "Turn off computer" you get the options to "Standby", "Restart", or "Shut down". Hibernate is a better option to Standby because it immediately saves your RAM to disc and protects your data better. Just hold the shift as you click Standby and you'll hibernate.
By the way, I hope you always save your work before you activate either Standby or Hibernate. These options are much faster to resume than booting your computer, but there is a chance Windows will lose your place and require a hard restart.