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  www.customsolutions.us July 2004 - Newsletter #1


Welcome to:  Custom Solutions Newsletters!
 

This is a new, and free, service we are offering to our customers and interested persons, to provide you with useful information, tips, and tricks to help you improve your productivity on the computer -- essential information every computer owner needs to know! Written in plain - easy-to-read language for everyone to understand.  We will also keep you up-to-date on new products, upgrades, and special offers from Custom Solutions.  Newsletters will be sent approximately twice each month.

Contents:

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Looking for a way to boost your typing speed?

Our Custom Typing Training web site provides all you need.  There is no software to download, and you can try it for free!  For details, go to:

www.customtyping.com
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  Coming Soon:
 
Online Typing
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Certification

We are currently working on a typing certificate web site. If you're looking for a job, or simply have a need to prove your typing speed, this web site is for you!

For a very low price, you will be able to get certified at a particular typing speed, giving you an edge on the competition when applying for a new job.

The new web site will be ready this summer. Stayed tuned to our newsletters for further information.
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  Joke of the Week - Computer Gender
Women claim that computers should be referred to in the masculine gender because:
  • They have a lot of data, but are still clueless.
  • They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they are the problem.
  • In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.
  • As soon as you commit to one, you realize that, if you had waited a little longer you could have had a better model.

Men concluded that computers should be referred to in the feminine gender because:

  • No one but the Creator understands their internal logic.
  • The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.
  • Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for retrieval.
  • As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
  Quick Tip - Give yourself more room to work

As you are doing your work, do you find that you constantly have to switch back and forth between your email reader, word processor, web browser, or other programs?  Wouldn't it be nice to be able to fit more information on the screen to avoid having to switch between windows so often?  Windows does provide a way to squeeze more information into less space, without having to buy a bigger monitor.  It's called the Display Control Panel.  To access it, right-click anywhere on your desktop and choose "Properties".  Or, from the Start menu, choose "Display" from the list of control panels (it may be under "Appearance and Themes" if you are a Windows XP user).

Once you've opened the Display Control Panel, click on the "Settings" tab, move the slider for the screen resolution to the right, then click on "OK".  All of your text and windows will "shrink", and you will now have more room to work.

A couple of tips:

  • Don't panic if your screen goes dark after changing the setting.  If this happens, it is because your monitor is not able to display the resolution you've chosen.  Windows works around this problem by asking you for confirmation before making the settings change permanent.  If you don't click on the "yes" button that Windows displays, your display will return to the old setting.
  • Try playing around with different screen resolutions.  To avoid eye strain, make sure not to set the resolution so high that you cannot comfortably read the text.
  Speeding up your Computer - Part 1
This is the first in a series of articles covering ways to get your computer to run faster.  Even the newest and fastest computers can get slow, as more programs are installed and new programs are introduced that use more and more system resources.  If your computer takes a long time to boot-up, if programs such as your web browser or word processor seem to be sluggish, or if you just want to get your work done faster, then this information may be helpful to you.

This week, we will cover a task that should be done on a regular basis, but that most computer users haven't heard about - disk defragmentation.  As you use your computer, and your data files grow in size, your files tend get spread out over different sectors of your computer's hard disk.  For instance, as you send and receive more and more email, your computer needs more and more space to store your messages.  Your email files may get spread out, or fragmented, into separate chunks, located in different areas of your hard disk.  When this happens, it takes longer for your computer to read those files, because it is necessary for your hard disk to jump from location to location as the file is being read.

Fragmented files never harm your computer - they only slow it down.  Fortunately, Windows includes a free built-in utility to de-fragment your hard disk.

... Here's how to run the defrag utility from Windows XP or Windows 2000:
  1. From the desktop, open "My Computer" then right-click on one of your hard disk drive (usually your "C" drive), and choose "properties".
  2. Click on the "Tools" menu and choose "Defragment Now".
  3. Click on the "Analyze" button to get a recommendation from Windows as to whether or not you should run the defragmenter.  This will also give you a list of the files that have the most fragmentation.
  4. If Windows recommends that you defragment, click on the "Defragment" button to start the process.

Defragmenting may take several hours to complete.  You will still be able to use your computer while it is defragmenting, but the performance may be noticeably slower.  Also, Windows will not be able to defragment any file that is in use, so you don't want to have any files open that have a large number of fragments.  For these reasons, you may want to run the defragmentation before you leave the office for the day or before you go to bed at night.

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