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Showing posts from February 19, 2012

The Sanitary Office: Cleaning your Keyboard and Mouse

Do you ever think about the germs, crumbs and dust in your keyboard and mouse? Well, there are ways to maintain these devices and keep them functioning for a long time. I am going to send you over to CNET, where you can watch a couple of great videos on how to clean and disinfect the keyboard and mouse. Click the title below.   Happy cleaning and I'll be back on Monday! How to clean and disinfect your keyboard and mouse Studies have shown that computer keyboards can have more bacteria than toilet seats. Given that little tidbit of information, you might want to consider cleaning and disinfecting your keyboard more often, especially if you share your keyboard and mouse with others.☺

Do you sleep, standby or hibernate? Part II

Now that we have covered the various power settings in Windows, we will go over changing the power settings on your machine. These settings are for Windows 7, but I will include information about Vista and XP.   Click for larger view Go to the Start Menu, and type in "Power Options".  Under the Control Panel, you should see "Change power-saving settings". Most likely the Recommended Settings are in bold (ticked). Now you can tweak these settings by clicking the light blue "Change plan settings on the right of the Recommended Settings. Now you can set the amount of time you wish to have before the system turns off the display and how long before it puts the machine "to sleep". Click for larger view  Other settings found on the Power Plan Page can be seen on the left side, including requiring a password upon waking up recommended if you have sensitive information and saved passwords on your computer. You can also change what the power bu

Do you sleep, standby or hibernate?

Last year we looked at your need to shut down your computer. Today, we are going to look at the power settings. Computers have definitely improved over the years when it comes to power management. There are three different states (or settings) depending on the Windows operating system. To Sleep, Perchance to Dream - Putting your computer to SLEEP, means that everything stays the same, like pausing a movie. It reduces power, stops what it is doing (while keeping your information in memory) and allows a quick wake up. Sleep draws a small amount of power but much less than leaving it running. If you loose power, you will lose your settings and anything not saved to the hard drive. Stirring Suddenly from Long Hibernation - Hibernation is designed for laptops. When you 'hibernate' the computer, it saves the information (called an image) of what you are doing at that time from the memory to the hard drive then turns the computer off. When you turn it on, it restores everyt

Mousy Scroll Wheel Quick Tips

We all know that scroll wheel on the top of the mouse allows us to scroll up and down on the page. But it can do some other cute little actions too. Click your mouse scroll wheel and you can auto-scroll up and down the page.  You can use it to zoom in (or out) of a document or webpage. Just hold the CTRL key and scroll the scroll wheel up and down.  Neat eh? Now my favorite... Hold the SHIFT key and scroll up and down.. you can move back and forward in your browser. How cool is that?  Want to tweak your scrolling?   Go the the START button and in the search, type "Mouse". Under the control Panel category you should see Mouse [hover over it and it will tell you that it is for customizing your mouse settings] . Click on that and you can customize your settings. Select the scroll wheel tab and you can adjust the number of lines the scroll wheel will advance.  Horizontal scrolling is only available on mice that have that feature. If you can tilt the scroll wheel of your m

Going Digital: E-books

Adam Strohm Hall – Detroit Public Library, Main Branch* Recently our local public library had cutbacks (which left my son out of work) but I started thinking about the library services, physical books and the future of our library systems. When I was a teenager, I loved going to the library to do research for a paper, check out classic books,  trace my family history and just hang out. [OK, yes, I was  nerdy, even then.] Now, that same research can be done online, with the most current information and access for academic resources with just the click of the mouse. As a student, I have been to the college library once.. not to pick up a book but to pick up a prize. ??? Don't get me wrong. I love libraries. Its just that things are starting to change. E-books are just a fraction of the market and it is growing by leaps as the price of e-readers drop. There was a time for public libraries to bring reading to the masses and preserve historical books and documents.  But the