Tech and life

Anyone who has used Microsoft Word down the years will be familiar with the keyboard combination Ctrl-F to bring up a search box. Well, all that’s changed in Word 2010. Hitting Ctrl-F now brings up the Navigation pane on the left which is a little different, but I think an improvement – at least once you’ve tried it for a day or two.

So how is it an improvement? Well for me, one annoyance of search and replace in earlier versions of Word was the way the search box would jump around over the document when you clicked the Find Next button often obscuring the search results. Now in Word 2010, the search box is in the Navigation pane in the left panel. Search results are highlighted in the main window as you type your search word. If there are few enough occurrences, a snippet of text containing the words is displayed in the Navigation pane. Clicking on a particular snippet will take you to its location in the document and the words remain highlighted. The Navigation pane can be docked and undocked if you wish by clicking the down arrow to the right of the word Navigation. The pane can also be closed by clicking the cross next to the down arrow.

I was sceptical at first. Is this really an improvement? Well it’s not obscuring the search results any more but it doesn’t seem to be case-sensitive – searching for Table brings up Table and table and words like adjustable which end in table.

No problem. There’s a drop-down box which you can access by clicking the down arrow at the right end of the search box. Select Options here.

Now if you like, you can select Match case and Find whole words only to improve your search results – and if you like you can make this your default search option by clicking the Set As Default button. Incidentally, you can also select Advanced Find (the old style search box) from this drop-down menu.

Okay, so you’ve tried it and you still don’t like the new Navigation pane. Well, you can try remapping the Ctrl-F key combination to the old style search box, now called Advanced Find. I’m indebted to Jay Freedman for instructions on how to do this:

- Right-click the ribbon or Quick Access Toolbar and choose Customize the Ribbon.

- Click the Keyboard shortcut Customize button in the dialog.

- Select the Home Tab category.

- Select the EditFind command.

- Click in the “Press new shortcut key” box and press Ctrl+F (note that the “Currently assigned to” label shows that you’re taking the shortcut away from the NavPaneSearch command, which is what you’d change to if you ever want to restore the default.)

- Click the Assign button and then click Close.

I’ve also discovered another quick way to access this Advanced Find box by adding its icon to the Quick Access Toolbar at the top of your screen. Follow my instructions in an earlier post on the Quick Access Toolbar, but this time you want to go to All Commands and scroll down to Advanced Find (with the binoculars icon), highlight it, then click Add to add this to your Quick Access Toolbar. Now when you click the binoculars icon on the Quick Access Toolbar, as shown in the top screen shot above, the familiar old style search box should appear.

Finally, I should point out that clicking Ctrl-H to bring up the good old Find and Replace box hasn’t changed in Word 2010 – and you can also access Advanced Find by clicking the Find tab at the top of that box. Of course Replace still has that old annoyance of obscuring results just like the old style Find did.

So give searching with the new Word 2010 Navigation pane a good try out first before you revert to old habits… if you must – I think you’ll like it.

The new search feature (Ctrl-F) in Word 2010 is a post from Tech and Life. If you’re reading it in full elsewhere, it’s been copied without consent. Please go to Tech and Life to read the original post and many others in the archive.

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It’s possible to run a small office/home office (SOHO) set-up with a completely free operating system, software and internet services… but do you? Are there any commercial packages or paid online services you consider ‘must-haves’? I thought I’d quickly run through my paid/free stance and I’d love to hear your thoughts although I don’t think we need to get into a discussion on ‘acquiring’ commercial software for free.

Free operating system

If you run a Linux system, you’ll be familiar with free operating systems and open source software. I run Ubuntu Netbook Edition on my Acer Aspire netbook and I’m just about to try out Linux Mint on my second desktop. What holds me back from completely moving to Linux is my day job where I have to be able to work on Microsoft Word files. More on that later. I’m running Windows 7 on one desktop. Of course in the Windows world, once you’ve bought the OS, you can run a completely free set-up too.

Free software

I run a small office/home office (SOHO) set-up and work from home. Pretty much all the software I use is free or open source. However, I do some work in the publishing sector and they still rely very much on Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat. Many authors submit work in Word doc format (rarely docx I find) and authors and publishers usually expect work to be returned in doc format with Track Changes turned on. It’s a real shame that open source software hasn’t really caught on in the publishing field yet. So I have to use Microsoft Office to cope with clients who use commercial software. Yes, you could convert Word doc format to Open Office Writer odt format, turn on track changes in Open Office Writer then convert back to doc format but there’s always a worry that some formatting/changes will be lost in conversion. So for work, I have to use MS Word on my desktop running Windows 7. There’s a good recent discussion on office software, free and commercial, at How-To Geek.

The only other paid software I use on my Windows system is an old copy of Serif PagePlus for DTP and Serif PhotoPlus for photo editing. I haven’t upgraded these in years – the old copies I have are just fine. But a quick look on the AlternativeTo website shows that I could move to Scribus as a free alternative for DTP and there are lots of free alternatives (software and online services) for photo editing.

But for many working from home on a Windows system, I’m sure it’s possible to find all you need if you look at free software alternatives and online services. By the way, I don’t believe it’s necessary to pay for security software either. If you’re running a Window system, Microsoft Security Essentials is free for you and is probably all you need for real-time protection. If you’re running a Linux system, you probably don’t need any antimalware software.

Free services

Every online service I use is free…so far, although I don’t expect it to remain that way in the future. We’ve had it good so far. Like many of you I’m sure, I use a good spread of Google apps. Yes, they’re free but the downside is targeted ads, which I don’t mind, and the knowledge that they’re building up a fair old archive of information on you. So I try to use good alternatives to Google services when I can.

So over to you. Do you use a free OS? Is there any commercial software you must have on your Windows system? What about online services – anything you’re paying for? Drop a comment below.

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About a month ago, without any warning, my desktop Windows 7 system suddenly bluescreened reporting an ‘uncorrectable hardware error’. Everything had been working fine up to that point, I was just surfing the net and not stressing the system in any way. There was absolutely no prior indication that things were about to go pear shaped. I tried rebooting but soon after boot up was complete and I was on the internet again I got the same stop error code 124. I didn’t do a screen capture of the error message but here’s a very similar shot I found:

I suspected a motherboard problem. Although I had installed a new hard drive with Windows 7 recently, the other hardware components in my PC were about 5 years old including the Soltek SL-75DRV4 Socket A motherboard.

Unfortunately, I’m not a repair tech so I took it to a good mate who is. He diagnosed a problem with the voltage controller on the motherboard but because of the age of the motherboard, I needed a motherboard/processor/RAM replacement. But when he replaced the motherboard and tried to boot the hard drive with Windows 7 installed he got a blue screen hardware error. He couldn’t do a Windows repair to set up the hard drive with the replacement motherboard. He phoned Microsoft but they said a Windows 7 repair couldn’t be done – you have to reinstall Windows 7. A Windows repair for a new motherboard used to be no problem with Windows XP.

I had the Windows 7 retail disk and the product key but I didn’t want to have to reinstall Windows 7 on the hard drive as I had just got it configured and running as I wanted it. That seemed like a real backward step.

Eventually he managed to sort this problem without a Windows 7 reinstall. He plugged my hard drive in as a slave in another PC, booted up and deleted the motherboard drivers on the slave drive. When the hard drive was plugged back into my PC with the new motherboard, it found and installed the drivers it needed. I just had to go through Windows activation using the automated phone system and everything went fine. One month on now and so far no problems.

Just though I’d post this as a salutary tale. You never know when disaster will strike and it can be completely without warning. Data backups are obviously  important but in this case I was down for a couple of weeks while the problem was diagnosed, parts ordered and installed and the machine set up again.

If you use your PC or laptop as a vital part of a small business and it’s the only machine you have, you’d be well advised to have a backup machine ready to take over in the event of a hardware failure like this.

Setting up a Windows 7 hard drive without a Windows reinstall after a hardware failure is a post from Tech and Life. If you’re reading it in full elsewhere, it’s been copied without consent. Please go to Tech and Life to read the original post and many others in the archive.

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I have a PC with an older motherboard and I’m not able to set the BIOS to boot from a USB drive or USB stick, just from a CD or DVD. I may be able to do this if I update the BIOS but I don’t want to take any chances, so I was delighted to read a post last week by Trevor at How-To Geek offering a solution on how to boot from a USB drive using PLoP. I’ve tried it out and it works perfectly.

I followed the instructions in that post, downloaded plpbt-5.0.10.zip, extracted it to a folder, found plpbtnoemul.iso in that folder and burned that to a CD using ImgBurn. I plugged in my USB stick with Ubuntu and then booted up from the CD I’d just made. I was presented with a menu where I could select USB and sure enough I booted into Ubuntu on the USB drive. An internet connection was available after I entered my WAP password.

So if my system runs into problems, I now have the additional option of being able to boot up from my USB drive. This has the advantage of being easier to update with rescue utilities than a CD should I run into a PC disaster.

The original post on How-To Geek is really comprehensive and goes through all the steps involved in setting up the CD, and even a boot floppy disk for those older systems. If you can’t boot up from your USB drive, have a look at that post.

Booting from a USB drive when this can’t be set in the BIOS is a post from Tech and Life. If you’re reading it in full elsewhere, it’s been copied without consent. Please go to Tech and Life to read the original post and many others in the archive.

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If you’ve ever installed or reinstalled Windows, you’ll know how long it can take to track down and reinstall all your favourite apps afterwards. Well that’s all a thing of the past now with the advent of software installers which allow you to pick your favourite apps in one place online and install them all at once saving valuable time. You just check the apps you want, download the installer and away it goes working through your list.

I used Ninite to reinstall my apps after moving to Windows 7 but I’ve come across a couple of other installers recently and was interested to see which had the most apps available and just how many of those I’d actually want to install.

Ninite

They currently have 73 apps on their website of which I would install 28. No registration is required. Ninite Pro allows you to save and reuse your installer so you can set up multiple PCs but this is currently $20/month.

AllMyApps

They have the best choice by far with 117 apps just now and I would install 31 of these. You have to register for free to download a bundle and you can save your list for future installs. Great for PC technicians who are regularly setting up PCs.

Smart Installer Pack

This one is slightly different. You download the complete pack then check the apps you want to install. Currently, Smart Installer Pack has 51 apps and I would have installed 17 of these.

So for me, AllMyApps is currently the best choice with 31 apps I’d want to install and a great selection. It’s also a great choice for those who will be doing multiple installs. If you know of any other great software installers, drop a comment below.

Speed up a Windows install or reinstall with a software installer is a post from Tech and Life. If you’re reading it in full elsewhere, it’s been copied without consent. Please go to Tech and Life to read the original post and many others in the archive.

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With the latest version of any operating system, there’s often a lot of hype around its release with many eager to upgrade straightaway. Whether you’re running Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 or Windows 7, you’ll know all about this. But do we really need the latest OS?

I was reading the Lifehacker Editors’ Favorite Software and Hardware the other day and what really caught my attention was not so much the apps they used, but their operating systems. You would think these guys at the cutting edge of tech would demand the latest OS on their systems, but no. Here’s what they’re running:

Gina Trapani: Mac OS X and Windows XP and thinking about Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04

Adam Pash: Mac OS X

Kevin Purdy: Windows Vista and Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04

Jason Fitzpatrick: Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux

Tamar Weinberg: Windows XP and Fedora 9

So no Windows 7, 6 months after its release. Not even Ubuntu 9.10.

Which just goes to show that maybe we just don’t need the latest version. I upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7 recently, because I got a good pre-release price on the upgrade and my XP install was badly in need of a refresh. But I have to confess I did succumb to all the hype – the general consensus was that Windows 7 was awesome. But in all honesty, Windows XP was just fine. What can I do now in Windows 7 that I couldn’t do in Windows XP….let me think…nothing! I’m running just the same desktop software and web apps and services.

And I seem to recall a bit of disquiet over the Mac Snow Leopard release – some felt the upgrade from Leopard just wasn’t worthwhile. And I guess the interest in Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron rather than the latest release is because it was a Long Term Support version (LTS) with 3 years support on the Ubuntu Desktop.

So you might say there really is no need to upgrade your OS. They are becoming more mature and more stable with each release and software vendors are going to find it increasingly hard to get us to upgrade in future. If you’re system is performing well and doing what you want, that’s the main thing. But it’s probably worth reinstalling your OS every couple of years to blow away your old bloated registry (Windows users) and the apps you never use, and you’ll likely see an improvement in performance. Eventually however, you’ll find that new hardware and software won’t be supported on the very old OS versions and technical support will be withdrawn so you may have to upgrade then.

Do you run the latest OS? If you have upgraded, was it worth it? Drop a comment below.

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I’ve been using Windows 7 on my desktop PC for a couple of months now after upgrading from Windows XP. So far I’ve had no real problems and am quite satisfied with the OS but I have two minor annoyances:

Date and time display in the status bar

I’m not a great lover of the new full size taskbar. For me, the icons are too large and the bar takes up too much real estate at the bottom of my screen. So I changed to small icons (right click on taskbar, Properties and choose Use small icons) which I like better but the problem is that the two-line time-date display in the system tray now just shows the time, which is a pity because I find myself constantly referring to the date (and day of the week for that matter!). Yes, you can see the date and day of the week if you hover your mouse over the time but I’d rather just be able to glance there and see the date. I’ve tried changing the display format, looked around online, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to get the time and date to display on the same line. Which is a pity because it’s the default display in Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my Acer Aspire One netbook:

I don’t know why the single line date-time option wasn’t included in Windows 7. It would surely be a nice option for those who don’t want a two-line display. But date display in the system tray has always been a problem in Windows for some reason. I used to use the TClockEx utility in XP to get the date in the system tray. Unfortunately, TClockEx hasn’t been updated for Windows 7.

Still, I have some kind of a workaround. My Rainlendar desktop calendar shows the date in the system tray as you can see:

And I have found a Firefox extension (Date Picker/Calendar) which displays the date and time (and a pop up calendar) in the bottom left corner of the status bar in the Firefox browser window:

But what a pity Microsoft couldn’t follow Ubuntu’s lead on this one – or at least give us the option.

Bare bones snipping tool

Microsoft have included a snipping (screenshot) utility in Vista and Windows 7 which is fine as far as it goes. But it’s just a basic capture and save tool with no facility for annotation of screenshots with text and symbols – a must for bloggers. And that’s a great pity because, as with Windows XP,  I have to download a third party app to do the job properly. So it’s back to FastStone Screen Capture for me, at least until Microsoft improves the functionality of their tool.

Do you have any gripes or niggles with Windows 7? Drop a comment below.

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Is the Windows key a forgotten key on your keyboard? Is your hand glued to your mouse or do you try and use any keyboard shortcuts? I must admit, I’ve never been one to use the Windows key much and I’ve been missing out on some cool shortcuts.

Apart from the obvious function of opening the Start menu, the Windows key can be used in combination with others for some great shortcuts. I’ve tried them out and this is how they work in Windows 7. Many of these shortcuts will also work in Vista and some work in Windows XP.

Win + Tab: displays the apps open on your superbar (really cool 3D effect in Windows 7); keep pressing Tab to cycle through them and release keys to open that window  (Alt + Tab is nice too; keep your finger on Alt and move your mouse over the windows; click to select one)

Win + E: opens My Computer

Win + D: shows the desktop; pressing the same key combination again takes you back where you were

Win + F: opens Windows search; or if you have Coperic Desktop Search installed, that opens instead

Win + R: displays the Run command box

Win + Pause/Break: displays system information in Windows 7

Win + U: displays the Ease of Access Center (try the Magnifier tool)

Win + G: shows your gadgets if you have any installed

Win + L: locks your desktop

Win + S: select and save a screenshot to Microsoft OneNote (if it’s installed)

Win + T: cycle through the apps on your superbar

Win + N: opens Microsoft OneNote

Win + P: opens the display control dialogue box

Win + F1: displays Windows help

Win + 1: Maximises or opens the leftmost application on your superbar in Windows 7. If Word is the first application on your superbar, and say you have three documents open in Word, you can cycle through them by repeatedly pressing Win + 1.

Win + 2 maximizes or opens the second application and so on. Works right through to Win + 0 for the 10th app along your superbar.

Hope all this helps you to be more productive.

Image credit: Jeremy Brooks

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I’m constantly going to my file manager throughout the day, opening files from there, moving, copying and renaming. A good file manager has always been important to me, ever since my first experiences with a PC back in the 1980s, well before the dawn of Windows Explorer. I used a program called PC Tools for file management back then and when I moved to the Windows OS I used a file manager called PowerDesk Pro which has seen me right through to Windows XP. On and off, I’ve use Windows Explorer but never really fell in love with it – too many restrictions on what I want to do.

I’ve recently moved to Windows 7, so I looked around for a good free replacement file manager to take over from my aging copy of PowerDesk. As usual, my first port of call was my Diigo bookmarks to check out my ‘file managers’ tag. Had a look at Free Commander and didn’t like it much, then looked at xplorer2 Lite – the free version from zabkat which is fully compatible with Windows 7. I’ve been using it for about 2 months now and found it’s a very able replacement for PowerDesk …and more. I find the free version has all the features I need for just now.

Some of the best features of xplorer2

One of the main features I need in a file manager is a very simple one. When I reopen the program I want it to have remembered which folder I was in when it was shut down – for my work I’m usually going back to the same work folder the next day so the ability to save settings on exit is really useful for me.  xplorer2 can also open multiple tabs as shown above, so you have quick access to a number of essential folders – again I find this a really useful feature. You can display the tabs at the top or the bottom of the window. Hit Ctrl-Ins to open a new tab. And you can rename tabs – right click and choose Rename. You can move or copy files by dragging them onto the tab of the destination folder. But if you don’t like multiple tabs in a window, you can set up quick access to all your favourite folders from the Bookmarks menu. And incidentally, you can set up FTP access for file transfers to your website or server again though your bookmarks. FTP access is explained in this excellent Lifehacker article which also gives a great summary of the program.

Filtering your list of files is easy. In the address bar, just type ‘*.jpg’ to list the jpeg files in that folder, or type ‘e*’ to list all files starting with the letter ‘e’. Incidentally, coloured folders as shown above on my Windows XP set-up isn’t a feature of xplorer2. That feature is from a free utility called Folder Marker Free. Once installed, just right click on a folder and change its colour.

I generally use the single pane interface (plus folder tree) as show above, but you can also have a dual pane set-up which is very handy for copying or moving files. I also like how you can  preview images, videos, pdfs and mp3s within xplorer2 using the Preview button at the top.

Another nice feature is the way it autorefreshes when you plug in an mp3 player or camera and the new drive shows up without having to press F5. PowerDesk didn’t do that.

Setting it up

I have it set up just the way I want it now. If you already use the program or want to try it out, here’s a list of the features I find useful and how to set them up:

1. Save program state on exit: Tools, Options, General tab and check Save program state on exit.
2. For single pane/double pane toggle: Ctrl-O.
3. To force file names ending in a number to list in ascending number order 1, 2, 3…10, 11, 12, rather than 1, 10, 11, 12, 2, 3… go to Tools, Options, Advanced tab and check Natural number sort.
4. To show folder in tree on left side, go to Tools, Options, Window tab and check Keep synchronized with folder in active view pane.
5. To allow slow double click renaming of files: Tools, Options, Window tab and check Allow slow double click to rename files.
6. To prevent truncation of file names when window is not maximized:  Tools, Options, Window tab and set Max list column width to 150 – although from reading the forums this doesn’t always work.

And there’s a good xplorer2 forum here.

I’ve only just scratched the surface here with the features I find useful.  Give xplorer2 a try and see what you think. You may find yourself quickly won over from Window Explorer.

I upgraded my son’s Dell laptop from Vista to Windows 7 recently. Did a custom install without reformatting the hard drive. Everything went fine but after installing some essential programs and putting his 20GB of music back from an external drive, I couldn’t reinstall his 20GB of photos as I was out of disk space. This Dell 1545 came with a 160GB hard drive which should have been way more than enough. What was hogging all the disk space?

I’m not a great lover of Windows Explorer so I downloaded the free Xinorbis to analyse the folder sizes on the hard drive. Straight away I could see that a folder called Windows.old was taking up 63GB of space! I googled windows.old and discovered that the Windows 7 installation had backed up the entire Vista set up here. I didn’t need anything from Windows.old as everything important was backed up to an external drive so I deleted the folder using great instructions I found here.

So if you’ve moved up from Vista to Windows 7 by doing a custom install and without reformatting the hard drive and were wondering what had happened to all your disk space, watch out for Windows.old.