Small Business Technology

What do you do if you need a calculator when working on the computer? 

Try to find one in the office?
Run through endless menus to find the Windows calculator?
Maybe you even know you can just start typing “calc” in the Start menu searchbox of Windows 7? Or just type it on the Modern Interface start screen of Windows 8.
How about pinning it to your Start Menu or Taskbar in Windows 7 or 8? No room for a calculator you say?

If you can spare a minute, you can have Windows’ very own calculator pop-up within seconds (and other programs you want to use this technique with).

First, navigate or show by typing (see above) the Calculator in the Start Menu/Screen.
For Windows 8 you now have to right-click the tile and on the bottom click on “Open file location”.
For all Windows locations you now RIGHT-click the Calculator icon/shortcut and select “Properties”.
In the pop-up window, go to the box besides “Shortcut key:” and press “CTRL”, “ALT” and the “c” key all at once.
Now you should see “Ctrl + Alt + c” in the box.
Now click “OK” and possibly acknowledge the Administrator warning.

From now on when you hit “Ctrl + Alt + c”, the calculator pops up. You can set it to “Standard” or “Scientific” under “View” and it will remember the settings.

Sometimes you may need to convert saved e-mail messages between eml and msg message formats. I recently found a MSG To EML Converter and an EML To MSG Converter; two freeware programs by DeConf. You just give each a path of a folder that contains one or more messages in the source format and it will convert them to the other.

In Windows 7 you have the Explorer icon in the taskbar which opens by default in your libraries.
While that may be convenient for some, it certainly isn’t for everyone.
Head over to SevenForums.com for a very nice decription on how to change the location the Explorer window opens on with many options listed to select in addition to the standard Windows paths you can use.

Sometimes you may need a telnet client in Vista or Windows 7. While in earlier versions of Windows they came pre-installed, Microsoft continued that practice.
To install, just open a command prompt and run: Continue reading “Install a/the Telnet Client in Vista & Windows 7”

Attribute Changer is a shell extension integrating into your Windows Explorer 32 bit and 64 bit that not only allows you to change the read-only, system, hidden, archive, compress and index attributes but also allows you to change the file dates and exif image dates as well which is great if you forgot to set the correct date and time on your camera since it can bulk change the dates/times by a specific offset, not just to specific times!

Every once in a while it seems to happen to many people that your keyboard “acts funky” and doesn’t let you type characters like \][/   and some others and it spits out french characters instead.
This happens if you accidentally switch the keyboard to French.
Hold the CTRL and SHIFT keys down together to switch between French and English. Sometimes it takes two or three tries to switch.

The Hibernate function on computers can be quite useful. When resuming from hibernate you can start right away where you left off with all programs open as they were when you stopped working and frequently the resuming from hibernate is faster than starting the computer after it was shut off.
You will still have to periodically reboot since Windows does get slower after some cycles, but that can be many days.
Many laptops have this function enabled when you are in the shut down menu, but most desktops do not. Continue reading “Enable Hibernate on Your PC”

Microsoft has released the Microsoft Camera Codec Pack (16.0.0652.0621) to enable viewing of many camera RAW files in Windows Explorer and many Microsoft and some other programs that use Microsoft codecs.
If you work with RAW files, head over there and download it to make it easier on you. View your RAW thumbnails and previews right in Windows.