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Tips & Tricks PageShould You Rebuild Your Desktop Computer or Buy a New One? Shake Clutter from Your Desktop Use Windows 7 to Improve Your Laptop's Power Efficiency Add a Videos Link to your Start Menu How to Keep Your Explorer Searches Private Visit Tools PageShould You Rebuild Your Desktop Computer or Buy a New One? 
If your technician suggests you replace the system board (aka motherboard) in your older model computer because it's cheaper than buying a new computer, hire a new technician. We've seen the work of these inexperienced technicians who buy cheap, no-name system boards that break down after 6 months. You'll be continuously paying that tech to keep the computer running. It is NOT worth it to replace the motherboard. We recommend you buy a new computer and move on. The reality is that a good system board will cost about a fourth of the price of a new computer. By the time you purchase a new, faster processor (which you should do) and the appropriate memory, the cost will be equal to or greater than the cost of a new computer, but yours won't last as long because you're using some parts from the old computer. Back to Top Shake Clutter from Your Desktop If like most people you run multiple programs simultaneously on your desktop it can quickly become confusing with all the open windows. To clean up the desktop normally requires minimizing all but the window you're using, but this can take time. Enter Windows 7 with its "shake" feature that allows you to minimize every window except the one in which you're working, in one step. Simply click and hold the current window's title bar and shake it quickly back and forth until all the other windows are minimized. To maximize them, simply shake the title bar again. Of course to accomplish the same thing you could also press and hold the windows key, but it's not as cool. Back to Top Use Windows 7 to Improve Your Laptop's Power Efficiency Want to get better battery life for your laptop? Windows 7 can assist you in achieving energy savings by using its energy monitoring tool to examine the computer's energy use and make recommendations on how to get more life out of your battery. To use the tool: 1. Open the command prompt as administrator (type cmd in the search box; when the cmd icon appears, right-click it and choose "Run as administrator") 2. In the command console, type the following: powercfg -energy -output \Folder\Energy_Report.html (Folder is the name of the folder where you want the report to be placed) 3. Windows 7 will examine your laptop's energy use, analyze the results and create a report as a webpage in the folder you specified. Double-click the webpage, and the report will be displayed along with recommendations. Back to Top Add a Videos Link to your Start Menu Although the Windows 7 Start Menu has links to your Pictures and Music folders, it does not have a link to your Videos folder. However you can change that by doing the following: 
1. Right-click the Start button and click "Properties" 2. When the Taskbar and Menu screen appears, click the Start Menu tab and click Customize 3. In the dialog box that appears, scroll down to the bottom, and in Videos section, click "Display as a link,". Click OK, then click OK again. If you prefer that your videos display as a menu, with links to files and submenus, then click "Display as a menu" instead of "Display as a link". Back to Top How to Keep Your Explorer Searches Private When you use Windows Exploerer to search for files on your PC, it displays the recent searches performed. If you share a PC and want to keep your searches private, you can configure the computer to not disply your recent searches: 1. In the Start menu Search box, type GPEDIT.MSC and press Enter to start the Group Policy Editor. 2. Go to User Configuration --> Administrative Templates --> Windows Components --> Windows Explorer. 3. Double-click "Turn off display of recent search entries in the Windows Explorer search box" and select Enabled. Click OK. Back to Top |