Biggest tips guide ever! (Part
6)
PC
Problems: Email; Browsing
Use
ReadyBoost to grab extra RAM from a USB drive
One PC: many users
Security and parental controls are two
good reasons to have different login accounts for family members. Preferred desktop
layouts, browsers, email clients, backgrounds and screen settings are another. Head
to the Control Panel and click User Accounts to get a personalized desktop for
everyone.
One careful user
If no-one else uses your PC, you can speed
up logins by having a single user account with full admin rights and no password
protection. This isn't recommended if it's a laptop that ever leaves the house,
though.
Limited users are liberated users
You need one Windows user account for
the administrator. Getting into the habit of instead logging into a separate
'limited' user account makes sense from a security point of view. Malware needs
admin rights in order to get to the Registry and to make other substantive
changes to your computer's setup. It can't do this if you're using the PC in non-admin
mode.
Switch your operating system
If you want to play it even safer, running
Mac OS X or a Linux OS rather than Windows is a good alternative. If you're comfortable
partitioning a hard drive, you can dual-boot your PC and keep your OS options open.
Parallels software is another good option and supports multiple OS environments.
Copyright your work
You've probably noticed watermarks on images
on the web; you can add the equivalent to your own work by choosing the Tools, Protect
document option In Microsoft Word. Click the Read Only button and select a password
before allowing that report you composed to be published.
Protect it with a PDF
PDF creation used to be the preserve
of the publishing industry, but there are now free tools such as Nitro Pro (tinyurl.com/ydyy6cgv)
that can create them at a much lower cost than Adobe's Acrobat. More recent
versions of Word and Excel also have a File, Save As, PDF option in their
drop-down menus. By saving this way, you prevent someone easily editing your words
or spreadsheet contents.
Micro-manage your email
Gmail
Labels let you color-code contacts for easier organization
Filters and rules are often used by
office workers to keep on top of the vast amount of email flooding into their inboxes.
Webmail software such as Hotmail and Gmail also support filtering. Go to the Filters
tab and click Edit in the Gmail Inbox view to create and apply rules for
bypassing or filing items.
Visual email overview
Click on the Labels tab at the top of your
Gmail inbox to start color-coding contacts to earmark personal and work mail.
Portable
Apps can be taken with you on a U3 drive
Trace an email's origins
If you want to known the source of a suspicious
email or URL, check its IP address. To trace the IP address of a web domain, such
as pcadvisorco.uk, go to Start, Run and type cmd. In the command prompt that pops
up, type tracert, followed by the domain name. Tracert will track all stages of
connection between you and the website, and then provide a final line that includes
Its IP address. Use this to check the location of the server by using visualroute.visualware.com
or IP-address.com.
Perform a ping test
The simplest of all internet tools is
the humble ping command, which lets you use the command prompt to contact a website
and see whether it's alive and responding. It also resolves host names to IP addresses,
so if you issue the command ping www.pcadvisor.co.uk. It will tell you the
site's associated IP address. And it also tells you the speed of the connection
and response - handy if you want to check on your own connection.
Browsing:
Musics Video
Manage browser add-ons
Use Microsoft's Mats Run utility to check
for browser toolbars and add-ons. To disable unwanted toolbars, right-click the
internet Explorer toolbar and deselect any you don't use. You may need to look in
Manage add-ons or Add/Remove Programs to disable them.
Update your browser to fix performance
issues
If a once favored browser no longer works
flawlessly, upgrade to the latest version. Not only will that stop its makers bugging
you about the upgrade's availability, but it will improve stability and content
handling, too.
Test your web connection
Speedtest.Net
use a ping test to check your connection speed
Another web speed test, speedtest.net,
also uses a ping test to check the bandwidth between you and the web server your
ISP has provided. Remember that connection speeds vary across the day, with peaks
of usage in the early evening.
Download domains
For downloads, using a local mirror
server somewhere in Europe rather than the US will generally result in faster access
to the program you crave.
P2P file-sharing danger
Peer-to-peer file-sharing and torrent sites
are among the most dangerous places you can visit on the web. They are fronts
for the nastiest forms of malware, and are especially effective as they require
you to open ports on your PC to let other users access your files.
Stream music and video for free
Rather than amassing a digital music library
by buying through iTunes or Amazon MP3, you could use the web to stream music instead.
There are thousands of online radio stations, but also free versions of music-streaming
and subscription services. Napster and We7.com are two good examples; both allow
you to enjoy music playlists and to save tracks you like for later offline listening.
Rent your tunes
As long as you're happy to pay $7.5 per
month, Spotify and Napster are content to share their seven million-strong music
libraries with you - including live sets and unreleased studio sessions. Depending
on the subscription model you choose, you can log into the account on your PC, laptop,
tablet and smartphone, and bring up your chosen playlists whenever you tike. Your
favorite albums can even be enjoyed offline, so you can tune in without a web
connection.
Google, Amazon and Tesco
All of the above companies have recently
launched video-on-demand services that let you rent or buy outright Hollywood blockbusters,
British indie flicks and renowned TV series. Tesco's is called Blinkbox and is preinstalled
on some Smart TVs. A limited number of free films and programmes are also on offer,
and you don't even need to log in.
BBC iPlayer is now even better
The BBC iPlayer app is so popular that
UK ISPs groaned about the extra bandwidth we started using. It's now available
on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wit consoles, but also on iPad and Android
tablets, so you can enjoy it in comfort rather than simply through a PC screen.
Add a parental lock to iPlayer
A potential caveat of the iPlayer is that
it will: play anything it's asked to, at any time. Click on a post-watershed
programme title, click the padlock icon next to the Guidance button, and enter
a password and your email address on the Parental Guidance page that pops up.
