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Tip Archive

Tip Archive This is the tip archive for the Kingswood Tech Support. It has all the preivous tips of the week..

Tip of the week 2/02/09

Germs?!

There are some reasons why you should keep your keyboard clean. One reason to do this is to minimize the chances of us passing around the cold or the flu virus and get sick. This happens a lot with computer labs that share computers with many kids a day coming and using the computers. There are a couple of ways you could stop the spread of germs. One way is to tell the kids about the risk of getting sick from the keyboards and tell them to go to the bathroom after the class and wash their hands. That way isn't the best way because most kids wont wash their hands because they are lazy. Another more effective way of doing this is to use Clorox wipes before each class and have the students clean their keyboard before using it. We found a website when we were researching this topic and we found it really interesting. Please click on the link below and start a health program to keep your keyboards and mice germ free.
Keyboard Article

Tip of the week 2/09/09
Got Dust?!?

Many people don’t think of their computer when doing a bit of cleaning around the home, but perhaps they should. We’re talking about an effort far less unpleasant than doing windows or cleaning the bathroom, and the use of a can of compressed air can take care of a bulk of the work for you. Caution, the use of a vacum could damage the components of your computer. Compressed air can be found in most stores in the cleaning aisle. Cleaning your system on a somewhat regular basis can easily help extend the life of components, increase system stability, and reduce noise. The dust build up in your computer will cause air flow to slow down and then your computer will overheat causing bad computer performance. So just use the can of air to clean out all of your fans in the computer and the heat sinks. Another good place to clean is your keyboard, over time it gathers hair, food, crumbs, dust and other things that are in the air. All this in your keyboard can make it look unusable and also slow down the response time oF the keys you hit. .

Tip of the week 2/16/09
MMM... Cookies

Every time you go to a webpage you get a little file showing that you went to this site. The file is called a cookie, after a lot of web surfing you acquire a lot of these cookies which can slow down your computer a little bit. So every once and a while you should delete these cookies by hitting the tools tab in your web browser and hit delete browsing history, this will open up a window where you can delete cookies, your browsing history and also your saved passwords. This should work with all browsers; if you can't find out how to do this in your browser just send us an email.

Tip of the week 3/2/09
Should I defrag?

Fragmentation is when an Operating System writes data to the hard drive disk on separate parts. Defrag is when a computer optimizes the disc files and rewrites them in the adjacent sectors. This helps because the hard drive has a "head" move over the disk, it finds your files and if they are all scattered then it takes longer to find files which slows down the computer. This isn't a big problem on home computers because the files aren't as big so you won't notice a big difference in speed. To defrag a windows computer go to Start->all programs->accessories->system tools->Disk defragmenter. Next click Analyze. When this finishes click Defragment. Most modern computers do not need to be defragged. If you own a Linux, Mac OSx, or Windows Vista computer these will not need to defrag.

Tip of the week 3/9/09
Saving word documents

Do you ever have problems opening a Word document in Word 2003 that was saved in Word 2008? There a simple solution to this problem. When you go to save click file->save as then under “file name” change the “save as type” to rich text format or rtf. This format is able to be opened in Word 2003, Word 2008, and Open Office.

Tip of the week 3/16/09
Increasing font size in a web browser

If you have ever had trouble reading the small font of a web page you will appreciate this tip. On a web page in a Windows operating system, press Ctrl and the plus or minus keys, plus for bigger font and minus for a smaller font. On a Mac computer its the Command key (little apple) and the plus or minus key. Also if you have a middle mouse wheel you can hold down the control key/command key and move it up or down to change the font size. To restore the page to normal size hold down control and hit zero.

Tip of the week 4/1/09

Cleaning your monitor.

Did you know that you're supposed to clean the outside of your computer screen? YOU'RE ALSO SUPPOSED TO CLEAN THE INSIDE OF IT TOO! Not many people know about this or know how to do it. so click here

Tip of the week 4/1/09

Have you ever wanted to take a picture of your desktop?

On windows XP you can hit print screen(Print scrn) button on your keyboard. Next open Paint or Word, go to edit and hit paste or hit the hot key control v to paste. In Vista, you can do the same thing with a built in tool. Go into accessories from your start menu and go to the "snip it" tool and you can select an area of your screen you would like to save.

Tip of the week 4/13/09

a berief over view of Steady State

Steady State Software is now used in many computers around the school and district. Steady State is used to limit permissions, privileges, and read/write privileges to a hard drive for a specific account. If you are using a computer with Steady State, on every reboot, the hard drive is efficiently “wiped”. This means your saved data that is not synced with the servers will be erased. The best way to save your data is to back it up to a flash drive. Flash drives are very cheap, efficient, and cost-worthy. Flash drives ranging in all capacity and prices can be found here

Tip of the week 5/18/09

Saving Key Strokes

Every time you type in a URL to navigate to a web site you have to type out http://www. and .com or .net or .org. What if you could save yourself a few key strokes (15 to be exact). All you have to do is type in the main part (EX: Google, MSN, yahoo) then hit CTRL+ENTER. This will automatically add http://www and .com to the main Part. If you are navigating to a .org then you would hit CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER. For a .net address you would hit SHIFT+ENTER.

Tip of the week 5/25/09

Changing OS's : XP to Vista

This week and the weeks to follow, we are talking about changing operating systems. We are focusing on the change from Windows XP to Windows Vista. This week we will be discussing the user interface differences. The first thing you'll notice is the new task bar. The new task bar is designed to look cleaner and sleeker. The new start menu is round with just the Windows logo. Another very obvious change to the UI (user interface) is the side bar. This allows you to have live feeds from websites, the time, comics, calenders, and more on your desktop. The third biggest change is the “glass” theme called Areo. There are many other changes that you will notice and we will be disscusing them in the weeks to come.

Tip of the week 6/1/09

Changing OS's : How to change your Vista theme to classic Windows theme.

To change your theme in Vista Right Click on your desktop, then scroll down to “Personalize” and click. A box will appear and will say personalize “Appearance and Sounds”. Choose theme which is the sixth item down. When you click on theme a box comes down with four themes: Current Theme, Windows Vista, Windows Classic, and Saved Themes that you can get from the Internet. Just search Windows Vista Themes in Google. When you pick a theme you can preview it or you can hit Apply and Okay. If you decide that the theme you already have is good then you can hit cancel to not change anything.