Stanford Computer Services

Shortcut Saturday: Win – Arrow Keys

Jonathan — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 21:27:40 +0000

Win – Arrow Keys (Window Position) This Shortcut Saturday will make moving your application windows around the desktop. Instead of using the minimize,maximize, close buttons. Win – Up Arrow OK, first you start with a window that is in the middle of the screen, here I am using a Firefox browser window. Now we hit the Windows key and the Up Arrow key along with it. This will maximize the window. Win – Down Arrow OK, This one we will start out with the application window in the same location sitting in the middle of the screen. Now you press the Windows key along with the down arrow key. This will minimize the window. If the window is currently maximized it will make the window look like the picture above, then if you do the Windows + down arrow key again it will minimize the application window. Windows – Left Arrow Again we are going to start with an application windows in the middle of the screen. Now we hit the the Windows key with the left arrow key. This will move the window to the left side of the screen taking the left half of the screen. Win – Right Arrow This one does the opposite as the left arrow. We will start in the same position. Now when you press the windows key along with the right arrow, the windows will go to the right side of the window and take up half of the screen. Conclusion Now that you know the basics of these four commands use them, try them out. I find these commands useful when writing a report. I can snap Word to the left or right of the screen and snap a browser window to the opposite side. This also works when moving and copying files. You can have one file explorer window on the left and one on the right. Play around with what works for you.

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Firmware Update Fail

Jonathan — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 11:42:36 +0000

Razr Maxx 4.1.2 Firmware Update. awoke at 5:30 on Monday the 25th of March 2013 got dressed and went down stairs and sat here at my desk, turned on the computer and looked at my cellphone. To my surprise my cellphone had a message that gets me all giddy like the nerd I am… “Your phone has an update” appears on the screen, install now? “Oh yes!” I reply. I pressed the button and minutes later the phone reboots into a screen I have only seen maybe 2 times, it is the updating screen. A long wait followed, I got to work before it had completed. I was standing there at work and I feel the phone grow warm in my pocket. I’m thinking to myself, this is not good… I check my phone at my first break and the phone is warm to the touch and the battery is now at only 50% charge, it may not make it through the day. I begin to feel a little frustrated, obviously something is not right with this upgrade! all throughout the work day the phone is staying hot and the battery is draining fast. I get home and start googling the problems… I am no the only one having the this problem. Throughout the week the problems get worse the battery is not lasting as long and the phone is staying hot even when I am not using it. Finally Thursday, the phone dies (dead battery) before I can plug it in… I take it home and plug it in and change it fully before unplugging it.. The phone is fixed… It lasts just as long as it did before thee upgrade and, it is not hot anymore… I would love to know why the dead battery fixed the problem.

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Shortcut Saturday: Shift – F3

Jonathan — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 01:43:01 +0000

Shift – F3 (Change Case) ON’T YOU HATE WHEN YOU GO ALONG TYPING AN ENTIRE EMAIL OR OFFICE DOCUMENT AND FIND THAT YOU HAVE MISTAKENLY HIT THE caps-lock KEY AND HAVE AN ENTIRE PARAGRAPH OF upper case! oH… OOOOPS… Alright so we have all done this. Had the dang CAPS-LOCK key get pressed without you knowing. Before I found this keyboard-shortcut I would just delete the paragraph after finding it in all caps. You do not have to start all over now! ok, so this keyboard shortcut doen’t work everywhere, but it does work in Microsoft Office, Wordpad, Open Office, and, LibreOffice.(let me know if any other programs support this) The Shift – F3 key will change the case of selected text. Here let me show you how it works. I just cant seem to get the hang of this CAPS-LOCK key! Select the text that you have in the wrong case. Press Shift and F3 at the same time. This will change the all caps to lower case. If you press it again it will either change the case to proper sentence case, or capitalize every first letter of every word like a title. Also Microsoft word has a button to do this same action, it looks like this.

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Shortcut Saturday: Cut, Copy, & Paste

Jonathan — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:11:40 +0000

Cut, Copy & Paste Trio The cut, copy, and paste trio is a great time saving combination, it aids in copying, and moving text, numbers, and files. It works in all programs! Here is a brief explanation on how these functions work. Cut A great use of cut is moving text around in a document. You have a document that you have finished, now you want to move some of the text around to make reading it flow better. Select the text you want to move. Press Ctrl + X (Cut). The text you have selected will disappear, it has now been copied to that place called the clipboard. Put the cursor where you want the text to be placed. Press Ctrl + V (Paste). The text that was in the clipboard is now back in the document where you wanted it. Copy You want to copy some text from a web site to a word document. You could rely on your exceptional typing ability and type it out your self, but that is not the fast method. First you find some text that you want to copy from the web. You then select the text you want to copy from the website from your browser, press Ctrl + C (Copy) to copy the text into the clipboard. Open Word Press Ctrl + V (Paste) and the text will appear in the new word document.

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Shortcut Saturday: CTRL + F

Jonathan — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 14:30:38 +0000

CTRL + F (Find) I know a lot of time I am always trying to find something, whether it is within a file on my computer or something on a website. This shortcut will open a find dialog box in most applications. Lets look at what this looks like in some different applications. Program Find dialog Google Chrome Microsoft Word 2010 Microsoft Excel 2010 Firefox The find keyboard shortcut works in most applications so if you ever finding yourself looking for something just remember CTRL + F.

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Saturday Shortcut: Windows-Key + X

Jonathan — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 14:30:02 +0000

Windows-Key + X (Quick Access Menu) This shortcut is is for people that I would call power users. This shortcut only works this way in Windows 8. When you hold down the Windows-Key ans press the X key it will bring up a menu that allows you to access some of the advanced computer management applications. The menu comes up in the bottom left corner of the screen and looks like the image on left of this post. As you can see it allows you quick access to many advanced features quickly.

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Shortcut Saturday: ALT + TAB

Jonathan — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 14:00:39 +0000

ALT – TAB (Task Switcher) lright, as the first Shortcut Saturday I will start this off with a keyboard shortcut that any Windows user can use since version 3.0. The Alt + Tab key combination is a quick way to change between open applications quickly. This keyboard shortcut has saved me a lot of time and mouse movements over the years. Lets see how it works here. I know this may seem like a simple shortcut but it is a good time saver. I hope it saves you some time too.

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Backup or Else

Jonathan — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 22:36:42 +0000

Why backup data? That question brings me back to a class I took in high school. I was in Computer Literacy, the teacher would always make us save our work on 2 floppy disks. Many of my classmates would sputter about having to take the extra minute or two to do this redundant task. Later in the class after some sputtering from some students, the teacher told us that the floppy disks were not reliable and the question was not if, but when would the disk fail. Ok, that was like in 1998 or something, computers have gotten faster, and more reliable. On the other hand we also depend on and entrust them more. Where do you put important things like pictures, music, and documents? Let me guess, they’re on your computer right? Yeah! So, what if you didn’t backup those pictures of your wedding, children, or special event and your computer’s hard drive crashes tomorrow? Well, Most likely they are GONE. The average computer lasts about four years, you could lose four years of photos, documents, and other data if they are not backed up properly. Now that I have gotten you thinking about how fragile your data is, I Will explain where and how to protect it. Media/storage Online Solutions There is many online solutions to backup any amount of data you would need, but most of them come at a cost. Some services charge by the gigabyte and some are unlimited and change per computer. Here is a short run down of the ones I have tried or know are popular. Software There are many companies that offer solutions to the backup issue, I have used some good ones that i would like to share with you.

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Test Portfolio

Jonathan — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 01:38:16 +0000

Test post

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