When consumers copy analog formats, such as cassettes, each copy generation suffers noticeable quality degradation, resulting in evermore hisses, pops, and squeals that make listening less pleasurable. When users make copies of MP3 files, only the first generation loses sound quality, and when done properly, the breakdown in quality is not noticeable.

 

Use Keyboard Shortcuts For Folders

In Windows XP you can create keyboard shortcuts for folders. This feature comes in handy for accessing a folder from anywhere on your computer, without minimizing open applications on your desktop. To create a keyboard shortcut for a folder, select the folder in Windows Explorer and right-click it. Select Create Shortcut, and place it on the Desktop. Another way to create a shortcut is to open the folder, click File, New, and Shortcut. Drag the newly created shortcut to your Desktop. Now, to add a keyboard shortcut, right–click the new shortcut, and then click Properties. In the Properties dialog box, click the Shortcut tab, and in the Shortcut key box, enter a Control key combination or a CTRL-SHIFT key combination, (CTRL-ALT-X or CTRL-SHIFT-X where X indicates a letter you will associate with the shortcut), and then click OK. When you press the key combination you specified, your folder will open.

 

Use Keyboard Shortcuts To Navigate IE

Fans of keyboard shortcuts should use ALT-Right arrow and ALT-Left arrow in Internet Explorer to move through pages rather than click the Back or Forward buttons. Bonus keyboard tip: Use ALT-D to move your cursor up to the Address bar.

 

Speed Up Dial-Up Load Times

Dial-up users who value speed over content can turn off the automatic loading of images in Internet Explorer. Open the Tools menu, select Internet Options, and click the Advanced tab. Scroll to the Multimedia settings and deselect the Show Pictures checkbox. Download speed should increase; but you can still choose to see a particular picture by right-clicking the picture placeholder and choosing Show Picture.

 

 

 

Change The Folder Windows Explorer Opens

By default, when you launch Windows Explorer using Windows XP the program opens to your My Documents folder. You can, however, make it so that Windows Explorer automatically shows your C:\ directory, or any other directory for that matter. To implement this, click Start, Programs, and Accessories. Right-click Windows Explorer and select Properties. With the Shortcut tab selected, the Target field should read %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe. To change this so that Windows Explorer will always open to your C drive, add at the end of the line: /n, /e, /select, C:\ and click Apply and OK. Be sure you insert a space after “exe” and include all the commas as shown. This will only affect how Windows Explorer opens if you open it by clicking Start, Programs, Accessories, and Windows Explorer; it doesn’t affect how the program opens if you right-click the Start menu and select Explore.

 

Keep A Hyperlink Handy

Keep a link handy at all times by placing it on your Desktop. Next time you’re visiting the page in question, drag the icon in the Address bar to your Desktop (or any other folder, for that matter, or even an open Microsoft Word document or Excel spreadsheet).

 

Launch Programs Without A Mouse

If your mouse quits working properly, you can still get around Windows XP without too much trouble. To launch programs, for example, press CTRL-ESC on your keyboard, press P, and press ENTER. This opens the All Programs menu. You can now use the arrow and ENTER keys to navigate to and launch programs.

 

 

Use The “Open With” Menu

If you use Windows and try opening a file that’s associated with an application not installed on your hard drive, an Open With dialog box will appear asking you which application you’d like to associate the file with. But how do you get that dialog box to appear when a file is already associated with an application? Say, for instance, that you have an HTML file that you’d like to open with a text editor such as Notepad instead of a Web browser such as Internet Explorer. If you use Windows 2000/ME/XP you can just right-click the file and from the resulting context menu and choose Open With (or Open With, Choose Program with some files in WinXP). To access the Open With dialog box in Windows 98 you must first select a file by clicking on it; then hold down the Shift key and right-click the file. The Open With dialog box will now appear in the context menu.

 

 

Sort Start Menu Programs

This tip applies to Windows 98/2000/Me/XP. As you add software to your system, you may notice the Start menu’s Programs menu (the All Programs menu in WinXP) is not in alphabetical order. To sort the menu alphabetically by program name, right-click any item in the menu and click Sort By Name. Because Windows won’t do it automatically, you’ll have to repeat this process every so often to maintain an alphabetical list of programs.

 

 

 

Search Within A Web Page

 

If you’re using Internet Explorer to view a Web page with a lot of text, you can quickly locate a word or phrase by pressing CTRL-F. This opens the Find dialog box. Type the word or phase in the Find What field and click Find Next. If this process finds a word or phrase that you’re looking for, you can click Find Next again if you want to search through more of the Web page.

 

Create A Shutdown Shortcut

For a quicker shutdown of your operating system, you can use the shortcut option to add a shutdown shortcut to your Desktop. Right-click an empty area of the desktop, select New, and point to Shortcut. If you use Windows 95/98/ME type C:\windows\rundll.exe user.exe,exitwindows in the command line path WITH the space between exe and user. If you use Windows XP, type SHUTDOWN -s -t 01 (with the spaces) in the commandd line path. Then click Next, name the shortcut, and click Finish.