Find all your drivers with Double Driver.
Jul 24th
Do you hate looking for and downloading drivers on every re-format?
Well if you can get to your desktop you should be able to run Double Driver and copy your drivers off your machine to a USB stick and then restore them right back into your fresh clean formatted system! We covered something a little while ago for backing up and restoring printers/print drivers.
Combine these two small apps with the Windows Files and Settings Transfer Wizard and you have yourself a powerful tool kit.
With Double Driver you can view which drivers are installed in your system and you can backup the drivers you choose, save and print the drivers list, and more.
Double Driver is freeware. Feel free to use and give this program to anyone you know. Your donation or feedback would be greatly appreciated.
_TheBackUpAdmiN_
Goofy But Cool — surf with your calculator
Jul 23rd
Ok, you’re on a desert island and…well, lets just say that you encounter a computer without IE and firefox. So you can use word, etc… but no way to surf the internet. Before you say it, no, windows explorer isn’t available either.
Here’s the simple trick:
1) Open the calculator (or any microsoft program)
2) Push F1 or the “help topics” button
3) Select the icon on the top, left corner. Its the one that has a magnifying glass on it.
4) Select the “Jump to URL” link
5) Enter the link you want in the field, eg “http://www.cnn.com”
Any other cool ways to surf that you can think of?
Kerry enjoys writing about a variety of topics. Her favorite website is CallCatalog.com which is a reverse phone number directory website that allows you to lookup and report unwanted phone calls. You can also read her blog which discusses phone number privacy issues.
How can I use Speech Recognition in Windows Vista?
Jul 14th
Have you ever wanted to talk to your computer? You know like “Music On” or “Kill Stupid Flanders!”
Well in Windows Vista, you can! And it is as easy as this:
Click the Start menu >> Click Control Panel >> Click Speech Recognition. >> Click Start Speech Recognition >> Now you can tell your computer what to do!
Be sure to take the Speech Tutorial first to get your computer to get the feel for your voice.
All versions of Windows Vista, even the Home Basic version already have one of the most powerful speech recognition systems available for consumer consumption. Microsoft has invested lots of dough in research and development regarding speech recognition over the years. Lets just say these boys have just about done it right this time! I have been trying to talk to my computer since my Commodore 64 and lets just say it has always been a kind of 1 sided conversation. But I had some big surprises on my hand when my computer actually responded by doing the tasks I requested. SWEET!
Just to give you a heads up we have composed the majority of this post using the features and it did not slow us down one bit! What are you looking to do? Surf the web no handed? Open applications? “type” word documents or emails? Well it is all possible my friends and it is pretty simple to get it going. All you need is Vista, A Microphone and Some time to put into training the beast. We all know you AtA readers will not sit sit still for a tutorial until you had problems doing it on your own… And you have probably already launched the wizard (Yes we know you that well!). You are going to have to put in 10-15 minutes but its well worth it. Trust us would we steer you wrong? More >
Using Notepad++ for Version Control
Jun 29th
I have what you would call a love/hate relationship with Version Control Systems. On the one hand, it is oh so nice to be able to revert back to a working version of your document when you accidentally make way too many mistakes, and it no longer works. But on the other hand, it is a total pain in the ass.
I am duty bound to tell you that if you are doing much of anything involving code, you need to be using some sort of Version Control, however I am not going to ram Subversion or Tortoise SVN down your throat. I understand why programmers use them, and I have used them myself in the past. Since I try to live the whole “Least Amount Of Administrative Effort” thing, I just really don’t like them. Let me explain.
Ok, setting up full on Version Control makes sense if any of the following are true:
- You spend a large portion of your day writing code (like your job title is “programmer” or something similar)
- You spend more time fixing things you break while writing code, than writing code
- Anyone else is going to suffer consequences if you totally wreck some code
- Someone else is going to maintain and administer the Version Control System
- You work on files that multiple other people also edit
However it does not make sense if any of the following is true:
- You write code for your own use only
- You could care less if it gets broken or accidentally deleted
- You don’t have time to administer or maintain a Version Control System
Even if all of the last bit are true for you, it is still a good idea to use Version Control. Wait, what?
Version Control is a process, and if done correctly it works very well. If done poorly it gives you a false sense of security. Version Control is not necessarily a software package or commercial system.
If working with end users for all these years has taught me anything it is this; if a system is easy to use (especially if you don’t have to actually do anything) it will get used, if it is complicated (or time consuming) it will not get used. This also holds true (even more so in most cases) for the IT professionals I know.
Since don’t write enough code to make Visual Studio a wise investment, I use Notepad++, and unlike Visual Studio, I can take my IDE with me on a USB drive (Notepad++ Portable!). In the same vein, I don’t really write enough code to really justify setting up and maintaining a Version Control System, so I do it with Notepad++. Least Amount Of Administrative Effort.
So here is my solution:
I use the Backup settings built into Notepad++ to take care of my Version Control. To set this up:
- Install notepad++
- Open Notepad++
- Select Settings > Preferences
- On the Backup/Auto-completion tab, change the backup setting from None to Verbose
If you change nothing else there, now when you save your file, Notepad++ will automatically create a copy of the file without the changes since the last time you saved it. The copy will also be saved in a subfolder (named nppBackup) in the same folder where the document is saved. The copy will be named FileName.Extension.Date_Timestamp.bak by default. So a file named “test.vbs”, saved today would have a name similar to “test.vbs.2009-06-29_151927.bak”.
Cumbersome to be sure, but I am guaranteed to use it every time I work with a document.
Please don’t mistake this for something it is not. This is not a Version Control System. You do not check files in or out, and it doesn’t differentiate who made what changes, all it does is save every iteration of your document. It is Version Control in the truest sense of the term.
Check out this Extended Task Manager for Windows.
Jun 29th
The Extended Task Manager provides additional Windows process management features and information about disk activity and network port usage.
The new “Disk I/O” chart allows you to monitor which applications utilize most of your disk at the moment:
Features:
* Displays disk input/output activity with information about related applications
* Displays network port activity with IP addresses of external computers
* Displays information about applications that utilized most of the CPU or memory at any time presented on the charts
* Displays all files locked by a select process.
* Finds all processes locking a specified file.
* Includes “Summary” tab for quickly assessing the overall state of the Windows system
* Allows freezing individual Windows processes
* Offer various visual and functional improvements over the standard Windows Task Manager
http://www.extensoft.com/?p=free_task_manager
[Molly via EeeUserForums]
I have hundres of files to rename help me Admin!
Jun 24th
Yes, we know you have taken a million digital photos over the last year, on your fancy shmancy new camera. And we also know the holiday season is almost upon us. Being the geek that you are, you could not just leave your pictures named digital_image_13456.jpg for your slide shows…
We just couldn’t have that now, could we?
Oh, how well we know you.
Wayne from Florida wants AtA’s help to create a script that will batch rename his purty pictures. Instead we are going to point him to some FREE software our friend Daniel at HackYourDay blogged about.
The software is called Batch File Renamer (clever eh?) from Cerebral Synergy.
Daniel says:
Here’s one software that productivity nuts will love. If you’ve ever needed to catalog files, change extensions, add something to a filename in large batches you know the suffering that is “right click, select, type, enter” done over and over and over again. If you need a tool that can simply edit filenames, rename extensions and so on in a very powerful, customizable way, read on!…
I set out to find some sort of tool because I need to catalog files in batches of 100 about every two days. I get a batch of stuff in txt format and I need to do the following operations.
- I need the files to be in the following format [ID - Number.txt]
- I also need them in this format [ID - Number.html]
Practically this means that I need “032 – 001.txt”, “032 – 002.txt” and so on (all the way to 100), also in .html format and I need to be able to customize all of this because for the next batch I will need “033? at the beginning.
Doing a Google search and trying a lot of free software that popped up I finally found Batch File Renamer. Not a fancy name, not a fancy program, but it gets the job done better than I’ve seen with other apps. First, head over to the Cerebral Synergy download page, scroll down and download Batch File Renamer.
He was able to change file extensions, mass change file names and it comes with all sorts of other free geeky options! Check out Daniel’s article at HackYourDay here and the Free Cerebral Synergy download is here.
