PC or MAC Tips and/or Hints

[ZOOTECH]

I saw an interesting seminar the other day that gave 10 helpful tips for the PC - unfortunately, I can only remember a couple.

> When web browsing, use the space bar to scroll down (page down), and hold the shift key and press space bar to page up. That's better than using the arrow keys or the mouse scroll wheel.

> To delete a word in your text, you don't have to highlight it by left click, hold and drag the cursor then hit the delete key. Just click anywhere within the word, it will highlight, and instead of deleting it, just type over it.

> I wish I could remember more at this time, but more will come - what are your favorites?

These may not work exactly as written depending on your OS or application.

[Tonerbomb]

Re: PC or MAC Tips and/or Hints

Thanks Zootech. This thread will help all of the consortium. try the windows key while holding it down and go thru the keyboard and see all the shortcuts that come up......

[sandmanmac]

'CTRL +F' opens a dialog box to search for words/phrases on web pages and most document programs.
I just learned this recently from one of my customers.
So simple and useful

[jonezy999]

Re: PC or MAC Tips and/or Hints

Win 7. The small vertical rectangle, bottom right of screen is the old show desktop feature.

[neergish]

Re: PC or MAC Tips and/or Hints

windows key + R is a short cut to "run", a quick way to get to where you need put "cmd".
(I was taught this my some friendly people from "windows" who rang me at home late one night to tell me my computer was full of viruses)

when using ping at the command prompt use the -t switch to get a continuous ping
(very handy as you can get an over the shoulder customer who just wants to help to watch this for you, while you return to your service vehicle and smash your head against the dash to distract you from the earge to strangle said customer. ) ctrl +c stops the pings

type "=rand(10,10)" into a blank "Word" document and you will get a page or so of text so you can prove a printer is working to a customer when a windows test page just isn't enough (enlarge the numbers and thus pages printed to equal the level of irritation the customer is giving you)

[CompyTech]

Re: PC or MAC Tips and/or Hints

When you're surfing the web and you want to type in an address. Hit Alt and the D key to highlight the entire URL bar, and you can delete the old address easier.

Very useful as lots of web sites now have long urls and such.

[Phrag]

Re: PC or MAC Tips and/or Hints

Holding 'CTRL' on windows PC's while clicking on a link to another website/page will open that link in a new tab.
Handy when I want to continue surfing a page when I come across an interesting link to look at.

Typing in 'netstat' in command prompt will list active connections. Haven't figured out how that is useful for me yet, but one day maybe.
Typing 'net config workstation' will, list the correct hostname/computername, and username of a PC. (Good for when you are trying to set up scan-to-smb.)

I've been in a situation where I was getting login error. The username (which is usually found by hitting the windows button and the first soft button under the picture) which was 'user' turned out to be incorrect. Using 'net config workstation' told me that the correct username was 'usr'

[jonezy999]

Re: PC or MAC Tips and/or Hints

type "=rand(10,10)" into a blank "Word" document and you will get a page or so of text so you can prove a printer is working to a customer when a windows test page just isn't enough (enlarge the numbers and thus pages printed to equal the level of irritation the customer is giving you)

I believe the number in brackets is the amount of paragraphs. 9 seems to fill one page.

[jonezy999]

Re: PC or MAC Tips and/or Hints

Holding 'CTRL' on windows PC's while clicking on a link to another website/page will open that link in a new tab.
Handy when I want to continue surfing a page when I come across an interesting link to look at.

Also if you are using a mouse with a scroll wheel in between the 2 buttons, depressing this while on a link opens the page in new tab too.

[Akitu]

Re: PC or MAC Tips and/or Hints

Similarly to the Wkey + R activating the Run command, Wkey + E will open a new explorer window (not to be confused with internet exploder). Wkey + L will lock the pc and bring it to the user screen assuming the shortcut has not been disabled. Wkey + M will return you to your main desktop with all windows minimized.

Ctrl + moving mouse wheel up or down will enlarge all text on a page akin to the zoom in/out buttons in View. Shift + mouse wheel up or down will move a browser page forward or back, respectively.

Ctrl + Alt + directional key (up, down, left, right) will rotate the desktop in the relative direction pressed. It's more of a software feature for some graphics cards than a hardware feature, so some monitors may not respond to it. If your customers ever call up and say "My screen is upside down! Help!", that would be the way to fix it.

[Iowatech]

Re: PC or MAC Tips and/or Hints

In Firefox and IE at least, the F11 key can be used to switch from normal view to full screen view. So if someone tells you the menu bar no longer shows on their browser screen, tell them to try that.
If you are really bored, you might try typing "tracert /?" in a cmd window to see what that's all about. I find tracert useful once in a while if a website isn't loading as fast as I think it should. Used properly, it will show you the names of up to thirty of the servers that the data has to go through, and the ping times for each one.

[Debs1964]

Re: PC or MAC Tips and/or Hints

Ctrl + Alt + directional key (up, down, left, right) will rotate the desktop in the relative direction pressed. It's more of a software feature for some graphics cards than a hardware feature, so some monitors may not respond to it. If your customers ever call up and say "My screen is upside down! Help!", that would be the way to fix it.

I am so going to remember that for the next time one of my colleagues leaves their laptop on when I'm around

[emujo]

Re: PC or MAC Tips and/or Hints

With Windows 8, and SMB scanning. With the users permission, create a standard account to use with scanning, the default account uses a "@mailaccount.com" and is not very friendly with the SMB authentication. Emujo

[Akitu]

Re: PC or MAC Tips and/or Hints

With Windows 8, and SMB scanning. With the users permission, create a standard account to use with scanning, the default account uses a "@mailaccount.com" and is not very friendly with the SMB authentication. Emujo

I noticed something weird with W8, not sure what the present status of it is as I can no longer do testing. When the computer was assigned a static IP address, SMB scanning was no longer possible. Running command prompt would return no main directory, only when running as an admin after assigning a static IP was it able to access C:\Windows and perform cursory command prompt functions. Never figured out why that was, not sure if it was a known issue by Microsoft as well.

[Lagonda]

Re: PC or MAC Tips and/or Hints

Ctrl + Alt + directional key (up, down, left, right) will rotate the desktop in the relative direction pressed. It's more of a software feature for some graphics cards than a hardware feature, so some monitors may not respond to it. If your customers ever call up and say "My screen is upside down! Help!", that would be the way to fix it.

What a ripper! Wait until our chief IT nerd is looking the other way and see how long it takes him to sort it out!