Hundreds of tips on a variety of topics, including Internet Explorer, the Windows User Interface, E-mail, Networking, Troubleshooting, and a variety of other subjects all geared toward making your computing experience both easier and more enjoyable. [ Available in PDF/LIT formats. Download ]

Printing More than Once

Plan on printing the same document more than once? Quit going though the motions; let Windows 2000 keep ‘em queued for ya. Open your Control Panel and double-click the “Printers” icon. Now, right-click your default printer icon and select the “Properties” option. Flip to the “Advanced” tab and put a checkmark in the “Keep printed documents” box. Now, when you spool data to this printer, it won’t be removed unless you manually delete it. Again, you’d want to turn on this feature if you have a propensity for printing the same stuff over and over… and over again. Windows 9x users feeling left out? So, here’s a tip that you can use! When you print graphics, they may not appear the same on screen as they do on paper. Perhaps your dithering is off (or on, as the case may be). Pull up the properties for your printer the same way your W2k brethren do—then flip to the Graphics tab. From there, you may be able to change the DPI (dots per inch) and dithering options. Trying to conserve ink? It’s par for the “Coarse.” Looking for perfection? There is “None.” Need something in between? That’s just “Fine.”

Nifty Modem Tweak

From the “How fast was I going, officer” department: Lockergnomie Kerry Rogers has brought a nifty modem tweak to my attention. The connection icon in the System Tray may say that you’re connected at “115200″ (or some other bogus number), when you’re actually connected at 26400. This is because Windows may be reporting the port speed (not the actual speed the user at which the user is connected). Open the ‘Dial-Up Networking’ folder (in ‘My Computer’). Right-click on an Internet service icon, select ‘Properties,’ press the ‘Configure’ button, click the ‘Connection’ tab, then press the ‘Advanced’ button. In the ‘Extra settings’ field, try adding “W2″ (without the quotes) to your initialization string. Upon doing this, you may see a more accurate connection rate the next time you connect to the Internet.

Clear the History and Cache

“La dee da… I’m surfing the Web. Nobody’s looking… so I think I’ll enter a forbidden URL and see what’s there. N A K E D G E R B I L S dot com. Wow… that’s furry!” Little Brian is having fun, but what if his hamster (Harvey) finds out about this adventure? It won’t be pretty—but the damage has been done! The Web address is stuck in the Address bar drop-down menu. Uh-oh. If Brian clears the History and Cache, his hamster will become suspicious. Is there another way to save Brian’s relationship? Yep, but it requires diving into the system registry. Open REGEDIT.EXE and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Internet Explorer \ TypedURLs (Windows 2000 users will go to HKEY_USERS \ S-1-5-21… \ Software \ Microsoft\ Internet Explorer \ TypedURLs). In the right-hand pane, you’ll be able to select and delete any incriminating URLs. NOTE: The site and its contents may be removed by opening the History panel in Internet Explorer, right-clicking on the site’s domain, and selecting the “Delete” option. I’ll be your guinea pig. Er, let me be your hog. Baby, baby, baby, baby…