20th June 1997

Remember your keyboard? Once you learn how to manipulate text using it (rather than your mouse), you might find yourself having an easier time in Windows. For instance, you can usually jump to the beginning of the next word by holding onto Ctrl and pressing the right/left arrow keys. If you want to select the words as you go along, merely hold the Shift key as well as the Ctrl key. A lot less random than the moving the mouse, eh? Don't forget your old friends Ctrl-A (select all), Ctrl-X (cut), Ctrl-C (copy) and Ctrl-V (paste). Using the keyboard instead of the mouse could shave minutes off your working time.

Wanna view a "text" file quickly, but NOTEPAD.EXE isn't set up as a certain file's default viewer? This trick comes in handy for those who edit HTML files. Make a shortcut to NOTEPAD.EXE and then place it in your C:\Windows\SendTo\ Folder. Then, right click on any "text" file and send it to "Notepad". Perfecto.

You might have some AVI files on your hard drive that are just sucking up disk space. Why not do a search for "*.AVI" and see what comes up. If yr computer came with Windows 95 pre-installed, chances are you'll find ~8 Meg worth of space being wasted by "useless" videos. What was Microsoft thinking??

Always want to have a choice about if you boot into Windows 95 or directly to a DOS prompt? Edit yr C:\MSDOS.SYS file and add 'BootGUI=1' (minus the apostrophes) to the [Options] section. Bingo. Make sure you've got the file's properties set so that you can save your changes. Heck, if you download More Properties (URL in the GnomePrograms section), it'll do most of the MSDOS.SYS changes for you!

If there's an ANImated cursor you want to view without opening the associated application, just right click on it, view its properties, and bingo... in the top corner it'll animate for you at a fixed speed!