TNPC Newsletter
by Dan Butler
25 July 2006
Hi
+++—- Check out our Sponsors ———————————+++
Have you thought about starting your own business? Check out my new
book. It will tell you how to start, setup, and get going in a
business of your very own with your own product. I call it Quick and
Effective Internet Business. Give it a look:
http://www.tnpcnewsletter.com/p/quickbiz/
+++————————————————————-+++
This issue has a quick follow up on this month’s drawing, a
reminder of the $20 freebie, and more on customizing your
system.
Still a few days left to enter this month’s drawing for free
stuff. You can find details in the last issue over at the blog:
http://www.tnpcnewsletter.com/blog/
Last issue I mentioned Unwired Buyer. Many of you took advantage
of the free cash. They pay you $20 for trying their free
service. You have to have an active eBay account and live in
either the U.S. or Canada. More information including a video of
how to collect your free money here:
http://www.audioacrobat.com/note/Cc5fbCgQ/
** Start Menu and Desktop Tweaks by Dan Butler
A lot of you are still writing in with ideas about editing the
start menu. Alan Zisman wrote in with this observation:
I enjoyed your item on Taming the Start Menu…
one important thing it left out– which is perhaps
key to Taming the Win2000 and WinXP (though not
Win98/ME) Start Menu… the Start Menu as
displayed actually merges two different Start Menu
lists– one for ‘All Users’ and the other for your
individual login.
Using the techniques you described can often be
unpredictable for that reason… if you right-
click on the Win2000/XP Start button, you’ll see
options to Open (or Explore) All Users, and to
Open (or Explore)– the later opens just the
individual login’s Start Menu items, while the
first ones open the All Users menu items.
It can be confusing– but it can be handy to copy
or move items between the two lists– especially
if their are multiple users of the same PC.
Alan is right and it can be confusing. If you became confused
when reading his note – don’t worry about it. If you are the
only person who logs on to your machine – don’t worry about it.
If you try this and it doesn’t work out for you – don’t worry
about it.
The bottom line is use what works for you. If more than one
person logs on to your machine you might want to think about
which of the two menus you want to edit. Personally I only have
one log on to my machine and I have never tried to keep the two
sets of menus separate. They both appear when I click “Start” so
it is hard to mess things up very much.
Read the last two issues and you will be up to speed on how to
edit your start menu.
Now let’s move on to your organizing your Windows Desktop
Simply put the Desktop is what you see when all of your
applications are minimized. It’s also the top level choice in an
Explorer window and most file selection dialog boxes. Don’t let
this fool you though! The Desktop is really a directory on your
hard drive. In most cases you’ll find it at C:\Document and
Settings\yourusername\Desktop. Replace “yourusername” with the
name you log on with. Anything dropped into this folder will
appear on your Desktop and anything deleted from this folder
will disappear from your Desktop.
Typically you’ll want to use your Desktop to store temporary
items or files that you’ll need quick access to. We find it a
good place to download files to. It’s easy to find the file
after the download and if you need to keep the file you can move
it to a more permanent location. It’s also a good place to leave
a file for someone else on the same computer to look at later.
Being so visible makes it easy to quickly clutter up the Desktop
with files and shortcuts. Many programs install shortcuts to
themselves on your desktop. You can safely delete most of these.
Simply grab the icon with your mouse and drag it directly to the
Recycle Bin.
Remember our tip earlier about dragging objects with your right-
mouse button instead of the left. This applies on the Desktop as
well. It’s a good habit to get into and can keep you out of
trouble when you accidentally drop an object in the wrong spot.
Clean up all the shortcuts that you won’t use.
The next change you want to consider is whether to keep My
Network Places (formerly Network Neighborhood) around. If you
connect to a Windows network to share drives and files you may
want to keep My Network Places around. If you have no idea what
My Network Place does or if you’ll ever need it grab it with
your mouse and drop it on the Recycle Bin.
Whoops! You can’t drag My Network Places to the Recycle Bin.
Windows treats some of these icons as system folders and
prevents you from deleting them. My Network Places is one of
these. To remove My Network Places you can either dive in and
take your chances with the system registry or you can use a
utility to remove it.
First see if you have TweakUI installed. From your Control
Panel look for TweakUI. If you have it, open it, then locate the
Desktop tab. The listing you are seeing is all the folders you
can display on your desktop. Simply uncheck the ones you don’t
want and check the ones you do. Since we started all this to rid
ourselves of My Network Places go ahead and uncheck that then
click OK. Voila – instant nirvana! Well maybe its not that
special but you are taking control of your system.
Note that this does not uninstall My Network Places. You can
still access it from your Control Panel. It only removes the
icon from your Desktop.
Here is a quick change. While you are customizing your desktop
go ahead and rename My Computer. It’s easy – right-click on My
Computer and choose Rename. Type the name you would rather have
and hit Enter.
The other thing you can do with your Desktop is put shortcuts to
your favorite folders or programs on it. Any file you drag onto
one of these icons will be opened or processed by that
application. For instance if you have a shortcut to your printer
on the desktop you can drag a file out of Explorer and onto the
printers shortcut to quickly print the document. By now you know
how to create a printer shortcut:
*** Tip: Put Your Printer on the Desktop ***
- Locate your printer in your Start menu. (Start / Settings / Printers)
- Drag it to the Desktop using your right mouse button.
- Choose Create Shortcut Here from the menu that pops up.
***
Putting Shortcuts to your favorite filing folders lets you
quickly move a document to that location by simply dragging and
dropping the file onto the Shortcut. How do you create a
shortcut to a Folder? The same as you created the printer
shortcut. Locate the Folder, right-drag it to your Desktop,
choose Create Shortcut Here.
That is all for now.
Have a productive week!
–
© 2006 Dan Butler
Dan Butler is the Editor-in-Chief of TNPCNewsletter.com and the
author of the amazing new book that shows you how to save your
identity, get your email read, and put more time into the things
you really enjoy…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tired of fighting identity thieves? Tired of all that junk in
your email box? Want to have your messages seen by the people
that matter? “Tame Your Email” reveals the secrets to taking
control of your inbox while leaving the thieves and spammers
out of sight and out of mind.
http://www.TameYourEmail.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+++———– Recommended Resources ————————+++
Want to finally get your finances under control? I know of a
easy program that can show you how to pay off all your bills,
including your mortgage, in less than 10 years. You won’t
have to pinch pennies, get a second job or cut back your
spending in any way.
http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=128581
+++———————————————————–+++
“How To Get Anything You Want,Starting Today, With 11 Simple
Proven Principles To Living Your Ultimate Life.”
Okay so that is a big claim – and the sales letter reads a little
hypey. But this course is fun and you see real results quickly.
I am sharing it with my family now and we are having fun going
through it together.
http://www.banabu.com/cmd.php?af=391576
+++———————————————————–+++
I use this software all the time to look up personal information
about myself and others. A friend of mine used it to research
the former owners of a property for title purposes. I have used
it for years.
http://zcat.com/qpp/x.php?adminid=8&tid=9
+++———————————————————–+++
Copyright 2006 Dan Butler
All Rights Reserved.
ISSN: 1522-4422
* We never rent, sell, or trade our email list with others. Your
information is safe.
* TNPC RSS feed: www.aweber.com/z/rss/?tnpcnewsletter
* The TNPC Blog: http://www.TNPCnewsletter.com/blog/
* Free Technical Help: http://TNPCnewsletter.com/discuss/
* To subscribe to TNPC: http://www.TNPCnewsletter.com/
* Visit the TNPC Store: http://www.TNPCStore.com/
