The US Inside Office Online blog recently published some great tips in you’re considering upgrading to Windows 7. Read first and you can’t go far wrong :).
Phew, I sat down at my desk this morning and breathed a sigh of relief, after last weeks slightly stressful back to school shopping trips. You may be familiar with the drill - dragging reluctant children around the shops and asking myself why I always leave it so late to buy everything! The shops have run out of school shirts the right colour and my 11yr old is looking sullen-faced at the remaining stock in his size the local shoe shop…
However, after a little persistence, persuasion and a few well-timed treats everything on the list has been bought. The boys have now been dispatched, complete with new haircuts, bags and shiny shoes - probably shiny for the last time this term.
Now, if previous years are anything to go by, I reckon I’ve now got about a week before the homework starts to pile up, half the contents of the pencil cases has been lost and the library has run out of books on this terms topic. So, this year I’m making a stand for parents (no self-interest there then ;-)) - scouring Office Online and beyond for resources which may help me and them manage the remainder of the term. I hope you find them useful and if you have any tips of your own – please share!!
Start with a template
Save time with pre-designed templates which you can save onto your PC and then use to easily create documents to suit your needs. Office Online has a huge selection – search the template database or take a look at these…
- Customise and print out 2009-2010 academic calendars for you or the kids, to keep track of activities or to use as homework planners.
- This backdoor bulletin board is a useful (and imaginative) project to bring together all your household info and notes. Get the kids to help put it together and maybe they’ll remember where their homework timetable is.. or is that just wishful thinking?!
- Use a weekly meal planner to get organised and save money… and more importantly, stop that too familiar ‘what are we going to have for tea?!!’ panic.
- PTA committee members may find some useful poster templates here. Some designs are a little US-centric but as they are templates they can all be customised to make them more suitable for the UK if needed.
- Lots more useful links on our Parents page.
Homework heaven
Here’s a couple of websites which could be a help with the homework (and are open more often than the local library)
- A new BBC Schools portal has brought together the enormous range of BBC online resources for both kids and parents. Definitely worth spending some time browsing – the site is divided into Primary and Secondary resources and you can browse by subject or site. There’s also an extensive parent’s section which looks like it could be very helpful in getting to grips with the Key Stage structure and associated jargon.
- Wikipedia is always one of the top sites found if your kids are using a search engine to get background info for their project. The good news is that it’s surprisingly accurate – although it’s always worth getting them to double-check any facts picked up on the internet!
- Top Marks is an educational search engine bookmarking a wealth of resources. Browse by subject and age group. There’s also a parent’s section with tips on supporting your child with learning and school.
- Although I am a little biased, I do love Bing! The gorgeous backgrounds change every day, often giving a lovely little insight into an unexpected corner of the world. Oh and it does actually bring back some pretty good search results too!!
Buying a new PC?
With more than 500 million Office customers around the world, the programs need to be available in whichever language our customers want to speak. So, the latest version of Office – Office 2007 - comes in over 80 languages:
You can buy the full version of Office 2007 in these 38 languages:
| Arabic | German | Portuguese |
| Bulgarian | Greek | Portuguese (Brazil) |
| Chinese (Pan-Chinese) | Hebrew | Romanian |
| Chinese (Simplified) | Hindi | Russian |
| Chinese (Traditional) | Hungarian | Serbian |
| Croatian | Italian | Slovak |
| Czech | Japanese | Slovenian |
| Danish | Kazakh | Spanish |
| Dutch | Korean | Swedish |
| English | Latvian | Thai |
| Estonian | Lithuaniun | Turkish |
| Finnish | Norwegian | Ukrainian |
| French | Polish | |
You can also purchase Office Language Packs to add more languages.
If the language you're looking for isn't on that list, you can download a free Language Interface Pack (LIP) for 42 more languages if you already have Office 2003 or 2007 installed. The LIP works for Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word, and acts as a "skin" that sits on top of Office.
Language interface packs (LIPs) are available in these 42 languages (for Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word)
| Afrikaans | Gujarati | Nepali |
| Albanian | Icelandic | Norwegian Nynorsk |
| Alsatian | Inuktitut | Oriya |
| Armenian | Indonesian | Pashto |
| Assamese | Irish | Punjabi |
| Azeri | IsiZulu | Romansh |
| Basque | Kannada | Serbian / српски |
| Bengali (India) | Konkani | Tatar |
| Bosnian (Cyrillic) | Kyrgyz | Tamil |
| Bosnian Latin | Luxembourgish | Teluga |
| Catalan | Macedonian (FYROM) | Vietnamese |
| Farsi | Malayalam | Uzbek |
| Filipino | Malay Brunei | Welsh |
| Galician | Malay Malaysia | |
| Georgian | Marathi | |
Later in 2009 we’ll be adding more languages to our Office Language Interface Pack program. We’ll let you know the minute they're available right here on this blog.
Here's more info about using Office in different languages:
PS: If you don’t already have Office 2007, you can buy it online or try it out for free.
-- Dearbhla (International Product Planner)
Have you ever lost a memory stick, had a laptop stolen or suffered a hard-drive failure? Yep – it’s likely the the answer is ‘yes’. An easy way to back up important files is to use an internet-based storage system like Office Live Workspace. You can back up your valuable documents to the web and then securely access them from any internet connected computer. That’s a PC or Mac running Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari.
And if you were wondering what happens to all those lost memory sticks… take a look at the video from one of the links below :)
I recently heard about an extremely useful add-in for Outlook 2007 from National Rail Enquiries, which allows you to plan and add train journey details to your Outlook appointments. Great idea and it’s really nicely put together too :). The screenshots below show how it works in Outlook 2007, but there’s also a version for Outlook 2003.
First of all you just download the plug-in from the National Rail Enquiries web site.
Once you’ve installed the plug-in you get an extra ‘Journey Planner’ button in all your appointments.
Clicking the Journey Planner button opens a dialogue box where you can specify you’re departure and arrival destinations, including default settings for work and home. You can then view details to select the journey which best suit your needs.
Once you’ve selected your journey appointments are created in your Outlook calendar which even have reminders set to the appropriate time, so you leave enough time to make it to the station!
The appt itself has all the detail of your journey, including links to the live departure board, so you track any delays. You can also set up SMS alerts for the journey.
All in all, a really nicely designed little application, which I know I’ll be making good use of very soon. Give it a go and let me know if it works for you!
[The second guest post from Dave Wascha.]
In the last post I talked about the pitfall of confusing activity with impact and why you should stop doing mail. Today I want to discuss why you should stop going to meetings. Before we get started, try the following exercise:
1. Print out your calendar from last week.
2. Circle all the meetings you attended that were not directly relevant to executing your objectives.
3. Add up the number of hours of those circled meetings and work out how much money that has cost the company you work for.
4. If you’ve recently thought that you work too much or don’t have enough time for your friends, family or hobbies – consider that you are responsible for wasting time in meetings that you could have spent doing more important things inside and outside of work.
Meetings are the antithesis of progress
Most of the meetings you get invited to are probably a waste of your time. I’ve observed that far too many people regularly waste the time of others by inviting them to meetings that aren’t relevant, aren’t necessary, or where the purpose of the meeting isn't even clear. What confounds me even more however is that despite the meeting being irrelevant, unnecessary or without clear purpose people still accept the invitations and attend the meetings! Just like with email, it’s easy to succumb to the illusion that by attending all these meetings you’re being productive and moving the business forward. Just like with email we have this fear that if we don’t go to every meeting we get invited to we’ll somehow miss something crucial to our jobs or be out of the loop. And just like with email, people will waste your time with meetings that aren’t relevant to you if you let them.
My approach to meeting requests is this:
- Just like with mail I have a list of people whose meetings I don’t attend because they are time wasters.
- I’m biased towards declining a meeting if the meeting isn’t relevant to the execution of my objectives.
- If the purpose of the meeting isn’t clear in the meeting request I ask the organiser for clarity. If I don’t get a response I don’t go to the meeting.
- If I find myself in a meeting and it becomes clear that it isn’t relevant I will leave the meeting.
When they’re big, they’re not clever
In most cases, the likelihood that a meeting is directly relevant to you achieving your objectives is inversely proportional to the number of attendees. Be sceptical of any meeting with more than 5 attendees on the invite list.
Even if a meeting is relevant and the purpose is clear it is likely that the meeting isn’t as efficient as it could be. Most meetings are scheduled to be an hour in length. In my experience any meeting scheduled for one hour can be held in 30 minutes and achieve the same results. If I get a 1:1 meeting request for an hour, I respond by suggesting we shorten to 30 minutes or telling the person I only have 30 minutes for the meeting. Like gas molecules and preparing for executive reviews, meetings will take up exactly as much time and space as you allot for them. When you get a meeting request, respond by suggesting you do the meeting in half the time. You can usually achieve this if everyone agrees and is clear on the purpose of the meetings.
Spot the difference
There are generally three types of meetings each with a different purpose:
- Decision making meetings
- Information sharing meetings
- Working meetings
Decision making meetings
For these to be successful you need 3 things:
- To be clear on what decision is being made
- To be clear on who is making the decision and that the decision maker will be present
- To ensure that stakeholders and reviewers are represented in the meeting
If you don’t have those three things, cancel the meeting.
Information sharing meetings
Perhaps the biggest culprits when it comes to wasting time, these ever expanding information sharing/project management meetings have evolved more into a (usually large) group of people sitting around a table doing email and listening occasionally (if you’re lucky). If you find yourself spending all your time in a meeting doing email and not paying attention, stop going to the meeting. If you find that a meeting you are holding becomes a room filled with people doing email, consider whether or not you should be holding the meeting. There are better ways to share information with colleagues, and if you’re looking to gather information, consider having more individual meetings.
Working meetings
Scheduling meetings for a group of people to collaborate is a good thing. I’m a huge fan of these kinds of meetings as long as people are really present (not doing email), you’re clear what you’re working on and you know what you want to achieve within the meeting.
As soon as people stop listening and start doing something else (like email) then you know the meeting isn’t working. You can force people to attend, you can ban laptops, mobile phones and all other external distractions, but if a meeting isn’t keeping people’s attention then it’s a lost cause. You’d be better off cancelling the meeting and figuring out what you really need to achieve – and chances are it’s not a meeting.
[Want a second opinion? Best Buy has taken an extreme view of meetings and other corporate artifacts known to be time wasters by formally getting rid of meetings.]
Key takeaways:
1. Attending meetings does not mean you’re making progress towards your objectives.
2. Keep meetings small – in number of attendees and time scheduled. (If you can’t get used to 30 minute meetings, try 45 minutes instead.)
3. Don’t be afraid to say no to irrelevant meetings.
4. If you’re running a meeting, think about what you want to accomplish in advance and decide if having a meeting is the best way to achieve this.
Students, if you have a valid .ac email address you can get an all-singing, all-dancing version of Office 2007, including Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Publisher, Groove and Infopath 2007 for just £38.95. The ERP on Office Ultimate 2007 is £599.99 so this is a whopping 91% discount off the standard price and gives you pretty much every application you’re going to need to get you through Uni.
*The offer ends on 30th June 2009 so click quickly!*
One of my interests/challenges/obsessions at work is personal productivity. How can you get everything you need to do done and still get home at a reasonable hour? Can you get a work/home balance that doesn’t require regular sacrifices -- on either side? And what’s the secret to defeating Parkinson’s Law?
With these ongoing questions at the back of my mind, I was struck when I came across a series of articles by a colleague, Dave Wascha, that outlined practical steps to master your workload and maximise your effectiveness – without turning you into a jobsworth. Over to Dave…
Stop doing email
Every time I hear someone talk about how much email they got through yesterday, or how many emails they have in their inbox it drives me absolutely crazy. How many times a day do you hear others talk about how much email they do? How often do you talk about how much you do? We don’t pay people to do email; we pay people to drive business impact. One of the most common patterns I’ve observed in my time working is that people too often confuse the two. People confuse activity with driving business impact.
There are two common activities that we often confuse with impact: doing mail, and going to meetings.
Email is not progress
One pitfall I’ve fallen into and witnessed again and again with others is when we aren’t clear on our goals or how we add value, when we’re not feeling empowered or motivated, or when we simply don’t know what to do next, then email is something tangible we can do to delude ourselves that we’re making progress. It’s very alluring. You can (and probably do) spend hours processing hundreds of emails, deleting, filing, responding, watching your inbox shrink, reacting to new mails coming in etc. and when you’re done you can say, “Wow, I got through 800 mails!” It feels like you’ve accomplished something.
But even if we’re focused and clear about our objectives, we are haunted by our inboxes. We open up the inbox in the morning, see that we already have 40 new emails and it’s only 7:30am and we look at our calendars and see that we have meetings all day and there’s no way we’re going to get through it all and we feel overwhelmed by it. As good conscientious employees we feel compelled to read and respond to every single email we get. We must let go of this notion. Doing mail can be largely a waste of time. I know because I stopped doing mail six years ago. Well…mostly.
In 2003 I found myself spending more and more time doing mail and yet as hard as I tried I was never able to keep up. Inevitably I’d have to work on two or three Saturdays a month and spend the day “catching up on mail” and cleaning out my inbox. I found this unwinnable battle very demoralizing. I got around 12,000 emails in 2003. If you assume an average of 2 minutes (which is probably low) reading and/or responding to all 12,000 of these mails it roughly equates to spending 9-10 hours a week doing mail. I was spending all this time doing mail and yet I was getting further behind in what I was actually supposed to be doing against my objectives. I felt caught in this ever increasing loop of mail, mail and more mail and it wasn’t helping me actually get my job done.
The black list
On one of those Saturdays as I was sitting at my desk catching up on mail I decided to conduct an experiment. I set out to discover just how little mail I could read and respond to and still achieve my objectives and drive the business forward. I started by deciding that I wouldn’t read any mail from certain people who tended to send me a lot of mail that wasn’t relevant to my job, or my objectives. I made a list of those people and built rules in Outlook to delete mail from them automatically (I maintain such a list today). People are always shocked when I tell them I do this. This reduced my incoming mail rate by about 5-10%. I was encouraged. I was buying back time through deleting irrelevant mail without reading it. I then took a pretty big leap and stole a rule from a colleague which was to delete all mails where I was on the CC line without reading them. This one made me nervous because I thought surely I was going to miss out on lots of important information and be out of the loop on crucial goings on. My incoming mail rate immediately dropped by another 40%. When I tell people this they immediately ask, “How long did that last before things started to get dropped?” But interestingly enough little if anything got dropped. Most people are terrible about how much thought they put into who goes on the CC line. In fact they tend to err on the side of sending mail more broadly than necessary. If the only exposure you have to some idea or piece of information is through being copied on a mail about it, how crucial can it really be to doing your job? Anyway, through these two simple steps I reduced my incoming mail rate by half and it was having no negative impact on my ability to do my job. In fact was spending less time on mail, hours less, and I was increasing the time I had to spend on driving the business forward.
I started to get addicted to deleting mail. Through trial and error I continued to build rules in Outlook to whittle and pair and trim mail that wasn’t directly relevant to me driving business impact. Anything that wasn’t directly relevant to the daily execution of my job got deleted or moved to a folder before I read it.
It’s good to talk
I continued to scan and analyze my inbox for patterns or trends that would allow me to cut even more. I began to notice that a significant portion of the mail in my inbox at that point were responses to mails that I’d sent other people. Furthermore I also noticed that the more people I put on the TO: line and the CC: line the more responses I got back. This of course seems obvious, but it led me to experiment with further refinements to my system. I made a list of the people I most often sent mail to. For six years I’ve made this list in every role I’ve had and it has always been the case that I send the bulk of my mail to 5 or 6 people. I then made sure that I have frequent, short meetings with those people, and I started to choose the phone as the primary communications channel in the absence of an in-person meeting. One 3 minute phone call or ten minute meeting often saved a thread of dozens of back and forth emails and hours spent conversing in mail. So, in addition to cutting back on the amount of mail I received, I also started to cut back on the amount of mail I sent. I sent fewer mails and I sent them to fewer people.
When you go through this refinement process you’re left with a handful of mails from the 5-7 most crucial people for you to be in touch with on the 3-4 things that are most important to your job. In fact, those 3-4 things should map directly to your objectives. If they don’t your system is flawed.
In all but a few circumstances email is not the best way to communicate with people. Additionally I believe most of the email we get is not directly relevant to doing our jobs. Email is a tool to get a job done and yet for many of us it has become our job. I got over twenty thousand emails last year and I deleted nearly 70% of them without reading them. Of those I did read I responded to fewer than half. If you spend a ridiculous amount of time doing email you are likely doing it at the expense of driving business impact and your own work/life balance. I’m ruthless about deleting mail and I don’t apologize for it. Only very, very rarely do I actually miss something that was pretty important.
Don’t confuse reading or writing email with driving business impact. I don’t get paid to do mail and neither do you.
Key Takeaways:
- Don’t confuse activity like doing email with making progress on driving the business forward
- Most of the email you get is not crucial to doing your job
- Create a system for identifying irrelevant (or less relevant) mail and delete as much as possible without reading it
- Send less mail and send it to fewer people
- Choose the phone, instant messenger or short, in-person meetings instead of email whenever possible
- Use the time you save doing steps 1-5 to make focused progress on driving the business forward
I wanted to share this article which my colleague in Mexico, Adriana, recently published. Hope you find it useful :). Thanks Adriana!
First things first: Everything you need to know about installing Office 2007 on your netbook
Most netbooks come with a free 60-day trial of Office 2007 pre-installed, so if you want to try Office 2007 before you buy, you can activate the trial by double-clicking the ’60-day trial’ icon on the desktop.
When you decide to buy, you simply convert the pre-installed trial by following the links you will receive in follow-up emails. Alternatively, you can buy a boxed copy of your chosen Office suite from a local or online retailer. You just enter the product key that comes with the box to convert the trial to a fully licensed version.
Not all netbooks have a CD/DVD drive. If yours doesn’t, don’t worry, you can buy and download a copy of Office 2007 from Microsoft Store. You can also download the Office trial from Office Online.
Performance
You do need to take into account the capacity and technical specification of your netbook. The netbook I tested had 512Mb RAM memory and 60GB hard drive. The ‘official’ minimum specification for Office 2007 is here. I installed Office Home and Student 2007.
Overall the experience with Office 2007 was good, and the applications all functioned well. After a few days of testing, the only slowness I noticed was when I has several applications with several windows each running, so it’s a good idea to remember to save and close documents as you go (a good habit anyway!).
The best thing come in small packages
Netbooks are - by their nature - smaller than standard laptops. This is great for portability but also means you might want to adopt a couple of tricks to make the most of the smaller screen area.
Zoom is your friend
Use the zoom function to view a smaller amount of your document at one time, for easier editing. You can also save zoom settings to suit your preferences.
Minimise the Office menu (Ribbon)
This function gives you a larger working area. To minimise or reset the menu (ribbon) just press Ctrl+F1.
You can also save time by becoming familiar with the Quick Access Toolbar
Save documents online and save space on your PC
Office Live Workspace is your No. 1 ally here. Don’t clog up your hard drive with documents and photos. Set up an Office Live Workspace instead. You can upload all your files so you can access them anytime over the internet, whether you’re using your netbook, work PC or an internet café on holiday. You can also choose to give access to some areas of your workspace, so friends or colleagues can download, edit and upload documents too.
What are you waiting for?
After you’ve installed Office 2007 on your netbook, visit our training portal to learn everything you need to get started with Office 2007, completely free, with our interactive training courses. If it’s the first time you’ve used Microsoft Office programs, don’t worry, I have something for you too. Learn how to take the first steps with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook 2007 here.
If you’re using Office 2007 and want to keep your computer completely secure and performing at it’s best - and I know you do - head to the links below, where you can find out about and download Service Pack 2 (SP2). If you have your PC configured to download updates automatically (Control Panel / System & Security / Windows Update), you will get this update automatically after around 90 days. However you can get the benefits straight away by installing the update early from Windows Update on your PC or by following the links below.
What are the improvements?
Faster email management in Outlook 2007
According to expert & blogger Gray Knowlton ‘One of the most important end user benefits of the SP2 release is the improvement in Outlook performance.’. Amen to that I say – anything that speeds up managing my email is a definite plus :). Improvements include:
- Faster and more predictable startup & shutdown
- Better folder view & switching
- Improved calendar reliability
- Reduction in number of data file check error messages
‘Save as PDF and XPS’ added to ‘Save As’ options
If you haven’t already downloaded this feature you’ll find it installed as part of the SP2 update. Saving as PDF or XPS keeps your formatting intact and secure so you can ensure your documents are seen exactly as you intended. So, very handy if you have official docs to email or complex creations to send to the printer.
Save as ODF 1.1
This feature should help if you have friends or colleagues using other types of office software. Basically, it allows you to save your Office 2007 docs in a shareable format which is easily read by most types of office software.
Next steps
· Where can I download SP2? – You can pop up to Microsoft Update and install the bits
· Where can I learn about what is in SP2? – Here
· Is this an Automatic Update? – Not yet. For the first 90 days (at least the first 90), service packs are made available as a manual download. After 90 days and with a 30 day notice, Service Packs are offered through the Automatic Update channel as a critical update.
Want even more info
More detailed overview of the Office 2007 Service Pack 2 can be found on Gray Knowlton’s Gray Matter blog – from which most of this info in lovingly cribbed. Thanks Gary!
Boot up your computer with lightning speed with these nine tips from two Windows gurus.
Last week, my Dell Latitude D830 laptop running Windows Vista booted up in one long minute. Today, thanks to some tinkering, it boots up in 22 seconds. With that, I joined the 35 percent club.
Why 35 percent? Data from the Customer Experience Improvement Program shows that about 35 percent of Windows Vista SP1 systems boot in 30 seconds or less. With a little patience and willingness to tinker with your system, you can join the club, too.
Whether you’re running Windows Vista or you’re running the Windows 7 beta, we tracked down two true Windows Gurus, Bill Karagounis and Erik Lustig, who recommend these nine tips for speeding up your Windows boot time.
1. Slim Down Your Startup Group
Do you really need all those groovy gadgets to launch when you boot up?
“To be quite honest, Windows Sidebar can take quite a long time to start up,” Karagounis said. So think about slimming down your set of startup applications.
Click the Start button, type msconfig in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER to open the System Configuration dialog box. Click the Startup tab to see what applications are configured to launch at startup. Remember—you’re not removing the actual applications; you’re preventing them from launching when you boot up, and you can re-enable them if you need to. For example, I disabled Windows Sidebar, Adobe Acrobat, and Java platform functionality.
It is also a bad idea to have Outlook in your startup group. If you want a better overall startup experience, launch Outlook when you get to your desktop.
2. Update Your Drivers
Windows Update can help keep your drivers up to date. There can be a lag time, however, between the release of a Windows update and the release of a manufacturer’s driver update. If you’re keen to improve your boot time, consider an automatic or manual update.
John Swenson, a writer in the Windows group, demonstrates how to find drivers to make your hardware run lightning fast. Watch this video demo to learn how to set up Windows Update to automatically find and install missing or updated software drivers for your hardware.
3. Update Your BIOS
The BIOS (“basic input output systems”) is the set of essential software routines that test hardware at startup, start the operating system, and support the transfer of data among hardware devices.
“Some BIOS take two seconds, some take five to ten seconds,” Lustig said. “The overall end-to-end boot time can be affected by the overall BIOS. Ask your local techy to update your BIOS.”
4. Update Your Antivirus Software
The status of your antivirus software is typically displayed in Windows Security Center.
To open Windows Security Center, click the Start button, click Control Panel, click Security, and then click Security Center. Click Malware protection. If Windows can detect your antivirus software, it will be listed under Virus protection. If your software needs to be updated, click Update now.
5. Update Your Antimalware Software
If you don’t use scheduled scans or if you don’t get updates automatically, you should check for new definitions at least once a week. To help protect your computer, Windows Defender will notify you if your definitions are out of date for more than seven days.
To open Windows Defender, click the Start button, click All Programs, and then click Windows Defender. Click the arrow next to the Help button, and then click Check for Updates. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
6. Don’t Double Up on Antivirus Programs
“We’ve seen systems with multiple antivirus programs running at the same time; this is a really bad idea,” Karagounis said. If it’s a speedy boot time you crave, don’t run more than one antivirus or antimalware program.
7. Periodically Defrag
How often do you defrag? “In our experience, it doesn’t run often enough,” Karagounis said. He advises analyzing and defragmenting disks every two to four weeks.
To run the Disk Defragmenter, click the Start button, type Defrag in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
8. Lose the Bloat on Your Machine
“Don’t install lots of likely unnecessary software just because it might look cool or be fun,” Lustig said. (One example: iTunes.)
9. Use Sleep and Resume
Windows lets you put your computer into an energy-saving mode called “sleep.” Why is this a good idea?
Booting up is hard on your machine. “Telemetry—automated, real-world feedback from consumers—tells us that sleep and resume cycles produce fewer errors and hangs than shutting down and rebooting,” Lustig said.
Using “sleep and resume” is not only easier on your system, but faster, too. The typical machine with good drivers can wake from slumber in two to five seconds.
“The vast majority of the time, I will use sleep. I tend to only use shutdown when I need to install an update that requires a restart,” Karagounis said.
To put your computer to sleep, press the power button, click the Sleep button on the Windows start menu, or, if you have a laptop, simply close the lid. Watch this short video demo to see how it’s done.
On most computers, you can resume working by pressing the power button. However, not all computers are the same. You may be able to wake your computer by pressing any key on the keyboard, clicking a mouse button, or opening the lid on a laptop.
Credit to Robin Dalmas for this useful article. I hope it helps you be a ‘Fast’ PC!
Best wishes,
Phil
This month, I’ve got an absolutely stunning offer for you all. Until April 20th, you can get Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 for just £59.99 – a massive saving on the usual price.
Microsoft Office 2007 has got brand new functionality and a clever new interface that helps you create work that stands out more than ever before. Know students in school or university? Give them an Easter egg that will help them get their work from an A to an A+. Managing you personal life? See how the new tools like OneNote 2007 that help you make it easier than ever before. Click here to find out more, but remember, you’ve only got until April 20th so be quick!
Phil
The school holidays are upon us again, so here’s a couple of Easter projects to keep the kids occupied, without breaking the bank. It’s easy to find Easter craft themes and you can get hold of craft supplies such as coloured feathers, pom-poms and googly eyes easily and cheaply at local stationary suppliers. Time to get out that glitter and glue again!
Make an Easter basket
Turn an old ice-cream or yoghurt tub into an Easter basket. Cover with wrapping or craft paper and make a handle with ribbon or old fabric. To decorate, the kids can print out and colour in Easter clip art, and stick on sequins, feathers and coloured paper shapes. Line with shredded paper or coloured tissue and voila, a magnificent Easter basket ready to fill with Easter goodies. Use for an Easter egg hunt or fill with home-made biscuits or treats for a thoughtful present for relations.
Soup up Easter lunch
Make Easter lunch extra egg-citing (sorry) for the kids with a special Easter menu and place cards for each visitor. Stick the place cards to thin card for extra strength. If they’re feeling more adventurous start with one of the basic place card templates and enhance with Easter clip art, pens, craft feathers and lots of imagination.
Let me know if you have any more!
We’re surrounded by messages about being eco-friendly and chances are you do your bit at home. You probably recycle as much as you can, you may use non-toxic cleaning products and be as sustainable as you feel you can be.
But when it comes to working, it can feel more difficult to achieve the level of green-ness we’d like. There may be people around you who are cynical about green business – considering it a fad instead of a real, global problem.
Maybe the answer is: start small and do what you can to reuse, reduce and recycle. In this article we’re looking at ways Microsoft Office products can help you work smarter and greener.
The obvious place to start is with paper. Did you know that 115 billion sheets of paper a year are used for PC printers? (Source: ID2 communciations)
The simple solution is to print on both sides of the paper before it’s recycled. On some printers duplex printing is automatic; with others you may have to set it up manually. If your printers don’t support this function maybe it’s time to consider an upgrade! Find out how to duplex print in Word 2007.
As well as paper, it’s alarming how much ink you can use in daily work life. And there’s only so much shaking the ink cartridge will take before you really do have to replace it. Some enterprising Dutch designers have come up with ecofont – a new sans serif font which they claim uses up to 20% less ink. It’s free to download and use, so why not give it a go?
You may be saying at this point – this is all well and good, but I do have to print out documents to read them properly. It’s true that reading on screen can be slower and more difficult on the eyes. But if you’ve haven’t tried it yet, turn on Full Screen View in Word 2007. It optimises the full screen for reading; you can read your document as it would appear in printed format, and you can quickly jump to particular sections to edit as you go, highlighting and tracking changes. There’s also the advantage of being able to view the document as a piece, which can be more satisfying than shuffling handfuls of paper!
If you produce formal documents which have to be signed off, you can still save paper by using digital signatures in Office 2007 programs. Using computer cryptography, digital IDs ensure the document is authenticated and valid, and turn it into a read-only file once it’s been digitally signed.
Word and Excel 2007 allow you to insert actual signature lines in documents and workbooks which can be sent for digital sign-off. A macro project in Office 2007 can also be digitally signed for security purposes.
On the theme of reuse, do you find yourself recreating the same bits of content in your Word 2007 documents? Either you cut and paste from previous documents, or – horror of horrors – you actually re-key the same information time after time. With Word 2007 you don’t need to. Instead you can use building blocks – pieces of content that you designate, keep in a library and access each time you need them. Whether you use a piece of boilerplate text, a legal disclaimer or a standard opening paragraph, using building blocks will save you time and energy, and allow you to be more productive. Watch this demo and see how you can reuse your work and create great-looking documents.
When you’re working with a group of colleagues in different locations, it can be fun. It can also be messy and wasteful. Everyone has their own store of material for the project, stashed in their PC, and it can be a nightmare to keep track of who’s doing what, when and why. The answer to this confusion is Microsoft Office OneNote 2007.
Using a shared OneNote notebook you’ll literally all be on the same page. You can set up team members with one place where you can all go to review your project, maintain up to date information and work together wherever you are. As well as keeping documents, workbooks and email in your notebook, you can also store screen clippings, audio and video. OneNote keeps everything synched up, so there are no worries about overwriting or version control.
Read Michael Oldenburg’s article and find out why he calls OneNote the ‘Swiss army knife of the Microsoft Office family’!
One area where you may feel you just can’t cut down on resources is looking after your customers or partners. After all, they’re the reason you’re in business – right? Of course, but why not go one step further and create an exclusive, secure workspace where you can interact with them, give them your latest product or service information and even invite them to the pub? They’ll be able to access it whenever it suits them and you’ll be improving your reputation and building loyalty.
Microsoft Office Live Workspace Beta gives you the opportunity to create an online space for you and anyone your organisation works with to come and develop ideas, work together on projects and share information. You’ll be able to reduce mailings, and keep better track of what’s going on in the business. Best of all it’s FREE – and easy to implement. Have a look at why an Office Live Workspace could benefit you and your customers, and then set up your workspace.
If the cynics are still unconvinced, Hilary Bromberg says: ‘Sustainability is not a fad or a trend. It's a seismic cultural shift, and it's here to stay.’
Bernard: You only need to know things on a need to know basis.
Humphrey: I need to know everything. How else can I judge whether or not I need to know it?
[from Man Overboard, December 1987]
Yes (Prime) Minister was one of my favourite TV series, but it’s a little bit scary how often you come across similar scenarios in “real” life! Like looking for help and how-to articles…
You know you can’t do something but unless you know what it’s called, you can’t find the instructions. So you stay stuck.
Well, we’re piloting an alternative to searching aimlessly for answers to Microsoft Office questions. Meet Agent Office!
Using either Windows Live Communicator or Office Communicator, start a chat conversation with “help2007@live.co.uk”. (Agent Office is just fresh out of training, so if you come across any glitches, it would be great if you could let her know.)
Agent Office is only available to chat, so please don't email her as she won't be able to reply.
