http://www.kitechnologygroup.com/blog/kilobytes/index.php Copyright 2009, Administrator Administrator en-US SPHPBLOG 0.5.1 http://www.kitechnologygroup.com/blog/kilobytes/index.php?entry=entry080821-083441
Almost any list control in Windows, whether it be your Outlook inbox or Windows Explorer, will let you type the first couple of letters in order to focus the selection on the item that matches in the current sorted column. It's not exactly a new technique, but judging from today's experience I felt it was worth sharing.

For instance, in Outlook you can sort your inbox by the "From" header by clicking on it…



Once the "From" column is sorted in alphabetical order you can then start slowly typing the person's name who sent the email to you that you are looking for. For example, you are trying to find a purchase confirmation email from Amazon.com. After you've sorted your inbox by sender (the "From" column) you can start typing in: a..m..a..z, etc... When you do this, Outlook will take you to the lines that contain those letters:



There is also another tip for the Outlook inbox that I have found extremely useful. Often times, you will outgrow your inbox quota. This means that your network administrator has set a maximum size limit that you are allowed to have in your inbox. A consequence of exceeding your mailbox quota is the inability to send email until you create some free space by either deleting email items or archiving. A quick way to free up space in your inbox is to delete or move the largest items.

Just like you sorted by the "From" column, you can also sort by the "Size" column. The problem is you may not have a size column by default so you will have to add it.

First, right-click your mouse anywhere on the column header at the top of your inbox and then left-click on "Field Chooser":



A small window will open up containing all of the possible columns you can add. You will want to scroll down to "Size". Left-Click your mouse on the "Size" box and drag it up to the column header:



Once you see the size column appear, you can close the field chooser window. Simply click on the Size column and your inbox will now be sorted by size. Now, just scroll to the top and you should see the largest email items in order by size:



In email terms, a large email item is anything over 1 MB in size. If you are really over your quota, anything over 500 KB can also be considered large in size.

Note: This will also work for other columns like Subject, or anything that can be sorted in alphabetical order. ]]> Tips & Tricks http://www.kitechnologygroup.com/blog/kilobytes/index.php?entry=entry080821-083441 Administrator Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:34:41 GMT http://www.kitechnologygroup.com/blog/kilobytes/index.php?entry=entry080707-154050
The average computer can consume up to 200 watts of power depending on the tasks being performed and the hardware being used. Ever more power is consumed when higher performance graphics cards and processors are installed into a machine. It isn’t uncommon for a high end machine to consume well over 400 watts of power. Below is a chart detailing the basic computer components and their power consumption in watts.



Luckily for most consumers their current computers offer numerous ways to conserve power. These range from speed stepping the processor, putting the computer into a low power state or even shutting them off and using them only when needed.

Intel and AMD both offer a feature on their processors which is commonly called speed stepping. Speed stepping allows the processor to go into a low power mode when the processor isn’t under heavy load. This is ideal for situations like surfing the internet or checking email. Those tasks require very little processing power. Speed stepping also enables the processor to “step up” when the computer needs to do more intensive tasks like play video games or encode video. This versatility can save power as well as preserve components due to the lower power and temperature. Speed stepping can be enabled in most BIOS configurations. Speed stepping is similar to suspending a computer and only using the bare minimum amount of power.

Suspending a computer is another way to effectively manage power consumption and ultimately power savings. Computers today have multiple power states ranging from completely off to just using enough power to respond to a wake command. Suspending a computer can be done in most versions of Windows. The amount of idle time required for the computer to automatically go to sleep can be adjusted. It is also possible to adjust what devices should be put to sleep. In Windows XP you can access these power management features by going to:

Start > Program Files > Control Panel > Power Options

Once there you can modify the settings to suit your needs. Windows also offers preset schemes to choose from. The drop down menu under Power Schemes at the top lists these options. Each profile uses a different combination of idle times to determine how to suspend the computer and its devices.
You can also configure these settings manually and save them as a custom power profile. The settings you can change are Turn off monitor, Turn off hard disks, System standby and System hibernation.

Turn off monitor allows the monitor to automatically shut off after the computer has been idle for the set amount of time.

Turn off hard disks will power down the hard drives in the computer after the computer has been idle for a specified time. This may increase the amount of time it takes to wake the computer up.

System standby controls when the whole system will go into standby mode. After the idle time has been reached the computer will go into standby mode. This may also further increase the amount of time the computer takes to wake up.

System hibernation effectively saves the current state of the computer and then shuts it down. This is the most power efficient mode, but also the most time consuming mode to return from. Hibernation also requires hard drive space to save the configuration to.

These settings can save a fair amount of energy if used correctly. There are draw backs to suspending computers for the night. The Windows power saving setting is perfect for home users who don’t plan on using the computer during the night. For businesses however, after hours is the best time to run critical system tasks that would otherwise interrupt daily work. This is where Wake On LAN or WOL comes in. WOL is a feature on most modern motherboards. This feature allows computers to be woken up from a suspended state by using a command sent over the local area connection. Once this command is issued the computer receiving the command will wake up and operate as if it were just powered on. WOL configuration requires the computer's networking card to have WOL turned on as well as WOL being enabled on the motherboard. This information can be obtained from most computer manufacturers. Software is also required to send the packet to your sleeping computer.

http://www.wakecomputer.com/WOL/index.aspx offers a free program to send the packets to a computer. There are also a few free online services that will allow users to schedule WOL packets to be sent over the internet.

http://wol.dtools.net/ is just one of the free online based WOL packet senders. A quick search of the internet will turn up many more.

Once WOL is setup on the computer this will allow scripts, updates, virus scans, drive defragmentation and any other task to be run as normal. These tasks can be setup using the Windows Task Scheduler. The task scheduler can be found in:

Start > Program Files > Accessories > System Tools

Once there, it is possible to setup various tasks to run at specific times of day. This will allow critical system tasks to run during non-business hours leaving the computer free for the rest of the day.

Energy Star offers numerous resources for saving energy using the standard power saving features built into most modern computers. The University of Wisconsin conducted a case study examining the benefits of using WOL and other power saving methods.

Using the basic power saving features built into most computers, users can save a fair amount of energy as well as money. This not only save energy and money, but can also prolong the life of the components. As the components consume more energy they generate more heat. Heat inside of a computer case can wear components especially if it isn’t managed properly. Reducing power consumption isn’t just easy on the wallet it is also good for the computer.
]]> Tips & Tricks http://www.kitechnologygroup.com/blog/kilobytes/index.php?entry=entry080707-154050 Administrator Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:40:50 GMT http://www.kitechnologygroup.com/blog/kilobytes/index.php?entry=entry080630-080000
An average thumb drive has a limit to the amount of times you can write to each cell, and while they are a lot better than they used to be, they can be unstable at times. This is true with the first SSD's, but with recent improvements these new drives should last longer than your computer is in service. Some estimate the mechanical drive has about a 3-5 year life, and the estimated life of an SSD is 50+!

While life expectancy is amazing, that's not all SSD brings to the table. One of the biggest improvements over mechanical drives is the speed. The old drives have to spin up and look through the platters for data, while the SSD has almost no "seek" time. Also, the transfer speed of the newest drives are 200MB/s read and 160/MB/s write (average HDD transfer rate is 125MB/s)!

Now the bad news. To get your hands on one of these amazing drives, you can expect to pay a very hefty premium. A 64GB drive will run you approximately $800.00. This makes them unafordable for all but the extreme professional, large corporation, extreme enthusiast, or those with more money than they know what to do with. But the future looks bright for those of us with a normal budget, as the price is expected to drop 50% in 2009, and another 50% in 2010, and I believe it will be even more as we see the drives increase in size. Currently the largest enterprise grade SSD I know of is 1,600GB (1.6 Terabytes[TB]) by BitMICRO, and the largest consumer grade is 256GB by Samsung.]]> Computers, New in Technology http://www.kitechnologygroup.com/blog/kilobytes/index.php?entry=entry080630-080000 Administrator Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:00:00 GMT http://www.kitechnologygroup.com/blog/kilobytes/index.php?entry=entry080624-081511
Links are another thing you have to be careful of, as they open the door for "unwanteds". Now this doesn't mean that every link is going to give you a virus, but be careful of what you click on. I would suggest only downloading from well known sites, as they are your best bet for staying virus free.

The worst place to get viruses is through sharing clients like limewire and bearshare. And what's more, a lot of people don't realize that using these programs to download copywrited material is against the law, and if you are caught you will be prosecuted, and you will pay a very hefty fine. I would suggest staying away from these programs altogether, as they are dangerous to you and your computer.

A best practice would be that if you're unsure of any link, ad, or download then just stay away, because if you get that virus/spyware/adware/Trojan then your computer and all its data is at risk of destruction and/or theft.]]> Computers, Tips & Tricks http://www.kitechnologygroup.com/blog/kilobytes/index.php?entry=entry080624-081511 Administrator Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:15:11 GMT http://www.kitechnologygroup.com/blog/kilobytes/index.php?entry=entry080623-144932
Most software manufacturers place a system requirement on the package that states the operating systems their program works with and a minimum RAM requirement. They fail however to state that they are referring to free or unused RAM not currently allocated by another application.

For example customer "A" has a computer with Windows XP and 256 MB of RAM and the software lists minimum RAM required is 64 MB of RAM. With the demands of WIndows XP, and an Anti-Virus software running, you would be hard pressed to dedicate 64 MB of RAM to any application when the computer only has 256 MB of total RAM.

Also never confuse Hard Drive space with RAM, as they are not the same. The Hard Drive is storage for the file system, installed programs and data; the RAM is the Memory that is utilized by the processor for running applications.

To get the maximum speed from your system make sure you have enough RAM. If you're not sure if you have enough RAM for what you're doing just call the gang at KI Technology Group .]]> Computers, Tips & Tricks http://www.kitechnologygroup.com/blog/kilobytes/index.php?entry=entry080623-144932 Administrator Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:49:32 GMT http://www.kitechnologygroup.com/blog/kilobytes/index.php?entry=entry080617-131831
So, you might ask if there is an alternative to right-clicking. The answer: Yes, there is.

Through many different combinations of keys on your keyboard, there are many tasks which can be done in a fraction of the time it takes to right-click to get the same result. Below are a list of the most common Windows Shortcut Key Combinations, which I also use throughout every day. For a complete list, go to Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows.

You should also know that these shortcuts work in all versions of windows, including Vista.

CTRL+C: Copy
CTRL+X: Cut
CTRL+V: Paste
CTRL+Z: Undo
CTRL+B: Bold
CTRL+U: Underline
CTRL+I: Italic
ALT+TAB: Switch to another running program (hold down the ALT key and then press the TAB key to view the task-switching window)
CTRL+ESC: Opens the Start menu (use the ARROW keys to select an item)
F5: Refreshes the current window. (Works great in Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox!)
CTRL+Z: Undo the last command
CTRL+A: Select all the items in the current window
CTRL+S: Save a document that you are working on (Same as File/Save)
Windows Logo: Start menu
Windows Logo+R: Run dialog box
Windows Logo+M: Minimize all
SHIFT+Windows Logo+M: Undo minimize all
Windows Logo+F1: Help
Windows Logo+E: Windows Explorer
Windows Logo+F: Find files or folders
Windows Logo+D: Minimizes all open windows and displays the desktop

Oh, and welcome to the KI Technology Group Tech Blog!

]]> Computers, Tips & Tricks http://www.kitechnologygroup.com/blog/kilobytes/index.php?entry=entry080617-131831 Administrator Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:18:31 GMT