Italian burger ingenue and MacDonald’s franchise owner, James Delligatti, invented the famous sandwich in 1967, and he has managed to keep the ingredients of the ’secret sauce’ secret all these years.

Ah computers… fun right? Work flawlessly all the time; they are always ticking along in perfect harmony with your world, right?

OK, ok… well, don’t yell at the messenger… jeesh!

Those that know me, know that I dabble… in computers that is. And there are some good things that YOU can use to make your machine a happy go-lucky bit of your day. So hit the “PRINT” button… I will impart a wealth of knowledge…

The good ol’ RIGHT CLICK

Seems that most of the apps we use today have buried secrets that can be easily uncovered by using the right click button. For example, if you right click on the START button, a window opens with a listing of applications (‘apps’) that you can use. One of these apps is “Explorer”. If you haven’t used Explorer, where have you been? In the old days, we used the DIR (short for directory) command to locate and look at the files and information stored on your computer. Explorer is a couple of steps above that old time command. I won’t expand on Explorer, but suffice to say that the “right click” can be used in many ways while you have Explorer open and active.

The idea of the “right click” permeates the application idiom. You may be using an app right now and have never used the right click button of your mouse on some part of the app. Try it. What you will find is that a right click in just the right place will allow you to change the app’s overall look and feel. For those who like photo-play type videos, play one of the videos located here. By right clicking on the video as it plays, you will see a selection that allows you to expand the video to fit “full screen”. Sweet!

No matter what application you have on your Windows desktop, the right click is always a part of the function of the application. The only way to find out what a right click will do (that is if you decide not to read all 1287 pages of the “Windows Applications Secrets and Tips” book) is to just try the right click on some part of the application and see what happens. Just using right click on Windows Explorer application alone could bring up as many as eight (8) different right click boxes.

Does your Explorer window look anything like this? With a couple of right clicks you can customize your views.

Slow Machine? DEFRAG

If you have never done it, DON’T DO IT NOW! But running DEFRAG on your computer can speed up its function. As you use the computer, files get moved in and out of the hard drive. Sometimes a file won’t quite fit in the spot it was taken from, so Windows breaks the file into bits and pieces. It takes time to reassemble those bits and pieces and this is where the DEFRAG function helps out. It grabs all of those bits and pieces and makes them whole again. Complete files means faster load times.

To run the defrag application, you could choose START -> PROGRAMS -> ACCESSORIES -> SYSTEM TOOLS -> DISK DEFRAGMENTER, but there is a better way, and you can set this up once and forget it. Use Windows Scheduler. To do that, several things must happen;

1. The computer must be running
2. Desktop shortcuts are created that can be scheduled
3. You monitor how things run

To defrag a disk drive, the computer has to be on. You know, electronics are funny things. When they are running they warm up and when they are not running they cool down. This “heat-up / cool down” cycle can kill a computer in short order. So, if you use the computer a lot, leave it running. If you plan to use the computer later in the day, leave it on. If you used it heavily one day and need to use it heavily the next day, leave it on. If you PLAN to defragment (or do other system upkeep things, like virus scan) on Wednesday evening/night, leave it on. If you are going on a motorcycle ride for three days, turn it off.

Let’s create the short-cuts. Follow these steps to create the C-drive defrag short-cut.

1. Right click on desktop
2. Select NEW
3. Select Shortcut
4. A window appears asking for the location of the item. Type “defrag c: -f” (without the quotes and include spaces).
5. Click Next
6. Name the shortcut DEFRAG C DRIVE
7. Click FINISH

That’s it… Now all we have to do is tell the SCHEDULER to run it on Wednesday (or any other day you choose).

1. Click START -> Control Panel
2. Double click Scheduled Tasks
3. In the window, double click on Add Scheduled Task
4. The Scheduled Task Wizard starts, click Next
5. You will see a list of applications that you could run, but ours are special, so we click on Browse.
6. Here is Windows Explorer, in the left hand pane click on Desktop
7. Find and click on your new DEFRAG C DRIVE shortcut and click OPEN
8. Type the task name as Defrag C Drive and click on the Weekly radio button
9. A schedule window opens. We correct the time for 3:00 AM. Make sure the “Every 1 weeks” is set and we select Wednesday as the day it will run. Click Next.
10. If you use password and login names you may be presented with a login box. Place you name and login information here then click Next.
11. You are presented with a successful task completion box. That’s it, your done. Click Finish.

You will now see your new task in the Scheduled Tasks window. On Wednesday, while you sleep, the Windows Defragmenter will run, grind away those bit of files and your computer will run faster. As a side note, you may not want to place the Defrag task on the scheduler. However all is not lost. You can also just click the new shortcut icon’s and the Defrag utility will run in the background.

Don’t forget… Clean-out your Recycle Bin and/or close any open applications. This makes the defragment operation work more efficiently (BTW, you can right click on the Recycle Bin icon to empty the Recycle Bin).

Have the right programs

I can’t say this enough. Having the right programs working for your computer can make your day on the computer a wonderful experience. I’ll list some of these applications and discuss them briefly;

Virus scan software

Without a good virus scanning program, you are courting disaster. There are n’er-do-wells (hacks) that prey on unsuspecting computers that access the web or internet. These “hacks” are looking to corrupt your computer, disable it’s abilities or worse yet, steal your personal information. Get a good virus scan package installed and keep it current. It’s worth it’s weight in gold.

E-mail program

You use Microsoft’s Outlook at work. So you use it at home… WRONG! Virus predators and hackers alike know that Outlook is used almost exclusively on Windows machines. If you are at home, use another (read as ‘different’) e-mail program. Your “at work” Outlook stuff is probably being monitored by your IT department and IT guys who speak geek all day long. But who monitors your e-mail while your at home? Changing your e-mail program does a couple of things;

1. It removes the Outlook e-mail program function overhead dramatically (Outlook does a lot of work in the background and your computer speed suffers for it)
2. Keeps the predators and hackers away from your vital information (you aren’t vulnerable if you use something that the hackers aren’t counting on you using)

Just do a search on EMAIL PROGRAMS and the list will be staggering. Me? I’m partial to Eudora. Why? Small footprint, no background “garbage” tasking and text based e-mails (smaller storage size and virus attachments will not run).

Backup your data

If your life is stored on your computer and your computer dies, what happens? It’s kind of like “if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there, does it still make a sound?” WHO CARES! If your computer goes ‘bonk’ in the night and all your pictures, e-mails, dates, documents and important information is on that now dead computer, how usable is all of that important data to you? IT’S NOT! Get a plan in place to backup and/or save your important information. Buy a third party backup program and learn how to use it. Use Microsoft’s built in backup program (START -> PROGRAMS -> ACCESSORIES -> SYSTEM TOOLS – > BACKUP) if you have to. You can also copy all of your important files to an external USB hard drive, network drive, CD-Rom drive… whatever… just get it copied so that you have some information in the event the Tommyknockers come calling to your piece of silicon diodes.

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Wow… that was a lot. For those of you who are still with me, take a breather. I could fill volumes on things I have found out in my over thirty years of playing with this “beefed up calculator” and trust me… some of the lessons were hard learned.

One last bit of advice? Find someone who knows a lot about computers and place him/her on your speed dial. There is nothing better than having a relative (hence the nick-name “Uncle Mark”) or friend who has been inside the box and knows why it goes “bonk” in the night. And yes, I do tech support for my friends as well as my family (just ask my 86 year old mother-in-law about that).

I look at computers very much like I look at a Big Mac. Without the secret sauce, it’s just an overgrown adding machine!

Um… did that make sense?

Did I get fries with that?

Until next week…