It Tips – April Showers

It’s spring! We’re already four months into 2011. Where did the time go? I think all of the excitement generated from these IT Tips has the clocks spinning.

What’s inside:

Tech Section

·         U Should Love your U: Drive!

·         Windows 7 Exclusives

·         More Keyboard Shortcuts

U Should Love your U: Drive!

Most of you have at least heard of it: the U drive. Everyone gets one and it’s a pretty powerful tool. To quote Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, “with great power comes great responsibility”. I’ll have more on that random Spiderman reference in a moment.

The letter U is just that, a letter. In Windows we can map drives to various locations and give them a letter as a reference point. We chose U: because U are special to us.

The U drive is mapped to your own personal little nook on our fileserver. The great part about your U drive is that it’s private, replicated and backed up. That makes it the ideal place for your very important files.

Let’s get back to responsible U drive usage. Unfortunately, the server has a limited amount of space. (I have yet to invent infinite storage hard drives!) We have to be mindful of how much data we put on our U drives. It’s a community space so we need to delete any old files that are no longer need. J

The U drive is very simple to use. It acts like any other form of storage in windows. You can drag and drop or select it from a ‘Save as’ window. Everyone should already have it mapped in ‘My Computer’.  If not, don't panic, I have included mapping instructions in this post.

There are two basic ways to use the U drive. You can open it in a window to drag and drop files:

Windows XP:

Windows 7:

Alternatively, you can choose File -> Save As from an application:

Windows XP:

Windows 7:

Things to note:

·    You MUST be on our network to access your U drive. That means if you’re outside of one of our buildings you will need to be connected to the VPN.

·    Always delete unnecessary files and keep your U drive tidy.

·    If your U drive is not in My Computer please follow these steps to map it:

o   Go to My Computer

o   Click on Tools -> Map Network drive (Windows 7 users can just click Map Network Drive at the top of the My Computer window)

o   Select U: for the Drive Letter

o   Enter \\iredalefs\users\YOUR USERNAME (enter the username you use to log into your computer)

o   Be sure that ‘Reconnect at login’ is checked and click Finish

Windows 7 Exclusives

This section applies mostly to the folks in the field. Windows 7 has some pretty neat features that you may not have noticed. I’m going to overview a few this month.

(To avoid writing “Windows 7” a million times I’m going to refer to it as W7 from this point forward.J)

Pin to Taskbar:

The taskbar has been redesigned for W7 and it’s a wonderful update. The aesthetic changes can be a little scary at first but I assure you it’s great once you get the hang of it. The W7 taskbar is sort of a hybrid of the old “quick launch” menu and the regular taskbar. You can “pin” applications to it and they light up a little to let you know they’re running.

Pinning your favorite applications is a breeze!

·         Find the application you wish to pin (Start bubble -> All Programs)

·         Right click on the application icon

·         Choose “Pin to Taskbar”

The application icon will now appear on your taskbar. No more searching through your desktop to find your important icons.

Snipping tool:

Microsoft has finally improved the screenshot process for Windows 7. They call it the ‘snipping tool’. You might want to pin the snipping tool to your taskbar because it’s pretty cool! It allows you to take a quick and easy screenshot of a selected area. No longer will you have to fumble around with Microsoft Paint to import, crop and save your screenshots.

The snipping tool can be found by clicking the Start bubble (bottom left) -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Snipping Tool.

Once you run the application your screen will fade, your cursor will turn into a cross-hair and you will see this window:

Left-click and drag the mouse to select the area you wish to capture. Upon releasing the mouse button your selected area will automatically be imported into this application:

You can then save or email the image as you please. Play around with it a little; you will like it.

Sticky notes:

Do you love covering your desk in small pieces of adhesive paper? Would you like to also cover your virtual desktop in them? I thought so. That means the W7 sticky notes are your new best friend.

Where to find the Sticky Notes program: Start bubble -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Sticky Notes. This is a good one to pin to your taskbar. (I’ll tell you why in a moment.)

When you run the application you see a little sticky note appear like this:

·    Clicking the + on the top left will create a new note.

·    Clicking the X on the top right will open a promt to delete the note.

·    You can resize your notes by clicking and dragging the bottom right corner.

If you have Sticky Notes pinned to your taskbar you can right click and open a new note quickly:

More Keyboard Shortcuts

This month I’m going to give the Q key’s neighbor and friend some well deserved recognition. I’m talking of course, about the Tab key. Tab is a time saver and here are three ways Tab can work for you:

1.   When filling out a form clicking each field is a hassle. Simply press Tab after you’ve finished with a field and the cursor will jump to the next one.

2.   Pressing Alt + Tab will let you quickly change windows without clicking. Press it once to go back to the last window you viewed. Press and hold Alt while tapping Tab to cycle through your open windows.

3.   If you use a tabbed web browser you can press Ctrl + Tab to cycle through your tabs!

That’s all folks. Have a great April!

-Keith

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