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Vol. 6, No. 37
9-7-06
1 Word housecleaning
2 RIP Crocodile Hunter
3 DRM patch, Apple dual core, AMD dual core, RIAA being obvious
4 Screen savers
5 OS X partition resizing/defragging
The last tip in our cleanup series is quick and easy and, depending on how often you use Microsoft Word, could free up several megabytes of hard drive space.
Word has a built in data recovery feature called AutoRecover. As you type documents the changes are saved to a temporary file, usually in the My Documents folder. By default your documents are automatically saved every 10 minutes and, if the program hangs or the power fails, Word will offer to recover the document the next time you start it.
This is a very useful tool and can save you hours of work if you live in an area prone to power fluctuations or have a less than stable Windows load, but it can also lead to clutter and wasted space after your documents are named and saved to the hard drive or removable media.
To remove these files open My Documents and click on Tools from the text menu at the top (View in Windows 98 and ME) and click Folder Options. Click the View tab and verify that Show hidden files and folders is ticked and the box next to Hide extensions for known file types is unchecked. Apply and OK if you made any changes and you’ll be back to the My Documents contents.
Look for files whose names begin with a tilde (~) and end in .doc or .tmp. It’s safe to delete all such files. Empty the Recycle Bin and you’ll have freed up quite a bit of space when coupled with the tips from the last two issues.
Once you’ve removed any significant number of files it’s usually a good idea to defragment the hard drive to consolidate the exiting files and prevent slowdowns in the future.
Click on Start and scroll to Programs or All Programs, then Accessories and System Tools and click on Disk Defragmenter, choose drive C: and click Defrag. In 98 and ME you’ll likely need to run Defrag in Safe Mode to avoid interference from other programs.
Depending on the amount of fragmentation this could take a while so you may want to start the process before bedtime and let it run overnight. Once finished restart the PC and you’ll have a leaner, faster cleaner PC.
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
Microsoft shows where its priorities lie by issuing patch to fix “vulnerability” in WiMP that allows hack to strip DRM from files within three days. Critical security holes? Patched once a month…
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71738-0.html?tw=rss.index
Apple iMacs, now with Intel Core 2 Duo goodness:
http://www.varbusiness.com/sections/news/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=192503702
Not to be outdone, AMD next week will introduce its dual core Athlon 64 X2 5200+ for the new AM2 socket:
In a shocking development, RIAA fights move by victim …err, plaintiff, to have hard drive allegedly containing pirated music examined by independent third party expert:
http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34135
Copy us on the good stuff ;-)
Matthew
Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattstodayinhistory.com
Download
of the Week
Since last week's download was geared toward the geeks amongst us (myself included), I thought this week we would lighten up and provide a little fun.
Screensavers are no longer necessary tools to protect monitors, but that doesn't keep folks from using them. Here are a few to enhance your computer experience or just help waste some time.
You can polish your high school foreign language schools with LinguSaver:
http://tinyurl.com/jjtss
Five pretty interesting 3-D screensavers here:
You can prove your dogfight prowess with screensaver:
Have fun folks.
Art Maley
Email Question of the Week
Q: I have a couple of questions for you Gurus. 1. Somewhere along the line when I downloaded this Mac OS X I split the hard drive into two. How do I go about making it just one hard drive again? 2. Where can I get a free defragging utility to get rid of all the garbage on my hard drive.
A:
To change the partitions on your hard drive, go to:
Applications -
Utilities - Disk Utility. Click on your drive name and
click on the
"Partition" Button/Tab. The options are pretty self
explanatory from
there. Always remember to back up your data prior to
messing with
partitions on a Hard Drive.
Normally you don't need to defragment an OSX
hard drive. There are
utilities out there such as
iDefrag http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iDefrag.php
that
will do this but I can't vouch for their effectiveness in any
way.
Unless you are in to high end video
editing or you are past 80% of used
space on your Hard Drive you shouldn't
see any impact of fragmentation
on a HFS file system. What is more
effective / important is to run the
routine maintenance tasks (CRON tasks)
on the Mac. OSX does run most
tasks automatically (usually in the
early morning hours around 3 AM),
but you can also run them using software
such as
MacJanitor http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/
or
my personal favorite Cocktail - http://www.maintain.se/cocktail/
Hash
hash@ucanweb.com
Contact info and legal
stuff
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