When using the ALT-TAB function in Windows Vista you may get a bit trigger happy and ALT-TAB straight past the program you require. However, the Vista ALT-TAB functionality is quite smart and allows you to use the mouse and click the window you wish to switch into. Press and hold ALT-TAB on the keyboard and then you can use the mouse to select the program you wish to switch into from the ALT-TAB program selection window that appears.

In order to reduce disk consumption I deleted a large number of emails from Outlook and emptied the “Deleted Items” folder. I clicked the “Compact Now” button in the “File” menu > “Data File Management” > “Settings” to reduce the size of the data store files. However, the Outlook.pst file has remained the same size. How can I reduce the size of the PST file? (more…)

A friend has a strong hand tremor, much like those evident with Parkinson’s disease. When using the computer she finds it almost impossible to hold her hand still long enough for a double mouse click, and instead the cursor nearly always moves between clicks which moves the icon but does not activate an application. Changing the double-click speed has not resolved the problem. Is there any way to reassign a keyboard key to act as the left mouse button? Using this method she could move the cursor and, if the cursor is still over the icon, release the mouse followed by hitting the reassigned key twice to simulate a double-click. This can be done quite effectively using a laptop touchpad and external mouse - move the external mouse, release the mouse, and then double-click the left button on the laptop touchpad. However, is there a way to do this with a desktop computer? The computer is running Windows XP. (more…)

Using Internet Explorer to view the Yahoo website a message appears saying “A Runtime Error has occurred. Do you wish to Debug? Line: 0. Error: ‘y708′ is undefined. Yes. No.”. If I click “Yes” another window appears saying “Just-in-Time Debugging”. I am very wary of following on, as I have been caught in the past with message boxes looking authentic but being some sort of virus causing all kinds of grief. I can stop the message appearing by clicking “No” but need to do this about 12 times before the message goes away for good. (more…)

In the Mac OS X Finder there are quite a few tweaks and modifications you can enable to improve the user experience. One of my favourites is the ability to display additional information about items on the Desktop, such as the amount of free space on the hard drive or the number of items within a folder. To enable this functionality, show the Finder and then go to the “View” menu > “Show View Options”. In the window that appears tick the “Show item info” option. You should now see additional information appearing for drive and folder icons on the desktop. You can also repeat the same process to display this information when you are viewing the contents of various drives and folders on the computer. Simply open the drive or folder and go to the “View” menu > “Show View Options” and tick the same setting. If you wish to apply this setting to all drives and folders then change the setting once and click the “Use as defaults” button to apply to all drives and folders.