The popular Firefox web browser (www.mozilla.com/firefox) has quite a few handy tricks. Two of the most useful tips are cycling between Firefox tabs and duplicating tabs. To cycle between Firefox tabs, simply use the CTRL-Tab key combination and you will be able to cycle through the various tabs, just like using ALT-Tab to cycle through programs in Windows. If you want to duplicate a tab (i.e. open another copy of a website on an existing tab) simply view the tab you wish to duplicate, select the address bar and press ALT-ENTER and the page will be duplicated in a new tab.

Recently when I attempted to connect an external USB hard drive to the computer a message appeared saying “USB device not recognised” with the additional explanation that the device has malfunctioned. The same message appeared when I tried connecting a variety of different USB flash drives. The upshot is that I cannot access the drives on the computer. Each of the drives was tested on a different computer and they work fine, so the problem seems to be my computer. It certainly creates a lack of confidence if important data is stored on external hard drives to which access can be refused so randomly. The computer is running Windows XP. (more…)

I organise my media files by renaming them in capital letters. Recently, a dialogue box appeared telling me the file could become unusable if I continue, so I chose not to rename the file. Why is this happening? The computer is running Windows XP. (more…)

People who have iPhones may not be aware of some handy shortcuts on the devices which can speed-up common tasks and make using the devices much easier. Here I am going to share my top three shortcuts. First, if you are reading something which requires vertical scrolling (such as a webpage or email message) you can easily scroll back to the top of the content by double-tapping the status bar at the top of the screen (i.e. the bar containing the clock and battery indicator). Second, in some situations when typing on the iPhone keyboard you may need a special letter, such as an accented letter. By tapping and holding a particular letter on the iPhone keyboard, a small menu will appear with variants of that letter. Likewise, if you are typing a web address and the “.com” button is present on the keyboard, you can tap and hold to reveal other variants (such as .net, .edu, and .org). Finally, if you are listening to music on the iPhones iPod function, you can tap the album artwork on the iPod screen to open the advanced options, allowing you to fast forward, rewind, see the remaining time on the song and also setup repeat or shuffle modes.

Upon attaching devices to the USB ports on my computer a message appears saying “This device could perform faster…” which relates to connecting the devices to a USB 2.0 port. My motherboard manufacturers documentation claims that the motherboard supports USB 2.0 and upon visiting the manufacturers website it seems that a BIOS flash update is required to enable this support. However, I am reluctant to proceed as I have heard that flashing the BIOS can render the computer unusable if something goes wrong during the process. Can you provide advice or reassurance on this matter? (more…)