PC Hints and Tips

Vista can transform any spare USB flash drive or SD card into an additional memory cache. To use the ReadyBoost feature, simply plug the drive into a spare USB port (or insert your card into the slot) and when AutoPlay kicks in, select Speed Up My System. You can specify how much of the available memory it should use. Any noticeable improvement in speed will largely depend on how much memory you have installed in the first place. Lower-spec laptops will probably benefit the most.

ReadyBoost isn’t available for XP but there is a decent alternative in the shape of eBoostr (www.eboostr.com). This commercial product costs between £12 and £20 or there’s a free trial version you can use for up to four hours at a time.

Sometimes you want to choose an album and listen to it from start to finish, but sometimes you just want to listen to a variety of tracks. iTues’ Party Shuffle is a great way to listen to music and it picks a random selection of tracks it thinks you’ll like. You can customise the way it works and with a few tweaks it might come up with a better music selection. Go to Edit, Preferences and select the Playback tab. Drag the Smart Shuffle slider to the left or right according to your preferences. You can choose to shuffle songs, albums or groupings too.

When you download and save a file using Firefox, it automatically saves it into the Desktop. If you don’t delete these as you go, your Desktop can soon get cluttered. To keep mine tidier, I created a Firefox Downloads folder. To do this just right-click on the Desktop, choose New and then Folder, then rename it Firefox Downloads. Next open Firefox and select Tools, Options and Main. Look for ‘Save Files to’ and click Browse. Then choose the folder you just created. Any downloads you make are stored in this folder and can be easily located, deleted or stored neatly.

Alternatively, in the same Main section of the Options, tick the ‘Always ask me where to save files’ option and you can make a decision for each download.

Want to try Linux but don’t fancy the risk of turning your brand new computer over to dual boot? Then use your old computer as a Linux workstation. Linux will run on older computers that modern versions of Windows turn their nose up at. So stop ditching your old computers into landfill sites and get into the World of Linux. Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com) is a good one to start with.

One annoying feature of WIndows Vista is the thickness of the windows borders. They are huge, they look ugly, and they take up too much space. To get the nice, thin window borders that you got used to with XP, right-click the Desktop and select Personalize. Click ‘Windows Color and Appearance’, and then click the Advanced button. In the drop-down list of items select Active Window Border and set the size to 1. Then select Border Padding and set the size to 1. Click OK twice to apply the settings.

If you often use Windows Help to find out how to do stuff or get the solution to a problem, it’s useful to bookmark the pages so that you can easily return if you need them again. I have lots of useful topics bookmarked. When you view a Help page, just click the ‘Add to Favourites’ button above the text. It’s then added to the Favourites button in the toolbar.

If you find Vista’s Start menu confusing, you can revert to the familiar Windows layer. Right-click the Taskbar and select Properties. Click the Start Menu tab and select the Classic Start menu option.

ReadyBoost turns any flash drive into an additional memory cache. Plug the drive into a spare USB port and Vista will ask if you wish to use it to speed up your system performance. You can specify how much of the memory to use.

Change which program loads when you double-click an MP3 file or a web link by clicking Start, Default Programs and selecting ‘Set Program Access and Computer Defaults’. Click the down arrow next to Custom to set a different default program.

If you’re struggling to find programs in the Start menu, you can reorder it alphabetically Just right-click any program in the menu and select ‘Sort by name’.