Workers' Edge

It didn't take long after installing Canonical Ltd.'s Ubuntu 7.10 version of Linux for me to decide I liked what I saw. A quick tour of the Applications, Places, and System menus indicated that converting from Windows to Linux would be relatively seemless. The only fly in the ointment was my inability to get any of three wireless adapters to work with the OS.

World-class applications without paying a dime I expected to find the Mozilla Firefox browser bundled with Ubuntu, and seeing links on the Applications*Office menu to OpenOffice.org's Database, Presentation, Spreadsheet, and … Read more

Running Linux from a CD in Windows doesn't get you much closer to computing in a Windows-less world. To make Windows and Linux and either-or proposition, you have to set your PC to dual-boot. With Canonical Ltd.'s Ubuntu 7.10, a.k.a. Gutsy Gibbon, the repartitioning is done for you during installation.

Before you install Ubuntu, create a full system backup. Creating a system restore point may not be sufficient, because a misstep during installation could render Windows unbootable. Make sure that you've got your restore CD/DVD handy, and that your system is set to … Read more

This is the year I kiss Windows good-bye. Well, maybe not entirely, but the writing is on the wall for Microsoft's flagship operating system, and all other desktop bloatware: The future of PC software is open source. (I'll add that the future of PC applications is on the Web, which I'll cover once we've got Ubuntu in place.)

Being the belts-and-suspenders type, I'll make the conversion from proprietary to open in baby steps, the first of which is to get a copy of Ubuntu 7.1 (a.k.a. Gutsy Gibbon), the version of Linux … Read more

My 3-year-old Hewlett-Packard PC stopped playing optical discs a couple of months ago. Not only were the built-in DVD and CD-ROM drives out of commission, I couldn't even get a brand-new external DVD drive to work. I searched and searched for driver updates, but came up empty. It wasn't until I happened upon a Registry patch on Chris Pirillo's great Lockergnome site that I got the machine to recognize the optical drives.

The patch was provided by a volunteer who had no affiliation with HP, Microsoft, or the drive vendors. It's not uncommon for PC experts … Read more

A recent decision by the National Labor Relations Board allows companies to restrict the use of their e-mail systems for union activities by their employees. The case dates back to 2000, at which time a union official for the Register-Guard newspaper in Eugene, Oregon, sent three union-related messages. The NLRB found that since the newspaper had a policy in place that restricted use of e-mail for "non-job-related solicitations" for outside organizations, it was within its rights to ban such messages.

What a surprise!

If your work entails use of your employer's e-mail system--whether or not the company … Read more

One feature in Microsoft Word has saved me more time than all the other doodads in the program put together: Styles. I frequently edit Word documents created by other people. The first thing I do after opening their files is to reformat them so they're easier for me to work on. I created a handful of styles that let me make the changes in an instant via custom keyboard shortcuts.

The favorite font style of one of the tech writers I work with regularly is 10-point Bookman Old Style, which I find close to unreadable. Another writer I edit … Read more

Last week I described how to use a simple Javascript to determine the age of a Web page. The only problem: if the page has any dynamic elements that update automatically when the page loads (and these days most Web pages do), the script shows the current time and date.

For pages without auto-update content, type javascript:alert(document.lastModified) into the address bar and press Enter to see a window pop-up with the date and time of the page's last update. I'm still looking for a way to find out how recently specific content on a Web … Read more

I can live without Microsoft Word, and I'm confident I could manage well enough if you removed Excel from my PC. Even my favorite e-mail app is a nonessential.

But take away my browser, and I might as well not even start up my PC.

Mozilla Firefox is the first program I open and the last one I close each workday (or worknight, as the case may be). I found some great time-savers for the program. And since many of you prefer Internet Explorer, I've got some productivity-enhancing keyboard shortcuts for both browsers.

Reset Firefox's Javascript options … Read more

I've never trained an elephant, but I imagine the process is similar to that of getting your Microsoft Excel worksheet to look just right. Here are five of my favorite Excel formatting tricks.

Double-click to fit columns and rows When you enter or paste text and numbers into Excel, the cells don't expand to fit their contents. The fast way to autofit columns and rows is to hover your mouse over the header border between the column and its neighbor to the right, or between two rows at the far left of the worksheet. When the resize icon … Read more