Workers' Edge

Prevent your search default from being changed

Dennis O'Reilly — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:00:00 PDT

The first thing I saw when I booted my PC yesterday evening was a notice that Google had prevented my default search setting from being changed. I certainly didn't want to switch from searching via Google by default. I hadn't even been considering a search change, regardless of ...

Microsoft Automated Troubleshooting Services fix a CD drive

Dennis O'Reilly — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:00:00 PDT

A friend of mine named John had good luck using Microsoft's free online troubleshooting service for Vista:

"I am elated with the results of the Microsoft Automated Troubleshooting Services' Fix it. Have you ever run across this service? After 8+ months without a CD/DVD player—and weekly

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Three approaches to free encrypted online storage

Dennis O'Reilly — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:00:00 PDT

One of the knocks against Google's online applications is that your personal data is stored unencrypted on the company's servers. For the many users of Google apps who are unconcerned about somebody snooping around their files, this won't matter. But those servers are no place to store ...

Restore a lost administrator account in Vista

Dennis O'Reilly — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:00:00 PDT

A reader named Eric found himself locked out of his Vista administrator accounts:

"Somehow, my account and my son's accounts were downgraded to standard user on his new computer using Vista Home 32-bit. I cannot seem to log in to make any changes to the accounts now. It prompts ...

Extend the life of your notebook computer

Dennis O'Reilly — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:00:00 PDT

The motherboard on my HP laptop fried 18 months after I bought it—and six months after its warranty expired. Even though it uses the same overheating NVidia chip that convinced HP and several other notebook vendors to extend the warranty for machines using the faulty GPU, my make ...

Simple ways to shine up Google's Chrome browser

Dennis O'Reilly — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:00:00 PDT

Chrome has quickly earned a reputation for being lightweight and fast. It can't offer anything like Firefox's useful extensions—yet. Still, there are plenty of ways to tweak Chrome's default settings to make it work more like you do.

Open to your home page
I never ...

Browser security and privacy tips

Dennis O'Reilly — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:00:00 PDT

Microsoft has made great strides in educating Windows users about the need to keep their systems secure by downloading and installing the most recent updates. (I still recommend that you set Windows' Automatic Updates to download but don't install, as I described in a blog post from last July.)...

Three productivity-enhancing Firefox add-ons

Dennis O'Reilly — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:00:00 PDT

I'll save us both some time by getting right to the descriptions of three Firefox add-ons that shave minutes off my workday. Hey, they add up!

Navigate Web pages using only your keyboard.
When it comes to speed, I'll take a keyboard over a mouse any day of ...

Utility merges duplicate Outlook contacts

Dennis O'Reilly — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:00:00 PDT

If you followed the steps in my post from August on merging your Outlook and Gmail contacts, you may have ended up with duplicates in your contact lists. Microsoft's advice for deleting duplicate contacts is to sort them by the date modified, Ctrl-select the ones you want to remove, and press delete.

The problem is, the duplicate entries probably aren't identical, so you're almost certain to delete some data along with the dupe. What you need is a way to merge the information in the duplicate contacts. There's no such feature in Outlook, but if you're willing to spend $30, you can make short work of your extraneous Outlook entries by running 4Team's Duplicate Killer for Outlook.

The program deletes or merges duplicate e-mail messages, calendar entries, tasks, and notes in addition to contacts. I tested the program with Outlook 2007 but, according to the vendor, it works with Outlook 2000, XP, and 2003 as well. The new version, 3, is said to work with "Microsoft Exchange type folders including public folders," according to the vendor's Web site, but I ran it on a standalone Outlook installation.

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Fine-tune your Vista PC's performance

Dennis O'Reilly — Tue, 26 May 2009 09:00:00 PDT

PC users don't agree on much, but they're close to unanimous in their low opinion of Vista's performance. There are plenty of manual tweaks you can make to grease Vista's skids--I ran down five of them a couple of weeks ago. You can also use one ...