Today’s tip is a chart of some useful advanced operators to help you find what you are looking for on Google®without returning millions of search results that you weren’t looking for.

OPERATOR EXAMPLE		FINDS PAGES CONTAINING…
vacation Florida		the words vacation and Florida .
Daytona Beach OR Florida		either the word Daytona Beach or the word Florida
“To each his own“		the exact phrase to each his own
virus –computer		the word virus but NOT the word computer
+sock		Only the word sock, and not the plural or any tenses or synonyms
~auto loan		loan info for both the word auto and its synonyms: truck, car, etc.
define:computer		definitions of the word computer from around the Web.
red * blue		the words red and blue separated by one or more words.
CALCULATOR OPERATORS		MEANING		TYPE INTO SEARCH BOX
+		addition		45 + 39
-		subtraction		45 – 39
*		multiplication		45 * 39
/		division		45 / 39
% of		percentage of		45% of 39
^		raise to a power		2^5 (2 to the 5th power)
ADVANCED OPERATORS		MEANING		WHAT TO TYPE INTO SEARCH BOX (& DESCRIPTION OF RESULTS)
site:		Search only one website		admission site:www.ufl.edu (Search University of Florida site for admissions info.)
[#]…[#]		Search within a range of numbers		DVD player $100..150 (Search for DVD players between $100 and $150)
link:		linked pages		link:www.ufl.edu (Find pages that link to the University of Florida website.)
info:		Info about a page		info:www.ufl.edu (Find information about the University of Florida website.)
related:		Related pages		related:www.ufl.edu (Find websites related to the University of Florida website.)

Dean Uncategorized

People frequently ask me what they should be doing regularly to keep their PC running well and to remove the many temporary files that build up from everyday use. Here is a brief description of the basics to do just that. I recommend performing this weekly to keep your PC running it’s best.

First open Internet Explorer. Click Tools>>Internet Options. Then click the “Delete” button in the Browsing History section.

Select “Delete All”

Check the “Also delete files and settings stored by add-ons” box and click “Yes”

Next, click Start>>All Programs>>Accessories>>System Tools>>Disk Cleanup. Select your disk and hit OK. Windows will show your options. Be sure to delete Temporary Internet Files and dump the Recycle Bin.

Finally Click Start>>All Programs>>Accessories>>System Tools>>Disk Defragmenter and select “Defragment Now” if you have Vista or click the “Defragment” button if you have XP.

If you haven’t done this for a while (or ever… You know who you are!) This may take quite a while the first time. If you do this regularly, it only takes a few minutes and will keep your computer running much faster.

Dean Uncategorized

Have you ever come across a situation where Windows Update gives you the message “An update failed to install” and gives you no other option? This can happen for a host of reasons and the first thing you want to do is search that phrase along with the update that failed to install.
There are some occasions, however, where you have to start from scratch and reinstall all Windows Updates from the beginning. Other than reformatting your computer and then installing every update again, you can also delete the folder that contains the updates and update history.
Once you delete the automatic updates folder, the next time you check for updates or go to the Windows Update website, all updates will be re-downloaded and re-installed.

How to reinstall all Windows Updates

First, you have to turn off the Automatic Updates and BITS service in Windows. To do this, click on Start, then Run and type in services.msc and press OK.

Next, right-click on Automatic Updates service and click on Stop. Right-click on Background Intelligent Transfer Service and click on Stop.

Now we can delete the folder that contains all of the Windows updates applied to your computer currently by navigating to:

C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution

Note that this will delete the Update history and ALL updates will be reinstalled on your computer. Note that this will not harm your computer in any way.
Now you can go ahead and restart the two services that we stopped earlier. If you are running Windows Vista, type in Windows Update in the search box and press Enter.
Windows Updates should show you that you’ve never checked for updates before, so go ahead and click “Check for Updates” to begin re-installing all updates.

In Windows XP, make sure Automatic Updates is set to “Automatic (recommended)” via the Control Panel and then visit the Windows Update website to begin installation of the updates.
Hopefully, once the initial updates are reinstalled, your failed updates will install also.

Dean Uncategorized

Learning a few keyboard shortcuts is one of the easiest things you can do to make better use of your time on the computer. Instead of taking your hand off the keyboard, moving the mouse and clicking a couple times, and then putting your hand back on the keyboard, you can use keyboard shortcuts to perform common actions. I’ve put together a list of Windows keyboard shortcuts worth knowing. Don’t worry about trying to learn them all; instead, pick a few that use you can use often.

CTRL C / CTRL V: This one is obvious and probably the most used keyboard shortcut in the world. CTRL C copies whatever is currently marked and CTRL V pastes the contents again. (C for Copy, V for Verbose)
CTRL A: The copy and paste shortcuts work well with this one. CTRL A selects all.
ALT F4: Closes the active window
F3: This one opens the Windows Search.
ALT TAB: Switches between open applications.
CTRL P: Opens the Print Screen dialog.
F2: Rename the active item
CTRL ESC: Displays the Windows Start Menu.
SHIFT DEL: Deletes the item immediately without moving it into the trashbin
TAB: Move to the next control, excellent for forms.
Spacebar: Checks a checkbox, presses a button if on a button, selects an option if on an option
Return, ESC: Those are single shortcuts. Return is used perform the active command while ESC cancels the current task.

For Microsoft Natural Keyboards:

Windows Logo: Start menu
Windows Logo+R: Run dialog box
Windows Logo+M: Minimize all
SHIFT+Windows Logo+M: Undo minimize all
Windows Logo+F1: Help
Windows Logo+E: Windows Explorer
Windows Logo+F: Find files or folders
Windows Logo+D: Minimizes all open windows and displays the desktop
CTRL+Windows Logo+F: Find computer
CTRL+Windows Logo+TAB: Moves focus from Start, to the Quick Launch toolbar, to the system tray (use RIGHT ARROW or LEFT ARROW to move focus to items on the Quick Launch toolbar and the system tray)
Windows Logo+TAB: Cycle through taskbar buttons
Windows Logo+Break: System Properties dialog box

Dean Uncategorized

I found this tip out of necessity after discovering the Adobe Bridge (and many other programs) imports duplicate copies of photos if you did not delete them from your camera’s memory card after previously importing them. This left me with multiple copies of the exact same photos on my PC. What to do??? Manually find and delete them? I think not. Fortunately I discovered a free trial download from Ashisoft called Duplicate Finder This program searches for duplicate files byte by byte so it can find duplicates even if your software appended the file name (ie photo, photo-1, photo-2, etc.)

The software will search across your network as well and is great for finding duplicates of mp3 and wma files. Here is the catch. With the free trial version you can only delete/move/copy 50 files and the maximum file size is 2MB. The full version is only $26.

Dean Uncategorized

It amazes me how many people do not back up their files. I think almost everyone knows someone who “lost everything” when their hard drive failed. In todays world of digital photos, how would you feel if every picture that you took for the last 3 years was gone forever? There are so many simple ways to safeguard your data that there is no excuse for suffering a data loss. External hard drives and very inexpensive and most come with automated bacup software. Norton’s new 360 will automatically backup your files to your external hard drive or to the included 2GB of online storage. You can get 1 GB of online storage space from us for under $17.48/year.

Another inexpensive program that I use and recommend is SyncBackSE from 2BrightSparks. This is a very powerful program for only $30 that will do nearly any type of backup automatically. It can encrypy your data with 256-bit AES encryption, compress your data, synchronize multiple computers, copy open files, and even provides versioning so that you can recover your data by “rolling back” to a specific time.

If you have any questions about backing up your data or need assistance setting up a backup routine, give us a call at 352.505.9306 and we can recommend a solution that is right for your needs.

Dean Uncategorized