Tech Tips Point

Make Firefox Immediately Switch to a Newly Opened Tab

After yesterday’s post about tweaking Firefox 3.6 so that it opens new tabs to the far right, just like all previous versions of Firefox, I realized there’s one other tip that goes hand-in-hand with that: tweaking Firefox to immediately switch to the newly opened tab.

Normally, when you click a link that opens a new tab (or hold down the Ctrl key while clicking a link, which forces a new tab to open), Firefox doesn’t actually switch to that tab. It keeps you where you were.

That doesn’t make a ton of sense. After all, why would you open a new tab if you didn’t want to view it right away? Fortunately, there’s an easy way to change Firefox’s behavior when it comes to new tabs, and you don’t even have to meddle with the about:config settings (as with yesterday’s tweak).

Instead, click the Tools menu, then Options, and then click Tabs. Enable the last option in the list: When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately. (Pretty straightforward, huh?) Click OK and you’re done.

Create Cool Videos without Pricey Video-Editing Software

Want to create a custom video, the kind with photos, video clips, and music? Normally, it’s a time-consuming and/or expensive hassle.

You can use Microsoft’s Windows Live Movie Maker free of charge, but it’s pretty limited–and kind of a pain in the neck, in my humble opinion.

You could also spend upwards of $100 on a movie-editing package like Adobe Premiere Elements of Pinnacle Studio. But those are big, complex apps–and like Movie Maker, they have to be installed. Surely there must be some kind of cloud-based solution?

There is, and it’s called Animoto. This cool service makes moviemaking embarrassingly quick and easy, and the results look like something that took days or weeks to create in a commercial movie-editing program.

It’s a three-step process. First, you upload your photos and/or videos. If your stuff’s already online somewhere else, no problem: Animoto can pull media from Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and other sites.

Second, choose your music. You can upload a favorite MP3 or choose a track from Animoto’s extensive (but mostly indie) library.

Finally, select a pace for your video: normal, half speed, or 2x speed. With that done, Animoto goes to work, assembling everything into a seriously slick music videos, complete with titles, transitions, and special effects. Don’t like the finished product? You can make changes manually or just let Animoto have another whack at it–it’ll generate different results every time.

When you’re satisfied with the results, you can share the video via the usual methods (Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, etc.), or download it for your own use.

I like Animoto’s pricing options a lot. You can test-drive the service for free, but that limits you to a 30-second movie. If you want a full-length flick, you can buy that for just $3. Or, if you see yourself using Animoto a lot, $30 buys you a one-year membership (with all the videos you care to make).

Whether you’re looking to have a little video fun or produce something meaningful for a special occasion, Animoto takes virtually all the hassles out of traditional movie editing.

Keep your laptop battery working for years (and for hours between charges).

Laptop batteries are like people–eventually and inevitably, they die. And like people, they don’t obey Moore’s Law–You can’t expect next year’s batteries to last twice as long as this year’s. Battery technology may improve a bit over time (after all, there’s plenty of financial incentive for better batteries), but, while interesting possibilities may pop up, don’t expect major battery breakthroughs in the near future.

Although your battery will eventually die, proper care can put off the inevitable. Here’s how to keep your laptop battery working for as long as possible. With luck, it could last until you need to replace that aging notebook (perhaps with a laptop having a longer battery life).

I’ve also included a few tips on keeping the battery going longer between charges, so you can work longer without AC power.

Don’t Run It Down to Empty

Squeezing every drop of juice out of a lithium ion battery (the type used in today’s laptops) strains and weakens it. Doing this once or twice won’t kill the battery, but the cumulative effect of frequently emptying your battery will shorten its lifespan.

(There’s actually an exception to this rule–a circumstance where you should run down the battery all the way. I’ll get to that later.)

The good news: You probably can’t run down the battery, anyway–at least not without going to a lot of trouble to do so. Most modern laptops are designed to shut down before the battery is empty.

In fact, Vista and Windows 7 come with a setting for just this purpose. To see it, click Start, type power, and select Power Options. Click any one of the Change plan settings links, then the Change advanced power settings link. In the resulting dialog box, scroll down to and expand the Battery option. Then expand Critical battery level. The setting will probably be about 5 percent, which is a good place to leave it.

XP has no such native setting, although your laptop may have a vendor-supplied tool that does the same job.

Myth: You should never recharge your battery all the way.

There’s considerable controversy on this point, and in researching this article I interviewed experts both for and against. But I’ve come down on the side of recharging all the way. The advantages of leaving home with a fully-charged battery–you can use your PC longer without AC power–are worth the slight risk of doing damage.
Keep It Cool

Heat breaks down the battery, and reduces its overall life.

When you use your laptop, make sure the vents are unblocked. Never work with the laptop on pillows or cushions. If possible, put it on a raised stand that allows for plenty of airflow.

Also, clean the vents every so often with a can of compressed air. You can buy this for a few dollars at any computer store. Be sure to follow the directions on the can, and do this only when the notebook is off.

Give It a Rest

If you’re going to be working exclusively on AC power for a week or more, remove the battery first.

Otherwise, you’ll be wearing out the battery–constantly charging and discharging it–at a time when you don’t need to use it at all. You’re also heating it up (see “Keep It Cool,” above).

You don’t want it too empty when you take it out. An unused battery loses power over time, and you don’t want all the power to drain away, so remove it when it’s at least half-charged.

Never remove the battery while the computer is on, or even in standby or sleep mode; doing so will crash your system and possibly damage your hardware. Even inserting a battery into a running laptop can damage the system. So only remove or reinsert the battery when the laptop is completely off or hibernating.

If you’ve never removed your laptop’s battery and don’t know how, check your documentation. (If you don’t have it, you can probably find it online.) The instructions generally involve turning the laptop upside-down and holding down a button while you slide out the battery.

Myth: Refrigerate your battery.

Some people recommend you store it in the refrigerator, inside a plastic bag. While you should keep a battery cool, the last thing you want is a wet battery, and condensation is a real danger in the fridge. Instead, store it in a dry place at room temperature. A filing cabinet works fine.

You don’t want the battery to go too long without exercise or let it empty out entirely. If you go without the battery for more than two months, put it in the PC and use it for a few hours, then remove it again.

Also, before you take the laptop on the road, reinsert the battery and let it charge for a few hours before unplugging the machine. Allow the battery time to get a full charge before you remove the AC power.

Heal a Sick Battery

Myth:  You can rejuvenate a worn-out battery.

This isn’t, strictly speaking, the case. You can’t make old lithium hold more electrons than it can currently manage.

But if the battery is running out unexpectedly fast, or if your laptop is having trouble figuring out how much power it has left, you might be able to fix the battery’s “gas gauge,” so it at least gives a more accurate reading.

If you suspect the battery can’t tell if it’s charged or not, run it through a couple of cycles. Drain it of all its power (yes, this is the exception to the “don’t drain the battery” rule mentioned above), recharge it to 100 percent, and then repeat.

But how do you drain the battery when Windows won’t let you do just that? Don’t bother with the settings described above. They’re not safe (you might forget to change them back), they may not be getting an accurate reading, and they quite possibly won’t let you set the critical battery level to 0 percent. (If they did, it would crash Windows.)

Instead, unplug your AC power and keep your laptop running (you can work on it if you like) until it automatically hibernates. Then reboot your PC back and go directly to the system setup program.

I can’t tell you exactly how to get there; each computer is different. Turn on your PC and look for an onscreen message (one of the first you’ll see) that says something like “Press the X key for setup.” Immediately press the designated key.

It may take a couple of times to get the timing right. If there isn’t enough power to let it boot, plug in AC until you’re at the setup program, then unplug it.

Leave the notebook on until it shuts off. This can take some time (45 minutes on my laptop); setup uses a lot less power than Windows.

Once the PC is off, plug in the AC power, then wait a few hours before rebooting to Windows and making sure you’ve got a full recharge.

Repeat the process once or twice.

With luck and proper care, your battery will still be useful when you’re looking for a new laptop.
Longer Life Between Charges

The tips above should lengthen the time before you need to replace your laptop’s battery. But on a daily basis, we’re far more concerned with another type of battery life: how long we can keep our laptop running without AC power. You may know most of the following tips already, but it never hurts to refresh (or recharge) your memory.

Dim your screen
Your laptop’s backlight requires a lot of juice. Keep it as dim as you can comfortably read it.

Shut off unneeded hardware
Turn off your Bluetooth, and if you’re not using the Internet, turn off your Wi-Fi receiver, as well. Don’t use an external mouse or other device. And muting the PC’s sound system not only saves power, it avoids annoying everyone else in the café.

Avoid multitasking
Run as few programs as you can get away with. If possible, stick to the one application (word processor, browser, or whatever) you’re currently using, plus your antivirus and firewall in the background.

And if you’re not on the Internet, you don’t need those two.

Avoid multimedia
Save chores like photo editing and watching old Daily Show videos for when you have AC power. And if you must listen to music, use your iPod (or similar device).

Know when to sleep and when to hibernate

You need to think about when you want to save power by sending your laptop into Standby or Sleep mode, and when you want to hibernate it.

There’s a difference. XP’s Standby and Vista and Windows 7’s Sleep modes keep your PC on, using some power, but less of it than in normal use. Hibernate saves the PC’s state to the hard drive, then shuts it off entirely, so that no power is used.

On the other hand, Windows takes much longer–sometimes minutes–to go into and come out of hibernation. And those are minutes that the battery is draining heavily and you can’t work.

XP’s Standby mode isn’t really all that efficient. If your laptop will be inactive for more than about half an hour, hibernate it. Otherwise, use Standby.

But Vista and Windows 7 do a much better job with their Sleep mode. Don’t bother hibernating your PC unless you think you’re going to go more than two or three hours without using it.

Myth: Adding RAM saves battery life.

True, more RAM means less hard drive access, and the hard drive uses a lot of electricity. But RAM uses electricity as well, and unless you’re doing a lot of multitasking (not a good idea when you’re on battery power), more RAM won’t reduce hard drive use.

Greatest Windows Tips of All Time 2

Speed Up Your Services

Manage the Task Manager: Windows’ built-in Task Manager (press Ctrl-Alt-Del and click Task Manager) is great for seeing what your system is up to, but power users will prefer Process Explorer, which shows more details that can help you find a memory leak or troubleshoot a pesky DLL problem.

Nudge your network: If you have network problems, try opening the command prompt (enter cmd in the Start menu’s search box) and typing ipconfig /renew to reset your network connection.

Index this, not that: The Windows Search indexer speeds up built-in search functions, but the indexing process itself can consume system resources at inconvenient times. Open Indexing Options in Control Panel (or press the Windows key and type Indexing Options). The resulting dialog box will let you specify which folders or types of data are indexed to avoid bogging down your PC needlessly.

Clean up your startup: If your PC drags its feet during the startup process, press the Windows key and type msconfig to open the System Configuration utility. Check in the Startup tab to see what your machine is loading. Your computer might be loading services or apps that you don’t need or want to use on startup.

Sharing is caring: For a little assistance in tracking your shared folders, right-click My Computer (or Computer in Windows 7) and click Manage to bring up the Computer Management tool. Then click Shared Folders to see a list of all of your machine’s shared folders, file-sharing sessions, and open files.

Essential Add-Ons

Look, Ma, no mouse: XP users should grab Launchy, a free keyboard-driven launcher application that allows you to access programs, files, and even Websites with just a few keystrokes. (Vista and Windows 7 users get the same functionality from the Start menu’s search tool.)

Cleaner than you found it: To make sure that your programs uninstall completely, use Revo Uninstaller–it’s often more thorough than the programs’ own supplied uninstaller routines.

Annoyance buster: If you’re tired of User Account Control dialog boxes popping up all the time in Windows Vista, but you don’t want to disable the security feature completely, grab TweakUAC to set it to Quiet Mode. Windows 7 has its own UAC controls, but can still benefit from TweakUAC.

Get your hands dirty with Greasemonkey: Optimize your Web browsing with Greasemonkey for Firefox, an add-on that lets you choose among thousands of user-designed scripts for blocking ads, changing the layouts of popular sites, and more. (Variants also exist for IE, Chrome and Safari.)

Work Your Windows Key

Lock your doors (and Windows): Stepping out for a minute? Remember to press Windows-L to lock your computer’s screen so that no one can nose around without entering your account password.

Run, Windows, run: To access the Run command easily, press Windows-R.

Keyboard explorer: Want to open a new Windows Explorer window without leaving the keyboard? Press Windows-E.

Declutter your desktop: Access your desktop instantly by pressing Windows-D to hide all open windows. Press Windows-D again to return to where you were.

Greatest Windows Tips of All Time 1

Whether you’re a grizzled Windows vet or a relative newcomer, you can always use a trick or two for making things go faster. Here we have 26 favorite time-saving tips for Windows XP, Vista, and 7. Print out this story and keep it on your desk.

Classic Windows Tips

Toggle between apps: Use Alt-Tab to switch open programs without touching your mouse. The oldest–and still the best–Windows timesaver.

Navigate app windows: Press Ctrl-Tab to cycle through an application’s windows (or through a Web browser’s tabs). First cousin of the tip above, and probably the most underrated tip ever.

When in doubt, type it out: If you don’t want to hunt through nested menus and the like, you can access most functions, applets, or files the old-fashioned way–by entering them into the Search box. Type Calculator, Control Panel, or even the name of a piece of music on your hard drive, and press Enter.

Full-frontal folders: In Windows Explorer, click Folder Options (located under the Organize menu) to reveal hidden files,

show the full path in the title bar, display file extensions, and more.

Unobtrusive updates: Keep your OS current by opening Windows Update (Automatic Update in XP) and setting it to Download updates but let me choose

whether to install them. (To get there, press the Windows key and type Windows Update.) That way, you won’t have Windows urging you to restart when you don’t want to (or worse, triggering a restart when you’re away from the PC with an unsaved document open).

Tweak your taskbar: Right-click the Taskbar and choose Properties to find options for switching to the old Start menu, choosing which icons show in the notification area, setting default programs to appear in the Start bar menu, and more.

Partition, partition, partition: Make backups and restores easier by partitioning your hard drive and keeping one partition for the OS and the other for your documents and data.

Make your text special: Need a special character such as © or á? Press the Windows key and type character map in the field to bring up an app that will let you copy and paste the characters you need.

Simple screen capture: Take a screenshot by pressing Print Screen, which copies an image of your full screen to your clipboard so that you can paste it into Paint or your preferred image editor. To capture just the active window, use Ctrl-Alt-Print Screen. For more fine-tuned controls, try Screenshot Captor.

Take a shortcut: Right-click on any application icon, bring up the Properties menu, and click the Shortcuts tab. You can specify a keystroke combination to start your application here. Our personal favorite: Making a shortcut for Windows 7’s Snipping Tool makes screenshots much easier. (Windows 7 only)

Sticky keys (the good kind): Holding down two keys at once–such as Ctrl-C to copy–is a royal pain. Press the Shift key five times to start Sticky Keys, a feature that allows you to initiate a keyboard shortcut by merely pressing Shift, Ctrl, Alt, or Windows instead of holding that particular key down. Press Shift five more times to toggle Sticky Keys off.

Line ‘em up: Want to arrange two (or more) windows side by side in Windows XP or Vista? Hold down Ctrl and click on the desired windows in the taskbar; then right-click the taskbar and select Tile Vertically. In Windows 7, you can simply drag any open window to the right or left edge of your screen and then let go.

Instant classic (control panels): Miss Windows’ old Control Panel, which conveniently displayed all of its items at once? In Windows XP and Vista, just open the Control Panel and select Switch to Classic View. In Windows 7, click the View by drop-down menu in the upper-right corner and select your preference.