Back in the days of 80-column monitors, dot-matrix printers, and DOS, the PrintScrn key on your keyboard was a way to send the entire contents of the screen to an attached parallel or serial printer. These days, PrintScrn takes a snapshot of your open windows, then sends the file into a hidden temporary buffer as an uncompressed image.

Each screen shot for this story was taken by opening the necessary windows, pressing the PrintScrn key, then loading Microsoft Paint by clicking Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Paint. Under the Edit menu in Paint, when you select Paste or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-V, Windows will paste the buffer contents in. You can also paste your buffer contents directly into applications such as Word, but many people like to compress the file into a JPEG first. To do this click on File -> Save As. Pick a folder and name the file something relevant, then select JPEG beside the Save As type. This will make the file much smaller, and the file can also be cropped into Paint while you are at it.

Tags: PrintScreen

Every time you boot windows, MSN Messenger starts running in the background. You’re not a fan of this IM client? Too bad. You don’t have a Passport account or don’t use the instant messenger integration built into Microsoft Outlook and Exchange? Too bad.

You can save a bit of memory and get a little faster boot time by not loading this chat client every time Windows starts. Users of AOL Instant
Messenger, ICQ, or Yahoo!’s client are also likely candidates for this tweak. First, click Start, then Run. Then, type this long string into the field:
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove and be careful to type it exactly right (no spaces) or unpredictable results may occur. You will need to reboot to complete the settings.

If you run Outlook or Outlook Express, those programs may try to launch MSN Messenger too. In order to prevent this from happening in Outlook, for example, go into the program and click on Tools, Options, then Other. Under this menu you will find a check box that reads Enable Instant Messaging in Microsoft Outlook, and you should clear it. Problem fixed!

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Windows XP is full of helpful applications, but some of them take too much control or have other downsides. MSN Explorer, the Outlook Express e-mail client, and even the Internet Explorer browser may all be mere baggage to you. All of these can be removed, saving you as much as 20MB of drive space in the process.

To remove them, navigate to the Control Panel by first clicking Start. Then open Add or Remove Programs and click on Add/Remove Windows Components on the left-hand side of the window. You can uncheck options that you do not use, such as Outlook Express, MSN Explorer, and, of course, Messenger.

After unchecking items to your heart’s content, click Next and let Windows configure its components; your system should be a few megabytes lighter. Note that some changes will require a restart, and removing things such as Networking can leave you with a crippled computer.

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Every time your laptop connects to a Wi-Fi hot spot, whether it’s in your home or down at the coffee shop, it logs the name of the access point that you connected to in the Windows Preferred Network settings. If you accidentally (or maybe even deliberately) connect to your neighbor’s access point, and then find yourself reconnecting again despite your efforts not to, you need to bump that listing down in your connection list and move your router to the top.

To do this, click Start and select Connect To, then Wireless Network Connection. On the window that opens, click on the Properties button on the lower left, then the Wireless Networks tab at the top. Under Preferred Networks look for your home, work, or favorite coffee shop’s router name. Highlight it and use the Move Up button to move the selection to the top of the list. This will prioritize the connection to your favorite hot spot’s access points. You can also use the Remove button to eliminate the auto-connection of networks that are no longer used or those that happen to be at your neighbor’s house.

Although you wouldn’t be alone if you kept it at the bottom for emergency use, just in case your Internet connection goes down.

Security suites pop up at an alarming rate and though security scares are appearing even more rapidly, it’s still the case that what you really need for protection isn’t necessarily the same as what you’re advised to buy. For example, the version of the Windows Firewall supplied with Service Pack 2 may not be particularly great and certainly falls over in some key areas, but in most situations it’s good enough. Anti-virus programs make a huge deal of how fast they respond and how many bad guys they can catch. Yet most of the time you’re going to be covered for the major threats regardless of the big-brand ones you use. All this begs a key question: is it worth buying a dedicated suite, or playing mix and match with individual packages?

BitDefender mixes anti-virus with firewall, anti-spam and dialer blockers and almost everything else you could conceivably need, and it does it at a price that’s much more reasonable than the going rate. You get two years worth of upgrades rather than the normal one, for example. When it comes to the anti-virus portion, there’s little to quibble with. There are automated scans, scanning specific files and folders and inside archives, along with a handful of extra touches such as warning you if anything tries to slip itself into startup or make covert plays for your Registry. This part of things is solid enough, both in direct operation and staying out of your way when there’s nothing going on that needs your input.
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Easy PC Transfer does not include third-party software as part of a system migration. Users have to manually install their programs to a new system before migrating their program settings from the old system, and it does not support direct drive-to-drive migrations within a single system as Migrate Easy does.

However, those are the only quibbles we have with the latest reincarnation of StompSoft’s data migration utility. Easy PC Transfer installs effortlessly, and its intuitively designed interface clearly explains each part of the migration process. It boasts several extras that caught our attention. It has an undo feature, for instance, and it doubles as a backup tool for system settings; users simply add the deferred migration option to the Scheduled Tasks tool in Windows and wait for the utility to launch every week or month. It also can handle media-based migrations, as well as migrations conducted over a local-area network or a direct Ethernet cable (included with the boxed version of the program).

Most impressively, the utility provides a Custom Migration feature that lets a user specify the particular files and settings that should be included in the migration. We appreciated this feature, as it gave us the ability to leave behind data we preferred to leave behind, for example, an old Windows Messaging account and an Internet Explorer address book. Last but not least, we give Easy PC Transfer high marks for providing top-of-the-line support that includes one year of free phone-, email-, and Web-based help for registered product users.

Tags: PC Migration

Migrating data from one system to another is the digital equivalent of moving personal possessions from one home to another. Both situations require time, thoroughness, and a great deal of care to make sure nothing gets broken or left behind. For more than 20 years, Laplink products have functioned like a reliable friend with a truck to countless PC users needing to move their digital possessions into new digs. That experience shows in the company’s popular utility, PCmover.

The utility offers several methods for transferring data. Users can migrate their data via removable media (such as a Zip disk, tape cartridge, or recordable CD), virtually any functioning network connection, and direct parallel or USB cable connection (the boxed version of the utility comes bundled with a USB cable). The amount of time involved is what distinguishes one migration method from another. A USB migration is faster than a parallel migration, for instance, and any network connection is faster than copying the data to removable media. Otherwise, the process is generally the same for all migration methods.

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