carlincomm.com/UnSexyGeek

Hey All, thanks for checking my new blog out!

So really, what is UnSexyGeek all about anyway? Gee, that seems kind of redundant, since that was just in the title there… ok, moving on!

I keep running into the feeling there is a lot of stuff rattling around in my head, that people “should” know, but some how don’t know. And finally I’ve been able to figure out WHY no one knows this stuff. Its because its UnSexyGeek stuff!

For example, I was talking to my girlfriend, over at her computer, and she wanted to know how much room was on her hard drive. She bounces back and forth between her Mac laptop (don’t ask me what it is, its white and covered in cat hair, ok?) Anyway, we were in the office, and this was on her fairly new HP tower computer running XP, also with a good dose of cat hair.

So I tell her “Windows E”, and lean back to grab my coffee cup, waiting for her to do something. All I get is a Blank Stare. You know the one, like she was waiting for me to finish the sentence. Mean time, I’m thinking damn, her computer is really slow, its not doing anything! Finally I realize she’s not hit anything on the keyboard yet, so I say “Ok, open up Windows Explorer, … not Internet Explorer… you know, where the files are?”

Now, I should take a minute to say that she’s really smart. Like, went to college, makes big money, and uses her computer every day probably.

And I should also mention that I have been using computers since… well lets see, do TRS-80’s count as computers? I used to write programs in BASIC just because I thought they were cool. Some of them even worked! I bought my first IBM “compatible” computer before Desert Storm, it was cool, it had a 30 MB hard drive! Dude, I ruled! My first Windows computer was running Windows 3.1… I had AOL 1.0 disks. Heck, I even had AOL on… wait for it… Geoworks! Or maybe it was just called GeOS, Geoworks might have been a part of it… Anyway, I “surfed” with a 2400 baud modem. I actually like DOS, still drop to the CMD command window on a regular basis to do stuff. My CMD window has green characters, as tribute to my first computer that had a green monochrome screen. So, yeah, I’m kind of geeky.

I’m also the kind of person who likes to know short cuts and tricks to getting things done faster.

Like the Windows E reference earlier. On a Windows computer, hold down the Windows Key, that’s the key that looks like the Microsoft Flag that is on the Start button, down between Cntr (Control) and Alt (Alternate) on the bottom row of your keyboard. Well, ok, first, if you just hit that key, its the same as if you had taken your mouse and clicked on the Start button on the bottom of your screen. So that by itself is a handy short cut right?

If you hit Windows and E, that opens up Windows Explorer, which is your “file manager”, a way to see all the files on your computer. From there you can move things, delete things, copy things, maybe do some back ups, etc. I’ll get more into that later, in fact, I could probably write a weeks worth of posts on all the useful stuff you could do in Windows Explorer. Yes, Very UnSexyGeek indeed!

So, my plan for this blog, is to write little posts about some short cuts you might be able to use. And if I find something cool on the internet that I think would fit the theme, I’ll put it here too. I’m also going to be doing some video tutorials on some of this stuff too, because, lets face it, some of this stuff is pretty hard to type in a way that makes sense, but I think if you see it you’ll get the idea pretty quickly.

But here’s some stuff you might already know, just to get you started. In the list below, hold down the first key, and then press and release the second key listed. Do not hit the “+” key, ok? so on the first one, hold down the Windows key, and then press and release E, and Windows Explorer will open. Oh, and you can release the Windows Key too!

First, some tricks with the Windows Key
Win + E = Explorer
Win + R = Run
Win + F = Find

Control + Z = Undo
Control + X = Cut
Control + C = Copy
Control + V = Paste
Control + B = Bold
Control + N = New
Control + S = Save
Control + F4 = Close Window

Alt + F4 = Close Program (or exit Windows if no programs running)
Alt will also highlight the menus in most programs, so if you hit, for example
Alt + F = File menu
Alt + E = Edit Menu
Alt + V = View Menu
Good way to learn these is if you look at the menus at the top of each program, usually there is a letter that is underlined. Start paying attention to those and soon you’ll be zipping along.

Yes, you can still use the mouse, nothing wrong with that. But when you learn the short cuts, they’re going to be faster. And if you are a decent typist, you don’t want to keep taking your fingers off the keyboard to grab the mouse, find your pointer, move it all the way across the screen, click on the menu, click the item, then back to typing. With the keyboard short cuts, you can use Alt F to open the file menu, then arrow down to the item, hit Enter to choose it, and be right back to typing again.

One word of note here, not ALL programs use all the same short cuts. But most of what I listed will work for almost all Windows programs. Often when you learn a short cut in one program, it will work in other programs as well, so its worth paying attention. Some of the more obscure ones will mess with you though! I have found several that don’t do the same thing in 3 programs I use often, so that can be interesting right? you hit F12 to “save as a new name” for example, but in Notepad2 , you should have hit F6 instead. That’s the fun things about standards, there are so many of them to choose from!

If you’d like to keep up on this blog, why not sign up with FeedBurner? You’ll be notified when ever there is a new post! FeedBurner is great, by the way, if there is no new post, you don’t get any annoying emails. If I post 4 things in 1 day, you get 1 email. Its brilliant! And you can relax your brain, knowing the computer will remind you, and you can think about more important things! Isn’t that the way it is supposed to be?

And please leave comments about what you’d like to see next!

Tags: Computer, DOS, Laptop, Mac, Tips, Tricks, Windows, XP

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Computer Tricks and Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.