A grab bag of handy things...
- David Moore
- May 25, 2020
- 2 min read
In my "article ideas" list there are a bunch of things that are really handy but too small to be a story on their own.
So I thought I'd bunch them together here for you.
There's some great tips and handy tools that I hope you like.
Let's go...
1) Windows 10 Power Toys
Those of you who have been around windows for a while may have already come across the Power Toys set of app's before.
Now they are slowly being added to Windows 10.
The new Power Toys are explained here: https://www.howtogeek.com/665780/all-microsofts-powertoys-for-windows-10-explained/
Or if you just want them, go here: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/releases/
The best feature, that I think most people miss and want, is the ability to resize photos/images from Windows Explorer.
2) How to stop windows restarting programs when you log back in
For a while I had things seemingly randomly start when I turned my computer on.
I knew I hadn't left them running and/or set them to start up automatically.
It tuns out that this is some kind of feature and now there is a way to turn it off:
3) Print to PDF
Windows now has a built in "Print to PDF" function.
This works by redirecting the print output from anything you may care to print, to a PDF file that can be read by, well, anything.
PDF stands for Portable Document Format and the best way to view them is with the free Adobe Reader (because Adobe created PDF).
Printing emails and other apparently "difficult to save" things to PDF gives you your own file copy.
I use it to test how a web page may print out before I waste ink and paper. Sometimes I don't even need to print to paper if I can save it this way.
4) Fax is dead - scan and send with your phone instead
Every now and then I encounter a customer persisting with a fax machine. When quizzed they can't recall the last time anything but junk faxes came in.
If you really have a need to scan and aggregate images into a document of some kind, then there are some great app's for that.
But mostly you just need to take a photo with your mobile phone and send it however you like; email, messaging, texting etc.
Obviously never send bank details, PINs or anything else private this way.
5) OMG! Do you really need to get something off a floppy disk?
It has been a few years but yes, very occasionally someone wants something old and important off a floppy disk.
There a few ways to go about this, but the easiest is to get yourself a USB floppy drive.
More methods are outlined at the link below.
That is it for now folks.
Enjoy!
David
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