When using Word to print a series of A4 sheets to make up for example S/A/L/E, F/E/T/E or L/Y/N/C/H/I/N/G you might find that the pull down font sizes doesn't go big enough.  Don't panic you just type in a font size ... and the next one rrrright in here please!

Avoid appearing a semi-literate paper pusher by NOT separating paragraphs with a blank line.  Instead point at the paragraph in Word with your mouse, click the right mouse button and then select Paragraph.  In the new window that appears set Spacing/After to say 6 and then click OK.  Job done and what's more when you create a new paragraph by pressing return the new paragraph will inherit the settings from the previous paragraph.

That there Microscoft are ending support for XP Service Pack 2 and Vista release version Tuesday so even though updating can take time you should visit www.update.microsoft.com and keep at it until the updater says it's had enough and you have the latest service pack installed.  The downloads are big enough that if you are still on dial up then take time will become until Christmas so best to part with the near six quid it costs to get the relevant service pack on cdrom.  Poke at this page long enough and you'll find out how to order a cd.

If you point your mouse at an unoccupied part of the taskbar (that bar along the bottom) and click the right mouse button this menu appears.  You might want to unlock the taskbar.  Why?  By pointing at the top of the taskbar and then dragging you can change the height of the taskbar, by pointing at an unoccupied part of the taskbar and dragging you can really confuse yourself by moving the task bar to the side or top of the screen but most important you can now change the size of the quick launch.  Haven't got the quick launch enabled?  You should have, our vid tells you how and why.

If you have a web site and you get one of these ignore it, essentially it's a fiddle.  It will almost certainly be cheaper to renew the domain with your present registrar at typically half the price, and they will certainly be contacting you about renewal.

As it's a very stripped down web browser Google Chrome is blisteringly fast compared with FireFox and limping along should be in a care home Internet Explorer.  Google Chrome even downloads and installs fast.  In fact all we have against it so far is it handles favourites/bookmarks in a slightly clunky manner, there's no print preview and ironically there's no Google Toolbar for it.

That's nice, you've been adding us to you favourites but there's an even easier way to find out what's been happening near the coast; add us to your home pages.  It's a doddle in Internet Explorer Alt + M (whilst holding down the Alt key press M) opens the home page window.  Teensy bit more complicated in Firefox, go Tools/Options and under Startup there are three home page options.

All we wanted to do was check the RAM on a chum's laptop but the language was set to Hungarian and we couldn't see the My Computer icon on the crowded desktop.  Things would have been easier if we'd remembered the keyboard shortcut Windows/Start+E which opens My Computer.  (That's whilst holding down the Windows key second left bottom row press the E key.)

User key F5 in the top row usually refreshes or reloads whatever you're doing.  It's particularly relevant in your web browser; the browser normally only pulls in a web page from the Internet when you first visit the page during a session, when you return to the page during the same session the browser shows you what it loaded last time and with a frequently changing web site like this one the displayed page could be out of date.  Pressing user key F5 makes the browser reload making sure you see the most up to date page.

User key F5 is also useful when a page seems to be not loading or stuck, using F5 to re-start the page load will sometimes clear the log jam on the Internet.

If you hold down the Control (Ctrl) and Alt keys bottom left of the keyboard and then press the Delete key you will open the Windows Task Manager and the Applications tab will list all the programmes you have running.  If one of your programmes has got stuck (probably with a Not Responding status in Task Manager) and won't let you close it you can force closure by highlighting (like Near The Coast etc in the pic) the prog in the Apps list by clicking on it and then clicking the End Task button.

Task Manager can sometimes be a little premature.  In the pic the bottom New Folder is shown as Not Responding but it was Adobe Bridge as always being slow to sort itself out at start up and later its status changed to Running.

Picked up a bit of nastiness twice this week that pretended it had found a virus on our main machine and wouldn't let us do anything except watch it ... so we restarted the pc whilst holding down user key f8, user key f8 opens a DOS type screen and we chose to start Windows in Safe Mode.  Then we used System Restore to roll the system back to before the nastiness appeared; surprisingly straight forward.

Try pressing the other mouse button, you'll get a pop up menu depending on what you're doing, this one appears if you're looking at a folder.

Street knowledge is improve the speed and reliability of your home wireless network by NOT using the same channel as your neighbours.  Makes sense to us ... but how do you know what channel your neighbours are using?  Cracking little freebie NetStumbler tells you just that.  The only gotchas are reportedly it won't run on Vista and whilst running it disables the XP wireless management.

Be aware of this, at the end of an 18 month broadband deal Orange put their price up because we're 'in the country' prompting us to change supplier.  Orange then charged for the month after the change had completed and they supply nothing because that's what they do ... we suspect other ISPs probably do the same.

Before you throw your dial up modem away do remember it's what you use to send a fax, and even now we find occasionally we still have to (the police still use ... more here.

th 10 de 09

In both Internet Explorer and FireFox pressing user key f11 (keyboard top row towards the right) makes the toolbars and all the other crud go away, pressing it again brings them back.

mo 23 no 09

Here's a good one to worry the children; whilst holding down ... more here

mo 16 no 09

Be warned: Orange want their bundled in rubbish router that never worked properly back or they'll charge £100 ... and they've got your credit card details ...

th 5 no 09

AVG anti-virus has started popping up saying wouldn't you like to upgrade to version 9, no doubt in time it ... more here

we 21 oc 09

We often encounter laptop users who either don't know you can tap the touchpad for a click or have turned it off because they can't control it.  The Apple Magic Mouse ... more here.

sa 10 oc 09

Freebie anti-virus software AVG by default does a hard disc scan everyday at noon.  The scan will slow your PC down and can go on for several hours so a good idea ... more here.

fr 4 sep 09

This one's always popular so worth repeating; open a Word document and highlight a word or phrase.  Whilst holding down the shift key press and release the user key F3 on the top left there ... now do it again ... and do it again, good eh?

fr 21 au 09

This is the netbook Lady KRJ bought herself, it's much smaller than a laptop and stunningly light implying the battery doesn't have a lot of clout, no cd/dvd drive so installing ... more here.

fr 7 au 09

At £200 the new Blackberry Curve 8520 is affordable apparently; well it's half the price of the Palm Pre (not available in the UK yet) which we were hanging out for but got a poor review on the Gadget Show and perhaps the 8520 would hold the data we need and the £120 iPaq we bought wouldn't.

sa 25 jl 09

Windows 7 is the next version of Windows and due in October.  These are ten reasons why it's a good idea and here are three reasons why it's not a good idea to try ... more here

su 12 jl 09

When you've had your laptop a while and it starts to slow down it's because the hard disc needs cleaning up.  We do ours on the Delicates cycle, it's much safer to use a non-bio powder and of course never put it in the tumble dryer but dry naturally.

mo 22 jn 09

When you come to throw a computer away it's the hard disc that contains information you may not want fraudsters, blackmailers or your wife to know.  If your soon ... more here.

su 31 my 09

You absolutely have to know about Control Plus Zed, that's whilst holding down the control key press and release the Z key.  Ctrl + Z undoes your last action; for ... more here.

tu 19 my 09

What's the difference between click and double click on the mouse?  Click selects whatever you're pointing at and double click actions it, though not in menus. ... more here.

sa 9 my 09

On your pc is a hidden file called the registry containing info about the the pc setup and the applications.  As time goes by this registry fills up with redundant ... more here.

th 23 ap 09

Here's a demon tweak for XP (and Vista too though a slightly different configuration path), starting with where it says Start (usually bottom left of the screen) go ... more here.

Microscoft and that there Gill Bates may be very rich cowboys ... more here.

Anti-virus software AVG is doing one of it's periodical ... more here.

Windows 7 will be the next flavour of Windows and it looks like ... more here

Our first PDA was a Sharp something or other and we were very fond of it, it had a rounded case which was nice to hold and a four line text only monochrome display ... more here.

Back when the only common portable data source was a 1.4Mega byte floppy zipping, reducing a file's size by encoding the data, was pretty important.  Now days with memory sticks in Giga (1,000s of Megas) bytes and widespread broadband zipping isn't so important, but it's still useful for grouping a bunch of files together in a single zip.  So you're likely to find downloads on the Internet that needs unzipping.

Windows XP has built in unzipping but recently we've been having intermittent problems on two different machines decompressing zips.  Our dirty but it works fix has been to install EasyZip which is free, small, straight forward and does the job; not WinZip which has got overblown and is no longer free.

GOTCHA: Don't expect zipping to do much if anything to jpeg files as they are already highly compressed.

fr 2 no 07

1954  Hancock's Half Hour was first broadcast

Despite the link inviting you to download Firefox, and we do have it loaded on the main machine here, we find ourselves bemused by how the tabs work.  Maybe Fish will help out?  Now to wash the stairs ...

th 1 no 07

1956  Premium Bonds first went on sale

If you like visiting us but but don't want to change your home page you can add us to your browser tabs.  If your browser is Internet Explorer (the one bundled in with Windows) and version 7 you can do it now.  Just click on the arrow down to the right of the little house up on the right there.  Now click on "Add or Change Home Page ...", then  on "Add this webpage ... " and finally click "Yes".

Now when you open Internet Explorer one of the open tabs will be Near The Coast.  If only one tab is open and it isn't NTC then check this: go Start/Control Panel/Internet Options/Tabs Settings and make sure "Open only first home page ..." is NOT ticked.

Tomorrow Firefox but right now the kitchen floor needs a good seeing to ...

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