Productivity

9 Cool Features to Use in Windows 10

9 Cool Features to Use in Windows 10 Once computers and laptops are configured to our liking, we use to approach them routinely. After the login page, we do boring stuff, such as opening outlook to check our emails. We fire up the browser to check our bank account, we print pages, we use Word for writing and Excel to fill out spreadsheets.A few days ago, a friend of mine in Westchester asked me if I would show him if Windows 10 has hidden features that would make the user experience more interesting and productive in some ways. After researching across several resources, I came up with some cool features that I will describe below: and everyone running Windows 10 should take advantage of them: 1- WINDOWS CLOCK If you want to add more than one clock to the actual Windows 10 interface, you can do that by going into settings, time, and language. There you will see all the settings for your clock. You can add clock for different times zones if you are interested in other areas of the world and if you have to check the time zone before jumping into a Zoom meeting. Adding a new time zone is useful if, for example, you work as IT professional and you have to remote into computers. The second clock will be added as a secondary clock and will be visible under the primary clock. You can see the second clock after hovering on the primary clock at the bottom right or by clicking on it. In total, you can add two more clocks to the primary one. 2- STEPS RECORDER Head down to the search box and type “steps recorder”. You can use this Windows 10 feature If you have a problem your computer and you want to try to show someone what is wrong with it. As computer troubleshooting errors can be clues for the help desk, users can show the error code that’s coming up. You can push “record” and every time you click the screen, it will record those instances. While you are recording, on the right there is a button where you can add comments. Don’t panic if the screen becomes blurry because that is a prompt to select an area where you can focus the recording on. After you stop recording, you are prompted with another window highlighting the recorded steps. You can also save the recording to a zip file. Once you extract the zip file, you can open the .MHT file with Internet Explorer. Don’t use Microsoft Edge to open the file because it will not work. 3- GOD MODE God Mode is a cool feature that converts an empty folder in your desktop to the control panel and much more. After having enabled God Mode, users will be able to see connected devices, updates, programs, folder structure and everything will be gathered in a convenient list.Right-click on a free space on the desktop. Click on “New” and “Folder”.Enter the folder name GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}.The God Mode folder will now appear on the desktop with all the control panel functions. 4- REPLACE COMMAND PROMPT WITH POWERSHELL If you are an advanced user and prefer to use Power Shell, there is a simple way to replace the Command Prompt with PowerShell. In the search box of Windows 10 located at the bottom left, you can type “Taskbar Settings”. Once the taskbar interface shows up you can turn on the “Replace Command Prompt with Windows Power Shell in the Menu”. The slider button is very simple to toggle, and it does not require advanced knowledge. 5- EMOJI With a simple stroke, it is possible to save same time when adding Emojis to our work. Let’s say we are working on a Word document or on a Power Point presentation and we need to add some Emoji, we can simply type the following: Which is the Windows button + the period sign. 6- NEARBY SHARING If you’re familiar with Apple’s airdrop, Microsoft now has a similar feature called nearby sharingthat will let you share content with other Windows 10 computers connected to your network. To enable Nearby Sharing, go to the search box and type “Share”. Click on “Shared Experience settings”. When you select share in Microsoft Word and many other programs including photos, you should see nearby computers. 7- BUILT-IN CALCULATOR Many of us are already familiar with the built-in calculator, but the Windows10 calculator can do the extra mile for its users. When we open it up, we see it that it works in standard mode, but if we click on the three lines on the top left of it, a wide arrange of new features comes up. The calculator can become a scientific calculator that can calculate logarithms. It can be also used by a programmer as it has program functions and, at the bottom, it can also convert currency, temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius and vice versa, time (hours, seconds, milliseconds etc.) and speed (km to miles and vice versa). 8- TIME DIFFERENCE This Windows 10 feature is helpful when you want to see the time difference between different areas of the world. In the search tab at the bottom left, you can type “Alarm” and when the Alarms and Clock app shows up, click on it. Go to the clock tab. The tab will show primarily your location, but if you click at the bottom right on the + plus sign, you can add a location and it will calculate the time difference between your current location and the new location. If you have friends, family or business and you have to speak to them, that is a good reminder to you of the time zone that people live in. 9- STORAGE SENSE Storage Sense is a nice feature to have especially if we have a computer or a laptop with a smaller hard drive. The feature can also automate the process of getting rid of worthless junk on

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The Main Tech Support Tools IT Professionals Should Have

The Main Tech Support Tools IT Professionals Should Have Information technology is a business like any other; it can be exposed to lawsuits, malpractice and other negative experiences. After many years in the field, I thought I could provide a guide on how to approach the job and what are the tools of the trade. I have compiled this guide by dividing the tools in three sections, legal toos, hardware tools and software. For each category, I provide a description of what each tool does so that even non-admins can understand the wide array of instruments computer experts use every day at work. With that said, let’s begin with the legal tools: 1- LEGAL TOOLS 2- HARDWARE TOOLS I had the Thinkpad T 470 with 14 inches screen for 6 years and it still works fine. With such a laptop, tech support can use the Ethernet port to troubleshoot a router or a firewall, login into a network attached storage, engage in remote sessions with users and participate in Zoom meetings. The laptop for an IT expert should be equipped with at least 512 SSD or NVME hard drive, 16 GB of RAM and an Intel Core i5 processor. I have used this tool a lot to clone laptop hard drives on pc and MAC computers and to recover spinning drives that were not bootable anymore when plugged in into their pcs. It’s a very helpful tool that can also host a temporary backup to an external device because, at the end, there is not so much difference between an external hard drive and an internal one. Recently I was able to experience how sensitive to damage HDMI cables are compared to the VGA as I had to replace HDMI wires very frequently on TVs and monitors hooked up to pc and laptops. 3- SOFTWARE TOOLS This piece of software will also display what devices are alive and which are dead, including their MAC address. A few months ago, I had a client of mine who did not know where the server was in her network and with Advanced IP Scanner I was able to find it in few minutes. The software will display the temperature and the health status in percentage. The power on hours feature on the top right of the picture shows how many hours the hard drive has been on. In the diagnostics tab with the smaller blue dots, if the uncorrectable sector count reaches the 200 marks, the hard drive needs to be replaced. IT tools are invaluable to IT specialists, who use them to assist them in their jobs. As a computer specialist, you will not be able to support your clients without carrying a good array of tech support tools. Achieving your goals without the right tools can be like trying to reach a destination without a map. While all of the properties of success are within you, having the right IT tools can make the difference between success and failure.

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7 Productivity Tools to Supercharge your New Windows 11 Computer

7 Productivity Tools to Supercharge your New Windows 11 Computer Once you get a new computer that satisfies your productivity needs and has enough storage space, I think that you may want to consider to install the productivity software I will be recommending in this article. The tools I am proposing are free and can help you complete tasks in a shorter amount of time. One important consideration, though: operating systems are open ecosystems, in that they can be enriched with productivity software, app and other utilities to accomplish things in a professional and clean way. Once you have installed all the required updates in your Windows 11, you may want to pick up some of the best productivity tools for your new computer. But first, let’s describe what thiese pieces of software are able to do: 1- ANYDESK Anydesk is a remote support software that can be used by IT professionals and private users as well. It is supported both on Windows and Macs and it’s very easy to use. Once both the local computer and the remote computer have Anydesk installed, the remote computer user will read the 9 numbers that show up on Anydesk and the local user on the other end will remote in. The software comes with very cool features such as the chance to use unattended access, text chats and the possibility of having multiple sessions by opening new browser tabs. The file transfer feature of Any Desk makes this product a great tool for those who need to access resources remotely. 2- FILEZILLA Filezilla is a tools that moves files and folders between computers by using a protocol called File Transfer Protocol. FTP is used to move files between computers, between servers and between servers and computers. Another popular use of the program is when webmasters upload files from their computers to their web hosting account. For example, if you have stored on your computer WordPress files that need to be uploaded to your domain, you can do that with Filezilla. Its interface is split in right and left side. On the left interface you will see the files and folders stored locally in your computer and after you have filled out the remote server information on 4 boxes on the top, the remote server files will show up on the right of the Filezilla’s interface. 3- GOOGLE CHROME Chrome is the default browser used by Google and Googlers and I have included it in this article because it is a non-Microsoft product. As users are not fully used to Microsft Edge, Chrome is easy to use for its speed, font clarity and the popular bookmarks tab that still atttracts thousands of users every day. The 2021 browser market share shown in the picture above still shows the strong Chrome trend. If you start using Chrome for a period of time, it will store safely the passwords you have used to login into browsers and you will also have a chance to retrieve those passwords if you don’t remember them anymore. Also, Chrome and Gmail are very well linked together because all the settings will be stored in your Google account , including your emails, your browsing preferences and other sensitive data. The Chrome webstore is also a great marketplace to pickup Chrome extensions you like to use. Pinterest and Malware bytes browser guard are the most popular Chrome extensions I generally use almost on a daily basis. 4- NINITE Ninite saves you a lot of time when you have a new computer and you need to install software. Ninite allows you to install software all at once. If you go to Ninite.com, you can select the apps you want to install in your computer and the software will download the packages for you. The apps range from browser, to documents, security and media. With Ninite, you don’t need to go to each individual site to download the app again, because Ninite will do the bulk of the download for you. 5- VLC VLC is a free and open source media player that can solve several annoying problems presented by the Windows DVD default player. When Windows 10 and 11 players cannot read dvd because they don’t have the updated Codec package installed, VLC will solve the problem by reading all video and sound files with no issues. One of the cool features of VLC is also the chance to rip DVD to mp4 files so that you can convert physical DVDs into Mp4 or AVI files. If you decide to use VLC as default media player you have to adjust the settings of your pc which are by default all using built-in Microsoft products. Go to the search bar at the bottom left of your screen and type “Default Apps”. There you can change the music player and the video player to VLC. 6-LIBRE OFFICE Libre Office is a great alternative to Microsoft Office and it is free. The software is made by Oracle and is very popular among the people who do not want to spend the money on Microsoft Office or students who have budget constraints. One of the main difference with Microsoft Office is that Libre Office does not come with an email program included in the suite. Use the browser to read your emails or you can download Thunderbird from Mozilla if you need to download and read your emails on your computer. On the other hand, one of the main downsides of Libre Office is that it does not a have a web version available like its counterpart from Microsoft. As Microsoft has expanded its range of cloud features with One Drive, Libre Office does not support data syncrhonization like One Drive. Therefore, you can still work locally on your computer with Libre Office but you may want to backup frequently your machine to the cloud or to an external hard drive to avoid losing your files. Another setting you want to tweak on Libre Office before

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