Welcome to the Geek Choice Blog

Here at Geek Choice we try to help the people who might not be so computer-savvy or people who are new to using them. At this blog, that is our mission: to instruct, to teach, and to educate everyone who is interested in knowing certain tips, tricks, and general information from everything to viruses and security to basic functions.

For today, let’s look at taking “Control” of your computer. The key located directly at the bottom left of your keyboard has the letters CTRL on it. This little button lives up to its title, as it controls many short, quick actions to help you move around the computer more efficiently.

Below is a list of the CTRL functions you can use:

Ctrl + C or Ctrl + Insert

Copy the highlighted text or selected item.

Ctrl + V or Shift + Insert

Paste the text or object that’s in the clipboard.

Ctrl + Z and Ctrl + Y

Undo any change. For example, if you cut text, pressing this will undo it. This can also often be pressed multiple times to undo multiple changes. Pressing Ctrl + Y would re-do the undo.

Ctrl + F

Open the Find in any program. This includes your Internet browser to find text on the current page.

Ctrl + P

Print what’s currently being viewed in programs such as Microsoft Word or your Internet browser.

Ctrl + Left arrow / Right arrow

Move the cursor one word at a time instead of one character at a time. If you wanted to highlight one word at a time you can hold down Ctrl + Alt and then press the left or right arrow key to move one word at a time in that direction while highlighting each word.

Ctrl + Home / End

Move the cursor to the beginning or end of a document.

Page Up / Space bar and Page Down

Pressing either the page up or page down key will move that page one page at a time in that direction. When browsing the Internet pressing the space bar will also move the page down one page at a time.

Alt + Tab or Alt + Esc

Quickly switch between open programs.

F1

Open help for the program you’re in.

Now that you know how what the pro’s know, let’s move on to programs that everyone should have downloaded to their computer.

Anti-virus and malware protection

Anti-virus: Avast! or AVG

Malware / Spyware protection: Malwarebytes

Browsers

Although Microsoft Internet Explorer comes pre-installed on Windows computers, there are several excellent free alternatives that everyone should try. These free alternatives can often be faster, have more options, and in many cases be more secure than Internet Explorer. Try Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, you will be impressed.

Backup

There are dozens of free and commercially available backup programs for computers. Unfortunately many of those backups are stored locally, meaning if your house were to catch fire, get robbed, or if you simply lost your backup discs all your data would be lost. This is why when dealing with important data we suggest users use online backup services. Mozy or Dropbox are two options that give you the necessary solutions to make sure that accidents don’t turn into disasters!

by Sean Wilcoxson

A new PC utility enables users to slim up there computer and cut down on all those programs you do not need which fills up disk space.

“Bloatware”, or software bloat, is a term that is used to describe the unnecessary features that are not being used but takes up valuable space on your computer. In the beginning, back in the 1970’s, every byte was accounted for because disk space was like gold not to be wasted. It seems in today’s world the reverse is the normal: pack in the useless nonsense!

With all the new operating systems, browsers, protocols, and storage formats, no wonder your computer is fat and farting! For example, a program that once could only save in text format is now demanded to save in HTML, XML, XLS, CSV, PDF, DOC, and other formats.

In comes SlimComputer software from SlimWare Utilities, a useful tool that collects user ratings of programs that ship with that PC you ordered and aggregates them to make it easy to decide which ones to delete, and which ones to keep.

“As more users participate, we get more data. As we get more data, the better the ratings are,” said Chris Cope, CEO of Slimware, based in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Looking at these ratings, you might still be skeptical at whether or not certain programs are valuable or not. The tool will identify and remove programs that many users don’t want, like the free games that come with many PCs, and also list nonessential toolbars, startup items and shortcuts. Basically the SlimComputer eliminates all those annoying programs that take up all the space that you could be using to store all those “movies”.

Why Is Bloatware Bad?

How does it feel to be bloated? Not good. That is what your computer feels, and it will go a lot slower than usual because it is too busy farting. Software companies often pay PC makers to include trial versions in the computer so you will get a nice variety of nothing!

This software can slow boot times, drag on performance, and take up disk space. Other examples of bloated software are trial productivity tools and accounting. So what can you do to get your PC up and running full speed?

With Slimware the main goal is to not interfere with important programs that are used to help the computer function properly. That would screw things up big time, no, what this program does is make it so that when you get a new computer or have an existing one, based on user ratings of how important a program is you can decide for yourself which ones to get rid of.

This is a valuable tool in this day and age of endless content that never ceases to fill up your screen with useless nonsense. Get rid of all that crap with slimware.

Microsoft, iTunes, and other applications like NERO burning ROM have been accused of being bloated. They come with all sorts of ridiculous add-ons and downloads that look great, but actually are just there to slow you down.

Here is a tip: if you feel your computer is bloated and is not as fast as you would like? Instead of buying a new expensive Sony laptop, download this free program and see how much money you can save by freeing up space.

That quintessential streaming service, Youtube, has just launched a music delivery system called Youtube Disco. Something of an addendum to their already impressive catalog of music videos, this service is still in its infancy, which becomes obvious when you notice its lack of more advanced options available elsewhere.

Still, it serves its fundamental purpose — which is to stream music.

Easy to use, you’re given two options for your music search: You can search for an artist and all of the songs they’ve crafted, or you can find music that’s in the same vein of the music you originally ran a search for.

Barebones but simple in its execution, this is a great means of discovering new music and finding songs from some of your favorite artists.

Visit Youtube Disco here.

Being a writer, distractions have always been problematic, their intrusion on the process of writing an annoyance that can often render a presumably easy writing task into one that occupies more time than you’d like.

CreaWriter is a very helpful tool that frees you of the many distractions that exist when using a word processor. Whether it’s that flashing icon in your task bar or the minimized Firefox tab that’s calling your attention, the modern experience of writing has become an endeavor hindered by our immediate access to other forms of information.

This tool wipes away all of those distractions, leaving a clean slate (literally!) on which to ply your writing.  As seen above, nothing else exists no your screen but the page to which you’re putting your words. You can further customize it, including the ability to add both background images and ambient sounds – both of which can be disabled, if you prefer just a white space.

In the digital age, distractions are inevitable, no matter how determined we are to avoid them. However, programs such as CreaWriter mitigate the frustration that results from them, making it a little easier to finish what you’re trying to compose.

This is a free program that’s available for Windows only, and you can grab it here.

Well, here I am with another Firefox extension.

Like the one I touched upon earlier today, this is an add-on that will greatly enhance how you use the internet with this popular browser. Looking for a simple means of customizing how your tabs appear and function in Firefox?

This is the extension you’ve been searching for.

Called Tabberwocky, this extension builds upon the functionality of your tabs to an impressive degree, altering everything from their appearance to how you navigate between each one.

Installation is just as easy as it’s been for every other extension you’ve put to use. Once that’s complete, your first order of business  is looking at the available options : Tabs – Menus – Advanced.

These options afford you an opportunity to tailor the extension to your liking. For example, looking at the Tabs option, you’re able to adjust how your tabs behave and how they respond when clicked upon or closed.

With the Menus options, you can assign keyboard shortcuts, adjust your context menu, and determine where you want new links to open.

Lastly, using Advanced options, you can configure it so that the “progress bar” appears  on your tabs instead of in the Status bar. Advanced options will also allow you have multiple rows in one tab.

Not everyone will want to put this to use, finding that the default functionality of Firefox’ tabs suits them just fine, but this might pique the interest of you Firefox geeks that love to tweak this brilliantly customizable internet browser.

You can grab Tabberwocky here.

When using an internet browser, be it Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Mozilla’s Firefox, you’ve probably used the full screen option that’s available when pressing F11. This is great for those of you who want a bit more breathing room while viewing the content.

Yet, in spite of how liberating that option can be, there are those times when you’d like to have some your browsing features available – such as the status bar or the address field. As in the past, I’ve happened upon a neat Firefox extension that introduces a new way of browsing, just one of a myriad of add-ons that significantly augments your browsing experience.

It’s called Hide GUI Bars, and it allows users to select which elements they’d like to remove from the browser, ultimately freeing up the viewing area on Firefox.  Those segments that you can specify the removal of include the navigation bar, the tab bar, the menu bar, the status bar, and the bookmark bar. Multiple combinations – if you, for instance, only want the bookmark bar visible — are available when using this extension.

There is a default hot key (CTRL-SHIFT-A), but it can be changed to suit your preference by using any other combination of keys.  Absolutely free, this is yet another example of the ingenuity that has propelled Firefox to the head of the browsing class.

You can grab Hide GUI Bars here.