Hyphenation is a great way to make your documents look fuller and make good use of space. However sometimes, depending on what you are doing, you won’t want long words to break up when they reach the margin. Here is how you can turn off hyphenation in Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop, the two most likely programs you will need to do this on.

In Microsoft Office:

1. Go to the Tools Menu, Language, and then choose Hyphenation.
2. Uncheck the Automatically hyphenate document check box.
3. Enjoy your non-hyphenated document!

In Adobe Photoshop:

1. Make sure the Paragraph palette is visible by turning on Window > Paragraph.
2. In the Paragraph palette, uncheck the Hyphenation box.
3. Enjoy your non-hyphenated image!

Know any other tricks to disable hyphenation on popular applications? Share it with us in a comment below!

In an effort to lower costs, most large companies now use automated answering machines to handle the bulk of their calls. It may be annoying for the customer to “press 3 for purchase inquiry”, but the fact is most calls can be handled this way, and so it is a great way for companies to save money. But what do you do when you absolutely must talk to a human being?

For that, use 1800Shortcuts. 1800Shortcuts is a list of hundreds of popular companies, their phone numbers, and the magic technique for each that will get you talking to a human representative. No doubt a very useful list to bookmark, because you will almost definitely need it in the future!

1800Shortcuts.net

A year has passed, and your “brand new” computer isn’t running all that great anymore. It seems to take much longer to do anything, especially start up. Well fortunately for you, there are a couple ways to restore that fresh-from-the-box speed that you desire. These tips focus on improving start-up speed, but they also will help general system speed.

1. Scan for viruses and spyware. If your computer had a sudden dramatic drop in speed, your problem may be spyware or a virus. I suggest you download Ad-aware, Spybot S&D, (and AVG if you don’t already have antivirus) to scan for bad stuff. Update each program and run a full scan.

2. Keep your drivers up to date. Old hardware drivers can sometimes be inefficient, so it is always a good idea to keep your drivers up to date.

3. Disable Unwanted Start-up Processes. Go Start > Run, type msconfig and hit enter. This will bring up the System Configuration Utility. Go to the start-up tab, and you will see all the programs that load when you start-up your computer. Do not disable any processes that you don’t understand. However you will probably recognize many that you don’t need at start-up, such as CD-burning software, or MSN messenger, or a P2P client. You can safely uncheck these to stop them from booting next time you start up your computer.

4. Disable Hardware you don’t use. Using the Device Manager (Right-click on My Computer, click Properties, and go to the Hardware tab) you can disable any hardware on your computer that you do not use. Each piece of hardware requires time to load it’s drivers. Disabling stuff you don’t regularly use such as firewire ports, PCI ports, and bluetooth could save you a couple seconds each time you start your computer. Don’t worry, you can always re-enable them any time you like!

5. Uninstall software that you don’t use. While it is true that installed software usually doesn’t affect computer performance if you don’t run them, some programs install things called “Services” which are similar to processes and run at start-up. You shouldn’t fool around disabling services, because usually you need most of them. The best way to ensure you don’t have any useless services clogging up your system is to uninstall any software you don’t need anymore.

6. Change the boot order in the BIOS. In most cases, your computer checks the CD drive, then the USB ports for bootable media before booting your hard drive. This detection can take multiple seconds depending on your hardware. If you own your computer and have access to the BIOS, you can change the order to boot from your hard drive immediately, thereby saving a couple seconds. If you ever need to revert, you can always change it back.

7. Disable Recent Documents. Every time your computer starts, Windows draws on a list of your most recently opened documents. Not only is this a potential privacy concern, but it can slow down your computer a small bit. You can easily disable this feature by right-clicking on your task bar > properties > Start Menu > Customize > Advanced.

8. Remove Extra fonts. You can save a significant amount of loading time by removing windows fonts that you don’t use. Fonts such as webdings and other fonts that you never use can be removed to save loading time. A good program to use is Font Frenzy, which removes all third-party fonts other than the default windows fonts.

9. Defragmenter your HD often. If you do heavy activity involving movies, pictures, and downloads, your computer will fragment more quickly. You should run a disk defragmenter at minimum once per month. This lowers the stress on your hard drive, thereby making it less likely to crash.

10. Hibernate instead of shutting down. If you have a laptop you can put it into hibernation, which is a state that uses no energy, but is quicker to restore from than starting up from scratch.

Have you ever wondered what that windows key between Ctrl and Alt on your keyboard does? Yes, it does minimize your games and steal window focus if you accidentally press it, but it has a real purpose, and is actually quite convenient. There are a bunch of shortcuts built around the windows key, but below are the most useful ones on a daily basis.

Win + L: Locks your computer

Win + D: Shows the Desktop

Win + M: Minimizes all programs

Win + E: Opens Windows Explorer

Win + R: Opens the Run dialog

So now you know that the Windows key isn’t completely useless. Problem is I find it does as much trouble by stealing window focus than it does from faster computing.

Microsoft made a flaw in their Office installations which makes installing multiple versions of Microsoft Office hard. If you open one version of Word, it takes a couple minutes to “Configure” itself. If you close and re-open the same version, it is fine, but if you try to open the other version, you have to wait 5 minutes for it to configure again. This basically makes using two Office editions almost impossible, and very annoying. Lucky there is a quick registry work-around that allows you to run two versions of Office without having to wait for each to “Configure”.

1. Run the version of Word that you want to have associated with your .doc, .dot, .docx, etc files, then close Word.2. Double click, in Windows Explorer in My Documents or another folder a .doc file to be sure it opens in the correct version you refer to use then close all running Office apps.

3. Start > Run > Type regedit and hit Enter

4. File > Export and save a backup copy of your registry just in case.

5. Navigate down in HKEY_CURRENT_USER to
\Software\Microsoft\Office

6. For Word 2007 (v12.0) continue to navigate through

\12.0\Word\Options

and once there right click on the ‘Options’ branch in the left panel and create a new ‘DWORD’ named NoReReg , then set the value
of NoReReg to 1.

7. For Word 2003 (v11.0), follow the same steps as in 2f, but use the area for Word 2003, which would be

\11.0\Word\Options

8. For Word 2002 (v10.0), follow the same steps as in 2f, but use the area for Word 2002 (Office XP), which would be

\10.0\Word\Options

After that, you should see the annoying configuration go away! If one version does become corrupt or needs an update, just delete the DWORD you just created, and it should be back to normal!

Running Office XP and Office 2007 [TechArena Forums]

With internet hotspots popping up everywhere, it is getting more and more important to be careful about what you do over wireless internet. Connecting to networks which are not secured via WPA or WEP encrpytion makes it easy for hackers to intercept your data packets, and steal sensitive information such as passwords or whatever else you enter. This usually isn't a problem at home, where you can encrypt your own connection, but it is becoming a problem because many hotels now only provide wireless internet. So how do you connect to the internet in this scenario while staying safe from hackers? Simple! Use a VPN!

What is a VPN?

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, and is similar to a Local Area Network that you may find at your house.  When two or more computers join a VPN, they can then perform tasks such as printer and document sharing even if both computers are located thousands of miles apart.

How can a VPN help me surf securely?

A personal VPN works using  a network between your laptop and a secure server connected to the internet. When you connect to your VPN, it opens a secure encrypted tunnel between your computer and the server, through which data can flow without being intercepted. When the data reaches your server, it is unencrypted and sent on its way.

Setting up a VPN

Previously to have a personal VPN you must either have a spare server lying around and a lot of technical knowledge, or be willing to dish out $40+/year to use a commercial VPN.

AnchorFree have released HotSpot Shield, a free personal VPN that you can use for free, without a server, and with very little technical knowledge.

Price: Free, but th catch is that it displays a banner ad on the top of every page you view. Annoying, but bearable if you need to check your email over an unsecured hotspot.

Speed: A big factor to consider when setting up or choosing a VPN is speed. You will almost always experience slower internet when connected to a VPN, but how much slower depends on distance to the server, the server's internet connection, and the load on their connection. I didn't expect much from Hotspot Shield, because I knew that because they were free, they likely had few servers and those servers had a huge load on them. However I was pleasantly surprised to find the speed was more than bearable.

Speed without Hotspot Shield:

Ping: 42 ms
Download Speed: 1423 kbps
Upload Speed: 943 kbps

Speed with Hotspot Shield:

Ping: 142 ms
Download Speed: 823 kbps
Upload Speed: 373 kbps

The internet was about half as fast when connected, which is not bad at all for free vpn software.

Features: Unlike commerical VPN software,
Hotspot Shield does not come with any extra goodies such as WiFi locators or fancy system tray menus. Hotspot Shield includes On and Off, and that is pretty much it.

Page Saver is an extension for Firefox that allows you to capture a full image of the page you are currently viewing, even if it doesn’t all fit in your window. This is incredibly useful if you need to capture a page for future reference, but you do not want to printing it will ruin the formatting (which eliminates the option of printing to PDF).

Another really cool feature is that unlike a screenshot, capturing a page with Page Saver only captures the page, and not your browser window, and it saves directly to a PNG file. This eliminates the need to open an image editor to crop and save your capture.

A couple weeks ago my friend was unfairly banned by a moderator on his favorite message board. Before the moderator deleted the thread, I went in and snapped a picture of each page, and sent it to my friend as evidence if he needed it. Capturing forum conversations is just one of the many uses for Page Saver. When you need it, you will be glad you have it.

Pearl Crescent Page Saver is an extension for Mozilla Firefox that lets you capture images of web pages. These images can be saved in PNG format or (with Firefox 2) in JPEG format. The entire page or just the visible portion may be captured. Options let you control whether images are captured at full size (which is the default) or scaled down to a smaller size.

Page Saver [Pearl Cresent]

You know that annoying popup that appears every 15 minutes nagging you to restart windows after updates have been installed? Not only is this annoying if you don’t want to or can’t restart, but if you are doing something in full screen mode, it will minimize it to display you the popup box. Here is a quick tutuorial on how to disable this annoying windows popup, and spare you a lot of frustration and possibly some embarrassment.

Method 1 (GUI)

Click start then Run (or windows key + r) and type services.msc and press enter. Next find “Automatic updates” and stop the service (right click –> stop).

Method 2 (Command prompt)

Click start then Run (or windows key + r) and type cmd then press enter. Type in the following and press enter:

net stop wuauserv

Method 3 (Batch script & Launchy)

Open up your favorite text editor and type in:

net stop wuauserv

Save this file as a batch file (e.g. begone.bat) and run it. Keep this file in a place where you will remember it for the next time you need it. To kill the popup with launchy, put the bach file in c:\program files\launchy\utilities\ and set that folder to index .bat files… You know the drill

(In case you werent sure, wuauserv stands for “Windows Update Automatic Update Service.)

PS. Windows Update service will start the next time you reboot so you dont have to worry about not having anymore updates.