Terry’s Computer Tips newsletters December 28th
This week’s online newsletter includes:
* Clearing the Address Bar History in Firefox 3
Firefox 3 has a new predictive system to save you from having to type most of a web address in its address bar, as long as you’ve typed it in, been there, or have a bookmark. But, how can we get rid of some of those addresses?
* Using Two Monitors Simultaneously for More Screen Space
Everybody has used one monitor with their computer. Those of us who have used two, find it hard to go back to one. How can we use two monitors, and for what?
* My Security Software Recommendations
My recommendations for anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, and anti-spam software…
* A First Look at Acronis True Image Home 2009
The new version of Acronis True Image Home is a lot more friendly…
This week’s email and on-line newsletters are now available:
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* weekly on-line Terry’s Computer Tips newsletter
Hi Terry.
New year’s greetings to you!
Re. your item about using two monitors, I’ve been using a couple for a few years now and I really don’t know how I managed before. Once tried, there just ain’t no going back! I feel very restricted when I have to revert to a laptop every now and again.
My NVidia twin-output card allows the use of an extended desktop (amongst other choices) without needing any additional software. For those in the same position, I can recommend a little add-on in the form of “Oscar’s Multi Monitor Task Bar”.
See: http://www.mediachance.com/free/multimon.htm
This is pretty self-explanatory. I didn’t know he’d brought out a pro, paid-for version. I use the freebie and it works fine.
Also see his interesting ideas under “Create Multi-Computer environment”. On a similar tack, I have a second PC connected with a cross-over ethernet cable to the main PC with the monitor also on the desk with the two monitors from the main PC and I use a program called “Synergy” http://synergy2.sourceforge.net which seamlessly allows the use of one mouse over all three screens and also one keyboard when the cursor is on the appropriate screen. It also allows copy and paste between the two computers, which is very useful. Pity it doesn’t allow drag and drop for files, as well! It’s so seamless it’s a great temptation to try and drag an open window from the right-hand monitor of the main PC on to the single monitor of the second PC and wonder why it won’t go! Hope this hasn’t strayed too far off topic but Synergy is so good, it’s almost worthy of an article in its own right! The only down-side is the set-up (i.e. telling Synergy the relative positions of the monitors), which is a little quirky but once done, it’s yet another one of those programs that I wonder how I did without. Regards, David
I know what she is talking about on the firefox 3.0 dropdown menu as it didn’t appeal to me as well. She is talking about when you are typing in the address block how that all the sites “pop-up” underneath the address bar. You cannot get rid of this as it is a feature in Firefox 3.0 This disturbed me so much that i did further research and found that you could disable this in the following manner:
Answer:
Type about:config into the location bar and press enter. This brings up a list or preferences.
Locate the preference browser.urlbar.maxRichResults, double-click on it and change its value to 0
Note: the value they have it set at for default is 12.
Hope she enjoys this information as much as I did!… A lot of people just don’t want all that information popping up as you type….especially if you already know where it is you want to surf to.
I was surprised to see an item in the [Clear Private Data] screen in your article was different from the Firefox Version 3.05 [Clear Private Data] screen on my PC. My PC did not show the checkbox and statement “Tab Mix plus Saved Sessions”.
Do you know why the [Clear Private Data] screens should be different on the two computers?
Thanks,
Bill DePierri
Bill,
Tab Mix Plus is an optional Firefox add-on. It adds a bunch of tab-specific options, and it can save Firefox sessions – so this change came with the add-on.
You can get it via the Get More Add-ons function in Firefox, or by going directly to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1122
Terry
Multi-monitor is great. I just got a new HP laptop in November. It uses a ATI addon video card and came with a built in VGA plug. So I just plugged in my desktop monitor and bingo, 17″ laptop LCD at 1440×900 x 59hz and my desktop CRT at 1280×1024 x 85 hz. It worked immediately. The only quirk is that the video utility assumes that the laptop is on the left of the #2 monitor if I power on the CRT after the laptop is running. So the mouse only wraps from the RIGHT side of the laptop all the way over to the far LEFT side of the CRT until I can reset location of the #2 monitor.
So while tools like the one you mentioned are useful, people should first check that their video driver does not already support multiple monitors. They may be pleasantly surprised, especially with newer video cards that already have the second monitor connector built in. You may not realize that your PC is already setup to handle 2 monitors without additional effort.