FAQs - General
1. I have
such a large hard disk, but games don't run if I copy the CD on to it. How do I
avoid having to put in the CD every time?
2. I need to send this file to my
friend, but there's no point burning a CD for such a small file and it won't fit
on a floppy.
3. How can I receive e-mail from
Web-based services in Outlook Express?
4. How do I make the most of my
dial-up connection?
5. I have so many images, sound
and video clips. Can I organise them so that I can find them easily?
6. Unlike ICQ, MSN doesn't
automatically save a history of my chat messages. Is there any way to log my
chat sessions in MSN?
7. How can I have my PC keep track
of birthdays?
8. The cartridges for my
printer cost too much. I wonder why they run out so fast.
9. Sometimes the CDs that I write
are not read by some CD-ROM drives and other players. This happens with various
CDs-data, MP3, audio, etc.
10. Can I send SMS messages from my PC?
1. I have
such a large hard disk, but games don't run if I copy the CD on to it. How do I
avoid having to put in the CD every time?
Top
Many games, encyclopaedias and other similar CDs require the CD to be in the
drive for them to work. This is either because the software needs to access
resources from the CD or it is a measure taken to prevent piracy. There are
several tools available, such as the Virtual Original CD Emulator (www.ztekware.com),
which can emulate CD-ROM drives for data as well as audio CDs. All you need to
do is install the software and configure which folder on your hard disk you want
it to emulate as a CD. Thus, you can copy entire CDs to your hard disk in
separate folders and have them all appear as different CD-ROM drives. This
software effectively fools the application into thinking there is an actual
CD-ROM drive with the application CD in it. Another advantage with this is that
of speed-being on the hard disk, the program will run much faster than if the
program disk were actually in the CD drive.
2. I need to send this file to my friend, but there's no point
burning a CD for such a small file and it won't fit on a floppy.
Top
To share large files, you can split them into smaller chunks and use a set of
floppies or the Internet to transfer them. There are several ways to split
files. You can use a file-splitting utility such as HJSplit (www.freebyte.com/hjsplit/)
where you simply have to specify which file is to be split and how large each
piece should be. The files can be joined back to the original using the same
utility. However, this means that the person you are sending the files to should
have the same utility (you could include it on one of the floppies). Another way
of splitting files is to use a compression program such as WinZip or WinRAR.
Almost all compression programs allow you to split the output file into multiple
files of a particular size, which can later be joined back together. You can
make a self-extracting archive so that the program does not need to be installed
anywhere else.
You can use a service such as Yahoo! Briefcase (briefcase.yahoo.com)
to store your files. This allows you to store up to 30 MB of data, with a
maximum limit of 1 MB per file. You can share these Web folders with your
friends for them to download the files.
3. How can I receive e-mail from Web-based
services in Outlook Express?
Top
It is possible to receive Hotmail messages in Outlook Express. To set up the
Hotmail account, click Tools > Accounts in Outlook Express and click Add >
Mail. Follow the wizard and enter your Hotmail address when asked for the e-mail
address. Outlook Express will automatically set sup the account and synchronise
the folders.
Apart from this, you cannot receive Web-based e-mail on a mail client. If the
mail service supports POP or IMAP access, only then can you configure it to your
mail
software. Free services such as Fastmail.fm (www.fastmail.fm),
SubDimension.com (www.subdimension.com), and
MyRealBox (www.myrealbox.com), among others, that
allow you to use the service using Outlook or Outlook Express, over POP or IMAP.
You can get the details of the SMTP and POP3 servers from each site. In your
mail client, when configuring the account, choose the appropriate protocol (POP3
or IMAP) and enter the SMTP server address for the Outgoing mail server and the
POP server address for the Incoming mail server. Earlier, Yahoo! used to allow
POP access to e-mail, but now it is a paid service. If you subscribe with them
for POP access, you can receive Yahoo! mail over Outlook or Outlook Express,
too.
4. How do I make the most of my dial-up connection?
Top
Dial-up connections end up costing a bomb if you add the cost of the ISP and,
more significantly, the telephone bills, especially if you have to keep
redialling. If you use your Internet connection primarily for e-mail, there may
be some things you can do to reduce the amount of time you have to be online. To
begin with, type your e-mail offline in your mail client. That way, when you
connect, all you have to do is send and receive messages without staying online
for too long. If you use Web-based e-mail, login to your account and open up all
the messages you want to read in new windows (hold down [Shift] as you click the
link). Once they are all open, you can disconnect, read them all offline and
type replies to them in Notepad. Then
connect again, paste the reply to each message and send them.
If you download files and software from the Internet, you must install a good
download manager such as Download Accelerator Plus (www.speedbit.com)
or FlashGet (www.flashget.com). Download managers
are much better than using your browser because these programs split up files
into several parts while downloading. A single-stream download will never be
able to efficiently utilise the available bandwidth, so the software downloads
the file in multiple streams. Also, usually these software can reliably check if
the same file is available elsewhere for download and will get the file from the
fastest server available. If for some reason the download stops midway, the
software can resume downloading from that point instead of downloading the
entire file all over again.
5. I have so many images, sound and video
clips. Can I organise them so that I can find them easily?
Top
What you need is a media organiser. You may already be using one of the best
tools for organising media files-the Microsoft Office Clip Gallery! This tiny
tool catalogues all kinds of media files, segregates them into categories and
associates keywords and descriptions with them, which you can use for powerful
searches. You can add your own images, sound and video clips to the gallery and
tag them as you want. You don't necessarily have to run this catalogue from an
Office application-it is an independent utility that can run on its own. If you
have Office, you should be able to find it in C:\Program Files\Common
Files\Microsoft Shared\Artgalry. Run Cag.exe from here to run the Clip Gallery.
There are also some cool tools available for download. Advanced File Organizer (www.softprime.com)
is easy to use and it can catalogue files and folders in hierarchical
categories. You can tag every file with your own keywords and descriptions,
making it very easy to search for them later.
6. Unlike ICQ, MSN doesn't automatically
save a history of my chat messages. Is there any way to log my chat sessions in
MSN?
Top
MSN Messenger has one major shortcoming-by default it does not save the chat
messages. You can use an add-on called Messenger Plus to log all your chat
sessions automatically, so that you can dig them up later for future reference.
Alternatively, you can use a unified messaging software such as Trillian (www.trillian.cc).
Trillian allows you to chat over several messaging services (Hotmail, Yahoo!,
ICQ, AOL and IRC), and also logs chat sessions for each of them and has many
additional features such as skins, custom Away messages, etc that are present in
some IMs.
7. How can I have my PC keep track of
birthdays?
Top
Keeping track of birthdays is as simple as using a reminder or scheduler
program. If you already use Outlook, you can set up each birthday as a task with
the appropriate date and configure it to be recurring every year. You can set up
an alert for it as per your convenience. Thus, the birthdays and anniversaries
can actually be planned among your other tasks, making this a very useful
solution. If you don't use Outlook, you can still use any other free utility to
remind you of special occasions. Free tools such as Birthday Reminder (www.harshal.da.ru)
manage birthdays and anniversaries quite well.
8. The cartridges for my printer cost too
much. I wonder why they run out so fast.
Top
Printing can be quite expensive depending on the kind of printer you have, the
number of pages you print and also the print settings. You can't really do much
about the first one unless you are buying a new printer. You can reduce the
number of pages you print in several simple ways. If you print from Office
applications, you can reduce the number of pages used from within the software.
Word, by default, uses large page margins that you often don't need. Reduce the
margin size to use a larger area of the page for printing. Word also has a
built-in function to reduce the page count. Go to the Print Preview mode and
click on the Shrink to Fit icon on the toolbar. Word will try to fit the
document on one page lesser than the current count using automatic calculations.
In Excel, you can set the zoom percentage at which a sheet is printed. Lowering
this value can reduce wastage drastically. PowerPoint, too, allows you to print
multiple slides per page.
There are some software such as FinePrint (www.singletrack.com),
that let you print multiple pages on a single sheet from any application.
FinePrint installs itself as a printer driver, so you just need to print to this
virtual printer and enter the number of pages that should be printed per sheet.
You can preview the layout and print from here to your printer. Each page is
resized to the defined area and formatted accordingly. This is excellent when
you want to just read the content and don't need a final proof.
Print settings can contribute quite a bit to printing expenses. If you don't
need great quality prints, print in Draft or Economy mode. This reduces the
amount of ink used and increases cartridge life. Also, if you don't need colour,
print in greyscale-colour cartridges cost more than black ones. Set these as
default settings by clicking Start > Settings > Printers and opening the
properties for the printer. Changes made here will reflect in all applications,
so change all settings to the most economical ones. You can change the settings
back to higher quality as required from each application.
9. Sometimes the CDs that I write are not
read by some CD-ROM drives and other players. This happens with various
CDs-data, MP3, audio, etc.
Top
Burning CDs is quite simple with the applications available today. It is largely
Wizard driven-you just need to select what kind of CD you want to write and the
source files and you're done. However, sometimes you will find that the CD-Rs
are not read by all drives and players. This has to do with either the CD
itself, or the way it is burnt. You may have noticed this behaviour more with
CD-RWs than with CD-Rs. VCD players are more tolerant than most other players,
but they can be quirky too.
The first thing you should try is lowering the writing speed. Many older drives
and players cannot read CDs burnt at high speeds. This is especially true with
Audio CDs. With data CDs, if writing at lower speeds does not help, the CD-ROM
drive's lens may require cleaning. Also, you may want to turn off real-time
processing features in the CD writing application. Thus, when burning an Audio
CD, use uncompressed WAV files for the source and use MPEG-1 video files for
VCDs. This will not only reduce chances of errors when writing the CD, it will
also decrease the odds of the burn process failing due to buffer underruns.
When burning MP3 CDs for an MP3 player, first convert all your MP3 files to one
bit rate (96 or 128 Kbps) to ensure that none of them are encoded with very
high, very low or variable bit rates. Although relatively new players can read
these formats, many of the older ones cannot. They have minimum and maximum bit
rate limits and some of them don't understand variable bit rates. If nothing
works, you will have to change the kind of CD-Rs or CD-RWs you use for burning.
10. Can I send SMS messages from my PC?
Top
Yes, you can send SMS messages from your PC. ICQ has an excellent network that
allows you to send SMS messages to most popular mobile services. All you need to
do is sign up with ICQ at www.icq.com, download the
ICQ client and you're all set. Login to the client, choose the person you want
to send the message to and check the box next to the Send by SMS option. ICQ
also lets you send SMS messages from the Web site itself. It also maintains a
personal inbox where you can receive messages sent via SMS to your ICQ account.
Mobile services such as BPL Mobile allows you to send SMS messages via e-mail,
using the format number@service.com for the To address. Thus, if you want to
send a message to a BPL Mobile subscriber, just send a plain text e-mail to his
mobilenumber@bplmobile.com.