Committee: November Shake your desktop free of clutter. Penrith Valley Seniors Computing Club Inc. 86 Station St Penrith NSW 2750

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1 Penrith Valley Seniors Computing Club Inc. 86 Station St Penrith NSW 2750 Committee: President: George Bell Vice President: Bryan Blake Secretary: Lorraine Brown Treasurer: Bert Foster Members: David Byrne Zillah Warner Robert Collins Alan Lees John Craft Webmaster: Tom Lehane November 2013 Editor: Bryan Blake Club Website: The Committee would like to invite all members to: Weekly Course Schedule: Monday Tutors: Zillah Warner, Lorraine Brown, Alan Lees & Bryan Blake. Tuesday Tutors: Bert Foster, David Byrne, Denis McAdam & Bryan Blake Tuesday Beginners Class Tutor: Bryan Blake Wednesday Tutor: Bryan Blake Thursday Tutor: Zillah Warner Friday Tutors: Zillah Warner, Alan Lees & Denis McAdam Windows 7 Tips Shake your desktop free of clutter If you frequently run multiple programs simultaneously, your desktop can get extremely cluttered. This can get annoying if you're working on one program and want to minimize all the other windows -- in previous versions of Windows you had to minimize them individually. With Windows 7's "shake" feature, though, you can minimize every window except the one in which you're currently working -- in a single step. Click and hold the title bar of the window you want to keep on the desktop; while still holding the title bar, shake it quickly back and forth until all of the other windows minimize to the taskbar. Then let go. To make them return, shake the title bar again. You can accomplish the same thing by pressing the Window key-home key combination -- although doing that is not nearly as much fun. All articles and comments in this newsletter are not associated with the Penrith Valley Seniors Computing Club Inc and are intended as opinions and items of debate only. Information gained over the Internet from many Web sites. 1

2 Windows Explorer tips Windows Explorer is the heart and soul of the Windows interface, and overall it works quite well. But you can make it better. Use check boxes to select multiple files In order to select multiple files for an operation such as copying, moving or deleting in Windows Explorer, you generally use the keyboard and the mouse, Ctrl-clicking every file you want to select. But if you're mouse-centric, there's a way to select multiple files in Windows 7 using only your mouse, via check boxes. To do it: 1. In Windows Explorer, click Organize, and then select "Folder and search options." 2. Click the View tab. Rose Barbaro Carol Booth Mary Gauci Julie Evatay 3. In Advanced Settings, scroll down and check the box next to "Use check boxes to select items." Click OK. 4. From now on, when you hover your mouse over a file in Windows Explorer, a check box will appear next to it; click it to select the file. Once a file is selected, the checked box remains next to it; if you uncheck it, the box will disappear when you move your mouse away. 2

3 Holiday Snaps too big to or put them onto a disc? Denis, wants to know how to reduce the size of your digital Holiday Photos. I have 350 photos and they are too big individually to and too big collectively to put on a CD. Well Denis: Today's high resolution digital cameras produce multi Megabyte photos. These are great for printing but cause a heavy burden when sending over the Internet or trying to burn to a CD or DVD. Yes you can use the built in tools in Windows to reduce the size of your photos but this is rather labour intensive. Why not let one tool do it automatically for you? All you need to do is install Shrink Pic (its Free). It automatically detects when you're sending large photo files and compresses them in the background. Shrink Pic allows you to send dozens of photos as attachments - quickly and with no effort at all! There's no setup, no operating instructions, nothing, nada. Just send your photos normally and Shrink Pic takes care of shrinking them How it works Shrink Pic runs in the background. It has a taskbar icon which tells you it's waiting for photos to be sent. Then, when it detects that you're sending a large photo, it automatically creates a temporary copy, resizes it and sends it instead. It gives you a notice message, so you'll know the photo you sent was resized. Of course, the original photo doesn't change, only the temporary copy. You can control how Shrink Pic resizes your photos. Select between three automatic resize levels or enter your own custom sizes. Shrink Pic also recognizes rotated photos (portrait layout) and resizes them intelligently, so you don't need to worry about that too. To Download go to and select Next month I will show you how to resize photos on your disc using Shrink Pic. Can t wait well ask me on Monday or Tuesdays at the Club. 3

4 Windows 8 Tips. Handle basic navigation Windows 8's interface is all colourful tiles and touch-friendly apps. And if you're using a tablet then it'll all be very straightforward: just swipe left or right to scroll the screen, and tap any tile of interest. On a regular desktop PC, though, you might alternatively spin the mouse wheel to scroll backwards and forwards. And you can also use the keyboard. Press the Home or End keys to jump from one end of your Start screen to the other, for instance, then use the cursor keys to select a particular tile, tapping Enter to select it. Press the Windows key to return to the Start screen; right-click (or swipe down on) apps you don't need and select Unpin to remove them; and drag and drop the other tiles around to organise them as you like. Find your applications The Win+X menu is useful, but no substitute for the old Start menu as it doesn't provide access to your applications. To find this, hold down the Windows key and press Q or either right-click an empty part of the Start screen or swipe your finger up from the bottom of the screen and select 'All Apps' to reveal a scrolling list of all your installed applications. Browse the various tiles to find what you need and click the relevant app to launch it. 4

5 Windows 7 Movie Maker Course Tuesday 12 Nov Start: 1115 Finish: 1230 approx What to bring: 1 x USB Memory stick 4 GB min. Notebook and pen (course manual electronic format provided) a sense of humour. The course is eight weeks long followed by a two week introduction to Photo Gallery. Contact: Bryan Blake at doreen.blake@bigpond.com phone: Maximum of 14 Students: 10 Students can use the Clubs PC s Course John Craft will conduct a structured class for Beginners commencing Tuesday, 4 th February, 2014 from p.m. John will prepare a Notice with all information required. The class will be advertised in the Penrith Press, The Star, The Western Weekender and the Blue Mountains Gazette. Christmas Break The Seniors Centre will be closed from Friday, 13 th December and re-open on Monday, 22 nd January,