Map a Network

How to map a network drive in Windows 7

Step 1: Click the Start button (Windows Icon on the lower lefthand-corner of the screen) and right-click "Computer"


Step 2: Left-click "Map network drive"


Step 3: Select the desired drive letter and enter the folder path name for the desired folder you want to map. Be sure "reconnect at login is checked". Please note that it may ask you to enter your sage username and password for access.

Step 4: Click finish. Your drive is now mapped to your computer!

How to Screen recording

How to Screen recording on your computer

Screen recording is a useful tool for software demonstrations and basic computer troubleshooting. You can create a video on anything you do on your computer.
It's a fairly simple process. ScreenCast-O-Matic.com is a free screen recording tool. If you have a built-in or external mic you can even capture sound.

Step 1.


Step 2. Let it load!


Step 3.


Step 4.


Step 5.


Step 6.


Step 7.

Modify the Start Menu

How can I modify my Start Menu or “Help! I can't find 'My Computer'”?



With Windows XP, or higher, you have a choice between the Classic Start Menus and the new "Bubblier" version. If the NEW version is active, you may not see "My Computer" or "My Documents" or other familiar icons on your desktop.
Instead, you will find them in the Start Menu.
This is a picture of what the Windows XP Start Menu looks like. Notice that is includes two columns. The one on the left is for commonly accessed programs. The one on the right, provides access to areas on your computer.











The Classic Look leaves "My Computer", "My Documents" and all the other familiar icons on your desktop. The Classis start menu is the one most of us are familiar with. It looks like the picture on the right.




Changing the Start Menu
As I mentioned above, you can determine which Start Menu you would like to use on your computer. It is very easy to set that. Using the right-mouse-button, click on the start button at the bottom of your screen. A menu will open, like the one below:


Select "Properties".



A new window will open:


In this window you'll see two tabs. The taskbar tab will allow you to customize the taskbar (the bar at the bottom of your window). The Start Menus tab will allow you to customize your Start Menu. When you have selected the style you would like, select "Apply" and then "OK". It may take several seconds before the changes are made and the window closes. Youd o not need to restart your computer in order for the changes tot ake place. You should notice a difference right away.
Again, don't be afraid to experiment!
Have fun.







For more information or assistance contact the Helpdesk (518)244-4777 or email at helpdesk at sage dot edu

Windows Vista Control Panel

 How to Navigating the Windows Vista Control Panel

Things have changed in the land of windows. If you have used Windows Vista or Windows 7 then you know what I am talking about. Getting into the control panel will make this fact even more obvious. Most of the functions of the Windows XP control panel have been moved around or renamed. Below is a list of all of the control panel sections. It includes what they were called in XP and what they are now called in Vista and 7. The Command box shows what to type at the run command line (start menu>RUN) to get there in a hurry.

Popular Categories

XP Name	Vista / 7 Category	Command
Add/Remove Programs	Programs	control appwiz.cpl
Administrative Tools	System and Maintenance	control admintools
Display Settings	Appearance and Personalization	control desktop
Firewall	Security	control firewall.cpl
Internet Options	Network and Internet	control inetcpl.cpl
Network Connections	Network and Internet	control netconnections
Windows Security Center	Security	control wscui.cpl
System	System and Maintenance	control sysdm.cpl
User Accounts	User Accounts and Family Safety	control userpasswords

[edit]

Other Categories

XP Name	Vista / 7 Category	Command
Appearance Settings	Appearance and Personalization	control color
Date and Time	Clock, Language, and Regions	control date/time
Folder Options	Appearance and Personalization	control folders
Fonts	Appearance and Personalization	control fonts
Game Controllers	Hardware and Sound	control joy.cpl
Keyboard	Hardware and Sound	control keyboard
Mouse	Hardware and Sound	control mouse
Pen and Input Devices	Hardware and Sound	control tabletpc.cpl
People Near Me	Network and Internet	control collab.cpl
Phone and Modem Options	Printers and Other Hardware	control telephony
Power Options	Hardware and Sound	control powercfg.cpl
Printers and Faxes	Hardware and Sound	control printers
Regional and Language Options	Clock, Language, and Regions	control international
Scanners and Cameras	Hardware and Sound	control sticpl.cpl
Task Scheduler	System and Maintenance	control schedtasks
Text to Speech	Ease of Access	control speech

Becoming a Google Search master

Becoming a Google Search master in 5 minutes
Isn't it frustrating when you are searching for something and you get 500,000 results that are NOT relevant to your search?   Well you dont have to put up with it anymore.    Learn these 8 search operators and you will be a google master in no time.   Google is your friend.   Google supports powerful operators which can be special characters or words that modify the search query. In this section we’ll look at the basic operators which include the OR operator and the special character operators:

• OR word or “|” character
• Double Quotation Marks (” “)
• Plus sign (+)
• Minus sign (-)
• Tilde (~) character
• Asterisk (*) character
• Double Periods (..)
• Parenthesis (())

As I’m explaining these, I’ll be tempted to use advanced operators (which I’ll describe later) to improve them, but I can’t until we get to that chapter. So, as you are reading, know that there are often better ways to do what I’m showing you and you’ll soon learn how.
The OR Operator
When you build your search with multiple keywords, Google searches for these as logical ANDs. This means that all of the keywords must be satisfied. For example, search query [red blue] means pages with both red and blue will be selected. But what if you wanted to search for either of the words? Do this by placing an OR between the words like this: [red OR blue]. The OR operator must be in caps; a lower case OR will be considered one of the stop words and ignored. Better yet, if you want to save a keystroke and not take the chance of keying it in lowercase, you can use the pipe character “|” instead of the word OR. These are both valid OR queries:

[Uranus OR Neptune]
[Uranus | Neptune]

OR sets the either or condition between the element preceding it and the element following it. It does not perform an OR between multiple words on either side of it (unless they are a phrase or group, which you’ll read about in a moment). So, the following query does not search for either “red couch” or “blue sofa”. What it does instead is search for “red” and “sofa” and either “couch” or “blue.” You’ll end up with pages that have “red”, “couch” and “sofa” or “red”, “blue” and “sofa”–not what you are looking for.

[red couch | blue sofa]

So, how would you request either “red couch” or “blue sofa”? By using phrases, up next…
Double Quotation Marks for Exact Phrase Search
When you enter multiple keywords, Google searches for all of those keywords. It gives precedence to finding the keywords together just as they are keyed, and those in close proximity, but it will also pull up pages having the keywords anywhere in the page.
But, you can search for only the exact set of keywords, in the order you keyed them, by enclosing them in quotation marks. The words within the quotes are called a phrase. In addition, enclosing the search terms in quotation marks will stop word stemming (finding variations of the word, not to be confused with synonyms). For this reason, you could use quotation marks to enclose a single word simply to find that exact word without Google word-stemming it.
Here is an example of using a phrase to better find pages with Crater lake Lodge in them:

[Crater Lake Lodge] 151,000 pages, not all about the Crater Lake Lodge
[“Crater Lake Lodge”] 6,550 pages virtually all referencing the Crater Lake Lodge

Getting back to the “red couch” or “blue sofa” query we did earlier, you can now do that with this query that uses phrases:

[“red couch” | “blue sofa”]

Using the “+” Sign to Force a Search on a Word
Google ignores certain “common words” (called stop words) because they appear too frequently in pages and would thus pull up too many pages that would not satisfy the search request properly. Using the “+” sign will force Google to treat the word following it (without a space in between) as a valid search term.
Frankly, there are not many situations that using this does any more than enclosing a word or words in quotation marks. For example, Google tells you that if searching for Star Wars Episode I you should use [Star Wars Episode +I]. Well, it would be better as [“Star Wars” “Episode I”]. This way you won’t get someone who wrote “I sure love that episode of Star Wars, the second one.” (I created two phrases in my search in case there was any punctuation between Star and Episode.)
There are valid situations in which you will need the “+” sign, and you’ll know it when you come across it.
Omitting Pages with Certain Keywords by using the “-” Sign
This special character is much more useful than the “+” sign. It tells Google to omit pages that have a particular word or phrase in it. Often words have multiple meanings and you end up with results that include pages that have nothing remotely to do with what you were interested in.
For example, let’s say that you were interested in learning about alternative energy, with the exclusion of solar energy since you already know about that. The following would satisfy that search:

[alternative energy -solar]

Powerful Synonym Search with the “~” Sign
Now this is a great search operator! By placing a “~” sign (called a tilde) right in front of a word (no space in between), you are instructing Google to search not only for the word following the tilde, but also its synonyms. Without doing this in certain types of searches you will miss many valuable sites. Let’s say that you want to find sites that offer a primer on alternative energy. You know that the word “primer” is not the only way to say “an introduction to” or “the basics of” but you don’t want to try to think up all the synonyms and build a massive OR query. So, you use the tilde like this:

[“alternative energy” ~primer]

You should execute this query by clicking the link to study the results. Looking at just the first page, you’ll see pages that use the words, “tips,” “basics,” “review” and “introduction.” Although not “primer”, the sites appear to be what we are looking for. Using just one word like “primer” would have missed many sites of interest.
Wildcard Search with the Asterisk
You can use the asterisk “*” as a wildcard in your search query. It’s not the type of wildcard people are used to. It’s really more of a placeholder for a single word. It means that wherever there is an asterisk, the search will accept any word.
This works well if you know a phrase but forgot one of the words. For example, let’s say you know there is a story called Little somethingg Riding Hood, but for the life of you, you cannot remember what that missing word is. You can search for it like this:

[“little * riding hood”]

Oh yeah, it was Little Red Riding Hood!
Use multiple asterisks for multiple wildcard words. For example, the following looks for pages that have the words “brown” and “cow” with three words in between them:

[“brown *** cow”]

I don’t think this is extremely useful. A traditional wildcard would have been better. But, it’s there if you need it.
Grouping with Parenthesis
Another very powerful operator is the parenthesis characters, used for grouping. It means that the operator (including the always assumed invisible AND operator) is to perform its operation on the group within the parenthesis. This is is primarily used with the OR operator.
Let’s say that you wanted to search for pages that were about silver or gold coins. You could do [“silver coins” | “gold coins”] but using grouping is better if the query becomes more complicated. The following search query looks for pages that deal with silver, gold or platinum dimes or quarters. This would be too unwieldy with just OR’s.

[(silver | gold | platinum) (dimes | quarter)]

Now that is cool!

Windows 7/ Vista speed up

Windows 7/ Vista runs too slowly, How can I speed it up?

Speeding Up Vista

Windows Vista/ Windows 7 come with many options to make things a little more flashy and pleasing to the eye. Examples of this are the smooth transitions between windows and graphical alt-tab setup. While these features look good, they are not required to run windows Vista and can be turned off to increase performance on machines that are having trouble running the operating system. 

You can also remove some of the preinstalled "junk" that comes with vista if you do not feel you will need them.  

Turning Off Aero (graphical enhancements)

Turning off the Aero interface will dramatically increase the performance of machines running Windows Vista. Follow the steps below,

1. Go to Start, then Control Panel.
2. Double-click on "Performance Information and Tools".
3. In the left sidebar, click "Adjust visual effects", then select "Adjust for best performance".
4. Click "Apply". Vista may take a minute to display the new interface.

Remove Programs

A number of installations come with unnecessary software that runs in the background; removing this software can help speed up your system. We recommend removing software "extras", such as free games and trial software. Follow the steps below,

1. Go to Start, then Control Panel.
2. Double-click on "Programs and Features".
3. Right-click any application and select "Uninstall" to remove.

Screen Capture

Taking a Screen Capture With Windows 7

The Snipping Tool – Windows 7’s New Screen Capture Tool

The Snipping Tool is a new feature that Microsoft has included with Windows 7. It is a lightweight screen capture tool that can have many applications.   For example let’s say you keep getting an error message and you want the Helpdesk to see what you saw, open the snipping tool and grab a snapshot to send with your helpdesk request. The following article will cover how to use of the Snipping Tool.

Let’s start by opening the Snipping tool. To do this click on the Start Menu and type “snipping tool” in the search box. Above the search box under “Programs” click on “Snipping Tool” to open the application.

This little window is all you need to start taking screen captures. Clicking on the down arrow next to “New” will allow you to choose from four different captures, free-form, rectangular, window, and full screen. Free form capture allows you to draw a capture area with your mouse pointer in any shape you desire. The rectangular capture allows for straight edge rectangular captures. With the window capture you would click on a specific window that you want captured, and full screen capture will capture everything on the entire screen. Once you select your capture method you can then capture the area you want and you will automatically be brought to the Snipping Tool’s editing window.

The Snipping Tool’s editor gives you the ability to highlight sections of the screen capture, or use the pen tool to write notes. There is also an eraser tool to erase any pen or highlighter markings you have made. To use these tools click on the corresponding icon in the menu bar.

Once you have made your changes to the capture you can then click on the disk icon in the menu bar to save you image. By default the application saves captures as a .png, but you can also choose to save as a .gif or .jpg. To do this you would expand the drop down menu under the file name and choose the image format that you are most comfortable with.

The editor also has the ability to send the image as an email, but note in order to email the capture Microsoft Outlook will need to be configured.

As I mentioned before the Snipping Tool is very useful and can have many applications, be it sending error reports to the helpdesk or just trying to be green and save on paper prints. This concludes the article on Microsoft’s Snipping Tool, if there are any questions feel free to call or email the helpdesk and we would be happy to assist you.

How to Screen Shots

How to save an image of what is on your screen (screenshot)

Screen Shots

On a Windows 7 Machine (CTRL + PRINT SCREEN)
To take a screen shot of the entire desktop, press the PRINT SCREEN key (often to the right of F12). This will copy an image of the desktop to your Clipboard. Open any photo or image editing software (such as Paint or PhotoShop). Pull down the EDIT menu and select the PASTE option to copy the image into the document. Edit or crop the image as necessary. Pull down the FILE menu and SAVE the image.  You can also paste this image in the same manner into a word, excel, or powerpoint document to add it to something you are working on.
On a WIndows Vista Machine (PRINT SCREEN)
To take a screen shot of the entire desktop, press the PRINT SCREEN key (often to the right of F12). This will copy the desktop to your Clipboard. Open any photo or image editing software (such as Paint or PhotoShop). Pull down the EDIT menu and select the PASTE option to copy the image into the document. Edit or crop the image as necessary. Pull down the FILE menu and SAVE the image.  You can also paste this image in the same manner into a word, excel, or powerpoint document to add it to something you are working on.
On a Windows XP Machine (CTRL + PRINT SCREEN)
To take a screen shot of the entire desktop, press the PRINT SCREEN key (often to the right of F12). This will copy an image of the desktop to your Clipboard. Open any photo or image editing software (such as Paint or PhotoShop). Pull down the EDIT menu and select the PASTE option to copy the image into the document. Edit or crop the image as necessary. Pull down the FILE menu and SAVE the image.  You can also paste this image in the same manner into a word, excel, or powerpoint document to add it to something you are working on.
On a Macintosh Machine (CMD+SHIFT+3)
To take a screen shot of the entire desktop, hold down the APPLE key (also called the command key), the SHIFT key, and the 3 key simultaneously. To take a screen shot of just a portion of the desktop, hold down the APPLE key, the SHIFT key, and the 4 key simultaneously. These keystrokes place a .png file of the screen on your desktop. Open the file in Preview or Photoshop to convert to a .jpeg that Windows machines can view.

Floral wall art using paper rolls

Floral wall art using paper rolls

You will need:Toilette Paper rolls 

Scissors
White glue
Stapler
Paint + brushes
Glitter
Laundry pins

How to:

• Crush paper roll
• Cut into approximately 5 equal parts don’t have to be exact
• place the rolls on a flat surface creating a desired  pattern. spend time trying different compositions and patterns.
• glue where rolls are touching, hold with laundry pins to dry.
• You may paint and add sparkles. Sprinkle the glitter on the wet paint, this way it will sticks and you wont need any glue.

Step by step

Took that entire pile of rolls, folded them, and cut them into thin strips

 Next step was to create flower like shapes that connect to each other

 Now that I had a general design, it was time to glue each flower. Every 5 petals were glued together to form a flower. I used cloths pins to hold them together while the glue dried

 I decided to paint some of the flowers light blue and then leave the rest of the flowers in their natural look

 Now that the flowers were all glued and painted, all that was left to do was to glue the flowers to each other and create a flowing connected design

 Hang it on the wall.

enjoy.