Tip-Of-The-Week

February 9, 2007

From the Free Computer Consultant

http://www.FreeComputerConsultant.com

What's on your desktop?

Call it a pet peeve of mine. A user asks me to help them and as I lean down to look at the screen my eyes start to hurt. Can't see the forest for the trees. Desktop wallpaper is 6 zillion colors of who know's what, from Garfield cartoons to last year's Christmas pictures.

On top of that is a collection of icons resembling the city dump.

"Hello, anybody home McFly?"

When Quickbooks installs and you don't know better than to tell it NOT to drop 400 icons on the desktop (it will still put a program icon on the desktop even if you don't want it), one quick look will tell you that you can delete the 5 or so extra icons that only lead you to buy more stuff from them.

Remember, everything is still on the Start Menu

I can't count the times a user has called up and told me they need XYZ loaded on their PC. "It should already be there", I respond. "Nope, it's not", they say. "If you click Start | Programs | ..." - "Oh, there it is!" (as if it just magically reappeared).

The lesson here is that just because an icon isn't on the desktop doesn't mean the program isn't on your PC.

4 Places to keep icons

1. The Start Menu. Any decent program will put them there; and remove them if uninstalled. Don't you go messing with those icons unless you're sure what you're doing.
2. The Desktop. Copy an icon to the desktop if you use it REGULARLY! Too many icons on the desktop defeat the purpose of having it handy.
3. The Quicklaunch and/or Desktop toolbar. If you don't know what these are, right click the taskbar, select toolbars, and click on each of those options in turn. If you like it, keep it, if not, uncheck it. You can add icons to Quicklaunch by dragging an icon to it. Desktop toolbar has an entry for everything on the desktop.
4. Folders on the desktop. You can arrange icons on the desktop by groups simply by creating a folder on the desktop to hold like items. Keeps things neat and orderly.

Better folder shortcuts

I like shortcuts to certain drives or locations on my desktop - like the F: drive on my server. If I just create a normal shortcut, I can end up with a view of the intended folder minus the "folders" window which I like for easy navigation.

So what I do is take the normal Windows Explorer shortcut, copy it, then modify it so the "Target" is: %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n,/e,F:\ and the "Start in" entry is blank. The "F:\" can just as easily be "F:\Foldername". I have a similar entry for my C: drive and a patches directory called P:.

Just say no to more icons

I think some order to the desktop brings efficiency and eliminates confusion. If a program does dump icons on the desktop without your approval, check 'em out and delete them if not useful. If it's already on the Start Menu, decide if what that isn't good enough and delete the one on the desktop.

As long as you do a regular delete of the icon, it should be in the recycle bin a minute later if you decide you made a mistake.

Hope this information is of use to you, that's it for this week.

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The Free Computer Consultant