Computer Corner

January 2012
Of Tablets and Tools
By Guruka Singh

I got lots of positive feedback about my comments in the November 2011 Computer Corner column regarding about the Apple iPad. Yes, it’s true; I hardly ever use a laptop computer anymore. The iPad has pretty much replaced my laptop, and if I need to, I can simply turn my iPad into my office or home desktop computer using GoToMyPC which works great over a wi-fi connection and allows me to control my PC’s remotely from anywhere. If you are considering a tablet computer, believe me, you want an iPad. The cheaper Android based tablets don’t cut the mustard. My iPad has replaced both my Kindle eReader and my laptop. I love Apple’s new iCloud, which automatically backs up all your Apple devices and syncs your music, apps, videos and photos wirelessly in the background without ever having to plug that white cable into your computer and run iTunes.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled topic…Windows.

Little-known Windows tools
Some of the more useful apps in Windows 7 are hidden in plain sight — in the Accessories folder. For example, the Ease of Access tools found at the bottom of the Accessories list has a treasure trove of helpful utilities originally designed for sensory-impaired users.

Find your way to the Ease of Access Center
From the how-did-I-ever-live-without-it, screen-capture Snipping Tool to Sticky Notes to the surprisingly robust speech-recognition and text-to-speech app Narrator, Windows 7 has a worthy cache of utilities that can make everyday computing tasks easier and more useful.

Most of these utilities reside in Win7's Ease of Access Center (EOAC), and Windows provides many routes to the EOAC. You can type the word “access” into the Start button's Search programs and files box, press the Windows+U keys, find it under Accessories in the All Programs menu, or look for it in Win7's control panel.
Although Microsoft obviously made it easy to launch the EOAC, I'll bet many Win7 users have never ventured there — possibly assuming it was meant for people with visual or audio impairments.

Taking a cue from its name, the EOAC offers a Quick access menu at the top of the window for instantly launching common tools. It's followed by a list of usability settings that can make the mouse and keyboard easier to use, make the display easier to see, and more.

Almost all of the tools listed below have been in earlier versions of Windows. However, many have beenenhanced in Windows 7. Here's a quick summary of some of my favorites. Do explore them on your own!

Magnifier enlarges portions of the screen or, on Aero-enabled systems, creates full-screen blow-ups. Originally engineered for people with impaired or limited vision, Magnifier comes in handy for the rest of us when reading extra-tiny type or when manipulating minute pixels in graphics and photo applications. Its choice of Views — Full Screen, Lens, or Docked — gives it added versatility. In Lens mode Magnifier creates a box of enlarged text that follows the mouse pointer. Default magnification is 200 percent, but you can shrink or expand this easily with these key combos: Windows - (minus) or Windows = (equal).

Giving Windows 7 enhanced powers of speech
Some people might consider Windows 7 the ideal companion — either it can do all the talking with Narrator, or you can do the talking with Speech Recognition.

Narrator is Win7's text-to-speech app that reads literally everything — menu selections, buttons, icons, text — displayed on the screen. The robotic voice is Microsoft Anna. (I am not making this up.) She can be programmed to read keystrokes as they are entered or to read entire menus, commands, dialog boxes, what-have-you.

Anna has a stubborn, completist urge and will finish reading what she started, even after you exit Narrator. This can be annoying, but it also can bealleviated somewhat by making adjustments in the Preferences menu (shown in Figure 4). You can also adjust the volume, speed, and the pitch of Anna's voice — from a low, sultry Kathleen Turner to a high-pitched Miss Piggy — by clicking the Voice Settings button.

Speech Recognition might just be the star of the EOAC. In the past, you had to pay big bucks and have a massive amount of RAM and CPU power to effectively use a speech-recognition package. Now Microsoft has integrated its own speech-recognition application right into Windows 7. And it actually works fairly well. Its features let you say commands you'd otherwise select with a menu option or by executing numerous mouse clicks. If you have a good microphone and a quiet environment, the built-in Speech Recognition lets you perform dictation in Word or WordPad with reasonable accuracy.

As with all speech-recognition software, the first time you use Microsoft's version you'll have to go through a one-time setup process. To start, make sure you've set up a microphone. Just about any mic will do — on a stand, in a headset, or built into your PC.

Under Speech Recognition in the Control Panel/Ease of Access window, click the Set up a microphone link and follow the simple configuration steps. You'll see three choices of mic input (shown above;) select your type and follow the testing instructions.

Now start the Speech Recognition app that you find on the EOAC menu and follow the interactive instructions so the program can learn your voice. After you complete it, you can dictate actual text as well as keyboard or mouse commands such as Open Word, Start, Control Panel, or even Ease of Access — and the PC will obey.

Windows Speech Recognition works only with apps supported by Microsoft Text Services Framework — for example, Word, Outlook, Internet Explorer, and most of the apps built into Windows 7. Dictation in Word is for the most part surprisinglyaccurate, but you have to enunciate clearly and some words that sound alike might be misinterpreted.

A misspelled word can be corrected by saying correct and either pronouncing it again or saying spell and entering the word letter by letter. You must also dictate punctuation such as periods, commas, and question marks — as well as the command new paragraph for a line return.

Although it certainly isn't perfect, Windows Speech Recognition is a valuable, little-known part of the Windows 7 OS that's worth checking out.

Cut to the chase: Snipping Tool and Sticky Notes
To capture a screen in Windows, most users resort to the venerable Prt Scrn (or some variation of that spelling) button on the keyboard. Alas, this produces an image of the entire screen that must be pasted immediately, via the Windows clipboard, into Paint or some other graphics app. If you wanted more flexibility, you previously had to rely on third-party software. No longer.

The Snipping Tool is built into Windows 7 and gives users several handy screen-capture options — including a full-screen, active Window and a selected rectangular area. Snipping Tool also supports sundry file formats and provides a simple image-editing mode. Copying and pasting snips to documents takes a few clicks, but you can send snips directly to e-mail via its Send Snip command. There's even a resizable pen to mark up areas of the capture in your choice of colors.

Snipping Tool is easily accessed by typing the first few letters of its name in the Start search bar. (If you use it frequently, right-click its name and pin it to the Taskbar.)

Win7's Snipping Tool is far superior to the simple Windows print-screen command.

Finally, Sticky Notes has the familiar look of yellow "Post-it" notes, and it's an excellent way to save and organize random bits of information on your desktop. It's not new, but Windows users often forget it comes with Windows 7. The easiest way to find Sticky Notes is through the Start search bar; if you get hooked using it, pin it to the Taskbar.

The notes you create stay on the desktop until you delete them by clicking the X on the upper-right corner of the note. They won't disappear when you log off or shut down. If you want another note, click the plus sign on the left. Sticky Notes is a quick way to copy and paste frequently used information to and from documents, e-mails, or other apps.

It's easy to forget all of the many enhanced tools in Windows 7. Take some time to look around for them.

Unexplained activity bogging down your system?
Yes, you can use <Shift+Ctrl+Esc> to bring up the Windows Task Manager, but you can do a lot more with a free tool called What's My Computer Doing? It shows what’s going on the background and using your hard disk, processor and other resources.
The software shows you a dynamic list, updated every second, of all the software and processes running on your system. You can use the tool to help identify mystery software and processes, to search online anti-malware sites for information about any suspicious activity you find — and to immediately kill any errant program or process.

Change the sound volume by rolling your mouse wheel
I love the convenience of VOLUME2. It’s an advanced Windows audio mixer and replacement for the volume control. You can change the sound volume just by rotating the mouse wheel or by using keyboard hot keys or just moving your mouse on the screen border.

The audio mixer features advanced volume controls support, a scheduler, an on-screen display, command line support, and the ability to store and recall different presets via one mouse click or system-wide hot keys.

Download it free at http://code.google.com/p/volume2/

Do you like these ‘tips and tricks’ type columns? If so, take the time to let me know if this column was useful to you. Please keep sending me your suggestions for column topics, along with your own tips and tricks or cool downloads, so I can share them with the Sangat. Just email them to me at guruka@sikhnet.com
Thanks!  - Guruka Singh