Computersight -

On March 15, 2008 I unpacked my new Dell XPS420 high powered performance bundle that comes with Vista Ultimate. The only setup problem I had was in determining which port to plug the speakers into; it should go in the green port. Other than that, I made these settings or played with Vista in the following manner. Before we begin, My brother worked with computers since 1982 on software and hardware. He has a college degree in electronics and am currently retired. So he still goes to school in his spare time to get a BSCIS degree. He is currently publishing a website with a blog addressing all these issues and others for free.

Turn off the Welcome Center startup page.

This is as simple as deselecting the Run at Startup check box. You do not need this to run at startup to enjoy Vista.

Change the sleep time on your computer.

If your computer has already gone to sleep please note that tapping a couple of times on the space bar wakes it quicker than moving the mouse. Go to the Windows start button and select Control Panel. It is the 3rd item from the bottom right. Select System and Maintenance green link, then go to Power options and select the blue link Change when the computer sleeps. You will notice they have it set for a measly 30 minutes, way too short for going to get something to eat and drink while you work at home. Set the Turn off display time to something you can live with, say 4 hours (I set mine to never). Set the Put the computer to sleep time to something you can live with. Save changes and exit out of the power options.

Change the defrag disk parameters.

It comes set to defrag every week and this is overkill for most users. I set mine for monthly defrag although on my old XP Professional system I only defragged once a year. Go to the Windows Start button and select Control Panel, the 3rd item from the bottom right. Select the green System and Maintenance link then scroll down to the category called Administrative Tools. Select the blue link Defragment your hard drive and click on the link. It should come up as Run on a Schedule and you can modify schedule. Do so. Select monthly out of how often, day 1 in days and 6pm or another time suited to you. This would mean defrag at 6pm on the first day of the month. Defragging keeps your files tight and together on your hard drive so they load faster. Of course, you could always take it off the schedule and defrag by going to the defrag scheduler when you want to.

Get on the Internet.

Get with your ISP and hook up to the Internet. Hopefully you do not have dial-up as it is much slower than anything else out there. I use my cell phone as a modem and typically run 7-10 times faster than dial-up for $25 a month. If you are stuck with dial-up but have a cell phone see if this option is available to you. After you connect to the Internet, just let your computer sit idle for awhile….Windows will download some updates and notify you to restart when it is done.

Get rid of PC-cillin by Trend and buy Norton Internet Security 2008 for $49.

If you decide to do this, go to the Start button and select Control Panel. Under the green link Programs select the blue link to Uninstall a program. Select Trend software PC-cillin and uninstall it. After it has done its’ job close the Control Panel. Have your Internet up and running and put the CD in the CD player to install Norton Internet Security 2008. Once Norton Internet Security 2008 has been installed, change the scan schedule. It comes set to full scan weekly as did disk defrag, this is also overkill as long as you do a quick scan after every days work is done if you were on the Internet. Double click the Norton Icon and select Schedule a scan. The select Schedule a full system scan. Select month for Schedule Task: and then select The 1st Sunday of every month, select time consistent with when you will be on the computer (You might shy away from 6pm or whatever time you set your defrag to, give full system scan a couple of hours prior to defrag. Select OK to save your changes and exit out of Norton.

Burn your music library to Windows Media Player.

Windows Media Player has been completely revamped and it is well done. Once again make sure the Internet is up and running. This will fill in your album information and your song tracks for you. Place the CD you want to copy songs from in the CD player and it should auto start. You will see a tab on the Windows Media Player that says RIP. This is the tab to copy from CD to computer, they call it ripping now. Select the RIP tab. You should see the list of song titles with them all checked. Deselect the songs you do not wish to copy. Select START RIP at the bottom right. Wait for ripping to finish and then you can close Windows Media Player. Repeat this process for each of your CD’s you want to copy from. I have 95 songs from 24 CD’s in my music library.

Burn a custom CD for your car from Windows Media Player.

You do not need the Internet up and running to do this. Install a blank CD in your CD-W drive. Open Windows Media Player and select a playlist you have made and want to burn from, or select Play All if you do not have a previously made playlist. Select Play, and then View Queue. You can then Edit Queue which will allow you to select a delete box by each song. Delete the songs you do not want burned to your CD, bearing in mind the CD can only hold 80 minutes of audio. Once you have done this, save the playlist under a new name. Use the Window button to return to the main selection screen and select your new playlist. This time select Burn, if you have too much songs selected it will warn you and you can delete some more. If not, it will merrily burn you a music CD with your favorite music on it.

Change your desktop background to your favorite photo.

You do not need the internet up and running for this activity. Your photo must be downloadable from where it is. I have a digital camera with compact flash card, so here is what I do. I have taken a photo of my son and his fiancée, turned off my camera, removed the compact flash media card and inserted it in the appropriate compact flash reader in my 9 in 1 card reader on the front panel of my computer. I then go to Windows start button, select computer, and select the drive with the media in it. I then select the photos I want copied and copy them to the Sample Pictures folder. This is under C:/users/public/public pictures. After doing this, make sure you expand your right task bar and find the safely remove hardware icon and click on it. It should bring up a yellow dialog box telling you it is safe to remove your media card. Do so and click the dialog box. Go back to the Windows start button and select it. Select the Control Panel, 3rd item from bottom right. Go over to the second column and find Appearance and personalization the second from the top. Go to the blue link called Change desktop background and select it. Browse photo locations if not started in Sample Pictures to Public pictures/Sample pictures which is where you should have put your photo when you copied it over. Just click on your picture twice to turn the background to it. Under How should the picture be positioned select the leftmost button. This stretches the picture over your monitor screen. Select OK and close the Control Panel.

Getting the red eye out of your computer photos using Adobe Elements Studio. You need the Internet up and running if this is the first time you’ve used Adobe Elements Studio. You will patiently wait at most an hour, unless you have dial-up and then it will be even longer, for an update package to load of 193 Mb. Open Adobe Elements Studio and allow the updater to do its thing. Afterwards, click on the camera icon to load Adobe Elements Photoshop 6.0. Select the Edit button. Once the program has loaded, under the menu heading FILE select open. Navigate to Sample Pictures, or wherever you put the photo with red eye at. Double click the photo to load it. A little past mid-way down the left screen side you will see a “red eye”. Select this tool and then position it over your photos red eye and click it. This however, does not remove the entire red eye-it did not on mine. The third icon down on the left side is an eye dropper. Select this tool and then at the top of the icons set sample size to 3 by 3. Using the keyboard hold down the CTRL key and press the “=” key 2 times to enlarge the photo. Move the eyedropper tool over the part of the eye you want the color to be and click one time. Now switch to the brush tool, it is above the paint can icon on the bottom left. Using the eye drop tool this way causes the paint brush to change to that color. Set the paint brush paint size at the top to a small brush. Then just paint over your red eye and your job is complete. Don’t forget to go to the file menu and Save your changes. If you were working on your background picture you will need to reload it or restart your computer for it to take effect.

Burn a movie DVD. Once again, if this is the first time you have used Adobe Elements Video shop 4.0 you need to be connected to the internet. Double click the Adobe Elements Studio icon, and then click the camcorder icon in the middle. If this is the first time, let the updater do its job prior to continuing, the wait could be as long as an hour, much longer if you have dial-up. Assuming this is a new project select the new project icon. Name your new project and the film layout studio will load. Click on the left most tool bar item titled Get Media. Click on DVD on the lists that come up. Select GET MEDIA FROM: to be your DVD player where the movie you want to make a copy of is in. Then click the Get Media button at the bottom of the pop up box. It will load the time clips backwards, if you hold the mouse over the first clip it will be VTS_01.03, the second clip will be VTS_01.02 and the third one will be VTS_01.01 if you have 3 scenes.

When you drag and drop them to the time line make sure you drag them in numerical order so you do not play your movie backwards. After you do this you can press play in the center of the screen to make sure your movie plays in the correct order. Then insert a blank DVD of 2 hours total time and select the green share tab at the top left. Click on disk Burn DVD or blue ray disk. Make sure your Burn To: is set to disc. Disc name should be what you want to name the disc, such as Jenna’s Wedding. Burner location is the DVD drive you have the blank disc in, either DVD or Blue Ray drive. Select how many copies you want to make. Leave presets alone. On quality, deselect the Fit contents to available space. The Burn button is in the middle right of the screen. This will start encoding the material for you. It takes about 12 minutes to encode 1.5 hours on my system. After that it burns the disc in about 5 minutes, and if you are making more than one copy each copy will take about 5 minutes. That is all there is to it.