Are you the scientific type? Do you think the Calculator is the most elementary computing tool you've ever seen in your life? Then pull down its View menu and choose Scientific. Whoa! Can't take all those school-day math reminders staring you in the face? Choose Standard under View, and you're back to basics.
Ever been in a Properties dialog box and wished you could move to the next tab without having to use your mouse? No problem. Simply key Ctrl+Tab to move to the next tab, or Ctrl+Shift+Tab to move back one. Who needs ya, mouse?
Ubiquitous buttons, located in the upper right corner of all windows, allow you to control each program. The first, an underscore - '_' will minimize the window. The second, a box or boxes, will change the size of the window. The third, an 'X', will close the program.
Want to change the size of the little boxes in the top-right corner of every window---the ones that minimize, restore, and close a window? Click the desktop with the right mouse button and choose Properties to open the Display Properties dialog box. Now click the Appearance tab, and under Items, scroll up and select Caption Buttons. Ready for this? Click the up arrow next to Size, and watch as those buttons grow and grow. When they're as big as you'd like, click OK, and you'll never miss those buttons again!
In a previous tip, we said you could launch programs using the Run command line: Click Start, choose Run, type the name of the program you want to open (with the path, if necessary), hit Enter, and you're off to the races. Well, for those of you who use Microsoft Plus! and the Internet Explorer, you can go directly to your favorite web page using the same technique. Just type the address of your favorite site on the Run command line (such as http://www.MicroMetric.com), and press Enter. If the Internet Explorer isn't already open, it will open (after prompting you to sign in, if necessary) right to that site.
You can start a Windows program right from an MS-DOS window's command prompt (Tip: The command prompt is the "C:\>" you see in an MS-DOS window; whereas the command line is the information that you type next to it.). You can also use the Run dialog box's command line (choose Start and then click Run to open the dialog box). Type the application's name on the command line, such as "WordPad," hit Enter, and it springs to life. If you aren't starting a Windows 95 program (Notepad, WordPad, MSPaint, and so on), you'll need to type the path for the program's executable file. (Such as "C:\MSOFFICE\WINWORD\WINWORD" to launch Microsoft Word.) The nice thing about using the Run dialog box as opposed to an MS-DOS window is that once you enter this path, you can select it from the list in the Run dialog box. Just click the down arrow next to the command line and pick the program you want to launch.