There are normally a number of features in the power management component of the BIOS options, which permit all types of triggers to wake a computer up from hibernation or standby modes. However, if the computer is turned off, these will not work.

One of the triggers allows us to set the computer to launch via the real time clock. We can set how frequently the machine will wake up, or what time of the day we want it too wake up.

Every BIOS is a little different so it is impossible to give specific instructions, but it is not too hard to find. Go into the BIOS and find Power Management. In here, ensure S3 is enabled. There should be an option called “Resume by alarm”, or “Wake-up on RTC”. Once this is enabled, you will be able to set the time you want your computer to turn on. That should be all there is to it.

While I had not seen this feature before, I checked the 3 computers I have access to, to see if they also had this option. These machines are of various ages and they all included this feature. Only one time can be set in the BIOS, so using this method will not work if you want it to turn on in the morning and the afternoon. If you want to do this, you will need to use the task scheduler.

I can also see it of being useful in the workplace. If you have a regular meeting you go to each week, it may be worth having your computer mute the sound of your laptop while you are in the board room.

The process is fairly simple. We need to use a free third party utility to allow the mute to take place. There are many utilities you could use for this such as NirCmd or Wizmo, but today to keep things simple I am going to use a program called Mute.

The next step is to set up a scheduled task to enable and disable these utilities. All of these utilities unload themselves from memory once they have run. This means that unmuting can still be controlled through your normal muting methods.

The setup for Vista and XP are slightly different, but you will find all the instructions after the jump.

Start off by downloading your desired mute program and save it somewhere you can get to easily.

Windows XP:

Open “Scheduled Tasks” (inside accessories of the start menu)
Double Click “Add Scheduled Task”
Click “Next”
Browse to your utility; E.g. C:\mute.exe
Select when you want it to run. (I chose Daily).
Click “Next”
Select what time you want the task to run; E.g. 12:00am
Enter in your username and password
Click “Next”
Tick the Open Advanced Properties tick box
Click “Finish”
In the Run box, make it “C:\mute.exe on”

You will need to follow the steps above to make a second task to unmute your computer in the morning. You will need to change the name of it to unmute so that it does not conflict with the initial task.
This will need to have the off argument instead of on.

That’s it. Your computer should now mute and unmute itself at the times you specified.

Windows Vista:

The Vista setup is similar to the XP setup, but you get a few more options. You can set it to only occur if the computer has been idle for longer than 10 minutes. This means that your computer game or movie won’t be interrupted.

Open “Task Scheduler” (inside accessories of the start menu)
Click “Create New Task” (not basic)
Give it a name “Mute”
Go to the “Triggers” tab
Click “New” (defaults to schedule)
Enter the frequency and time you want the mute to occur
Click “OK”
Go to the “Actions” tab
Click “New” (defaults to run program)
Browse for your program and put in the necessary arguments; E.g. On
Click “OK”
Go to the “Conditions” tab
Here, define how long you want the computer to be idle before activating the mute.
Click “OK”

You will need to follow the steps above to make a second task to unmute your computer in the morning. You will need to change the name of it to unmute so that it does not conflict with the initial task. This will need to have the off argument instead of on.

That’s it. Your computer should now mute and unmute itself at the times you specified.

Conclusion:

As you can see, it is not overly hard to set this up. It is also not very hard to turn your speakers off when you go to bed. I am often forgetful though so this method is ideal for me.

I hope you have enjoyed this article. Please stick around and check out some other tips at Inspect My Gadget.

There are more types of Easter Eggs than just the chocolate variety. They come in many forms. Easter eggs are also the name of hidden features or novelty items found in movies, DVD menus, software, websites and sometimes even hardware.

I have put together a list of some of my favourite software Easter Eggs for your enjoyment. I have tried to select examples from programs that are found on the majority of computers. This way you will be able to try many of them out yourself.

We are going to look at eggs in the following programs:

• Pinball
• Solitaire
• Nullsoft Winamp
• Google.com
• Notepad

Read on for your eggs…

All of these eggs are completely harmless for your computer. They are just a bit of fun. The most you will need to do to restore your program back to its original state is to close it and start it up again.

Pinball:

Pinball that comes with Windows is a fun and challenging pinball game. To work your way through all the missions is practically impossible as there are so many of them. There is an easier way which will have you climbing up the scoreboard very quickly.

This Easter Egg will let you control the ball with your mouse. You can drag the ball onto any bumpers and up any ramps. I assume this egg was originally placed in the program for testing, but it was never removed.

Please follow the steps below:

1. Open pinball
2. Wait until the ball drops
3. Type “Hidden Test” (include the space)

You can now drag the ball anywhere you want with your mouse, clocking up that score you were never able to achieve in the past.

Solitaire:

Solitaire is a great time waster. It can be hard to finish, but there is a way that you can see the waterfall of cards and finish the game without getting red eye fever.

1. Open Solitaire
2. Hold “Shift+Alt+2”
3. Watch the waterfall

If you wait for 30 seconds before pressing the key combination, you will get huge scores next to your name in the High Score table.

Nullsoft Winamp:

Winamp has a number of Easter Eggs built in. Nullsoft must spend hours making them. Today we will look at a couple related to the beats visualisations. I think these will work in any version 5 variation. The skin may need to be changed though.

Winamp – Bento Skin: Make the window change opacity according to the beat.

1. Open Winamp
2. Type “nullsoft” (press Esc after each L as below)
   n u l (Esc) l (Esc) s o f t”
3. Watch the effect

Winamp – Modern Skin: Watch two llamas head bang to your music.

1. Open Winamp
2. Drag the main window wider, until the word beat appears
3. Hold “Ctrl+Alt+Shift”
4. Click in the middle of the beat visualisation
   It’s a little tricky to find the right spot. You may need to click a few times.
5. Watch the llamas

Winamp has many more Easter Eggs. This is just a small sample, read on to find out where you can find more.

Google.com:

The folks at Google have a sense of humour. They have a wide variety of searches that bring up amusing results. They used to have more than they have now, but many have been removed. There is still plenty of value to be found. I won’t tell you what this one does. Try it for yourself.

1. Open Google
2. In the search box type “answer to life the universe and everything”
3. Click Search and check out the results

Notepad:

Even a program as small as Notepad can have an Easter egg embedded within it.

1. Open Notepad
2. Type “Bush hid the facts”
3. Save the file
4. Open the file
5. Look at the screen with confusion

I was surprised when I came across this one.

Conclusion:

I hope you have enjoyed playing with a few of these easter eggs.

I sourced all of these eggs from eeggs.com. It is a site full of eggs that can be found in movies, games and software. There are thousands of eggs listed. I have spent hours on their site over the years.

Happy Easter from Inspect My Gadget. Please take care over the break and enjoy this great celebration.

If you make a complaint to your phone company, you may end up feeling that speaking to customer support is getting you nowhere, and that you are out of options.

What do you do now? There is one more step you can take which not many people know about. Most phone companies find it hard to find new customers and it is very important for them to hold onto existing customers. They will do a lot to keep you with them. That is where retentions come in.

Ask your customer support if you can speak with their retentions staff. Retentions is a seemingly small team of people that have more authority than the general customer support staff. They may not be able to help you with your problem directly, but if they feel that you have a case, they are able to offer you credit, refunds or services to keep you on board.

You will obviously get a bit further if you tell them that you plan to end your business with them, or if your contract is coming to an end. I have had some success with this from previous problems.

If they don’t want to help you, moving on is often the best way to go. You will probably get a better deal elsewhere as plans are constantly changing and offering more for your money as technology grows.

I use a computer based calendar (Outlook 2007) and find that it does everything I could want it to do. I asked her why she used both when the computer options are free and come with a number of features a paper diary can’t offer. After listing a few of the advantages, I thought it would be wise to do a bit of a comparison.

This article will look at paper diaries vs computer based calendars. I am strongly leaning towards the computer based diaries as being a better option. The only way a paper diary can win this is to bypass all the benefits and answer “I simply prefer paper diaries!”

Benefits of computer based diaries:

• Not limited to one year: Most paper diaries are limited to just one year of data whereas in a computer based system, you can keep data from years back and years ahead. 
• No transition time: When one year is up and another begins, you don’t need to run two paper diaries in parallel as the computer based system is continuous.
• Easily backed up: Most computer based calendars are either backed up by the company supplying the calendar, or can be easily backed up by the user.
• Accessible anywhere: Many computer based calendars can be accessed from any computer in the world, normally through a web browser.
• Syncable with phone: You can take all your dates with you on your mobile phone. This is much smaller than carrying a paper diary around.
• Recurring appointments: Instead of writing a date down for every fortnight or week, you can make recurring appointments which will automatically fill in future dates. This saves a huge amount of time.
• You can set up visual and audible alerts for important reminders.
• Address Book: The address book does not need to be written out each year, it continues on. There are no scribbled out names in the address book.
• Delegates: Using some advanced features of computer based calendars, you can see when other people are busy by looking at their calendar and book meetings accordingly.
• Typing data is quicker and easier to read: I can’t write very neatly or quickly so a computer based calendar is better for me.
• You don’t need to trek out to the shops to find one you like at the right price.

Benefits of paper based diaries:

• Looks professional: Opening up a paper based diary at a meeting looks good. It makes it look like you are organised.
• Writing is quicker: Some people can write quickly and neatly.
• The joy of making a hand-script tick as you complete your tasks.
• Habit: You might be used to a paper based calendar. Making the change to a computer based system may be a hassle.

Additional Points:

Portability: Depending on the size of the paper diary you use, it could fit into your handbag without too much weight, or it may end up being a pain to lug around. Likewise, your ability to reap the benefits of an electronic calendar largely depends on how easily you can access it through your mobile, laptop or another computer perhaps at work or uni. Many current phones do have sync and calendar functions built in.

Access: I spoke with a colleague about paper diaries and why he uses them. He is not completely comfortable with computers yet (even though he is in IT) but he had a valid point. He likes to access his diary when he wants to. He doesn’t want a computer based calendar to control his life and distract him with alarms constantly.

My wife would want to customise the colours, fonts and alerts in Outlook so she could enjoy using it, and feel like it was hers, so we are going to look into the colour options of Outlook in the coming days. More on that later.

Conclusion:

It has to come down to personal preference. The most I can suggest, if you have not yet tried electronic diaries is to give it a god for a month and see what you are missing out on. I doubt you will regret it.

As a result of writing this article, and sitting down with my wife to give her a quick run-down on Outlook, (after lots of oohs and aaahs) she has finally come around and now she enjoys using her new calendar, especially the recurring schedule function. The computer based system is a clear winner!

I hope you have enjoyed this article and found it useful. It can be hard to pick up new things, especially when there are so many features you won’t use that are available to you. 

It would be nice if we could test our files through multiple scan engines to find out if a file is dangerous to our computer. The problem with this is that virus scanners fight each other if they are installed on the same machine. Sometimes this will result in slow performance, and other times you may find your computer comes to a halt. There is a way around this though.

VirusTotal

You can upload files via their website or by email. You should receive a detailed report back in your email within 10 minutes. The report you receive lists each scan engine, followed by the result and virus name. Click here to see a previous report.

While this website should not replace your computers main virus scanner, it can definitely help you if you feel a file is safe but your scanner is reporting it as infected.

Visit them at VirusTotal.com

Email servers often have spam protection built in. These cull the majority of spam, but they have to allow a fair chunk of spam through so as to not restrict legitimate emails. Sometimes if they are unsure, they may add a spam tag to the subject. It is scary looking at server stats, just how much is stopped at the server level.

In our email client we are able to setup rules to remove the majority of remaining spam from our Inbox. I regularly find myself doing this on computers where I work and have found this method to be very reliable.

This article will show you how to setup basic email rules which will check mail as it is received. The rules will look for keywords in the body and the subject of you emails to decide if they are spam or not. We are then able to move these filtered emails to a folder of our choice.

It is worth noting that you will still be receiving the same spam as you always have. What this article will help you achieve is automatic removal of it from your Inbox. There is no perfect solution to your spam problems, but this one comes pretty close. It is still necessary to look in junk email every now and again to see what has been wrongly tagged.

We have to be careful when we make our rules to keep legitimate email in our Inbox. We will also need to check our spam folder every so often to ensure legitimate email has not gone into it. On a good note though, we can keep tweaking the same rule to best suit our needs.

Introduction:

Outlook and many other email packages come with rules or filters that we can use to manage our email. With these rules we can check mail as it is received and automatically send the email to particular folders or send auto replies. These are normally things that we would do manually, but once rules are set, they can be our personal secretary.

I will be using Outlook 2003 in this article. To setup rules in Outlook 2007, the configuration is very similar.

Method:

In Outlook:

Click “Tools”

Click “Rules and Alerts”

You will be presented with a new screen showing you what rules you already have.

Click “New Rule…”

I like to start with a blank rule. This lets me configure every aspect of the rule to suit my needs.

Setup a new rule to “Apply this rule after the message arrives, with specific words in the subject or body.

Work your way through the wizard, keeping in mind the following points…

• If you click on “specific words”, you then get to enter in words that are normally associated with spam.
• Words like viagra, sex, Rolex, Nigeria, penis and possibly a few swear words should be in this list. It’s a good day to have tourettes.
• You want to be careful to choose the right words though because you may get rid of legitimate mail if you use incorrect words. Words like enlargement may stop legitimate email. Your friends might also send you emails with the odd naughty word.
• I like to add the word spam to my list. Be aware that some emails may legitimately say spam in them. You may want to create a new rule where the word spam only registers if it is in the subject, instead of both the subject and the body.
• You can have as many rules as you want. 

Click “Next”

Tell Outlook to move these flagged messages to a specified folder, in my case, Junk Email.

That is the end of the basics, but we can customise out rule a little further if you would like. Click “Finish” if you would like to end here, otherwise read on.

Click “Next”

Select “Except if from people or distribution list.” In here you can select your whole address book. This will make the rule void if the message is sent from somebody you know. This is a worthwhile step as you will still receive all the email from recognised contacts.

When you are done, click “Finish”

Please note that you may get into trouble by adding in too many variables. For example, if you create the one rule to filter messages with “spam” in the subject and “viagra” in the body, the rule will need to find both of these to be marked as junk. In this situation, it is best to make two rules. One for the emails body, and another for the emails subject.

You have a lot more options as to how you configure this. If you follow the last step, you can probably feel more free to add more keywords above. This will require a bit of tweaking. If you do get legitimate email in your spam folder, you can figure out why it was sent to this folder and change the rule to suit. If you get spam in your Inbox, you can add words to the rule so that they too will be flagged as spam.

You are able to run the rule immediately to clear out your current Inbox of spam. You also have control of turning the rule on and off. Either way, you should have greatly reduced your spam intake for all future emails.

Rules can be transferred from computer to computer, but they are so easy to make, you may as well start from scratch.

Conclusion:

You should now have much less spam in your Inbox. You can keep tweaking your new rule to work better for you over coming weeks. This method has never failed me and it is one of the first things I set up when I install Outlook.

Rules can also be a really fast way to tidy up an over cluttered Inbox. If you have 300 messages, the spam rule above and a few other rules specific to people or distribution lists, can really help you work through huge chunks of email quickly.

I hope you have enjoyed this article. Please stick around and check out some other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

Eg, You may want to setup one of your home computers as a web server. If you have not set up port forwarding, typing in your home IP address into a browser will bring up the router settings. You will need to setup your router to send webpage requests to the computer that will be hosting the site. This is known as port forwarding and it is a supported feature for most routers. Without port forwarding you can’t move beyond the router, restricting you access to all of the computers on the network. 

I have found over the years, my needs for port forwarding have been limited to only a few simple tasks. I set up a web server and an ftp server on one machine. I also needed to have access to a remote desktop connection from another machine. This was easy to setup and allowed me to take my home computers with me on the road.

Once you have access to remote desktop on one machine, you have freedom to access shared network drives from within your home network. There is nothing that you are unable to access. It is as if you were at home, on your home computer.

This article will show you how to configure your router so that you can access computers on your home network, from any computer that is outside of your network. This article is designed for newcomers to Port Forwarding, meaning that there is lots of technical stuff left out.

Port Forwarding can get much more complicated than this article will go into, but we are only going to cover a few common tasks, and show the benefits you may receive by setting this up.

Some of these features, accessing your files in particular, can be done by setting up a Virtual Private Network(VPN). A VPN allows you to access a remote network, and treat you as if you are a member of that network. This is much more difficult to setup and it is more frustrating to use, though there are some security benefits in using a VPN. I find that port forwarding is an easier option in most circumstances and it is fairly safe and reliable if setup correctly.

There are a lot of various ports that you can open up for online gaming. This will not be covered in this article. If you find that you are having trouble with a particular peice of software accessing the internet, there is a good chance that you will need to setup port forwarding. This is particularly common with some older messaging programs and networked games.

Port Table: A list of common ports

Each type of network data you want to access, uses a different port number. This is what allows us to request the ports of a particular computer, to access the service on that computer. It is not possible to access the same port on two computers, though it is sometimes possible to configure your router and computer to use a different port for a service. Eg. You can only access remote desktop from one computer while you are not on the local network.

Below is a list of some common ports you may want to configure.

80: HTTP, this service is what you will want to set if you setup a web server.
21: FTP, this service is used for transferring files over a network, FTP server.
3389: RDP, this service is for accessing computers via remote desktop.

The list of ports is very lengthly, but I cannot see them being used for general use. They are all for specific programs. Portforward.com has a comprehensive list of ports.

Setting up your router

There is a good chance that your router will have a Port Forwarding section in the routers settings. All you need to do it select the service you want access to, such as RDP, enter in the port it uses(3389), and then enter in the IP address of the machine that you want to offer this service. Eg. 192.168.0.2. Open a command prompt and type in “ipconfig” to find out yours.

You will need to configure you server to offer the service itself, Eg. Enable Remote Desktop Connection in Windows. 

Know your IP address

So that you can access your home network while you are on the road, you will need to know your home networks IP. This will not start with 10 or 192, we are after the address of your modem. If you have a static IP, you can memorise it and plug it into whatever program accesses the services you have setup.

Most people have a dynamic IP which changes every day/month/year. This makes it very hard to remember. If this is the case for you, please check out DynDNS. DynDNS allows you to use real words instead of an IP address. Your router or a desktop client will update their servers automatically, so you will never have to remember your home IP again.

Lastly

If all of this is a bit too much, check out portforward.com. They have a facility in which you can select your router from an extensive list, choose which port to forward by name, and then they will show you exactly how to do it.

I hope you have enjoyed this article and found it useful. Please stick around and check out some other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

Every now & then you may receive the occasional doc file from people at your work or in your home email box. The normal course of action would be to open it with Microsoft Word – if you have it.

I’m one of those people who doesn’t, for the simple reason that, while I could buy a copy of Microsoft Office and be done with it, I barely have use for 90-odd percent of Microsoft Office’s feature set (everything but the kitchen sink, it seems) so I can’t really justify spending the kind of money that Microsoft are asking, just to open a few files. So what solutions are there for a guy like me?

Read on for an Inspect My Gadget investigation…

Speaking as a graphic designer, I often find a lot of people seem to be treating Microsoft Word like a Desktop Publishing & Page Layout program, and that bugs me for two reasons:

1. Word is not, and was never designed to be, a page layout program and
2. The more complex a Word document gets, the harder it becomes for any other program apart from Word to open it.

Which leads to the “inspection” part of this article; Some Word documents I receive are nice & straightforward – a couple of pages of styled text, perhaps with a header & footer. Most of the time, I’ll receive a document that’s been peppered with any combination of graphics, tables, headers/footers, whatever. It’s all fine if you happen to use Word, but what about other word processors? How much gets lost in translation? And how close to the original can I get without breaking the bank?

Before we proceed, bear in mind we’re not covering every word processor out there, nor is this intended to be an in-depth review of word processors. Your mileage may vary.

While we are aware of Office 2007’s new Open XML (.docx) format, we won’t be covering it in this article. At the time of writing, docx is still a relatively new format – it has not had nearly enough time to spread and establish itself widely as a potential standard. Microsoft, of course, are doing all they can to make sure it does. Even so, people these days are less inclined to upgrade their software as long as whatever they have now is working fine for them, so docx has got a long way to go before we can consider it in the same light as doc.

With that in mind, lets move on with the inspection:

Using Microsoft Word 2003 on Windows XP as my starting point, I produced a sample document based on one of its stock templates, with tables, graphics, headers & footers, some text formatting… oh yes, and a touch of WordArt (*shudder*) for good measure.

I began with the two simple word processing programs that come as a standard part of Windows and Mac OS X: WordPad and TextEdit respectively.  Since they’re only intended to be basic programs, I didn’t expect a lot from them to start with. Naturally, a lot of formatting was lost. TextEdit did manage to import the table and text, but I honestly expected more from WordPad – it only managed to import the table!

I moved onto Microsoft Works, which nowadays comes bundled with many home PCs. It strikes me as a kind of “poor man’s Office” – the type of program you’d be using because it’s there, and it can do the job, but really you’d be wishing you had Office instead.

In my test, it managed to bring across all the text frames, the title text, and one of the two graphics, with some hint of the original layout which you’ll only notice if you place it side by side with the original. Unfortunately, it missed the sidebar, the WordArt, header & footer, and it managed to split the table.

I downloaded the free Microsoft Word Viewer from Microsoft’s website. As a program written by Microsoft themselves for the sole purpose of opening Word files, I expected nothing less than 100% accuracy here. Sure enough, it passed with flying colours, showing the document exactly as it was made in the original.

Microsoft, in fact, has Viewer applications for Powerpoint and Excel, as well as Word. Some time ago on a separate occasion, I downloaded the Powerpoint Viewer for my wife, as she’d been receiving .ppt files from friends, but had no way to open them without Office – the Viewer was a perfect solution. Unfortunately, these Viewer apps aren’t cross-platform; they’re only available for Windows.

Mac OS X

On the Mac side of the fence, I moved on to Microsoft Word 2004, part of the Microsoft Office for Mac package. Microsoft themselves advertise this product as having seamless cross-platform compatibility – the same file can be opened in Mac or Windows. Thus I would have expected it to render pretty close to 100% accuracy, but surprisingly, when opening the test document, it actually stumbled at rendering the WordArt, which appeared at the back of everything else, instead of in front (see the screenshot). Apart from that, everything else appeared pretty much exactly as it did in the Windows version.

From there I went to Pages ’08 – a recent entry by Apple as part of their iWork ’08 suite of programs. Pages ’08 managed to bring just about everything across except the WordArt headline (which, I don’t miss anyway). Only minor tweaks were needed to margins and font sizes, but otherwise it came pretty close.

Small inaccuracies aside, I actually found a lot to like with Pages. It feels to me like it’s the kind of program Microsoft Word should be – written from the ground up with page layout in mind. This means that its design features are easy to use without feeling clunky, but it also still holds up well as a no-fuss word processor. Microsoft, are you taking notes?

I decided to give Google Docs a try, as it seems to be one of the main voices proclaiming the wave of the future – online applications. I have to confess I wasn’t sure what to expect, since it was my first foray into online apps. I wanted it to work, I really did. Unfortunately, as you can see, it made an absolute dog’s breakfast of the layout. Google Docs seems to rely a lot on dynamic HTML & JavaScript to achieve it’s layout tricks, so in all fairness, it was a lot to ask of it. The simple fact remains that Google Docs has still got a long way to go before it can ever be considered as a tool of choice for handling more complex documents.

Open Source

Moving into the open source realm, I started by trying out AbiWord. I would have loved for this one to work, but unfortunately it didn’t actually get much further than TextEdit did. If you compare the screenshots – you’ll find they turned out quite similar.

AbiWord no longer appears to be under active development – the most recent builds found on SourceForge.net date back to 2004-2005. Hence, it doesn’t look like it’s going to get better at handling Word documents any time soon… for these reasons, I can’t recommend AbiWord.

OpenOffice, on the other hand, came the closest of all third-party programs tested – both open source and commercial – to matching the original Word document. Rendering was pretty much spot-on, with only a bare minimum of tidying up required – it even rendered the WordArt pretty close to the original. As an open source program, it is an impressive achievement on the part of the programmers to get as close as they do. The program is still being tweaked & worked on, so it can only get better from here.

(For this test, I actually used NeoOffice, which is a Java implementation of the OpenOffice source code for Mac OS X. At this time of writing, OpenOffice for Mac is still rather clunky and requires the user unfriendly X11 windowing system to be installed).

By the end of this inspection I’m pretty much convinced that the only thing that can open Word documents with anywhere near 100% accuracy, is Word itself. Many of the word processors we covered here will be able to open your business memo’s, cover letters and next blockbuster novel with little or no hassle, but the moment you start introducing graphics and fancy stuff into the mix, that’s where you’ll run into problems. Somewhere along the way, you will lose some formatting or layout, and it then becomes a question of how much tidying up will you need to do to make it look more like the original.

Conclusion

So what can I recommend for the average reader who deals with Word documents?

If you have Microsoft Office for Windows or Mac, the solution is obvious – use Word. You’re pretty much guaranteed you’ll be able to open any Word document that comes along.

For everyone else, who either can’t afford Office or choose not to use it, I can recommend the following based on my inspections:

For Windows, if all you need to do is open, save and print, you should consider downloading Microsoft’s Word Viewer. Its ability to open & correctly render Word documents is the best of all solutions reviewed – and it’s free.

If you need to edit your documents, I would supplement the Viewer application with OpenOffice. Its feature set is comparable to Microsoft’s Office and its rendering of Word docs is excellent. It’s open source (read: free) so it is also great value for money.

For the Mac, I can recommend NeoOffice, – it is more comfortable to use for the average Mac person, since it conforms to Apple’s OS X user interface (Mac OpenOffice still uses the clunkier X11 interface) and it is based on the OpenOffice source code, so it’ll render those Word docs the same way as its cousin.

From my personal viewpoint, I can also recommend Apple’s Pages ’08. Even though it isn’t free, and its Word doc accuracy is not quite 100%, it is still such a pleasure to use. There’s a 30-day free trial available, so you can try it out and see if you agree.

For Linux or other Unix-based systems, OpenOffice is pretty much your only solution for accurate Word doc rendering. Not that you’ll be complaining really, as OpenOffice is good enough to serve you well in a Microsoft-free existence. It is continually being worked on and improved, so it will remain compatible for the foreseeable future.

Finally, to those of you who are using Word to create your documents; Not all word processors are created equally. If you’re making a particularly complex document and want it to be opened & viewed by people exactly as you intended, you may want to consider saving your document as a PDF instead. The PDF format keeps all your fonts, graphics & layouts intact. PDF files can be read by just about anybody around the world, regardless of what computer they’re using. The PDF format also has the additional advantage of being printer-friendly, which means you can take a PDF file to a professional print shop and their machinery will be able to handle it.

If you’re not sure how to make PDFs that anybody can open, check out our IMG archives for PDF-related articles, to see how you can create your own PDF files.

What works for you? What’s been your experience with cross-platform file-swapping? Drop us a line!

If you have a dual screen setup, and you would like to connect multiple computers up to your monitors, people will tell you to spend a large amount of money to get a KVM switch which will handle this. 

For a dual screen KVM switch which you can connect 4 computers, you are looking at spending around $500 and you are also likely to have to spend additional money on the cables, and these can cost more than the switch itself. It is almost worth purchasing extra monitors and peripherals to control your computers, instead of buying one of the really fancy switches.

This article will show you a cheaper option to achieve the same result. Halving the cost comes with the most minor of drawbacks:

• Switching can no longer be done through the keyboard (still works for one screen).
• To switch computers, you will need to press two buttons instead of one.

Instead of spending $500 on a dual monitor KVM switch, I bought two single monitor KVM switches for $100 each. Another bonus is that four port, single monitor KVM switches often include the cables meaning you do not have to purchase them separately. They are available in USB and PS/2 variations, with both costing similar amounts.

From a major electronics retailer, I purchased a 4 port PS/2 KVM switch and a USB KVM switch for $AU100 each and they both came with all the cables I needed. If you look around online or in smaller computer shops, you can probably get them for much cheaper. The point is, you can get the same results for less than $200 as opposed to the $500 do-it-all KVM switch.

I am currently running a Windows XP computer and a Windows Vista computer. I am using one wireless keyboard and one wireless mouse, each with their own receiver. Both of the computers output their display to the same two monitors. I switch between the computers by pressing 2 buttons. I sometimes have computers that I am fixing attached to the KVM switch also, allowing me to do all my work in the one place.

In my case, the KVM switches do not have their own power source. They are supplied power through either the USB or the PS/2 ports. I was disappointed when I bought my USB KVM switch to find that it had PS/2 connectors for the mouse and keyboard inputs, and USB was only used for the connection to the computers.

I have connected one monitor, keyboard and mouse to the PS/2 KVM switch. Only a monitor and USB connections are connected to the USB KVM switch making it solely a monitor switcher. A picture says a thousand words.

As you can see, drawing is not my strong point, but this picture does show the connections that need to be made. Luckily, KVM cables contain either Video and USB connections or Video and PS/2 connections. Some also contain audio cables. Either way, there are a fair few cables involved for any KVM setup.

The USB KVM switch would not allow for me to enter the BIOS on machine startup as the computers did not recognise the keyboard at this stage of the boot up. Once I was in Windows, everything worked fine for me. That is why I used the PS/2 KVM for keyboard and mouse input. You are able to use two USB KVM switches only, but you may come across the same problem. It may have been something to do with the keyboard I was using.

With this setup, pressing “PC 1” on both KVM switches will bring up Windows XP, and “PC 2” on both KVM switches will bring up Windows Vista.

If you are very handy and technically savvy, there is no reason why you could not build your own box to store both KVM switches, and even re-wire them so you only need to press one button. This is too complicated for me to try but it is bound to be possible. I prefer pressing the two buttons because I know it works.

If you have any questions about this article, please post your query in the comments section, and you should receive a response within two days.

I hope that you have found this article useful. Please stick around and check out some of the other tips at Inspect My Gadget.