101 Ways for Faster, Better Computing

Statutory warning: Tweaking your system’s settings may cause it to crash. And we mean it. That said, as long as you tweak the right way, you can get more out of your computer or network. Here are 101 ways to use your computer’s features, software or hardware, to boost productivity and to solve problems

Windows Zip through Windows Startup Free up the CPU Defrag for Speed Uninstall the Right Way Clean-desktop Policy Call for Help in XP Hidden in Windows XP Windows without Mice Apps Close at Hand Rescue Windows How Well does your PC Perform? Save Power PCs Many OSs. One PC BIOS Tweaks for a Speedier PC Save Power from the BIOS Reset your BIOS Password Protect Diverse Drives Connect Right Partition Smart Overclock for Speed. But Carefully Office Suites Zippier in Word Efficient in Excel Present with Power Burn CDs in XP Rip to MP3 Surrounded by Sound

Everyday we receive many queries about specific business-computing problems. In one such query, a person wanted to know how to set up a customized and automated e-mail response system running off his PC. He wanted to send different automated responses to various customers based on their profile. The solution to his problem was simply a matter of configuring a built-in feature called mail filters. While many of us may know about this feature, we may not know that they can be used to solve a business problem in this manner.

Many times the solution is right under our noses, and yet we invest a significant amount of time and money in getting external help for it. For instance, you can configure Windows 98 SE or 2000 to act as your Internet gateway. If you’re a small company wanting to share an Internet connection between a few PCs, then this may be the right solution for you.

Bigger companies face more difficult questions. For instance, if you want to segment your network to control traffic, then you can use your existing network OS, be it Windows NT, 2000, Linux, or NetWare, to act as a router. On individual desktops, there are questions like how to improve PC performance or make Windows boot faster.

Keeping in mind that there are so many things we can do to get more out of our computers, we devoted this issue to tell you how to do some of them. While we’ve tried everything out in our labs before writing about it, there’s no guarantee that it will work straightaway on your system. This could be due to any reason, like your system configuration being different, or you using a different version of the software. Also, be careful when trying something out yourself. If it’s something that could potentially bring your network down, such as installing something on a server, then be sure to do a pilot run on a test machine first.

We’ve spanned the articles across the regular sections of the magazine. So you’ll find Windows, PCs and Office Suites related tips in the Cover Story; the Internet and e-mail in In Focus; and networking in Server Side. While the title has the number 101, you’ll actually find many more on these pages.

Story done by Anil Chopra, Ankur Saxena, Anuj Jain, Ashish Sharma, Benoy George, Juhi Bhambal, Krishna Kumar, Neelima Vaid, Shekhar Govindarajan, Sachin

Makhija, Sanjay Majumder, Vinod Unny