Hi all some of us have some handy tips for when we are on the computer and I thought it would be a good idea to share some of our shortcuts and tips and anything that would make it easier for our members to use their computers, so if you have some tips please add them here because we can all learn from each other.

With my tip, have you ever closed off a tab and wished you could get it back well read on. If you don't know what I mean by a tab then hold down your control key (Ctrl) and while holding it down press the "T" key (this is normally written as Ctrl+T) while you are doing Ctrl+T look at the top of your screen and depending on how your browser is set up you will either see a tab open up to the right of the one your on or it will open up to the right of the one your on and it will move to that tab. You can navigate between the tabs by clicking on them and close individual tabs by clicking on the x on each tab. Bear in mind if you have a slow computer then too many tabs will slow it down but usually you can get away with a half a dozen tabs open.

Now for my tip. You had a half a dozen tabs open and you closed four of them and you want to bring them back to find the one you want. The shortcut is Ctrl+Shift+T so while you hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys together press the T key and each time you press the T key while holding down the Ctrl and Shift key you will bring back a tab until you bring back the four tabs or more tabs but if you have a slow computer then wait for each tab to open (you can let go of the keys) and do it again. If a page doesn't fully open then you will have to click reload on the page.

If you want to try it out then open your search page which in my case will be Google and do a search for something like Pop top caravans for sale. Now you want to open your selection in Tabs so that you can go back to your search page to select more. You have found one so while you hold down Ctrl click on the one or two that interest you they will open up in their own tab you click on each tab on the top of your screen to look at them and then at the top of your screen you click on the search page tab and and Ctrl+click another two or three and you look at them. Your finished with them and you close them by clicking on the x of the tab NOT THE X AT THE TOP RIGHT OR YOU WILL CLOSE YOUR BROWSER It doesn't matter what pages you have closed even the search page as long as you have at least one tab open now do the Ctrl+Shift+T hold down Ctrl and Shift keys while tapping the T key and bring back your closed tabs. Once again if you have a slow computer let each tab open separately but play around and you will learn if you have to wait for each tab.

Maybe you want to find something you had a couple of days ago well that will be in History so if anyone wants to know how to find something in history then post back and tell me what browser you use eg. Fire fox Google chrome Microsoft Edge and hopefully some others will post their tips here as well.

Aus-Kiwi wrote:

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Sum of us are on phones or IPads too ?

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 We will have to get some who are familiar with those devices to add their tips 

macka17 wrote:

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Computer dumb... ME

Only tip I think worthwhile.

When you buy\have whatever. New or second hand.

Swap out the Hard drive for a 120\250gig SSD (Solid state drive)
And double whatever ram you have in there.
16 gig is good figure, 8gig MIN.
It's cheap enuff nowadays.
My Lappie has 12gig.

They will instantly change you from a cuppa coffee while I wait for startup.
to 12\14 seconds to mouse use. MAX.
with correspondingly faster operations.

Really are that good.

I have 120 SSD in both here, With OS and security. Programs, only.
on them.

EVERYTHING else. is kept on 2 Terra 7200 disk speeds External drives.
1 Terra will do job.

Security.
I've used Bitdefender for last 10\12 yrs, advised by my Bank manager.
they use Professional version.

I have TOTAL.
Newby can get for Special, around $89 per 12mth
with 5 items.

I get for less, but long term user.

NEVER ever had an intruder.
they stop.Clean and Quarantine everything.
give choice of what YOU want to do.
Incl Delete, reinstall, the PROG\File that naughty boy was on
and has been cleaned.

Best one I've ever used.

$700 to $4k of Lappie. Free or cheap Basic security
IS a little dumb don't you think.
They ALL only give you a part of basic program.
These give FULL cover. incl net cover\Clean.
for ANY intruder 24\7. And don't seem to slow me down any.

Software.
Computer literate can help everybody more than I can.

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 Some good advice there Macka and the Solid state drives are fast but if you computer is only 32 bit then it is no good going past 4 gig of RAM because it wont use the extra, you would need a 64 bit computer to be able to use the extra RAM past the 4 gig.  

Most new folk are told there's nothing you can do which can't be undone.  Thankfully most still exercise a little caution.

Kiwi and Sandman.

If your Smart phone, tablet are on Wifi.
Bitdefender covers them as fully as the Computers.
Total = 5 items.
I have PC.Laptop,Samsung Tablet. plus 2 x Samsung J1 smart phones.
ALL covered for $29 a yr.

Didn't think anybody would be still using 32 bit nowadays.
That's from the Ark days.
Like the old 286\386 with floppy's hey.
Pre Win.

Thankfully. My Toshiba Lappie has the Start-Zero key.

which brings up dos and sets everything back to factory.

Pheww..... As he wipes his forehead.

AGAINnnnnnnn.

You are right AK not all of these tips may be relevent for those of us who use Apple for instance I have never needed to use an anti virus program for my iMac, Macbook, iPad or iPhone devices.  

I have been caught before where I changed my email address and forgotten a password to a site, when I requested a new one it was sent to my old email address which no longer existed. I have also had the situation where I did an electronic funds transfer, my banking institution sent me a text with a verification number which I needed to proceed unfortunately it went to an old mobile number so I couldn't retrieve it. This meant I had to spend time on the phone getting things sorted which is not good when its a weekend and the mob you are dealing with are only open on weekdays. My tip is - if for any reason you ever change your email address or mobile No. remember to go straight in and change your details on sites where you are using a password as it may save you some real headaches down the track.

When a password change is required most people get a bit stumped and have trouble finding a password that's acceptable. Easy fixed. For any passwords that have to be changed today I'd use "Wed.31.May.17" without the quotes of course. Just use the date with appropriate mix of upper case, lower case, alpha and numeric characters and punctuation marks. Get a password keeping app / programme - I use KeePass Password Safe. Keeps all passwords in one place. Keep a copy of the database on both your smart phone and your laptop/tablet or whatever. It's important to have the database in more than one place for backup. Make the password for that something only you know and is easy to remember.

Hope that all makes some sort of sense to someone...

Cheers, Mark F...

Computers can and will die anytime, and shouldn't be blindly trusted. So always have a backup of anything you don't want to lose. (photos  and documents etc)

Cheers, John.

Yes John, I have a 2 Terra external hard disc that is set to do auto backups every 24hrs - just in case the worst does happen. There are over 5000 photos and other important files stored on this machine that I would risk losing if they weren't backed up.

Gday...

Backing up data/photos etc is a basic and sensible action.. No different to keeping important/valuable documents in a secure, fire-safe container ... and having photocopies of those documents in another location also in a secure, fire-safe container.

Similarly, those old paper photos you have tucked away in albums ... one would hope the negatives have been retained and are stored properly and in a place that is not with the albums and/or paper photos. Fire is indiscriminate.

If one is concerned about losing their data/photos/etc then backing-up is critical.

However, if one is serious about backing up their data etc then it should be backed up to two other sources - one needs to remember that various media can failure. Additionally, at least one of those sources should be stored at a different location to the main computer and the the other back-up.

Apart from computer/media failure, in the case of fire etc then a back-up should be stored remotely.

Cheers - John

Slightly of the subject

I was sitting at sons place trying to look at their T.V. no luck

So asked 7 year old grandson, how to watch their T.V.

His answer was.

Grandad, the first thing you have to do is turn on the T.V.

Smart little bugger or more like DUMB old man.

Jay&Dee

I am enjoying this thread re knowledge of computers. Keep it going folks.

bill12 wrote:

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Belt it with a hammer, and if that doesn,t work, get a bigger hammer........

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 Yes, a brick work's well too, has a bit more surface area so less effort needed!.

Not a bad idea Cruising but I wasn't thinking about disasters like a fire just covering the risk of losing my computer. the only problem I can see with having a hard drive in another location would be that you would have to continually update it. I believe that another way is to keep things on the cloud but I am not really that familiar with how that actually works so I don't rely on it as a backup..

Hylife wrote:

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My tips,
never backup,
never do a disk cleanup or defrag,
go buy an apple and foolishly believe the old wives tale that you'll never get a virus,
never buy a book and actually learn how to use your computing device properly, just get behind the wheel and drive it,
buy an Android device and continuously hand over all your usage information to Google for advertising,
waste money on commercial security products you don't need that simply offer their own front-end skin for the inbuilt antivirus and firewall software Microsoft has given you free,

Please do all these things or I won't have a job as a computer technician and earn any money, and then how can I afford to travel for 3 months a year.

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Do Macs get attacked by viruses and malware?

Yes, they do. Mac virusesand Mac-specific attacks have been documented.

But let's be clear, first of all, that Macs are indisputably more secure than Windows PCs. The Mac operating system is Unix-based, and Unix offers a number of security features built in, like the way that executable code and data is stored in separate folders. (This is why deleting an app on a Mac is so simple.) In addition, Apple has included a number of security measures that make attacking a Mac particularly challenging, including Gatekeeper, which blocks any software than hasn't been digitally signed and approved by Apple. If you try to open an app by a developer that Apple hasn't verified you will see the message: "[This app] can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer."

Hilife, I never said you can't get a virus on a Mac I said in all the years that I have run apple devices (since 1988) I have never needed to use a virus protection program (and I have never had a problem). If that ever changes and I do get caught out I will go and see the guys up at Apple to get it fixed not one of the many local computer technicians whose expertise is usually in Windows machines and software.

I use a backup too called synctoy http://windowsreport.com/synctoy-windows-10/ which was designed by the Microsoft engineers for their own personal use and then they let it out for free through Microsoft. I have been using it for years. With it I select what data I want to backup and to where. I backup to a second hard drive on my PC and also to an external hard drive it does the two of them together. Here is a quote from their site 

Great thing about this application is that you can choose any folder to be your destination or source folder. Youre not limited to your internal hard drive, therefore you can choose a folder on a Portable hard drive, USB flash drive or even a network drive."

With Synctoy you have several choices of what type of back up you want to make you can mirror what is in your source folder to the destination folder deleting any changes in the destination folder or you can keep changes in the destination folder or you can mirror each folder to each other and not delete any changes. 

I also use Acronis True Image and make an image of my C: drive which is just the operating system and programs. I keep my data on another partition on another hard drive my D: drive. If I have any problem with my operating system or a hard drive fail I can reinstall the last image and then only have to do any updates and reinstall any programs since the last image was taken and if it was a ransomware demand then I reinstall the image of my operating system and replace my locked data with the data on my external hard drive which is not kept connected to my PC. I haven't looked at backing up to the cloud as yet because of security and uploading so much data would take yonks because uploading is so much slower even though we have the fastest available at the moment ADSL2+ (still goes at a snail pace I think they have slowed it down so that we will appreciate the NBN which will arrive in August)

One thing I don't know what to do (and I would appreciate any input) is how to make a link on this forum active so that it can be clicked on without having to copy and paste or is that not allowed in this forum. A link such as this 

http://windowsreport.com/synctoy-windows-10/