Online forums and bulletin boards can be great places to find answers. The problem however is getting through all the information. Sometimes this is because users post a question or solution in the wrong topic. The other problem is many forums lack a search feature. There is a quick workaround if the forum doesn’t require a password to view the data. – Google’s Site: operator.

One lesson I relearned because of upgrading this website was that I don’t have to do it all. I could, but it would be at the expense of sacrificing something else. Rather than trying to control everything, I decided to outsource some tasks. Although difficult at first, the payoffs were immediate. To start, I became more productive. And no, you don’t need fancy project management systems, large budget or crash course in Six Sigma.

Last month I was involved in a documentation project. I thought it would end once I submitted my file minus some final edits. Instead, I was asked if I could make the Word document to a brochure. Immediately, I started thinking of layouts, orientation and tables. And then I remembered a seldom used feature of a program most of us already use.

I’m not into multi-tasking but if I can write an article that does two objectives, I’m game. As with many articles, this one started with a reader email. John in Canada has a problem reading a specific page on this site. My problem is I can’t figure out why so I want to gather more information from other readers. While there are many ways to collect data, I thought I would create a web form using Google Docs.

It’s no surprise to most readers that I hate buying printer ink. I find the process wasteful and expensive even if I recycle empty ink cartridges. You can imagine my joy when I found a free utility that saves ink and paper. It does this by allowing me to select the items from a web page I wish to print. It even saves web pages as a PDF file.

One item people complain about Windows Vista is the need to run programs as an Administrator. Elevating your privileges is easy although it can confuse some people when it comes to the Vista command prompt or cmd.exe. This need happens when people run into installation problems or get the infamous internal error 2739. Fortunately, there are easy solutions.

One of the scariest ordeals laptop owners encounter is a lost or stolen computer. It’s one of those scenarios that once you peel away one layer, the potential for bigger problems appears. And that’s when you break into a cold sweat unless you’ve taken preventive measures to aid in the recovery or track your laptop.