40Tech

Windows 7 has some handy windows management functions, such as dragging a window to the left side of the screen to have it snap to fill the entire left half of your screen, or dragging it to the top of the screen to fill the entire screen. If you want even more functionality, whether it be on Windows 7, XP, or Vista, check out Chameleon Window Manager.

We recently looked at Markdown, a markup format that lets you easily create HTML-formatted text. What can make Markdown even easier to use is if you use an app that supports it. On the Mac, Markup apps are plentiful. On Windows, not so much. Fortunately, if you’re on Windows, you do have WriteMonkey. WriteMonkey is a Markdown tool, but describing it as such just scratches the surface.

I don’t know about you, but hung print jobs are the bane of my Windows existence. Have you ever had the “canceling . . .” message that just won’t go away? If you have, there is a simple way to purge your Windows print jobs, using a batch file.

If you have more than one computer sitting on your desk, and don’t want extra mice and keyboards cluttering up your workspace, take a look at Synergy. Synergy is free and open source software that lets you control multiple computers with one keyboard and mouse, using your home network. Each computer will need its own monitor. Once you’ve set it up, you can drag your cursor from one computer’s screen, right off the edge to the other computer’s screen.

One piece of software that Microsoft got right was Windows Live Writer. If you’re a blogger, and don’t want to dig around in HTML (and arguably even if you do), Windows Live Writer is the software that we recommend for your drafting needs. One flaw with Live Writer, though, is that it doesn’t offer a setting to change where your blog posts get saved on your machine. By default, your drafts and recent posts get saved to your user folder, in the \Documents\My Weblog Posts\ directory. What if you want to save your posts elsewhere? You can do this, with a registry hack.

Yesterday we covered five ways to boost your productivity using a text expansion program. If we’ve sold you on the value of a text expansion program, your next question may concern which program to get. We previously mentioned how to use text expansion for free on Windows using Texter, an app that we identified as one of five tech tools to increase your productivity in a non-tech job. Texter was the first text expander that I used. When I added a Mac to my repertoire, though, one problem that I ran into was that Texter is a Windows-only app. I started using TypeIt4Me on the Mac, but then I had to manually enter my expansion snippets to keep them in sync between Mac and Windows. Recently I discovered a better solution – two separate apps (one on each platform) that can use the same snippet file, synchronized over Dropbox. I’ve been in text expansion heaven ever since.

If you grew up in the 80′s, do you remember games like Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and perhaps the best of them all, King’s Quest? They were games from the legendary, and now defunct, Sierra Entertainment. If you long for the fun of yesteryear, then you’re in luck. You can now play the first three King’s Quest Games if you own a Mac or PC. The best part? They’re free.

Is your PC’s desktop or downloads folder cluttered with files? If so, and you’re feeling overwhelmed with the thought of getting your system organized, check out DropIt. DropIt is a free program that creates a big icon on your desktop, that can be thought of as a drop zone. When you drop a file onto the icon, actions will be performed on it depending on how you’ve configured DropIt. DropIt can help you quickly move files to the proper place on your PC, without having to manually select a folder for each file.

Ahh, a new computer. Kind of makes you tingle with excitement, right? Perhaps, but you’re probably also thinking about all the work that you have ahead of you when installing all of your apps. We’ve previously talked about ways to download several apps in one bundled download, to help speed along the process, and we’ve covered some tips for upgrading to Windows 7 in a couple of posts. If you want to get even more streamlined, you can move programs, settings and all, from your old PC to your new PC using PickMeApp.

You know the stereotypes: Mac users are young, progressive, city-dwelling hipsters, while Windows users are more conservative, and live in rural areas. Hogwash, right? Well, maybe not. Hunch recently released results of a study of user data, comparing preferences and tendencies of PC and Mac users. The data pool was pretty massive, using more than 80 million aggregated and anonymous responses to questions from 700,000 Hunch users over an almost two year period. The study results do reinforce some stereotypes.