There's nothing more soul-sucking than sitting there picking your
earwax while you watch Windows 7's blue ring of fire. Yet, to be fair,
your poor laptop spends a lot more time waiting for you to act than you
waste watching it load applications, boot up or finish processing. If
your computer takes .8 seconds to load your browser, but you take 5
unnecessary seconds to type in a username and password, who's the slow
poke?
Fortunately, you can reduce the human bottleneck if you take just a few
simple steps that will double your personal processing power. To show
the benefits of overclocking yourself, I've put my stop watch where my
mouth is and recorded the amount of time you'll save by following each
of my tips. Sure, you may only save a few seconds by using a particular
shortcut, but those moments really add up, particularly when you're
performing scores of similar actions every hour.
Follow these time-saving tricks to keep your computer from sitting
around and twiddling its fans when it should be turbo boosting to keep
up with you:
1. Assign Keyboard Shortcuts to Favorite Apps
Any time you have to roll your mouse pointer across the screen, you're
wasting precious milliseconds of your life that you'll never have again.
Just imagine that your pointer is sitting in the upper right corner of
the screen and you have to roll it all the way over to the Start
button, click to open the menu and then navigate your way through the
folders, just to find and launch
PowerPoint. That's 5.46 wasted seconds,
according to our estimates.
However, if you assign a keyboard shortcut to the application, you can
launch it in under .5 seconds, the amount of time it takes to hit a
combo like
CTRL +
ALT + C. To assign a hot key to an application,
simply right click on its shortcut icon, select properties, click the
shortcut tab, and then enter some combination of CTRL + ALT + (Letter or
Number) into the
Shortcut key box. To make remembering them easy, I
recommend using letters that match the name of the software you want to
load. For example, assign CTRL + ALT + W to
Microsoft Word.
Time saved: 5 seconds per app open
[
5 Things to Look for in Your Next Notebook Keyboard]
2. Use Macros to Enter Frequently-typed Text
If you have something you type frequently such as "Dear PR crony, For
the 100th time, I'm a tech journalist. I don't cover the
Oak Ridge Boys.
Now please go away," you can accomplish that with just one key stroke
rather than 17 seconds of touch typing. Even if you're just entering
your email address, you'll save a good 3 seconds.
A number of programs allow you to assign text to hot keys, but
Quick Paste
is my favorite, because it's totally free and very easy to use. After
downloading Quick Paste, be sure to select "Start with Windows" from the
#Options menu and "Minimize to tray if Close" so that it will always
run in the background.
Time Saved: 17 seconds more or less.
3. Employ a Password Manager to Log in for You
There are few bigger time sucks than remembering dozens of different
username / password combos and typing them in every time you need to log
in to your email client, social media service, favorite shopping site
or bank account. And while you could use the same simple set of
credentials everywhere, that leaves you wide open to hacking and
identity theft.
The fastest and most secure way to type in your login credentials is with a password manager like the totally-free and popular
KeePass.
With this utility, you can keep all your credentials in a single
encrypted key file and then set the program to type them into any form,
online or offline, when you hit a key like CTRL + ALT + A. A number of
KeePass plugins
allow you to keep your password file synced across multiple computers
and to integrate it with your browser for even faster web logins.
Time Saved: 4 Seconds to 5 Minutes per login, depending on your long-term memory.
[
Lock Down Your Log-in: 6 Password Managers to Protect Your Accounts]
4. Get Social Networking and Email Notifications Without Loading a Single Web Page
If you're like me, you need to know right away when someone references
you on a social network and you need to know about every email the
second it arrives. However, you waste precious moments every time you
navigate to your accounts just to see if you've gotten anything new.
I recommend installing some browser extensions that will alert you the
instant you get a new message, even if you don't have the web page for
that service open. Though you can get some plug-ins for Firefox and IE
that provide some alerts, Chrome Browser puts your alert icons in the
most prominent place, right next to its address bar.
For Chrome, I recommend the following extensions:
Time Saved: 30 seconds every 5 to 10 minutes (or however often you would have been irresistibly compelled to check your accounts).
[
Facebook vs. Google +: Which Social Network is Best?]
5. Use Dual Monitors and Aero Snap to View Several Windows at Once
Most of us need several windows open at once to do our work. If you're
writing a report in Word and need to glance at the assignment your boss
sent via email, check the results of a calculation in Exel, and grab
some additional data from a website, you'll have at least four windows
you really need to look at. If you can only fit one of these windows on
the screen at a time, you'll spend an eternity switching between them.
Pivoting your eye balls from one side of the desktop to another is
infinitely faster than moving your pointer or hitting a key.
To save time, try putting more windows next to each other on-screen.
Hit Window Key + Left on one window and Window Key + Right on another to
snap two applications right next to each other. Add a second monitor to
give you more windows on the screen at once or two windows running at
full screen. The
Lenovo ThinkVision LT1421
portable monitor is a great second screen for laptop users on the go,
because it weighs less than 3 pounds and is powered by USB.
Time Saved: 1.5 to 2 seconds per window switch, which adds up to several minutes per hour.
6. Learn How to Touch Type Faster
If you can't type without looking at the keyboard and using all 10
fingers, you need to learn touch typing. Every time you sit there
pecking at the keys, your computer is secretly laughing at you and
texting all its friends on the network to tell them what kind of noob it
has caressing its keys.
Fortunately, many online programs can help you learn how to touch type
or improve your touch typing to where it should be, 80 or more words per
minute. TypingWeb provides some good,
free typing lessons, but I really like the paid service at
Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor which costs $25.95.
Time Saved: Enter text 300 percent faster or more.
7. Search the Web Directly from Your Browser Address Bar
If you need to perform a web search there is absolutely no reason to
waste time by navigating to Google.com or Bing.com and then typing your
query into the search box. Instead, all the modern browsers will query
your search engine of choice if you just type the text you're looking
for right into the address bar.
In a test, we found that navigating to Google.com, waiting for the page
to load, typing in the search term "laptops," hitting enter and waiting
for the results took 9 seconds while simply typing "laptops" into the
Chrome address bar, hitting Enter and waiting for results took 4
seconds.
Time Saved: 5 seconds per query
[
Web Browser Tips and Apps to Save You Time]
8. Find Stuff Faster Using the Start Menu Search Box.
When you need to find a file or program, there's no reason to go
fumbling through dozens of folders like some kind of Watergate burglar.
It's not necessary to launch a dedicated explorer window either. Simply
hit the Windows key or CTRL + Esc to pop-up the start menu and start
typing into the "Search for programs or files" box.
You may need to only type the first few letters of a file name before
Windows starts making suggestions for you. This instant search feature
is particularly useful when you know exactly what you're looking for.
For example, when I wanted to find a document I had written about SSDs, I
typed "SSD" into the start menu and had my results in 3 seconds. When I
browsed the documents folder to find the same file, it took 6 seconds.
Time Saved: 3 seconds
9. Configure Your File Associations to Open Documents with the Program You Want
Unless you just bought your computer yesterday, you probably have at
least five different programs that can open JPEGs, four programs that
can play MP3s, two that can display PDFs and six that can edit TXT
files. Unfortunately, the default program which launches when you double
click on a file isn't necessarily the one you need.For example, if you
want to crop a picture and remove red eye from it, you'll need to open
the JPEG in Photoshop, not Windows Gallery.
To change file associations in Windows, type the term "file type" into
the Start menu search box and then select "Make a file type always open
in a specific program." Then select the file extension you wish to
change (ex: .jpg) and click the Change program button. Finally, you'll
need to pick the program you want to open with and click Ok.
Time Saved: 10 seconds
10. Avoid the Scroll Bar
Every time you roll your mouse pointer over to the scroll bar on the
right side of a window and use it to move down the page, you've wasting
time, a lot of it. If you have a mouse, the answer is obvious: use the
scroll wheel to slide down your documents, emails and web pages.
However, if you don't have a mouse, use two finger scrolling on your
touchpad; just place your index and middle finger next to each other and
drag them down the pad. Pointing sticks like Lenovo's TrackPoint
provide dedicated scroll buttons as well.
In web browsers, hitting the spacebar key is even faste, as a single
tap takes you down exactly one screen. In my tests, using the scroll bar
to navigate down to the "display" section of a smartphone review took 4
seconds, using the mouse scroll wheel took 2 seconds, and hitting the
space bar to jump down two screens took just 1 second.
Time Saved: 2 to 3 seconds
11. Learn Windows' Keyboard Shortcuts
I've explained already explained how you can assign keyboard macros to
commonly typed text or to opening programs, but it's equally important
to memorize Windows' own built-in hot keys. Every time you use one of
the following key combinations, you save precious seconds you'd
otherwise spend rolling the pointer across the screen until you found
these options on various menus and sub-menus.
-
ALT + F4: Close the current window [save 1.3 seconds]
-
Windows Key or CTRL + ESC: Open start menu [ save 1 second]
-
F5 or CTRL + R: Refresh web page [ save 1 second]
-
CTRL + F: Find within document [save 3 seconds]
-
CTRL + D: Bookmark this page (in browsers) [save 1.5 seconds]
-
CTRL + Left or Right Arrow: Jump forward or back one word [save 2 seconds]
-
CTRL + Up or Down: Jump up or down a paragraph (only works in some programs) [save 1.5 seconds]
-
CTRL + A: Select All [save 2 seconds per full page of text, save 17 seconds on an 8 page document]
-
CTRL + Shift + Arrow Key: Select Text [save .5 seconds over scrolling, but be more accurate]
-
F2: Rename file (used primarily when browsing folders) [save 2 seconds]
-
CTRL + S: Save (hit this instinctively every few seconds when working on documents) [save 1.4 seconds]
-
CTRL + Z / CTRL + Y: Undo / Redo [save 1.5 seconds]
-
CTRL + C / CTRL + X / CTRL + V: Copy / Cut / Paste (but you knew that already, right?) [save 1.5 seconds]
12. Increase the Number of Google/Bing Results Per Page
When you conduct a web search on Google or Bing, you see just the first
10 results by default. If you don't see the exact result you want on
the first page you have to click again and again to see the second,
third or fourth page of results. All that clicking and loading takes
time, approximately 3.6 seconds per extra page of results you visit.
Fortunately, you can configure the two major search engines to show you
more than 10 results on a page, allowing you to scroll through more
results without clicking on a next button and waiting for another page
to load.
To change the number of results in Google:
-
Select Search Settings from the gear menu in the upper right corner of the screen.
-
Set Google Instant Predictions to "Never"
-
Slide the Results per Page bar to 50 or 100. I find that 50 provides the best balance between speed and selection.
-
Click Save.
To change the number of results in Bing:
-
Click the gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen.
-
Click the Web button in the left column.
-
Select 50 from the Results dropdown.
-
Click save.
Time Saved: 3.6 seconds per search result page.
13. Set Your Taskbar to "Never Combine" Icons
By default, Windows 7 takes all the open windows from a particular
program and combines them into a single taskbar icon. While this may
provide a neater looking taskbar, it saps precious seconds of your life
away every time you have to hover over an icon to change windows.
For example, I had six Word documents open and wanted to select the one
labeled "Smartphone Buyer's Guide." When I had to hover over the single
Word icon to look for that document, it took me 2.5 seconds to locate
the document and click it. When the document had its own button on the
task bar, it took me just 1.5 seconds to select it.
To stop Windows 7 from combining all of a program's windows into one taskbar icon:
-
Right click on the Start button and select Properties
-
Select the Taskbar tab.
-
Select Never Combine from the Taskbar buttons menu.
-
Click Ok.
Time Savings: 1 second
14. Configure Autoplay for External Storage
When you first plug in a new USB flash drive, hard drive, smartphone,
MP3 player or other USB device with storage, by default you are hit with
Windows 7's Autorun menu, which gives you a slew of choices that range
from "viewing" the content to editing it.
However, most of the time, what you want is to see a view of all the
files and then decide whether to copy them, open them or add to them
with other files you drag over. Selecting the Autoplay window and then
choosing the "Open folder to view files" option took me a mind-bending
3.5 seconds, enough time to observe millions of particle collisions in
CERN.
Fortunately, you don't need to be prompted every time you pop in a new
storage device. Here's how to configure Autoplay so it automatically
opens all your drives in folder view:
-
Type "Autoplay" into the Start Menu search box.
-
Click Autoplay.
-
Select Open folder to view files using Windows Explorer for
Pictures, Video Files, Audio Files and Mixed content. You may also want
to select that option for specific devices that may appear on your list
like your camera or phone.
Time Saved: 3.5 seconds
15. Don't Put Your Laptop to Sleep when You Close the Lid
Every notebook user has had this experience. Your notebook is sitting
open on your lap, you need to reach into your bag that's on the ground
and you're in a tight space so you close the lid to prevent the notebook
from falling over as you bend. The notebook lid is only closed for a
couple of seconds, but when you open it again, you have to wait a while
for the system to wake. If your system has password protection, it may
even prompt you to enter your password when you lift the lid.
Even if you're traveling down the hallway at work for a full two
minutes, it doesn't pay to put your laptop to sleep. You want to keep
your notebook safe by closing the lid before you carry it, but you don't
want to waste time logging back in. The easiest way to avoid this whole
sleep/wake problem is to configure your notebook not to sleep on lid
close.
To stop your PC laptop from sleeping on lid close:
-
Type "Lid" into the Start Menu search box.
-
Click "Change what closing the lid does"
-
Select Do nothing under On battery and Plugged in.
-
Click Save Changes
After making this change you can still put your notebook to sleep.
You'll just need to press the power button or use the sleep option on
the Start Menu.
Time Saved:10 to 15 seconds (a lot more if you wake the notebook before it has gone to sleep)
This story was provided by Laptopmag.com, a sister site to LiveScience.
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