Ira C. Eaker College for Professional Development (CPD)

Air War College (AWC) Gateway to Internet Resources

• ZDNet, with reviews of products and services

• Modem Speed Test Page

• Clean Out Temporary Internet Files
  Periodically clean out the Temporary Internet Files folder, even if you have your browser set to erase the temp files every time you use it. On one faculty member's computer, we found over 3,000 temporary files -- occupying over 240 Mb of hard drive space. Remember, with only a few exceptions, everything you see on your browser as you surf the web is stored on your hard drive before being displayed on screen. One faculty member, doing online research, completely filled his hard drive three times in one day online.

  
  
  
• Speeding Up Your Browser Start
  Sometimes (or often) you may experience a real S-L-O-W browser start. At least some of the time it is because you have a particular company's page as your Home Page on your browser (the page that comes up first) and it can be reeeeeealllllly slow at times and thus slow down your browser becoming available. It was probably the Home Page originally installed on your computer.

  One way to fix this is to change the page which comes up when you start your browser -- either with a local page on your server (your browser home page can even be a file on your hard drive or LAN) or a page on the internet which is consistently fast loading.

  To do this, go to the page you'd like to be the first one ...

  Once you are looking at the page you want to see first each time you surf,

  • select Tools menu (or View menu if you're not running Internet Explorer 5)
    • select Internet Options
      • in the top section titled Home Page, select Use Current button -- you should see the address change in the little white box.
        • then click OK button and the next time you start your browser, it will bring up the page you just made your new Home Page

  You can also click on the Home button at any time to return to your Home Page -- handy if you get sidetracked following links.

  Another option is to put a jumpstart page on your hard drive with links to many of your favorites and most used destinations. Click on it in Windows Explorer (or equivalent) and when it is loaded in your browser, then use the steps above to make it your browser home page. An example of this is the AWC Military Quick Portal with almost 200 of the most used military links. It is designed to sit on your hard drive, and can be updated at any time by right-clicking on its link to itself and "save target as" the online latest version to your hard drive to replace the version currently sitting there.

• Turn Off Fast Save
  
  • Many folks still have documents which are needlessly large and slow down email and server operations. The Microsoft option in Word called "Fast Save" basically attaches changes onto the end of the existing document file. If you have a document which has been edited a lot, this can add up. On one person's computer we turned off Fast Save and then resaved an article which had been frequently revised in preparation for publishing. The document went from over 900 Kb down to only 53 Kb in size. This was a document the individual had been attaching to email to other faculty -- sending them each the 900 Kb attachment, taking up that much space and time on the server, and their desktops. Also, by sending the 900 Kb version, the individual had sent all his edits and previous versions -- including names he deleted to protect the innocent, phrases he deleted to protect his ignorance, etc.

  • To turn off Fast Save (which comes turned on for many new machines) --

  • Select "Tools" from the menu at the top of a Word document,
    • Then select "Options" at the bottom of the drop down menu
      • Then select the tab marked "Save"
        • Then make sure the box is unchecked in front of "Allow fast saves"
          • Then click on "OK" button

• Disable "Journal" function of Office 97
  
  • Even if you don't use Microsoft Outlook 97, installation of Office 97 automatically turns on the Journal function, which means your computer is wasting time making a "journal" of all the stuff you do with Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.
  • Nobody who has disabled the Journal function has reported any problems or regrets.
  • To disable it, start Outlook from your Win95 Programs menu, select "Tools" menu item at the top of Outlook, select "Options" choice, select "Journal" tab, uncheck those boxes next to Excel, etc.
  • Some folks notice a speedup in their machines, others don't -- but nobody's reported any negatory comments.

• Use black paper backing. When scanning pictures with printing on the back of the page, put a black paper behind the picture to prevent text showing thru the white sections of your picture. Holding your copier ("Xerox") open while making one copy of nothing, will give you a nice carbon black sheet to use as backing for scanning photos.

• Zoom before adjusting. Zoom in on critical area of photo before adjusting contrast and brightness.

• Scan to fit.Scan directly to the size you need. Letting some programs resize on-the-fly later, when displaying the picture, can result in some slow screens and some goofy looking pictures.

• To avoid rescanning, scan big, then reduce. Scan in at the highest number of colors you anticipate ever needing, then use graphics software to convert to fewer colors. This generally gives better looking photos, and you won't have to rescan later when you need more colors in the same picture. However, if a 256 color version of your picture looks fine, then don't bother wasting space storing a 16 million color version.

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