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Thomas's Archive

Computer geek from the age of 7, which amounts to 30 years of computer experience. From the early days (when every computer company had their own OS) of DOS, Windows 1.0 through Seven...

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Ever heard of  AHCI ? No?

In short, AHCI is a new hardware communication standard from INTEL that can speed up hard drive operations and enable more efficient multitasking. Since the release of Vista, Windows has natively supported what is known as AHCI (Advanced Host controller Interface). In most cases Windows does not recognize the ability to use ACHI. Usually because it has not been switched on in your BIOS. If you have at least one SATA disk on your system you may benefit from activating the AHCI driver. Before we get to that part, let’s explore what the ACHI is and what it does.

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PRANKS: Lets have some fun

Posted by Thomas On May - 30 - 20112 COMMENTS

I Love pranks. How about you?  I’ve surfed the web for some pranks that I could share with you. Some are new, and some are updated “good old ones.” Feel free to share your own computer pranks in the comments.

[Disclaimer] Neither Mintywhite Staff nor I shall be held responsible (or liable) for any consequences you might suffer for using these pranks.  You do this at your own risk, so keep it clean if you would like to keep your friends (and job) …

On to the pranks

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Every now and then you need to resize a photo for different reasons. Being an eager hobby photographer I like to be able to print some of my photos. Sometimes I want to make smaller prints and sometimes I want to make large ones. Storing different copies of my images would not be a space saver, so instead I use a different method: Scaling using DPI.

[disclaimer] This guide is written using Photoshop, but there are several other programs available with the same capabilities as described here (like Paint.net). This guide will not focus on how to create photos for use on the web where pictures need to be downsized and data removed.

To be able to resize a photo (making it larger or smaller) without removing data you need to know what a digital photo is and you will also need to know what DPI is and how it works.  So let’s start with that.

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The other day I was asked by my boss to convert our product sheets to editable word documents for translation purposes. Now I am somewhat reluctant to let other people mess with my design. Especially if they have no idea about design or layout in general. My biggest concern is that they are going to somehow mess up the design or product photos (which is quite easy to do in Word). In situations like these I normally ask for the translated text in a word document and paste it in myself, making sure everything looks as it should. This time however I remembered an old trick, the Page header.

The page Header (or Footer) allows you to place layout items in a locked layer behind your word document, not just for header (or footer) text, page numbering, company name etc. but also background images, text blocks and so on.

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Hide and Show the Office Ribbon [Quick Tip]

Posted by Thomas On May - 5 - 20112 COMMENTS

If you are using a smaller Laptop (netbook etc.) you are facing the problem (or should I say challenge) of  low screen resolution.

The lack of space (on your screen)  makes it difficult to see all the information you want at all times. I use my netbook as my primary email and communication computer. Mostly because of its handy size and portability. The resolution is a mere 1024x600px which is to say at least not very High-Res. When it comes to using programs like Outlook, Word etc. with large ribbons or toolbars, the space available for work is, somewhat limited.

Luckily Office has one feature that gives me a bit more space for my chores: Temporarily hiding the Ribbons   Read the rest of this entry »

Word 2010: Custom LineSpacing

Posted by Thomas On May - 2 - 20113 COMMENTS

For some reason the developers of Office (2007 and 2010) believe that every letter or document you write should use a line-space setting of 1,5. Which really hasn’t been used since the day of typewriters. Back when you had no other layout option. Another thing annoying me is the custom setting og 10 pt. space after each paragraph you write.

Okay, this ensures that your letters (or emails) use lots of “air” and can easily be read by anyone. But being a graphics designer, this layout is ugly. Not to mention, how much space you waste. With a little tweaking you can save at least one page when printing your documents. And in these environmental times, thats not such a bad thing either.

Most users i meet doesn’t know how to fix this, or do so permanently, so this is how.

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