tech tips

Tips

Useful tidbits from PCMag editorial staff, Labs analysts, and readers

MISSING TOOLBAR?

If your toolbar in Word 2008 for the Mac goes missing, click on the gray oval box in the right-hand corner.

MICROSOFT OFFICE

Restore a Disappearing Toolbar in Word for Mac

Recently my oft-used formatting toolbar in Word 2008 for Mac went missing. One day it simply disappeared, despite the fact that the Formatting box under View | Toolbars remained selected—how to get it back was a frustrating mystery. I trolled every menu option in Word, looking for the box that I could check to recover it. At last I noticed a small, nondescript oval button in the top right-hand corner of my document window: Clicking on it made my toolbar magically reappear. Turns out that this little bubble expands and retracts Word’s toolbars. In fact it appears all over Apple’s OS X, in Finder, browser, and other programs’ windows, and it does the same thing in all of them. Who knew? Thanks, Apple, for making this option so puzzling!—Wendy Sheehan Donnell

Align Images in Microsoft Word

It’s easy enough to get an image into Word 2007—just copy it to the clipboard and paste it in, or choose Insert | Picture. But once the image is in there, you may find it a balky old thing. You can’t move it around, and you can’t put text alongside it; it’s an albatross! The key to unlocking your pasted image lies in the Text Wrapping setting. By default, it’s set to In Line with Text, which might be handy if your image is an arcane rune not found in any font—then it would flow with the text and stay in just the right place. Most of the time, though, you’ll want to choose a different setting. Right-click the image, choose Text Wrapping from the context menu, and choose Square or Tight (or any of the other wrapping options). Now your pasted image is no longer locked in place. You can move it wherever you want, and you can decide how the text should behave around it. You’ll find other helpful options in the Picture ribbon that appears when you select an image.—Neil J. Rubenking

Set New Time Increments in Outlook’s Calendar

Outlook’s calendar divides days into hours, which are in turn broken up into half-hours, with appointments starting and ending on the hour or half-hour. You’re allowed to type odd times in (down to the minute), but for people whose classes, appointments, or other calendar items regularly start and end at 15 or 45 minutes past the hour, scheduling can become tedious. Having fielded questions from such folk, I scoured Outlook’s calendar options, to no avail. The answer was out there, however, lurking in a context menu—thanks, Microsoft, for putting a random option nowhere near the Options dialog. Here’s how to make Outlook respect your schedule: Right-click somewhere in your calendar (somewhere within a day, not in the left-hand pane) and choose Other Settings.... Then, next to Time Scale, choose another time increment—say, 15 minutes. In addition to seeing your hours divided into four segments instead of the default two, your scheduling drop-down will display times in 15-minute increments. You can’t type in a custom increment, but being able to choose 5-, 6- (6-minute increments? Seriously?), 10-, 15-, 30-, or 60-minute increments is a start.—Sarah Pike

NETWORKING

Improve Power-Line Performance

If you are getting less-than-stellar performance with your power-line network, it’s probably because your adapters are connected across two circuit breakers. For best results, make sure the power-line adapters are on the same circuit. Note that networking performance can also degrade if your electric circuit is overloaded, so try not to use the hair dryer, refrigerator, and air conditioner all on the same one. —Mario Morejon

Turn Your Cell Phone into a Modem

Wishing you could get on the Internet from your laptop without having to find a Wi-Fi hot spot? Don’t want to pay $60 per month for a cellular broadband connection? You can probably use your current cell phone as a modem for your laptop—and at a significant savings compared with implementing a separate PC card, ExpressCard, or USB solution. Head over to Smart Device Central’s Modem Tethering Guide for information on setting up this kind of connection: There are instructions for each carrier using a PC laptop, and one specifically for Mac laptop users.—Jamie Lendino

CAMERAS

Calibrate Your Monitor

Ever wonder why some of your friends’ pictures look better than yours? Well, maybe it’s not your camera; it could be your monitor. Calibration tools and software can help you optimize your monitor’s contrast and brightness settings so that your pictures can come out looking detailed and accurate. Expensive tools like the Spyder3 can adjust your monitor for you automatically. And software calibration tools like DisplayMate can help you fine-tune your monitor’s picture to your eye. A quick Google search will turn up

a bunch of free basic-calibration images you can try as a way of getting your feet wet.—PJ Jacobowitz

MulTIMEDIA

Get the Best Image Quality from Your HDTV

Most HDTVs provide several picture presets that can be selected for quickly and easily optimizing the picture quality for a particular viewing environment—such as daytime or nighttime viewing. An HDTV’s default picture mode usually produces its brightest picture, which would be suitable for use in a sunny or otherwise brightly lit room. For a more accurate and naturallooking viewing experience, particularly in a dimly lit environment where the eye is more sensitive to detail, picture presets such as Movie, Cinema,or Natural are better choices. —Robert Heron

Choose the Right Port for Your HDTV

Video sources such as Blu-ray players, cable and satellite set-top boxes, and console game systems provide an array of connection options to use with an HDTV. For optimal picture quality, always use the best port that the source and the TV share. For instance, if an upscaling DVD player and a HDTV both have HDMI ports (a singlewire, digital audio/video connection), then always use the HDMI ports. The next best port option would be component video input (a three-cable analog-video-only system). Ports such as composite (the yellow RCA-style port) or S-Video (a four-wire, single-cable video connection) do not support HD formats and should be avoided when connecting HD-compatible gear. If you have no choice but to use composite or S-Video, opt for the latter: It will provide a more detailed picture.—RH

Improve the Quality of Your Music Library

With MP3 player capacities increasing every year, most devices have more room for “lossless” files now. Lossless files act like ZIP files—they use far less compression but take up much less space than the originals, and sound a lot better than lower-bit-rate MP3, WMA, and AAC files. In iTunes or Window Media Player, you can choose to import files as either Apple Lossless or WMA Lossless. Or, using free software available online, you can convert audio into FLAC (free lossless audio codec)—just make sure your player can support FLAC first.—Tim Gideon

Optimize Sound Through Proper Speaker Placement

Stereo is mixed in two channels, and if you want to hear the same balance the mix engineer heard, make sure your head forms an equilateral triangle with your two speakers’ tweeters (high-frequency drivers). You want your ears to be at the same height as the tweeters, so buying the right height of speaker stand is essential. Speaker height can be problematic at a desk if the speakers aren’t upward-angled. There are desktop speaker stands, however, that eliminate this issue—or you can use phone books or CD cases, just as long as you place both speakers at the same height.—TG

INTERNET

Speed-Dial Your Nine Favorite Sites Using Firefox

A reader named Gregory T. wrote to me recently saying that he wished Firefox would mimic a feature from Opera, his favorite Web browser: Speed Dial opens new tabs to a grid of nine user-chosen sites. With it, your most-visited sites are a single click away. (Gregory also finds Firefox faster than Opera, which surprises me, as Firefox is often the worst performer on my speed tests.) Good news! For devoted Firefox users and Opera users who have to open Firefox for the occasional incompatible site, an extension, also called Speed Dial, adds just such an option to Firefox.—Michael Muchmore

This Just In: Google’s Not the Only Internet Search Provider!

I always use the Google box in the upper right-hand corner of my browser to do a search, rather than taking the time to go to Google.com or whatever. And I’m always looking for keyboard shortcuts to avoid having to move my hand over to the mouse and back. Here’s one: Put your cursor in the box, type some text, and then use the Ctrl-Down Arrow or Ctrl-Up Arrow to scroll through the various installed engines, rather than using the pull-down menu. Awesome! —Jeremy A. Kaplan GREAT IDEA! Got a tip to share? Find a cool new trick in your favorite gadget or app? Send it to tips@pcmag.com. We’ll run it through the PCMag Labs wringer and print our favorites on this page.

SPEED DIAL This Firefox extension allows users to open new tabs to a grid of nine sites of their choice.