Have fun with 3D drawing

If you would like to explore your artistic talents and need a tool which can quickly help you to draw almost anything, from a simple box to a complex building, try Google’s Sketchup – a new, free, downloadable tool. It combines the art of pencil sketching with the power of digital design to help you create a range of drawings and pictures.. Also a great educational tool for kids – helps them to explore their artistic and creative ideas. Get it from

www.sketchup.com

Prevent other users from accessing your files and folders

The files that you save in your computer under your user account can be accessed by other users through their user accounts. If you want to prevent other users from opening and viewing your files you need to encrypt the files or folders. Users looging in through other accounts will not be able to open these files although they will be able to see them.

To encrypt a file or folder, right click on it, go to Properties – General - Advanced and check the box next to “Encrypt contents to secure data”. Click OK - Apply and wait for Windows to apply the new settings. The encrypted folders and files will be saved in green to make it easy for you to identify them. To encrypt files and folders, your drive must be in a NTFS (New Technology File System) format. To check this, right click the folder, open Properties and check the file type. It can be either in NTFS ot FAT32.Windows XP comes in the NTFS format while older Operating Systems use the FAT32 format.. To learn how to convert files to NTFS from FAT32 check out this link - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881

This is a limited security feature and not a foolproof way to prevent your files from being accessed. Encrypted folders can be copied to a FAT32 type storage device such as a USB drive and opened. They can’t however be opened if they are copied to another NTFS folder or storage device. This feature is useful when you are certain that people using your computer can’t copy files to other devices.

Protect your sensitive Excel files

If you have sensitive excel files which you don’t want other users to access, Excel offers you 3 levels of protection.

Open Excel, go to File – Save As – Tools – General Options and select from the following options.

a. Password to open – This is the highest level of protection. It requires the user to know the password to open the workbook. Make sure you remember your password. If you lose it, there is no way to retrieve it or to open the workbook.

b. Password to modify – No password is required to open the file. The user needs a password if he makes changes and wants to save the file under the same name. This is useful when sensitive files such as budgets, costing and pricing need to be viewed by several people for comments or approval. The creator of the file may need to ensure that no changes have been made in the original file.

c. Read only - This is not high level protection and does not restrict access. Anyone has the option to open the file either as a read only or as an unprotected file. This feature is useful for preventing unintentional changes or for manipulating data but saving the file with the original data intact.

If you want to lock all data in the file so that no changes can be made, select Tools - Protection – Protect sheet and enter a password. This locks all data. A user can open the file to view it only.

To remove passwords, open the file, go to File – Save As - Tools – General Options and delete the asterisks in the password box.

Don't want others to know what websites you've been visiting ?

Every time you enter a URL in IE’s address bar, it gets saved. This is a useful feature for websites you visit regularly as you don’t need to retype the address every time. But if you don’t want other users to know which websites you have been visiting, you would want the URLs removed. Unfortunately, there is no simple select and delete option in IE. You do have the option of going to Tools – Internet Options – Clear History, but this deletes all URLs, even the useful ones.

To delete individual URLs, you need to edit the registry files. Click on Start – Run , type Regedit and click OK. Click on the + sign from the menu options on the left hand pane of the Window and in the drop down menu click on the following : HKEY – CURRENT - USER – Software – Microsoft – Internet Explorer – TypedURLs. On the right pane, you will see a list of the URLs currently stored in your address bar. Select the ones you want to delete, right click and delete it. Close the registry window and any open IE windows. Next time you open IE , the URLs wil have been removed.

Sharing a PC at home ? Retain your personalised settings with multiple user accounts

When several people are sharing a computer, which is the usual case at home, it can be annoying when strange icons and files suddenly appear and change the layout of your desktop or folders.. To avoid this, Windows XP allows you to create separate user accounts so that each user can customize his desktop, folders and other settings without affecting other users.

There are two types of user accounts commonly applied – Administrator and Limited. Administrator is usually the first account that would have been created when you first installed XP. An administrator can make changes within the system, install software and hardware, and access all files in the computer. A limited user account restricts your ability to download files, remove programs and access some parts of your system.

To create a new user , go to Control Panel – User Accounts and under Pick A Task, select Create new User. You can create new users with or without password access. The new users will appear in the Windows Welcome screen when you start your computer.

You have to be logged in as Administrator to create new user accounts. If you don’t mind other users installing files, changing settings and accessing all parts of the system, you can give any number of other users Administrative privileges. Otherwise, you can give them a Limited User account.