(Applies to Windows XP, Vista and 7)

Just watching “Last tango in Halifax” on BBC TV and I was impressed by the typing skills of the elderly couple emailing each other – both used the shortcut keys for deleting a whole word or phrase that they had just typed! How many of us do that?  Most people tend just to backspace delete a character at a time but it is much quicker to use Ctrl-backspace to delete the previous word, and Ctrl-Z to delete the last few words.

Just type my ip into Google and the current ip address of your computer will come up at the top of the window!

 What is an IP address?

Every device that you use to connect directly to the Internet has to have a unique public address known as an IP (Internet Protocol) address.  This is four groups of numbers separated by full stops e.g. 86.0.0.1

Note: If you are sharing a router to connect to the Internet this IP address will be your router's IP address.

You know - we've all been there!  You press something and suddenly you are in FULL SCREEN MODE with no visible way onscreen of getting out, and you remember there was a key that got you out of it, but which one?  Well - it's F11 to exit full screen mode in most browsers and most of the later versions of Microsoft Windows.  If you know of any browsers that F11 doesn't work with in this way, and/or if you have any workarounds for these, please comment, and we could build up a useful resource here for ourselves. 

Have you been wondering why the Insert key isn't working any more on your keyboard in Word 2010?  This is a very useful feature for filling in forms or changing text without destroying the formatting of the document.

You need to turn on this feature in Word Options as follows:

Magic!  From now on, whenever you want to to turn Overtype mode on or off,  just press the INSERT key

Vector or Bitmap?  The Dilemma

Ok, so you have downloaded a zipped folder from a royalty-free image provider such as istockphoto.com and you may have two files - one ending in .bmp and one ending in .eps.  If you click on the .bmp file you can see your image, but the other one may come up with "Windows can't open this file", so you don't go any further.  But wait!  The vector image format could actually be a much better one for your purposes if you have the right tools to edit it.

More about Vector files

.eps stands for Encapsulated PostScript and can be opened and edited in programs such as Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw

Other commonly used vector file extensions are:

.SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) .AI (Adobe Illustrator Graphics) .CDR (CorelDraw Vector Graphics) .WMF (Windows Metafile Format) and .DRW (Vector Drawing file)

Vector files are usually much smaller than Bitmap, and much more easily scalable, so good for your web site or Social Media use.

Bitmap files

.bmp (Bitmap) files are more familiar, and more suited to photographic images as they handle complex colours better.

Typical commonly used bitmap file extensions are:

.PSD .JPG, .GIF, and .TIF 

Editing your Vector file

To find out if you have software for editing your vector file on your PC, right click on the filename and choose "Open with", and a list of suitable software should come up,  If not, surf the Web for "free vector graphics editors 2011" or something similar (be sure to check the date of the article so that you get the latest software).

After that, it's up to you!  Some of these image editing packages can be quite complicated, but I'm sure you'll find your way to do the basics of sizing and cropping, and you will be impressed with the superlative quality of your vector image.