Safely Remove USB Drives Just by Unplugging Them

 Most Windows users have become conditioned over time to never unplug a USB flash drive or hard drive without first clicking Safely Remove Hardware in the System Tray.

Why is that necessary? In theory, it's to ensure that Windows isn't busy reading from or writing to the drive when you remove it, something that could result in corrupted data or even a damaged drive.
As it turns out, however, you can safely sidestep Safely Remove Hardware with little to no loss of performance. In fact, this option may already be enabled on your system, and you just didn't know it. Yep, you may have been wasting extra clicks all this time.
Do this:
1. Plug your USB drive into your PC, then open Device Manager. (start-settings-control panel-system-device manager)
2. Expand Disk Drives, then find the entry for your removable drive. On my system, for example, it's called "USB2.0 Flash Disk USB Device."
3. Right-click that entry, then click Properties.
4. Click the Policies tab; you should see something like this:

5. If the first option, Quick removal, is already selected, you're good to go. As noted in its description, "you can disconnect the device safely without using the Safely Remove Hardware notification icon." If Better performance is selected, switch to Quick removal and click OK.

Want to Reduce Printing Costs? Choose The Font Type Carefully

If you are spending a good amount of money on print cartridges, be sure to read this article:

Are you spending a fair amount of money on printing documents, emails and project reports? A recent study has revealed that choosing the correct font for printing documents can have a considerable impact on the overall printing costs of an organization.
Printer.com recently put this notion to the test using two popular printers. The Canon Pixma MP 210 was picked to simulate the printing of private users while the Brother HL-2140 laser printer was used to test business use. Both printers were left at their default settings (600 by 600 dpi). Changing only the font resulted in saving between $20 and $80 per year.
Here is a quick comparison between the different fonts and their business cost per year:

Example: The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has switched the default font for its emails from Arial to Century Gothic. The institution reported that the new font requires about 30% less ink, which costs up to $10,000 per gallon.
The logic is simple enough. Different fonts requires different amounts of ink to print and you can save money on buying costly printer cartridges by making a simple change in the font type used to print the documents. In the above example, the university authority changed the font from Arial to Century Gothic and the yearly savings is expected to be somewhere around $5000 to $10,000.

Make Using Google Gmail Easier and Faster With Keyboard Shortcuts

Many people have Google Gmail accounts but not everybody knows that there are a substantial number of keyboard shortcuts available to speed up using Gmail. . Unlike some other services, these shortcuts are not automatically enabled for Gmail.

How to turn on the use of keyboard shortcuts

1. Go to your Gmail account page
2. Click “Settings” in the upper right corner.
3. In the Settings list that appears, find the entry for keyboard shortcuts. (It's near the top.)
4. Click the radio button next to “Keyboard shortcuts on”.
5. Click "Save changes".

Keyboard shortcut	Action
#	Delete selected or open message
r	Reply to the sender of a message
a	Reply to all
f	Forward a message
c	Compose a new message
Tab, followed by Enter	Send a message
g, followed by i	Return to Inbox
z	Undo (if possible). You have 5 seconds after Send

There are a number of other keyboard shortcuts and entering "?" (without quotes) will open a list. You can also go to this Google link for a list.

How to Create a Custom Hotkey for Your Favorite Application or Folder

Hotkeys are keyboard shortcuts that save time and effort.
There are two ways for designating a hotkey in Windows. One uses a combination of two of the so-called modifier keys Ctrl, Alt, and Shift together with one other key. The other method uses a single key, one of function keys F1 to F12 or a key from the numeric pad. This second method uses keys that often have other functions and must be assigned with care to avoid conflicts.
There is a small catch. Windows does not apply hotkeys to a file or folder directly but only works with a shortcut file for the desired target. For applications that are listed in All Programs, a shortcut file already exists. For other files or folders, a shortcut file for the object in question will have to be created if one does not already exist. The shortcut file must be placed in either the All Programs list or on the Desktop or a folder on the Desktop.

How to assign a hotkey to an application

1. Open the Start menu
2. Find the application in the All Programs menu
3. Right-click the desired program file and choose “Properties”
4. In the Properties dialog, find the text box labeled “Shortcut key”
5. Click in the text box and enter a key that you wish to use in your hotkey. Windows will automatically place “Ctrl + Alt +” in front. If you choose a function key or a numeric keypad key, only that key will be used and “Ctrl + Alt +” will not be added.
6. Click "OK"

HOW TO: Use Google as Dictionary?

Many times we need meaning of a particular word and we start googling, you can actually ask Google for meaning of a particular word without really having to go to a particular website.

Simply type define:word . Google will immediately give you the meaning of the word you are searching for. Google will give you accurate answers for even most complicated words in English or any language.

In case you make a spelling mistake Google will still suggest the correct spelling and give the meaning for the correct spelling just below the suggestion.

How to minimize all the windows of background application?

This is another cool feature of Windows 7 just open the application of your choice click @ the top most header of the application and shake the mouse left and right like we shake bottle, you will notice all the background running applications are minimized instantly.

How to Convert Any Webpage to PDF Using Chrome’s Print to PDF Option

Google Chrome’s Print to PDF option is a basic built in functionality. But it is these little things that are making it win the battle of the browsers. Printing to PDF is a very useful failsafe to have around when there is no printer to be found. It’s also useful if you want to archive webpages for a later read. HTML doesn’t save so well; that’s where printing to PDF keeps the layout nearly intact.
So, without further ado let’s see where the Print to PDF option can be found. Here are three short and fast ways:

• Right click on the webpage that you want to print to PDF and click on Print.

You will get a screen similar to this:

You have all your installed printers listed here. Click on the Destination dropdown and select Print to PDF. You have a choice of Portrait or Landscape modes. Select all or select the page numbers you want to print. A few page viewing controls allow you to preview the page. That’s it! Click on Print, and choose a destination to save the PDF file.
The Print to PDF option is a default feature of the latest stable version of the browser.

Keeping an Eye on the Health of Your Laptop Battery

All batteries will go bad sooner or later and it pays to keep an eye on the state of your battery. How much do you know about your battery's health? Aside from the time that is estimated to remain before you run out of power or a percent reading of the remaining charge, laptops do not generally provide much other battery information.Nir Sofer, who is a prolific and well-known writer of small free Windows utilities, has released a new little program to help fill in the information that can be obtained about your battery. It monitors a number of battery properties and is called BatteryInfoView. It is a stand-alone program and requires no installation. The author says it works on Windows 2000 up to Windows 7. It has two modes of display. An example of the main window is shown below. The other mode of display is a log that shows the charge or discharge state at specified time intervals.

Go to this link for more details about the utility and/or to download it.