Brighten Up Command Prompt

If you use the DOS command prompt to any degree, you may find this tip helpful. Use the Color command to brighten up your screen a bit. You can choose your colors for foreground (text) and background using the color command.

Typing Color by itself, in a command prompt, will result in setting the default colors of white text on black.

The available colors are:
0 = Black
1 = Blue
2 = Green
3 = Aqua
4 = Red
5 = Purple
6 = Yellow
7 = White
8 = Gray
9 = Light Blue
A = Light Green
B = Light Aqua
C = Light Red
D = Light Purple
E = Light Yellow
F = Bright White

You can change the color in two ways:

1. Change only the foreground text. Just type color and any of the above choices such as "color 1", which will result in blue text on a black background (this color is hard to read by the way).
2. Change the foreground and background. Type "color c0" to get black text on Red background

I use the command prompt for a number of things that do not need a windows GUI (Graphical User Interface). Many automated and system tasks can be done in a much more resource efficient way via a command prompt.

Some things I use the command prompt for:

• ping
• tracert
• chkdsk
• defrag
• xcopy
• batch files
• net view

Hope this tip helps you make better use of your pc or just have a little more fun with your pc.

For additional links to frugal tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC or FrugalTech in any way (guest posts, articles, ideas, interesting links, advice, financial assistance, or anything else), feel free to contact me via email. Click here to add this to your RSS reader or Subscribe to FrugalTech by Email.