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.

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Firefox Shortcuts

I've been meaning to put up a good list of shortcuts for Firefox. Most of these are already all over the web, so what makes my list special? Well, my blog has become a database of sorts for myself, and I hope it's a good reference point for some of you. Many things can be easily found via Google, but sometimes it takes several clicks to find the exact thing I'm looking for.

This list will contain a list of shortcuts that I use most often. Sometimes I forget what the shortcut is and need to look it up again. Some of them are the very basic ones, but shortcuts vary from Windows to Linux etc..

• Alt+Left Click - Save Link
• Ctrl + K - Jump to search bar
• Ctrl + L - Jump to address bar
  
• Ctrl + T - Open new tab
• Ctrl + W - Close broswer tab
• Ctrl + # (where number is 1-9) - Jumps to the numbered tab. E.g. Ctrl +1 jumps to first tab.
  
• Ctrl + Shift + T - Undo close browser tab
• Ctrl + Enter - Adds www. and .com to beginning and end of domain name you type in. When Entering a website name such as www.google.com, most browsers now support this shortcut and I think many of you already know this. But for those who do not use this its a great shortcut to have. Just type "google" or any site name, without the quotes and hold Ctrl+Enter.
• Shift+Enter will give you the .net domains, just like above.
  

Some Helpful Add-ons

• Video Download Helper

This list will continue to be updated. Find the full list on Mozilla's site and pick the ones most useful to you! What are your favorite shortcuts? If you know of any not listed, please let us know in the comments.

Thanks for visiting. 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.

My New Linux PC

Recently I ran windows update on a six year old laptop running Windows XP SP2, yes I know it is ancient, but it is still useful. Everything was working fine before the update, and you can probably guess what happened next. After the updates, the machine started to Blue Screen. I spent a little time troubleshooting it and figured out that it was the wireless driver that caused it to crash. Unfortunately, there are no further updates to this driver and I decided it was time for a fresh install.

So I did what everyone should do before reinstalling the OS on a pc, I made a data backup to an external hard drive. Then I cracked open the original vendor restore disks and got the OS restore process started. After about an hour, the machine was back in working condition. I tested the wireless, which seemed to work fine, but this was with XP SP1. I wanted at least XP SP2, for decent wireless connectivity. So I installed SP3, which recreated the BSOD problem. I rolled SP3 back and installed SP2. Only to have the same problem over and over. At this point I was fed up and decided to do something different.

I believe a computer is a tool and as long as it does what you need it to do, it is a useful tool. Making the most of old hardware is good for the environment and easy on your wallet. Getting back to the subject, I decided I will install Linux instead, so I installed Ubuntu 8.10. After about 45 minutes, it was done. It works wonderfully and I am a happy camper. I tested the wireless functionality and it never crashed on me.

In general, I do prefer to use XP on this machine, mostly because of the amount of software available that I am familiar with. I think this is the case with most people, comfort is a big factor. I've had a good experience with Ubuntu on this machine so far, but there is still a learning curve with certain things, such as playing DVDs and hardware compatibility with certain USB thumb drives.

Some lessons I learned, which should help many of you.

• Store your Data in one location for easy backup. Or keep your data on external drives and make another backup.
• Always save your system restore disks, make sure this is the first thing you do after you buy a computer. You never know when you may need it. If you decide to sell you old machine, its best to restore it to the original defaults.
  
• Fixes and patches can sometimes make things worse, learn about what you are installing before installing it.
• It's great to have an alternative operating system to fall back on, grab a copy of Ubuntu or better yet, Linux Mint - which has built-in multimedia support for DVDs.

Hope you found this post useful. Thanks for visiting. For additional links to frugal tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC 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.

Photo by Andrew