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Move the My Documents folder
It's a good idea to move your My Documents folder to another hard drive or partition in your computer (if you have one). That way, if something goes wrong with Windows, your precious data is still OK. Moving the My Documents folder is easy. In Windows XP, click on the Start button and then right-click on the shortcut for My Documents and choose Properties. If My Documents is not in your Start menu, then right-click on the My Documents shortcut on your desktop. On the Target tab, choose Move and then specify the new location. You can create a new folder if need to. Click OK and all of your files will be moved to the new location. Windows automatically points all My Documents shortcuts to the new location.

RealPlayer and Quicktime alternatives
A lot of videos on the web require RealPlayer or QuickTime to view them. Both of these programs bother you with update notices, advertising, icons in your toolbar, and other annoying things. One developer got fed up and created Real Alternative and QuickTime Alternative. They're both free and work great.

Easily rename a group of pictures in Windows XP
This is handy if you want to rename a bunch of pictures that you just downloaded to your computer from your digital camera. Just highlight all the pictures that you want to rename, right-click and select Rename. Type in the name you want all of the pictures to be and Windows automatically appends a number to the end of each filename. For example, family(1).jpg, family(2).jpg, and so on. Very handy!

Google tip: inurl
Has anyone every told you the name of a web site, but when you finally got to your computer you could only remember part of the URL? Luckily, you can tell Google to only search in the URLs of web pages. For example, type inurl:geeky and it only searches for web sites with "geeky" in the URL.

How to capture screenshots
Taking a snapshot of your computer's screen can be very useful if you want to show someone an error message, show someone how to do something, or any of a number of other things. It's very easy. Just hit the PrtScr key and it copies a picture of your entire screen to the clipboard. Or hold down Alt and PrtScr to copy a picture of only the active window. Then just paste it into Word or your favorite image editor. Try it, it's pretty neat.

Search inside a web site using Google
Know what's really annoying? Not being able to find a page that you know exists through a web site's search function. The solution? Use Google. If you type site:geekyjock.com computer in the Google search box, you would only get results for pages within GeekyJock.com that contain computer.

DO NOT use Paypal for large purchases
Paypal is very convenient, but you don't get near the protection you would if you used a credit card.  If you have a problem with a transaction, you only have 30 days to make a claim and you are not guaranteed any reimbursement. Paypal's customer service is known to be horrible and very unhelpful. Be sure to read all of the very fine print before committing to anything when using Paypal.

Use Windows+D to minimize all your windows and show your desktop
What do you do when you have 10 windows open but you need to get to an item on the desktop? You could minimize each window, but the fast and easy way is to just hit the Windows key+D at the same time. All of your windows are instantly minimized. Brilliant!

Use Ctrl+click and Shift+click to select files and folders
You can do things much faster if you select multiple files or folders at the same time and perform an operation on them, such as copy (or cut) and paste. To select multiple files or folders that are consecutive, just hold down the Ctrl key and you can select multiple files or folders. You can select a group of files or folders that are consecutive by selecting the first one, holding down the Shift key and clicking the last one. All the files or folders between them are now selected. If there are a couple that you want to unselect, hold down the Ctrl key and click on them.

Always copy text entered into a web form to the clipboard before submitting
If you ever type a lot of text into a form on the web, such as in a web-based email like Yahoo or Hotmail, make sure you always copy all the text you entered to the clipboard before you click Submit or Send. If you type for a long time, or type and then go away and come back, the server may automatically log you out for security.  If you click Send at this point you might lose everything you've typed. So always highlight everything and hit Ctrl+C before sending.  If the server times out or your connection goes down, you can just hit Ctrl+V in a new form and you won't lose anything.

Copy and paste from web pages the easy way with PureText 2.0
Have you ever tried to copy and paste some text from a web page into a Word document? Unfortunately, it brings all the formatting of the text with it. You don't have to go in and reformat everything. Just download PureText 2.0. It just sits in the system tray. When you copy something to the clipboard, just click the PT icon, and voila!, the text is now unformatted pure text. Just paste it in and you're done!