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Timesavers

Also see Moneysavers

Time is money and the more time wasted on anything we do the less time there is for what gives us any benefit. Politicians are often telling people they should use public transport more but for most people that would involve a great loss of money. If someone earns 9 pounds ($13) per hour, wasted time should be valued at approximately 22 cents (15 pence) per minute. Waiting for a bus for 5 minutes would cost you approximately $1.10 (75 pence). Nobody is claiming that waiting for a bus is entertainment! So the time factor should be taken into consideration when discussing advantages and disadvantages to people of different plans.

Waiting for public transport must be one of the chief causes of wasted time. Of course, there are many others and any idea someone has which can save time for people is equivalent to giving them money. It gives them more time to spend on making money for themselves or doing whatever they want to do with their time. So I would like to put some ideas on this page which help people to do things a little easier including with computing because anyone seeing this will be interested. Little ideas which save time with oft repeated tasks save hours over the years.

Setting Up A Free Site. These are the main things I had to spend time finding out to set up my sites. If you don't have an FTP programme, sign up with GeoCities. They have an easy upload facility. If you can manage FTP you probably know more than me but www.50megs.com is good. It also accepts the Windows Web Publishing Wizard. For an FTP program, if you need one, WS_FTP LE is free from Ipswitch - it is a little difficult to find at Ipswitch's site but it is there (April 2001). If you want to set up a music site Winamp has a free version of its mp3 player and for a free mp3 encoder/decoder try RightClick by Mr Shannon.

Closing Windows. One of the biggest time wasters I found with getting to know Windows 98 with Office 97 was trying to close the system down and finding that it wouldn't close. The way I found to do this, which is probably quite well known, is to right click on the 'Start' button, then to click on the 'Open Office Document' icon. Let it open and then close down. If it was a programme you were running click on the 'Programs' icon after right clicking on the 'Start' button and then close down. It usually works. If you suspect there was incorrect closure of an Office document or a programme don't waste the 20 seconds it takes to find out. Right click on the start button and take it from there straight away.

Always save as you work. Establish the habit and it will save you hours and hours added up over the years. Back up your files and save what has cost you a lot of time to floppy disk. Save things on an internet site if you have one. Save what is on your internet site to floppy disk. Disks are cheap whereas computing can be very expensive in terms of time.

Typing within brackets. When you type something in parentheses type both brackets first, then use the left arrow to move the cursor between them. Type what you want in the brackets last.

Choosing background clours. To choose nice background colours for your pages (using Front Page Express, for example) select the custom option under Format, then set the pointer on the right-hand side to the luminosity you would like - that's how deep you want the colour to be. Then you can move the colour selection marker all over the coloured area to find the exact hue you like.

Please email me with ideas I can pass on to other people: andrew_burbidge@hotmail.com