Page 8      Diablo Blue    December, 2001

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You are a member of DVPC — the Diablo Valley PC Users Group. The gift giving season is upon us. To make it a great combination, and to help with your gift shopping, we have DVPC membership gift certificates that you can buy and give to your relatives and friends who are interested in computers and who would enjoy being a member of your computer user group.

The colorful gift certificates will be available for purchase at the December DVPC meeting on December 6. These gift certificates are $25.00 each for a Web membership (which includes access to the Web edition of our newsletter Diablo Blue), or $30.00 each for a regular membership (which includes the printed version of Diablo Blue mailed to your recipient).

And, as a gift to you, at the meeting when your gift certificate is redeemed by your lucky recipient you will get 20 extra raffle tickets.

So bring your gift list and your checkbook to the December DVPC meeting, and make your gift shopping easier by giving a gift that will keep on giving!

Microsoft has released Power Toys for Windows XP. This free download includes the best version of Tweak UI yet, plus a series of other Toys.

·          PowerToy Calculator: This calculator has numeric and advanced modes. The advanced mode includes the ability to graph and evaluate functions, use arithmetic or Reverse Polish Notation, and display calculation history.

·          CD Slide Show Generator: Save images on a CD as a slide show, with the viewing program.

·          HTML Slide Show Wizard: Create HTML pages of your slides and post them to a web site.

·          TweakUI: Lets you change system settings that aren’t otherwise readily available. Look for the January issue of Diablo Blue where we’ll have a review of TweakUI for Windows XP.

·          Fast User Switching: Windows XP lets multiple users log on simultaneously (unless you log in to a domain server, which prevents user switching); this Toy lets you switch users by pressing the Windows and Q keys simultaneously.

·          Open Command Window Here: Right-click in a folder and select this option and a command window will open pointing at the selected folder.

·          Task Switcher: View a large-size thumbnail of each open window as you Alt-Tab through running programs.

·          Image Resizer: Select one or more image files in Windows Explorer, right-click on the selection, and select Resize Pictures.

·          Webcam Timershot: Take pictures from a webcam connected to your computer at specified time intervals and save them to a designated folder.

You can download the Power Toys for Windows XP from either of these web sites:

www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/downloads/powertoys.asp,

www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp.

Note that the copy of Power Toys for Windows XP you will download is exactly the same regardless of whether you do so from the “home” or “pro” site. It seems that it’s possible that Microsoft may have different versions for Home and Pro users at some time in the future, and having these two links will allow different downloads for users of the two versions.

Power Toys for Windows XP is a great free download. Get it today, experiment, and enjoy!