Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Here's How To Get To Your Applications Quicker To Save Some Time

By Bill Orion

There are many different ways to make your computer faster out there, but once you have that handled there really is a limited amount of things that you can do to increase your productivity. One of these things being to simply make your applications quicker to get to. Think about it just for a second - how much time could you save if you were able to get to your applications quicker?

At first it wouldn't seem like much but it would eventually add up as the day goes on, and it would also be a lot more convenient if you could almost instantly get to your applications quicker instead of having to look all over your desktop to find them.

Let's start with the quick launch (the quick launch is the group of icons that are right beside your start button). If you don't see a group of icons right beside your start menu, just right click on the taskbar and select Properties and then select Show Quick Launch. In order to do anything you are going to have to unlock the quick launch and to do that, just right click on the task bar and select Lock Taskbar. Now you should see dotted lines which will allow you to resize it. Now find the top 3 applications that you frequently use by going through your All Programs list in the start menu and right click on their icons and select Copy. Now go to your desktop, right click and select Paste. You should now see a copy of that icon on your desktop - just drag it into the quick launch area and the icon should be in bottom right hand corner next to the start menu (you can delete the shortcut that you copied to your desktop now since you will not be needing it). Now when you start up your computer or just log on you don't have to look all over the place those 3 programs - there right in front of you.

Now the start menu can also be of use to you when you are looking around for your applications. If you click on the start menu you will notice a faint horizontal line on the left hand side. Everything that is above this line is permanently there unless you manually remove it and everything below this line is programs that you have most recently used. What you're going to want to do here is to add 3-5 programs that you use regularly to the permanent (the top part) of the list. Just go to All Programs on the start menu, right click on the program icon and select "Pin To Start Menu". Do this for all 3-5 programs that you want to add to your start menu. Now you have your main 3 programs on your task bar and the other 3-5 regularly used ones on your start menu so you don't have look around your computer to find where they are.

One more smaller thing that you can do is to just clean up your desktop of its unused icons. This may seem pointless, but dont underestimate an organized desktop - it will save you some time.

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