Alt+Tab
Press Alt+Tab to switch between applications quickly without the hassle of using your mouse to click on the taskbar.

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+X
Use Ctrl+C to copy any highlighted images or text, use Ctrl+V to paste the copied material elsewhere. Ctrl+X to cut an object permantly and move to another location. These shortcuts are a staple in all modern applications.

Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, Ctrl+U
Ctrl+B to makes the selected text BOLD. Ctrl+I to make the selected text ITALIC. Ctrl+U to place underling under the selected TEXT. These shortcuts are a staple in all modern applications.

Windows Key+D
Use the Windows Key+D to quickly minimize all open windows to the taskbar and go directly to your desktop.

Alt+F4
Use the Alt+F4 combination to quickly terminate the window that is currently open. This is useful for full screen applications that you need to quickly escape from.

A lot of problems can be solved by making sure that the hardware in your computer is working properly. A good way make sure everything is connected and operating correctly at a basic level is to check the system Device Manager to see if there are any errors.

To get to the device manager do the following in Windows XP:
Start menu -> Control Panel -> System -> Hardware (tab) -> Device Manager

The device manager gives you a categorized list of system components that are in or connected to your computer. Expand the categorized lists. You should look for a small yellow exclamation mark by the icon, if there is a yellow exclamation mark than that particular hardware component is incorrectly installed, usually this means you must install the correct and or most recent drivers.

The resolution of your screen in layman's terms are how many pixels are being used by your monitor to draw the picture on your screen. It is a simple but often overlooked by businesses to increase the screen resolution. By increasing the screen resolution, you will be able to fit more content onto your monitor at one time, it is very beneficial for saving time by not having to scroll so much through web pages or programs.

To increase your screen resolution:
Right click on your desktop -> properties -> settings -> slide the bar to the right to increase your screen resolution.

Common resolutions include 800x600, 1024x768, 1024x1024*, 1600x1200*, etc. Think Geeks recommended's 1024x768 or 1280x1024* for your screen resolution.

* NOTE: Some computers are unable to get their screen resolution this high either because your monitor does not support this resolution or your video card doesn't support it.

Defragging your Hard Drive should become a regular task. Defragging your essentially makes Windows go through your Hard Drive and reconnect "chunks" or fragments of information that became scattered on your hard drive and reconnects them to their original files. Doing this makes your hard drive access files faster and lets your computer run more efficiently overall. Defragging your hard drives will also fix a lot of errors that may crop up.

To use the Windows XP Defragmentation tool:
Start menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter

Disc Cleanup is a feature of Windows that allows you to quickly search the most common places files are placed on your hard drive and delete unused or temporary files. It's not a sure fired way to clean up your Hard Drive of useless junk but it's a good start.

To use the Disc Cleanup feature in Windows XP:
Start menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Cleanup

This feature of Windows is used to examine the hard drives of the computer for software storage errors and corrects any damage it finds if possible. This tool is great for fixing minor errors with your hard drive.

To use the Scandisk feature in Windows XP:
My Computer -> Right click hard drive -> Properties -> Tools -> Check Now

The best way to avoid E-mail spam is to have 2 e-mail accounts, one for junk stuff you sign up for and one for your personal use. If you just absolutely have to sign up for that really cool CD deal, than give them a junk e-mail address that you have created specifically for junk mail. Generally however, junk mail can be avoided by not checking all the boxes that ask you if you want more information on their products or newsletters, and by reading their privacy policy to make sure they wont sell off your e-mail address to someone else.

This type of cautious filtering is way more efficient than even the thousands of junk e-mail filter programs available on the web.

Always have at least one decent Anti-Virus software installed on your computer. Thinks Geeks recommend AVG from Grisoft, which is available in our downloads section... it's free and it's fast and un intrusive. Set your anti-virus software to automatically update everyday, generally these programs are already set with auto-update on. Avoid loading your computer with anti-virus software, doing this will cause more problems than fix them, because many anti-virus software are often incompatible with each other.

Spyware is the viruses little cousin on the internet. Spyware are vicious little programs that are covertly downloaded onto your system when you visit certain sites that are up to no good. Spyware downloads all the relevant information on your computer that it's looking for and uses it to try and sell you things, which generally ends in more e-mail spam. Some spyware can be really annoying, some spyware actually hijack your web browser so you can't surf the web anymore.

Much like junk/spam e-mail, spyware can be easily averted by avoiding website's that look shady. Even so however, everyone gets at least a little spyware on their computer, most of it is not that harmful but they do have a tendency to slow down your computer if you don't keep the numbers down. That's why it is a good idea to have at least a couple anti-spyware programs like Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D. Think Geeks recommends that you have both of these programs installed at the same time as they both detect certain spyware programs that the other may not. They are both free products and are regularly updated, they too can be found in our downloads section.