Google's best-kept secrets: its features

Google continues to be the world's most-used search engine. So you might think that the search engine giant would roll out new features gently, not wanting to upset its massive user base, right? Not quite. Google introduces new features of its search engine with little warning and even less explanation of how to use them. The Instant Preview, Wonder Wheel, Timeline, and Date Ranges features are prime examples. What are they all about? Read on to find out.

Benefits of last bard drives

If you have a large media collection -music, video, or photos -be sure to place them on a fast hard drive, if possible. Most media players and browsers will create a catalogue of your media files and accessing that catalogue can take a lot of time -and slow your PC down -when the media player starts. An alternative to cataloguing a large media collection is to force your media player not to catalogue all of the files. Instead, open the music or video files individually.

BCC e-mails

To send a copy of an e-mail message to one or more additional recipients without the main recipient knowing, use your e-mail program's BCC field. BCC stands for "blind carbon copy" and it's often used to disguise the e-mail addresses of additional recipients. You can even use Bee to hide the addresses of all recipients. To do so, place your own e-mail address in the to field and the e-mail addresses of all recipients in the BCC field.

Speedy surfing

Want to get quickly to a website? Place your cursor in the address bar of your favorite browser, type the name of the site -minus the .com or http://www -and press Ctrl-Enter. Most browsers will automatically add ".com" to the end of the word and ''http://www'' to the beginning

Defrag details

Should you defragment your hard drive? With Windows 7, that question is becoming increasingly irrelevant these days. Disk defragmentation is automatically scheduled in Windows 7 on those drives that need it. With newer solid state disks (SSDs), defragmentation is not recommended at all, since files are stored differently on SSDs than they are on traditional disks. Windows 7 is smart enough to recognise SSDs and will turn off defragmentation by default.

Take charge of your Hard drive

It’s hard to feel in control of your digital life if you're not in control of your hard drive. After all, your hard drive is where all of your files are stored. When hard drives fill up or don't allow you to organise your data the way you'd like, frustration results. And when your computer won't start, it's important to know whether your hard drive is at the heart of the problem. Read on for some tips that will help you get a grip on your hard drive -and the data that lives there.

My computer won't start. How can I know if the hard drive has died?

      Failures of conventional hard drives are often, but not always, preceded by some clicking or tapping sounds emanating from your PC. Sometimes a steady click-click-click sound will indicate a hard drive that has malfunctioned. Solid State Drives (SSDs), which have no moving parts, will obviously not exhibit such a clicking sound. They will simply fail, with no audible warning.

Plan a stress-free Migration to Windows7

For many, the hardest part about using Windows 7 is actually getting up the nerve to migrate to it. After all, you have all of your data files, e-mail, photos, addresses -and more -stored on your existing operating system. What if you should lose some of it in the move?

It's a reasonable concern. But with some careful planning, you can have both a seamless transition to Windows 7 and set yourself up to make future upgrades even easier. Here’s how.