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Issue #28: January 31, 2008

It was a sincere pleasure meeting so many of you at the Computer Expo last Saturday.  Many thanks to J.B. Hillard and the Northwest Florida Association of Computer User Groups for inviting me to be a part of their Expo, and making me feel so welcome.  My next personal appearance is currently scheduled for May 6th for the Crestview Library’s First Tuesday Lecture Series.  Go to http://tinyurl.com/36zso4 for more information.

Q: I have windows XP and internet version 7.0. My question is, how do I get the window web pages to open fully maximized?  They open about ¼ page and I’ve tried maximizing using the box in the upper right then going to view and hitting “refresh” but they still open small. I’ve also tried stretching by pulling the sides/top and bottom, hitting refresh but still no help.  Please tell me how to get all my web pages to open fully maximized.

– David
Fort Walton Beach, FL

A: Under normal conditions, Internet Explorer remembers the size and position settings when close it down and it will restore itself to those settings next time it runs.  Many things can override these settings, but most of them are probably more technical than you want to read about.  Even though technologically possible, with only a few exceptions it is highly unusual for a web page to resize the browser window when you hit “Refresh”.  That makes me suspect that something more ominous may going on behind the scenes.

Assuming that the web page you’re using isn’t designed to do exactly what you described, if you want your IE “Maximized” the size and position are irrelevant, because a maximized window occupies all available space on the screen, and a browser shut down while maximized, should be maximized the next time you run it.  IE even has a setting that’s a step beyond “Maximized”, called “Full Screen”.  This mode hides the title bar, menu bar, and tool bars and maximizes the window to make every possible pixel available for displaying web content.  You can toggle Full Screen mode by hitting the F11 key.

Q: All I need in a computer is a browser, email, and MS Office (really!).  I don’t need graphics, games, sounds, or video.  I have an older HP with AMD Athlon CPU that works fine (Windows XP SP 2).  However, I would love to delete the bundled software and the accumulated dreck that has attached itself to my computer over the last 4 years.  I’m hesitant to do so for fear of losing something critical.  Do you have any suggestions or a gameplan to make this happen?

– Mike S.
Fort Walton Beach, FL

A: The first thing I do when I take a computer out of the box is to delete all the junk I’ll never use.  As long as you know what the stuff is, you can safely use the Control Panel’s “Add/Remove Programs” feature to remove any games and other “dreck” you don’t want.  You won’t run into any problems unless you start messing around trying to delete files manually, or changing registry settings.


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