Category: Useful Software

I just had one of those “gulp!” moments … it’s 3am, and I’d been editing a PowerPoint for maybe 5-6 hours.  I’d used a previous deck as a template, and because I thought I might want to sample from some slides.  I clicked “save”.  Uh oh … I never remembered to change the name of the PPT to a new deck — I just overwrote what turned out to be my only copy of the previous deck!  And it was a critical deck.  This is not the first time this has happened to me.

Thanks to this post on restoring overwritten PowerPoint files, I found ShadowExplorer, an awesome utility … man, it’s my new best friend!  I was immediately able to go to the directory and find my previous copy of the file and restore it … sanity and hours of work saved!  Later, I determined that maybe I could have just gone in Windows Explorer to the directory, right-clicked on the file, and selected “Previous Versions”.

Just installed Subversion on my (relatively) new Vista notebook just now, for bookkeeping purposes in the midst of iffy edits.  Followed the notes on the VertigoSystems blog, which in turn are following the notes on Joe White’s blog, which were overall very useful.  A point that I discovered after some digging, that might help you:  When you go to run “sc …” to register the service, ensure that you’re running in a command window started with “Run as Administrator”.

Having had all sorts of problems with my Lenovo T42p overheating after the fan blew, even with the fan kept on maximum, I had to find ways to force the temperature down.  Not cool when trying to run a backup causes an abrupt system shutdown!

I found the answer in the really nifty application Notebook Hardware Control.  This application allows you to control the various settings on your notebook associated with power management.  You can assign different profiles for docked and undocked.  Most importantly, you can throttle down the speed your CPU’s running at by controlling the voltage, triggered by different CPU loads.

 

By doing this, you can turn your CPU speed — which you generally don’t need most of, given a modern machine — way down.  I find this useful for keeping my machine cool … but you’ll probably find it useful because by turning the speed down, you can substantially prolong your battery life.  I find that — even with the fan kept on full all the time — I’m adding another 0:30 or so to my battery time.