Windows XP Notes

You can open multiple tabs when starting IE or Firefox as shown below:

In Internet Explorer

Open the General tab from the menu item Tools…Internet options and simply enter the address of each page you want to open in a separate tab as separate lines in the Home page listbox, as indicated.

In Firefox

Open the Main tab from the menu item Tools…Options and add the address of each page required separated by a vertical bar ‘|‘ character as shown.

Multiple tabs in Firefox

Microsoft Outlook provides a mechansim to save the contents of Mail Folders as a file on your disk, which you can use as an archive or backup of your email messages and also enables you to copy the files and open them in Outlook on other machines. These are known as personal folders (.pst) files.

Here’s the process I used on Outlook 2007, which may work with other versions of Outlook too but I’m not sure whether this works in Outlook Express …

Creating a .pst file

1. On the File menu, click Import And Export.

Export PST file

2. Click Export to a File, and then click Next

Select Export to File

3. Click Personal Folder File (.pst) , and then click Next

Select File Format - PST

4. Click the folder that you want to export to a .pst file and then click Next

Select the Folder to Export

5. Click the Browse button, and then select the location to save the .pst file.

Filename and Location

6. In the File Name box, type a descriptive name which will be used as the title of the mail folder when the file is opened in Outlook. (The password is optional – you don’t need to specify a password) and then click OK.

Folder Title

How to open a .pst file data in Outlook

1. On the File menu select Open and then Outlook Data File and browse to the required .pst file

Open a .pst file

2. The file when opened in Outlook appears as an additional folder in the Mail Folders list as shown, using the name specified when the file was created. This folder can be used in the same way as other folders – emails which are copied to the folder are automatically written to the file.

File opened in Outlook

Close the .pst file

1. To close the file, simply RMB (right mouse button) click on the Folder name and select Close …

Close the .pst file

Why is the Font rendering in IE so much better than Firefox?

Here’s a sample from Internet Explorer

Sample from Internet Explorer

and the equivalent from Firefox

Sample from Firefox

Although this may not seem to be substantially different, believe me it does make a big difference.

There’s actually a simple fix for all fonts that Windows XP displays, simply enable Cleartype.

Enable Cleartype

1. Right click on the Desktop and select Properties.
2. Click on the Appearance tab and choose the Effects button
3. In the option “use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts” choose ClearType