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How to: use SpeedFan to control PC’s fan speeds

SpeedFan is a powerful and useful program, but its interface can be intimidating and confusing to use. In this post, we’ll guide you through the basics of SpeedFan.

The first thing you want to do is see if your motherboard is compatible with SpeedFan’s fan control feature. A master list of supported motherboards can be found here. If your motherboard isn’t supported, you can still use SpeedFan as a monitoring or troubleshooting program. Continue reading “How to: use SpeedFan to control PC’s fan speeds”

How to open Excel files without Excel

If you need to open an Excel document but don’t have Microsoft Office installed, then don’t fear – you can open them with Microsoft Excel Viewer.

Microsoft Excel Viewer is a simple application which allows you to open Excel sheets without Excel. Once installed, just double-click on the file you want to open and Microsoft Excel Viewer does the rest:

It’s just like using the real thing but obviously, there’s no editing of any kind allowed but it’s ideal for just browsing or viewing Excel documents if you don’t have Office or your Excel isn’t working.

If you need to edit Excel, you can opt for OpenOffice which is completely free to use and allows you to both open and edit Excel, PowerPoint, Word and many other formats although it’s much heavier and requires a longer installation process than Microsoft Excel Viewer. There’s also LibreOffice which you can read more about here.

Download Microsoft Excel Viewer.

How to: Create a photo slideshow in PowerPoint

You’ve probably had a few PowerPoint photo slideshows in your email already. They seem to be a popular topic for messages coming from friends and relatives with too much spare time on their hands. But have you ever tried creating one? It’s easier than you think, and it might actually be a good way to share pictures – just don’t abuse the slideshows with cute kitty images!

1. Open up PowerPoint, click the Insert tab and then the Photo Album button. Select New Photo Album to open the Photo Album settings menu.

2. In this new window, click the File/Disk button to select the photos you want to use in your slideshow. Remember you can select multiple files simultaneously by holding the Ctrl key while selecting them with your mouse.

Continue reading “How to: Create a photo slideshow in PowerPoint”

8 Things You Must Do Before Reformatting Your PC

Your PC is slow. Really slow. You’ve used CCleaner to get rid of the garbage, you’ve lightened the load by uninstalling bloatware with Revo, you’ve checked inside, outside, upside down and backwards for a virus, and you still have time to make a coffee by the time it takes your computer to start up. Is it time to reformat your hard drives?

Luckily for you, reformatting your computer is really simple. Go to My Computer, find the offending hard drive (in all likelihood, C:) and right click. You’ll see Format… under the context menu options, and find all the information you need when you click.

What takes a little more effort, however, is preparing for the reformat. As it will erase absolutely everything on the disk, if you don’t make the right preparations, you could find yourself with a faster computer, but absolutely nothing to do on it. Follow the steps laid out in our list first to make reformatting your hard drive as easy and safe as possible!

Continue reading “8 Things You Must Do Before Reformatting Your PC”

Three ways to open DOC files without Word

Whether you like it or not, DOC files are a standard for sharing documents online these days. The problem comes when someone emails you a DOC file and you don’t have Microsoft Office installed on that computer. Don’t worry: even if you don’t have Word on your system, there are other ways to open DOC files without Word – and all three of them for free:

1. Google Docs

Google’s online suite not only creates and saves documents as DOC, but also works with DOC files imported from your hard drive. So if you ever find yourself with a DOC file on a Word-less computer, head to Google Docs in a web browser and click the Upload button. You’ll be able to import files from your hard drive, up to 1024 MB – 500 KB per DOC file.

Three ways to open DOC files without Word

Continue reading “Three ways to open DOC files without Word”

3 free ways to open Word documents without Office

Yesterday my father rang me wanting some help with opening a Microsoft Word document. He didn’t have Microsoft Office installed, there was no way he was going to pay up to $229 to buy it and to cap it all, he’d never even used a word processor before. I shuddered at the challenge that lay ahead of me but to my pleasant surprise, within 10 minutes I’d taught him how to open, edit, save and even send the document by e-mail – and all without having to have Microsoft Office or Word installed on his computer. If my dad can do it, anyone can and so here’s 3 ways that you can do the same:

1. Google Docs

If you’ve received the document by e-mail, download it, go to Google Docs and upload it. Note that you’ll need to sign-up for a Google Account first.

Simply browse to the file you want to upload and it will open automatically in Google Docs.

From there you can edit it in much the same way as you can in Word and send it by e-mail directly from your Gmail account. Continue reading “3 free ways to open Word documents without Office”