Gadget's Tips

Gadget - sad to say - is downloading rather a lot of images from the web.

Shocking, but true - though not, perhaps, for the reasons you may be imagining...

His web browsing history does seem to include a huge number of sites relating to dog biscuits. And his Downloaded Pictures folder is in danger of taking over the hard drive.

And all because he's discovered how easy it is to copy a picture from a website to your computer - even when you don't have fingers.

...and he'd be the first to admit his paws aren't exactly suited to his keyboard. So imagine his delight when he found he could just type the name of a website (like 'myspace') into his browser address bar, then press CTRL and Enter - and let the browser fill in the missing bits and take him to the site.

And when he gets there, he can download any of his friends' Christmas pictures simply by right-clicking on them and choosing 'Save Image As' or 'Save Picture As'.

Which is why he now needs a bigger hard drive....

Gadget recently enjoyed an advance Christmas present - an upgrade to Windows 7 on his laptop. Although he read our review in the October issue, he still felt the need for complete security (he's a very security conscious hound), so the first thing he did was to create a system repair disk.

Why? Because that way, even if the operating system refuses to start, he's got a way of firing up his computer. And it really couldn't be easier to do.

Gadget knows that Vista makes it possible to divide a hard disk into two or more partitions, which Windows sees as separate disks.

And that means top-secret information (including his biscuit stash database) can be safely hidden in his own, personal volume.

Click Start, right-click Computer and select the Manage option. Select disk Management from the left-hand pane, right-click the disk that is to be split and select Shrink Volume. Enter a new size for the partition and click Shrink.

Gadget was getting pretty fed-up with looking for shared files on other computers connected to his network - until he discovered this handy little XP trick...

On each computer, right-click the My Computer icon in the Start menu and select Map Network Drive.

Choose a drive letter from the dop-down menu.

Click Browse, then navigate to the shared folder.

Click Finish - and that's it! Anywhere on the system, you'll be able to find that shared folder simply by opening My Computer. And Gadget is now woofingly happy...