Have you ever needed to completely remove all formatting from a document and couldn’t? I have found this free software called  StipMail that will completely remove all the formatting from an Email, Word, HTML or even PDF document. It does a good job of striping all formatting out even characters “>” and “|” from forwarded e-mails.

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Here is a tip that may seem obvious but I just haven’t fully appreciated until recently. Do you want more screen real estate, why not hide your windows taskbar. If you’re like me and have increased your taskbar double fold then hiding it  adds about an inch more to your screen real estate after it’s hidden. Now It really feels like I have a 19 inch monitor Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Here’s how to turn on the Auto-hide option:

 1. Right-click on the taskbar and select “Properties” from the context menu. The “Taskbar and Start menu Properties” window should open.
 2. With the “Taskbar” tab open, put a check in the box labeled “Auto-hide the taskbar”.
 3. Also make sure there is a check in the box labeled “Keep the taskbar on top of other windows”.
 4. Click “OK” to save the changes and exit the properties window.

The Taskbar should now disappear. To make the taskbar visible, simply move your mouse cursor right to the bottom of the screen.

1. Right click on your desktop and choose New -> Shortcut.

2. Type “RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll” for the location. After that, change the name of the shortcut. I had renamed it to “Remove USB Drive“.

3. You should have a USB icon on your desktop. You can click it and now choose which device to remove.

Defragmenting your hard drive is something that should be done on a regular basis, twice a month at least, more if you regularly download files or use intensive applications like Adobe Photoshop or Premier.

Defragmenting can be a time consuming process and remembering to do it is another problem. You can setup up Windows XP to auto Defrag your hard drive on a set schedule. Here’s how to do it.

1. Open Control Panel and  click on Performance and Maintenance and then click Scheduled Tasks.

2.  Double click on Add Scheduled Task, this will open up the task wizard, click Next.

3. Click Browse, navigate to the C:\windows\system32 folder, find and select Defrag.exe, and click Open.

4. Here you will be able to setup a schedule to Defrag your hard drive.

5. Before you click on FINISH click on the box to open advanced properties for this task. (If you didn’t click on the box to open advanced Properties you can right click on the task and go to properties.)

6. At the RUN line, under advanced properties enter C:\windows\system32\Defrag.exe c:

7. Click OK and then you are done. The task will run at the specified time.

If you have any questions regarding this topic you can post them at the Forum