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By Walter, May 18, 2010 11:51 pm

PowerPoint 2010 offers a number of compelling new features. One of those new features is the ability to publish a presentation as a movie file. This offers a handy way to share presentations of any kind with just about anyone, without requiring the person viewing the presentation to have PowerPoint or the PowerPoint Viewer installed. But it also offers a neat way to create a quick slide show of photographs that you can share with friends.

While you can use any kind of picture-editing program to prepare your pictures – removing red-eye, adjusting brightness levels, and so on – I’m going to focus on just what you can do within PowerPoint. And it’s a surprising amount.

Here’s how to do it.

1. Start PowerPoint and create a new, blank presentation.
2. On the Design tab, you can choose any theme or color scheme you want. This can make the movie look prettier if you want to include multiple photos per slide or if you want to make your pictures smaller than the actual size of the slide. If you just want your pictures displayed, don’t worry about this step.
3. Create your title slide.
4. Create a new blank slide. The first time you do this, you’ll want to click the arrow under the New Slide button and then click Blank Slide. This creates a slide without placeholders for text and other objects. After doing this the first time, you can then just click the New Slide button and PowerPoint will remember that you want to create blank slides.

5. On the Insert tab, click Picture. Locate the picture you want to insert and then click Insert. Alternatively, you can use Windows Explorer to open the folder that contains the pictures you want to use and just drag them into place in PowerPoint.
6. Size the picture however you want it. If you want the whole screen to be the picture without any added text, borders, or other elements, just make the picture the same size as the slide.
7. Use the controls on the Format tab to make adjustments to the picture. Note that this tab only appears when you have selected a picture. PowerPoint 2010 includes all kinds of new controls for working with pictures, including letting you adjust color levels, perform basic corrections, apply artistic effects, apply borders and shadows, crop the picture, and even remove background colors (Note: I’ll be writing an article about the picture controls in the near future and will be sure to link to it here).

8. Repeat steps 4-7 for each picture you want to include in the slide show.
9. By default, PowerPoint does not add a transition animation between slides. On the Transition tab, hold your pointer over the available transitions to preview what they will look like. When you find one you like, click it to apply that transition to that slide. If you want to use the same transition for every picture in the slide show, click Apply To All.
10. Preview your slide show to make everything looks right by pressing the F5 key. Use your mouse button or arrow keys to move through the presentation.
11. When you’re satisfied with the presentation, it’s time to make the movie. On the File tab, click Share and then click Create a Video. You have a couple of options here:
    • Set the quality of the video. By default, the quality is set to Computer & HD Displays – the highest quality. It creates a movie at a 960×720 resolution and is intended for viewing on a computer or burning to a DVD and viewing on a TV. You can also set the quality to Internet & DVD (medium quality, resolution 640×480, great for sharing on the Internet) or Portable Devices (low quality, 320×240 resolution).
    • Specify whether to use timings and narration you have already set up in the presentation. You can specify an automatic timing for changing slides and even include music or narration using the controls in PowerPoint. If you haven’t set these up (or don’t want to use the ones you have set up), turn this option off and use the Create a Video window to specify the number of seconds to spend on each slide.

12. Click Create Video.
13. Give the video a name and save it. Depending on the length of the slide show and the speed of your computer, creating the video can take a little while.

And that’s it. At this point, you have created a perfectly functional video slide show in the .WMV format used by Windows Media Player and supported by numerous other video players. You can even upload them in this format to YouTube, Facebook, or a number of other sites.

If you need to convert your video to another format, there are a number of free video converters available out there. Just search by the formats you want to convert to and from.

And here’s a quick photo slide show (nothing fancy) that I created using PowerPoint 2010 using some pics we took on a family vacation to Helen, Georgia several years ago. It took about 10 minutes.

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By Walter, October 26, 2009 5:06 pm

Almost everything I’ve thrown at Windows 7 over the past 8 or 9 months of testing first the Beta then the RC has worked – hardware and software alike. The sole exception in the hardware realm has been the Linksys Wireless PCI Card (WMP54G v4.0) in my son’s computer.

The trouble is that Linksys has been very bad about supporting 64-bit Windows (Vista and Windows 7) for some of their slightly older products.

Neither Linksys nor Microsoft have drivers available for many models of these cards. But, I finally got the v4.0 card to work in Windows 7 64-bit. Here’s how:

1. Download this Ralink driver (the card is based on a Ralink chipset): Linksys Wireless G (RT2500) (direct link to download).

NOTE: This driver is hosted on Dan Wendorf’s site and is just the Windows 64-bit drivers. You can also download the full driver set from Ralink’s site, but the download is quite big (lots of unnecessary programs and drivers for other versions) and the site is unbearably slow.

2. Unzip the .rar file. You can use WinZip or WinRar to do this.

3. In Device Manager (click Start, right-click My Computer, click Manage, then select Device Manager in the management window), locate the network controller. It may be an unidentified device or a mislabeled device depending on whether you’ve already tried to install a driver for it.

4. After selecting the device, click the Uninstall button on the toolbar to remove the device.

5. On the toolbar, click the Scan for hardware changes button.

6. When windows find the new device and asks for a driver, point it to the folder you unzipped.

7. If you get a notice saying the driver is unsigned, go ahead and allow it.

Windows should now install the driver and you’ll have wireless access before you know it. It’s sad this has to be so complicated. A company like Linksys should really get on the ball with 64-bit support.

I’ve been using the driver for quite some time now and it seems perfectly stable. Hope this helps some of you avoid the frustration I went through.

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By Walter, June 27, 2007 10:48 pm

Windows Vista includes Complete PC Backup, an image-based backup program that works similarly to Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage. Complete PC Backup creates an image of one or more entire hard disk partitions. In the event of a hard drive failure, you can replace the disk, restore from that image, and have your computer right back at the state it was in when you last backed it up.

Unfortunately, Complete PC Backup does not have a scheduling function built in so that you can automate backups. Fortunately, the command-line equivalent wbadmin.exe supports a rich command structure and with a little help from Task Scheduler, you can schedule automatic image backups.

wbadmin.exe supports the following commands:

Start Backup. Runs a backup.
Stop Job. Stops a running backup.
Get Items. Lists backed up items.
Get Status. Lists status of currently running backup.

The Start Backup command is the one we’re concerned with here. To create a full command, you can use the following parameters:

-backuptarget. Indicates the location to save the backup image. This can be a drive letter or a UNC path.
-include. List of drive letters, volume mount points, or volume names to include in the backup.
-noverify. Tells wbadmin not to verify backups written to removable media such as DVD.
-quiet. Runs the command with no user prompts.

So, let’s look at a simple backup command:

wbadmin start backup -backuptarget:e:\backups -include:C: -quiet

This command starts a backup of the C drive and saves the image to the Backups folder on the E drive, and does it with no user prompts. This would be a useful command for backing up the typical computer with one hard drive to a folder on an external hard drive.

To make this work as a scheduled backup, all you need to do is open Task Scheduler and create a new task using this command on the appropriate schedule.

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By Walter, January 13, 2007 11:03 pm

While the new .docx format in Word 2007 promises great things, for now most of the people you’ll be working with are still using Word 2003 or (gasp) an even earlier version. The .doc format remained virtually unchanged in Word 97-2003 and is still supported in Word 2007. But Word 2007 by default saves files as .docx documents, meaning that when you need to share with someone using a previous version you have to open the .docx file you created and save it as a .doc file.

If you work with folks that use previous versions of Word, you can change the default format Word 2007 uses to save a file. To do this, use the following steps:

1. In Word 2007, click the Office button (the big round button at the top left of the Window) and then click Word Options.
2. In the Word Options dialog box, choose the Save category from the list on the left.
3. Use the Save files in this format drop-down menu to choose the format you want Word 2007 to use by default. I use Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc).
4. Click OK.

When you save a new file, if you really want to save it as a .docx file, you can always choose that format from the list in the Save As dialog box.

Microsoft also has an Office Compatibility Pack available for users of Office XP and Office 2003 for opening documents created in Office 2007 (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint)

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By Walter, September 24, 2006 12:06 am

Sometimes, navigating the Start menu for the shortcut to a particular program or folder takes too long. Creating a shortcut toolbar on the Windows XP taskbar is simple. The first step is to create a folder and fill it with shortcuts. You could create a folder named Shortcuts, Games, or whatever you need quick access to. Store the folder wherever you like. I keep mine in the My Documents folder. After you create the folder and some shortcuts inside, use these steps to add the toolbar:

1. Right-click any open space on the Windows Taskbar.
2. On the shortcut menu, point to Toolbars, and then click New Toolbar.
3. In the New Toolbar dialog box, locate your shortcut folder, select it, and then click OK.

That’s it. The new toolbar appears and looks something like this:

To remove the toolbar, right-click the Taskbar, point to Toolbars on the shortcut menu, and click the shortcut toolbar to disable it. When you disable the Toolbar, you will have to recreate it if you want it to appear again.

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By Walter, September 22, 2006 10:57 pm

Honestly, error reporting is kind of a drag. After a program or system crash, the last thing you want is to sit through is Windows having to grind out an error report. To disable Error Reporting:

1. Click Start, then click Control Panel.
2. In Control Panel, if the window is not already in Classic View, click the Switch to Classic View link on the left.
3. Double-click Administrative Tools.
4. In the Administrative Tools folder, double-click Services.
5. In the Services window, scroll until you find the Error Reporting Service entry and double-click it to open its properties.
6. In the properties dialog that opens, in the Startup Type box, select Disabled. Also click Stop to go ahead and stop the service.
7. Click OK and then close the Administrative Tools folder.

Error Reporting will no longer bother you.

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By Walter,

If you didn’t build your computer yourself and the name of your video card isn’t printed on a nice little sticker on the case, it’s not always easy to find out what you’ve got inside without cracking the case open. Fortunately, there is a way:

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click System Information.
2. In the System Information window, in the list on the left side, open the Components category, and then click Display.
3. In the right side of the window, the Name and Adapter Description labels describe your video card model.

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By Walter, September 21, 2006 11:21 pm

By default, Windows XP displays the Language Toolbar on the right side of the Taskbar in a new Windows installation. For most people, it just gets in the way and takes up Taskbar room that could be put to better use. Here’s how to turn it off:

1. Click Start and then click Control Panel.
2. In the Control Panel window, if you haven’t done it already, click Switch to Classic View in the Tasks pane.
3. Double-click Regional and Language Options.
4. In the Regional and Language Options dialog box, switch to the Languages tab, and then click Details.
5. In the Text Services and Input Languages dialog box, click Language Bar.
6. Clear the Show the Language bar on the desktop check box.
7. Click OK until the dialog boxes are gone and then close the Control Panel window.