Saving Seconds in WINDOWS

Every minute Windows sucks out of my life is another minute I've lost forever.

Hit the snooze button. Most PCs automatically turn themselves off when you shut down Windows (or, in Windows XP lingo, select the Turn Off option). But you can save yourself a heartbeat or two by using your desktop PC's power switch to end as well as to begin a work session.

From Windows' Start menu, select Settings/Control Panel/Power Options and click on the Advanced tab. In the field under "When I press the power button on my computer," make your selection from the drop-down list. I like to use Hibernate , so the machine goes to sleep -- saving an image of the current desktop and open applications to the hard disk -- when I press the power switch. When I return, another press of the power button wakes Windows.

Fast-fingered URLs. Don't type any more than you have to when you bang out a URL in Internet Explorer. Punch in the domain -- that's the part of the URL between http://www. and .com -- and press Ctrl-Enter. Microsoft's browser automatically adds the required characters fore and aft.

Restart Windows, not your PC. If you use Windows 95 or 98, you probably reboot at least a couple of times per day just to keep the OS from crashing like a Pinto with a full tank. Trim the time it takes for this odious task by restarting Windows only, not rebooting the computer itself; it accomplishes the same thing -- starting a fresh Windows session -- but takes a lot less time. How? After choosing Shut Down from the Start menu, hold down the Shift key while you click OK in the Shut Down dialog. Unfortunately, this trick doesn't work for Windows Me.

Quick-drivin' dial-ups. Dialing your Internet service provider several times each day? Here's how to shave a few seconds off the process. In Windows 98 or Me, make sure you've entered your ISP username and password and checked the "Save Password" box, then log in at least once. Now open the Dial-up Networking window from My Computer. Choose Connections/Settings and uncheck the "Prompt for information before dialing" box, then click OK. Now when you click any ISP connection, Windows goes right to work; you don't have to see the Connect To dialog or click the Connect button to initiate the process.

In Windows XP, click on the ISP connection (get to it from Start/Settings/Network Connections) and click the Properties button. Click the Options tab and uncheck these two boxes: "Prompt for name and password, certificate, etc." and "Prompt for phone number." Click OK. You must repeat this procedure for each ISP connection you use.

To save time, Send To. Find yourself moving files to the same destination over and over -- backups from a floppy to a specific folder, or MP3 files to your CD-RW drive? Add those folders or drives to Windows Explorer's Send To, the same-named item in the menu that pops up when you right-click any file. Then when you pop in a floppy, for instance, just select one or more files, right-click, choose Send To, and pick the folder destination.

To add a destination to Send To, open the SendTo folder using Explorer. In Windows 95, 98, and Me, this folder is in the C:\Windows directory; Win 2000 and XP users should look for it in C:\Documents and Settings\your username here. Make a shortcut for the folder(s), drive(s), or both you'd like to add, then drag and drop them into this SendTo folder. That's it!