Marcus Hamaker is The Sleepy Geek

Since I was a kid and touched my first computer, the keyboard has been the primary user interface. Today there are a lot of substitutes and add ons but none has taken more of the burned off the keyboard than the mouse.

The problem is that today people have forgotten that using a keyboard combination is a lot of times faster than a combination of mouse clicks.

Here are a list of must know keyboard shortcuts:

Windows
Windows+L – Lock your computer (especially important in the corporate environment)
Windows+D – Show your desktop
Windows+M – Minimize all windows
Windows+E – Launch Windows Explorer
Windows+R – Open the RUN Dialog box (not many people use this box but if you do you probably use it a lot)
Windows+F – Open the Find Files or Folders box
Ctrl-C – Copy selection
Ctrl-V – Paste
Ctrl-X – Cut selection
Ctrl-Z – Undo (sometimes one of the most handy shortcuts ever used!)
Ctrl-A – Select all
Ctrl-B – Bold
Ctrl-U – Underline
Ctrl-I – Italic
Ctrl-ESC – Windows start menu

OSX
Command-C – Copy selection
Command-V – Paste
Command-X – Cut selection
Command-Z – Undo (sometimes one of the most handy shortcuts ever used!)
Command-A – Select all
Command-F – Find
Command-I – Get info
Option-Command-M – Minimize all windows

There are a ton more than these, but you have to know these ones. They are going to be the ones that save you the most mouse movement. If you can’t remember all of them, then remember the Copy, Pate, Cut and Undo.

Geek on!

It is very common today for companies to create a 1-800 sales or support phone number that includes their name or a catchy phrase. For instance the major satelite provider here in Canada (Bell ExpressVu) has 1-800-SKY-DISH as their sales/support line.

Recently I wanted to dial a number like this from my Blackberry and low and behold there are no phone letters on the Blackberry keyboard. This isn’t something that you have to do everyday but it is something that will frusstrate you when you need it. If you have enough patience and you remember that A starts on the number 2 then you might be able to figure out the corresponding numbers. Put that into a real world situation and most of us are going to be cheesed off that we need to bother with this and just won’t bother.

After some searching I have found the solution! It is so simple that it is almost embarrasing how easy it is. When you dial your number and want to enter letters simply hold down the ALT key. The phone number must start with a digit so 1-800-LETTERS would work but CALL-897 would not.

Great feature, too bad it was a hard one to locate! Happy Crackberry people!