Q. Love your column — read it religiously. You recently answered a reader’s question that mirrored my problem (resizing images for e-mailing).
Per your instructions, I went to Microsoft downloads, then Powertoys, but then couldn’t find anything relating to Image Resizer.
Can you elaborate further?
— Kim Brown @sisqtel.net
A. I picked your note because you were so flattering before expressing frustration over finding that sweet software called the Image Resizer Powertoy.
Designed to either reduce the size of picture files sent as e-mail attachments or to blow pictures up for bigger prints, the software is produced by Microsoft but not included in Windows because the company deems it a tad complicated for ordinary users.
Finding this software gem with my help might be difficult but using it once you find it is simple, no matter what Microsoft says.
I heard from lots of folks who also couldn’t find this free program and some weren’t all that polite.
Here’s the problem folks: You didn’t follow my instructions exactly to the letter.
To recap: I said to go to the Microsoft main support page at http://support.microsoft.com and then use the search term “powertoys” to find the utility. But many people got to that page and saw a line on the left-hand side of the display for downloads and clicked it. No luck. That’s for other stuff.
You need to look in the upper right of the Web page for a search box. That is where you type in “powertoys” and get taken to the software. This will work. I tried it a half-dozen times before writing the column and afterward.
Here also is the exact address to type into thebrowser:www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
More Top Picks Best Jumping Jack Compactors
Q. I am planning to upgrade from Windows 98 to a new computer in a few months with Windows XP and I’d like some advice about e-mail. Am I dreaming if I want it to do a number of things, including archiving e-mail, make it searchable and also help me move it all to other computers and programs in the future?
— Janet Schmidt @ameritech.net
A. A bunch of stuff has come together over recent months that makes something of a cake walk out of dealing with the e-mail messages that build up with each passing day.
The new functions come to use whether we’re using Eudora, Microsoft Outlook Express or even UNIX-based text only clunkers like PINE. E-mail users luck out because of search engines for one’s own hard drive offered by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.
These desktop search programs use the same tricks for finding stuff on your computer as their search engines do to find stuff on the Web.
The great news is that once one has this kind of searching power, one also has powerful tools for archiving and message searching and moving information onto new computers.
All three of these services provide e-mail based on their Web sites or let users import their Web e-mail into software like Microsoft Outlook Express.
Either way, the desktop search services of Google, Yahoo and MSN make indexes of every word and attachment in the user’s e-mail — making them available in seconds during searches.
This is far faster than the rudimentary searching in Outlook Express and that means no matter how large the archive becomes it’s always simple to find stuff by keyword searches.
The search engines thus solve both your wishes to have searchable e-mail and easily archived messages. That leaves portability — making it easy to move stuff to new computers.
Here the good news is that the services are Web-based and so it doesn’t matter what software is used on a local computer — all the messages can be acquired from the company’s Internet servers no matter your hardware or your location.
Take your pick: http://desktop.google.com, http://desktop.msn.com or http://desktop.yahoo.com.
All three let Windows users download the programs needed to handle this new way of dealing with e-mail.
On the downside, a lot of people worry about plans that in essence require a user to agree to let the provider watch keywords inside e-mail messages and then serve up ads based on the subjects.
Despite assurances that privacy will be honored, the fact that your e-mails are being scanned by outsiders is hardly comforting. I deal with this by using a different account for highly sensitive stuff and Google’s Gmail for the rest.
———-
Got a question on personal technology? Send a note to Jim Coates at [email protected]. Questions can be answered only through this column.