Shift-F10 is the equivalent of right-clicking on an item. Very handy if your mouse goes bonkers.

Not sure what your options are? Or maybe it just doesn’t make sense? The F1 key is your friend. In most cases, hitting it will bring up some helpful advice in ANY program you are using.

To quickly open drop-down menus, hold down the ALT key and tap the “underlined letter” in the menu title. Use the cursor keys to choose a menu item. Hey, it keeps your hands on the keyboard where they belong!

When filling out Web forms, don’t use the mouse to click in each blank. Hit the TAB key instead. Shift-TAB will move you in the opposite direction.

The fastest way to select a large number of documents is to hit Ctrl-A (selecting them all) and then holding down the CTRL key while you deselect the ones you don’t want.

You can print most documents without opening them by right-clicking on their icon and choosing “Print.” Quite a time-saver!

How fast is your computer? In Windows 7, click Start, and right-click on Computer, then choose Properties. In Windows XP, click Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Information. Look in the Processor field and it will give you the approximate speed in mhz.

System not powerful enough to use Word or Wordperfect? No problem, check out Wordpad (Word’s little cousin). It comes FREE with every version of Windows. You’ll find it under All Programs \Accessories in your Start menu.

The fastest way to display the Start Menu is to hit the Windows key or CTRL-Esc.

Want to know more about your computer? Depending on how your computer was configured, you may be able to click the Start button, Programs (or All Programs), Accessories, System Tools,and then (if you’re lucky) “System Information.” It has more information than you would ever need…