Useful tools you learned about later than prefered

[Marter]

So, my elbow has been hurting a lot recently. It has gotten bad enough that it hurts me to type on my laptop. I have been doing much less of it as of late, but it is a necessity in my life. In an attempt to lessen the pain, I started looking up voice recognition software.

As it turns out, Windows 7 comes with a voice recognition software preloaded.

I have been messing around with it all night and I have determined that it's actually not bad. In fact, I managed to get this entire post created without an error.

The question for this topic is this: Has there ever been anything useful that was available to you that you found out about later than you would have liked? For example, this software would have been nice to know about a couple of weeks ago, for me.

And if anyone has any idea why my elbow would be hurting, that would be nice to know as well.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Pretty much the printscreen back in High School (back during Window 95/98 era).
I had to make a report in my IT class which including showing images of my work (I made a semi interative menu which include some drop down boxes). Since I didn't know that features, I just use the line tool to make images of what my drop down boxes look like (needless to say it look terrible).
It was only when my IT teacher saw it he mention the printscreen features, now if only he had told me that sooner, it would had save me alot of time by not making those cruded images!

 

[FalloutJack]

Oh look, Steam-chat has a program for voice-chat and- What? HEY! What the hell did I get Skype for?!

 

[hoboman29]

Oh look, Steam-chat has a program for voice-chat and- What? HEY! What the hell did I get Skype for?!

I have a similar story I had no idea that existed until my buddy decided to voice chat me. My thought at the time was along the lines of "what the hell is that?"

 

[renegade7]

In EVE Online, you can log into the test server to fit and test new ships. I did not know this, I had only been going off of what EFT told me and numbers alone can be a bit unhelpful.

 

[Aris Khandr]

When I first started getting on the internet (about 18 years ago), I manually entered the addresses to every site I liked into my bookmarks folder. It took me about two months to learn that there was a button for that.

 

[headbanger97]

Oh look, Steam-chat has a program for voice-chat and- What? HEY! What the hell did I get Skype for?!

This. Steam chat really is my favorite way of talking to people online. I actually have a friend who refuses to use steam chat (typing or voice) over Skype. whenever he wants to talk to me and my friends he tries to get us all on Skype. Me and my friends always create secret steam chats while he is on Skype so we can have an actual conversation while he is talking...
Don't judge me!

 

[Reginald the Butler]

On the topic of not-very-well-know features. Windows 7 also has a handy thing called the 'Snipping Tool'.
It allows you to screenshot parts of your screen and save them as images, without using the printscreen key or having to use Paint.

[small]However, I believe only the Professional version and above includes the Snipping Tool, unfortunately.[/small]

Actually I think all the Windows 7 editions have the snipping tool. I know that mine does, and I definitely did not shell out the money for the professional edition.

Until last year, I didn't know that Windows had foreign language software built into the system. I just thought you would have to buy it from a third party or download it online. It sure makes typing papers for Japanese class easier.

 

[Queen Michael]

When I discovered literary fiction, it was like I'd been living in a mine my entire life and now I finally learned what gold looked like.

 

[DugMachine]

When I learned I could dual screen my computer. Changed my life.

My new video card can't support two screens though so I have to stick with one for now...

 

[CPunchMaster]

I think this basically sums up how I've been learning to use some of the programs from Adobe's Creative Suite. Just the other day, I was combining some elements and I spend probably an hour working to remove a persistent white line around someone. And right afterwards I discovered Photoshop has this awesome "Defringe Layer" tool.

When I learned I could dual screen my computer. Changed my life.

My new video card can't support two screens though so I have to stick with one for now...

Oh, two monitors. I found my family had one they weren't using at all so I took it. I don't think I could go back to having just one.

 

[L0dest0ne]

You can push CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to open task manager. This would have helped me so much back when I had a crappy computer and things crashed frequently, causing me to do the old-fashioned CTRL+ALT+DELETE.

 

[DugMachine]

Oh, two monitors. I found my family had one they weren't using at all so I took it. I don't think I could go back to having just one.

Actually I can still do it I think. It's not the video card but my older monitor is a lower resolution so I'd rather stick to high res with just one monitor.

 

[Jamash]

The mattock:

I've discovered this to be the perfect tool for breaking up the hard clay soil and digging up the weeds in my garden, I just wish I discovered this humble Bronze Age tool before destroying a couple of garden forks and various other tools in my attempts to de-weed the flower beds and tidy up my garden.

It's funny, I'd seen people using mattocks to great effect many time before, but it was people toiling in fields or digging trenches in Third World countries on TV, so I had a complete mental block and didn't even consider that I would be able to get one of these "esoteric instruments" from my local tool supplier and instead relied on the more traditional garden fork and spade.

I vaguely knew of them, but it was only when I saw one in the flesh that I made the mental connection and realised that this was the tool I needed (and had needed for many years) and I could actually buy one, that it did actually exist in my country and not just in historic agricultural scenes on the TV.