Got a digital camera? Not sure what format to save your images in once downloaded to the computer? Here is a short guide to help you GIF: (Graphics Interchange Format) This format has a maximum number of 256 colors (but it can "dither" which means mix two colors together to give the impression of another color). GIF is a "lossless" format, meaning it doesn't get blurry or lose sharpness. It's a great format for drawings, clip-art, icons, and such, but it's a very poor format (because of the limitation of colors) for photographs of digital photography. GIF is the most popular image type on the Web. More GIFs are used on Web sites than any other image formats. GIFs can be made transparent and can be animated as well. JPG: (Joint Photographic Expert Group) The JPG format uses compression that reduces image file size by reducing the amount of detail contained in the image. Images with fewer details compress extremely well, while pictures with a lot of detail do not compress as well and will suffer some degradation. The amount of compression allowed (and hence the amount of details lost) can be controlled in most image editing application. Because JPEG/JPG can display millions of colors and because it has the smallest file size of all, it is the best choice for detailed images and photographs which you want to send via email or use on the Web. JPG/JPEG is the second most popular image format in use on the Web today. BMP: The Windows Bitmap file format is the standard file format used by Microsoft Windows. Bitmap files can contain either 2 (black and white), 16, 256 or 16.7 million colors. Most Windows Bitmap files are not compressed. It is possible to save 16 and 256 color images in a compressed format. BMP files are very large and the image quality is not noticeably different from a JPG/JPEG file that is not compressed too much. Since both BMP and JPG/JPEG can display millions of colors, for most uses you'd be better off with JPG/JPEG since the file size (Kilobytes) is much smaller. You rarely see BMP format in use on the Web simply because the file size is large and would take too long to download in a browser. Never save in this format if you intend to use your images on the Web or send them by email. They're far too large of files (kb) and take too long to send or load on Web pages. PNG: ( Portable Network Graphics) PNG was invented to replace the GIF format. But so far it has not done so. It is in use on the Web and is increasing in popularity. For image editing, either professional or otherwise, PNG provides a useful format for the storage of intermediate stages of editing. Since PNG's compression is fully lossless--and since it supports up to 48-bit true color or 16-bit grayscale--saving, restoring and re-saving an image will not degrade its quality, unlike standard JPEG (even at its highest quality settings). For transmission of finished true color images--especially photographic ones--JPEG/JPG is almost always a better choice. Although JPEG's compression can introduce some degradation in quality, this can be minimized, and the savings in file size even at high quality levels is much better than is generally possible with a lossless format like PNG or GIF. We use a lot of PNG format on our Web sites and newsletters since they can be made smaller (file size) and still look nice and clear. There are other formats such as TIF,TGA, ICO, and many others. The four listed above are by far the most common ones. --------------------------------------------- Starting Up With A Shift - Troubleshooting Windows Startup Windows XP Home, Media, and Professional If you are having problems with Windows XP and want to start your computer without loading all the startup programs that normally open with Windows - this tip is for you. Using this method, can help you troubleshoot startup programs which may be causing your Windows startup to "hang" or take longer than it should. And using this tip will also disable malicious programs from loading as well. You could use WinPatrol (or MSCONFIG) to disable startup programs, but using this tip is quick way for you to see if, in fact, it is a program being loaded at Windows startup that is causing your problems. This tip was mentioned in a Microsoft article (read the entire article here http://tinyurl.com/ywcvec ) called "Troubleshooting the Startup Process". The gist of this article is this: Simply hold down the Shift key while booting your machine. Doing this disables programs set to load at Windows startup from the following locations: C\Documents and Settings\Username\Start Menu\Programs\Startup C\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup C\Windows\Profiles\Username\Start Menu\Programs\Startup C\Windows\Profiles\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup But hold on there! This is important! In order for this to work, you have to continue to hold down the Shift key until ALL your desktop program icons have appeared. Another plus: This tip is a great way to make your computer boot faster because Windows will not load all the programs that it normally would load in the background at Windows Startup. However, if you need to use one of the programs that normally start with Windows, you will have to start it manually. ------------------------------------------------------------------