76. Use a Free, Full Featured Office Suite

Microsoft Office is expensive, but pretty much standard in the working world these days. Other word processors like WordPerfect are available, but these come with a cost attached also. There is a way to get a full-featured, Microsoft compatible office software suite completely free though. It's called Open Office.

Open Office is an offshoot of the successful commercial Star Office suite for Linux and Windows. Open Office is completely free and is constantly being worked on and updated by the Linux and Windows user community. The interface may be considerably different from Office, but the functionality is essentially the same and you can't argue with the price. Try it out.

77. Create a Windows XP Bootable CD with Service Pack 2 Built-in

If you have any plans to re-install Windows XP and you would rather not go through the lengthy Service Pack download and installation process, we have a guide for you.

Did you know that you can create a legal, bootable Windows XP CD with Service Pack 2 included as long as you possess an original Windows XP CD? The process is called slipstreaming, and involves copying the contents of the XP CD to your hard drive, updating the files with the Service pack, then recreating a bootable Windows XP CD with the new files. It's easier than it sounds, and you might well learn something. Check out PCstats guide to 'Slipstreaming Service Pack 2 for Windows XP'.

78. Edit Local Computer Settings with GPEDIT (XP Professional)

Windows XP contains a vast amount of possible configuration options, many of which are not available from the control panel. The easiest interface with which to change most of these option is the Group Policy Editor Window.

You can access this by going to the run prompt ('start\run') and typing 'gpedit.msc'

As you can see, the local policies are divided into two groups, computer configuration and user configuration. Computer configuration options change the way Windows XP operates, while user configuration options change the way users interact with the operating system. It's worth noting that all the settings here apply equally to all users of the computer, and only your computer.

As you can see, there are many, many configuration options available here. Explore, but be cautious, as unwary changes here can mess up your system as fast as a bad registry edit can. The next few tips will cover some interesting things you can do in this interface.