CHRISdotTODD

In Excel, I will use formulas quite frequently for my analysis. At times I want to reference the resulting value of the formula for comparison or to feed another formula. Unfortunately, if you are doing a comparison, Excel will try to compare the formula instead of the formulas results. Well, turns out there is an easy way to correct this. If you want your formula result to be a number, then use the VALUE function. If you want the formula result to be text, use the TEXT function. Here is the syntax for each: VALUE(text) TEXT(value,format_text) -- The format_text value can be any format from the Category box on the Number tab (in the Format Cells dialog box) except General. Here is an example of each: =VALUE(MID(A2,46,FIND("&",A2)-46)) -- this actually finds a number beginning with the 46th character of a string, and continues until it finds the ampersand character. By wrapping the formula with VALUE, I can now compare the number to other numbers in my looku

With the release of Google Chrome just weeks ago, speed tweaking tips are popular topics for Firefox. I found a list at TechRadar to be fairly good. Of the 8 tips offered, I am trying the following: 1 - 3, 6, and 8. Not that some of these are as much about perception as really making any difference. But isn't perception all we really care about? If we perceive it to be faster, it must be faster.

With all the buzz around Microsoft's latest ad campaign, prior videos are re-appearing. Thanks to Digg, I found this video with Christopher Lloyd as Microsoft kicks-off TechEd 2007. I found most of it quite funny. "Oh, Biff..."

As published on the Silicon Alley Insider , here's a video that compares the real speed of an iPhone against the speed you see in the iPhone commercials. In looking at the ad, Apple has clearly cut out much of the connection and load times. Now let's examine the reality of cell phone network speeds. As reported by tests done by Computer World , AT&T's network averaged download speeds of 755Kbit/sec. and average upload speeds of 484Kbit/sec. Computer World also included a 3 second network connection time. With this information, let's calculate the load time for an average 50kb page. Convert our download rate to Kb: 755/8 (8 bits in a byte) = 94.4 Kb/sec Download page time: 50 / 94.4 = 0.53 seconds Total time: connection time of 3 sec + download time of 0.53 seconds = 3.53 sec For us to really get the performance we have come to expect from our computers, it appears the issue right now is the connection times. We can grow our page sizes 6x (and many have) before the

I recently got a new laptop with Windows XP and I'm slowly getting it configured to all my preferences. One thing I noticed is that everytime I rebooted, the Language Bar would reappear in the Taskbar. No matter how many times I removed it, it would rear its ugly head again. With a little research, I found out how to stop this nasty behavior. You need to un-register and re-register a DLL that controls the behavior. Specifically, here's what you do: Go to Start and click Run... Enter"Regsvr32.exe /u msimtf.dll" and click OK Go to Start and click Run... Enter "Regsvr32.exe msimtf.dll" and click OK Next time you reboot, it wont show up.

It's hard to figure whether the Gates/Seinfeld ads ran their course as expected or were they cut short because thy missed the mark expected. Regardless, Microsoft has releases some new, more relevant ads that displays all types of people and their roles as PC users. I'm a PC: Pride I'm a PC: Not Alone I'm a PC: Stereotype The New York Time released an analysis of the Microsoft strategy to combat the Apple TV spots, and they point out that Microsoft isn't the first company to try and take some very bad press and turn it around in their favor. “This is just the beginning, the first phase of the campaign,” said Mich Mathews, senior vice president for marketing at Microsoft. “We’re on a journey to reposition the PC.” Looks as if we may have many more entertaining commercial spots ahead of us.

You may have the need to open and view more than one Outlook Inbox at the same time. Take for example an employee quitting... who's going to monitor his inbox until a replacement is hired? In my office, email support is handled through a shared email account, with designated individuals watching it at various times. Here's how you can add additional inboxes to Outlook, so you do not have to switch back and forth between accounts: Start Outlook Go to Tools | E-mail Accounts... Make sure View or change existing e-mail accounts is marked and click Next Make sure your Microsoft Exchange Server is highlighted and click Change Click More Settings... Click the Advanced tab Click Add Enter the name of the additional inbox you want to add. This is the same name you find in the Outlook Address Book. Click OK -- you may have multiple choices, if the name you gave matches more than one account. If so, select the account you want and click OK , again. Click OK Click Finish Here's a