How To Rip a Music CD in Windows 7 Media Center ?

If you’re a Media Center user, you already know that it can play and manage your digital music collection. But, did you know you can also rip a music CD in Windows 7 Media Center and have it automatically added to your music library?

Rip a CD in Windows 7 Media Center

Place your CD into your optical drive. From within Windows Media Center, open the Music Library and select the CD.

If you haven’t previously ripped a CD in Windows 7 with either Windows Media Center or Windows Media Player, you’ll be prompted to select whether or not you’d like to add copy protection. Click Next.

By default, your CD will be ripped to .WMA format. The rip settings for Windows Media Center are pulled from Windows Media Player. So to change the rip settings, we’ll need to do so in Media Player. Click Finish.

From within Windows Media Player, click on Tools from Menu bar, and select Options. 

Select the Rip Music tab and choose your output format from the Format drop down list. You can also select the Audio quality (bit rate) by moving the slider bar under Audio quality. Click OK when you are finished.

Now, you are ready to rip your CD. Click on Rip CD.

Click Yes to confirm you want to rip the CD.

You can follow the progress as each track is being converted.

  

When the CD is finished you’re ready to start enjoying your music any time you wish in Windows 7 Media Center. 

Looking for some more tasks you can perform in Media Center with just a remote? Check out our earlier post on How to Crop, Edit, and Print Photos in Windows 7 Media Center?

How to Embed True Type Fonts in Word and PowerPoint 2007 Documents?

If you are the creative type that likes to use custom fonts in your documents or PowerPoint presentations, here is a cool tip to ensure that the readers of your document see the document with the fonts intact, just the way you want it to.

In this example I will use Word, but you can follow the same steps for PowerPoint also.

First, click on the Microsoft Office Button in the upper left hand corner and choose “Word Options”. Select the Save tab on the left.

Under the “Preserve fidelity when sharing this document” section, first choose your document. 

Then check the box for “Embed fonts in the file”, and “Embed only the characters used in the document”. Now when you save that document, the fonts will be embedded for everyone to see.

How to Save Paper by Highlighting and Commenting on PDFs ?

Here’s a little-known fact: There are applications that let you annotate and modify PDF files for free, with no watermarks. This way you can review a document and make your comments without wasting any paper in the process.

Foxit Reader

The application we’ll be using for this quick tutorial is Foxit Reader. This is an alternative PDF reader (alternative to Adobe Reader, that is). It’s fast, lightweight, and free. And most importantly for us, it lets you annotate documents.

For starters, download and install Foxit Reader. Then use it to open a PDF document you’d like to annotate. If installing Foxit Reader doesn’t make it the default application for opening PDF files on your system, you can right click the PDF and select Foxit Reader under Open With:

Once the file is open, click View > Toolbars > Commenting Tools.

The commenting toolbar lets you annotate the document in seven different ways:

You can underline words, highlight them, underline with squiggly lines (possibly to mark typos), cross text out,  add a “replace” mark for text you wish to change and add floating sticky notes.

You can also double-click any such marking (underline, squiggly line, etc.) to open up a note where you can type a longer explanation. This is optional, so if the other side would understand what you’re trying to communicate even without a verbose note, you might want to omit it.

By clicking the Options link on each note you can set its status, mark it with a checkmark and more. You can also change its color by clicking Open Properties.

The comments you make in the documents are readable with Adobe’s own Reader – the other side does not need to have Foxit Reader installed to read them (though they would need Foxit Reader or Adobe Reader Professional if they wish to reply).

How to Secure Your Private Word 2007 Documents?

If you are worried about sensitive data in your Microsoft Word document you can both encrypt and password protect the document to keep it secure. This feature is very useful if you have to store your documents in a shared location, such as a network folder or home computer.

To encrypt your document, click on the Microsoft Office Button in the upper left hand corner, select Prepare from the left-hand menu and then choose Encrypt Document.

In the Encrypt Document dialog window type in your password for this document.

You will then need to enter in your password again for verification and click OK. You will not receive any type of confirmation message, this window will simply disappear.

By default Windows Office Word 2007 will save your document with 128-bit advanced encryption.  Now when anyone goes to open the document it will automatically ask for the password.

That’s all there is to it.