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How to make a single page landscape in Word

Dave Farquhar Office, Software November 19, 2011March 28, 20231990s, microsoft word, Page Layout

Can I make one page landscape in Word? Yes you can. In Microsoft Word, it’s not difficult, but it’s anything but obvious. Here’s how to make a single page landscape in Word. It takes three steps.

This is useful when the document contains an image that’s wider than it is tall, and you need to make it fill the page to make it easier to see.

There are buttons on the ribbon to switch between portrait and landscape. But they switch the whole document, not your selection or the page you’re on. I’m sure you have already tried that. Here’s how to switch it for part of the document.
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Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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Steve Jobs and the Commodore PET

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing November 5, 2011October 11, 20171980s, 1990s, 6502, amiga, amiga os, apple, apple ii, Chuck Peddle, commodore, commodore 64, intel, irving gould, jack tramiel, KIM, macintosh, Mehdi Ali, MOS, motorola, pixar, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, tape drive, Texas Instruments

There’s a nasty rumor floating around that in Walter Isaacson’s bestselling biography, Steve Jobs, Jobs alleges that Commodore copied the Apple II when making its first computer, 1977’s PET. Here’s the story of Steve Jobs and the Commodore PET.

The book doesn’t come right out and say it, but it insinuates it. I know how the PET came to be, and the PET would have happened whether the Apple II ever existed or not.
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Dave Farquhar

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Microsoft: No x86 apps for ARM

Dave Farquhar Hardware September 19, 2011April 2, 20251990s, acer, amd, ancestor, android, apple, DEC, IBM, intel, Intel Atom, IOS, power savings, Token Ring, unix, vista, windows 2000, windows 7, windows 8, windows me, windows nt, x86

So, The Register reports that Windows on ARM will not have compatibility with apps compiled for x86. Intel has been saying this for a while, while Microsoft has been mum. So now we know.

There are arguments both for and against having an x86 emulation layer.
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Dave Farquhar

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PC Magazine’s sub-$200 PC

Dave Farquhar Hardware September 5, 2011January 31, 20221990s, amd, asus, firefox, intel, kingston, Micro Center, Open Office, pc magazine, phenom, recycling, ubuntu, Ubuntu Linux, Western Digital

PC Magazine has reprised its sub-$200 PC. I think it’s a good guide, and a savvy shopper can potentially do a little bit better with some care and some luck. At that price, it’s running Linux, but it also serves as a good guide for upgraders looking to upgrade an existing PC inexpensively. If you have a case and hard drive you can reuse, you can either buy better parts, or just pocket the savings.

Here’s my take on their selections.

Dave Farquhar

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And now it’s Apple’s turn

Dave Farquhar Macintosh August 25, 2011January 3, 20251980s, 1990s, Andy Grove, apple, Bill Gates, erector, intel, mac os x, macintosh, os x, pixar, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney

It’s been a weird month for technology. And as always, Apple had a way to get people to stop talking about anything else, though it’s not the news Apple wanted do deliver this week. I can only think of one bit of news Apple would want to deliver less.

Steve Jobs is stepping down as CEO. He’s becoming chairman, but perception is everything. Especially with Apple. I don’t think any company in recent memory has leveraged perception the way Apple has.

Dave Farquhar

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Lenovo and IBM look back at IBM’s PC exit

Dave Farquhar Hardware August 19, 2011December 12, 20241980s, 1990s, asus, AT&T, compaq, dell, hp, IBM, lenovo, lexmark, thinkpad, web os

The Register reports that Lenovo is gloating over its purchase of IBM’s PC division and its turnaround efforts, while IBM doesn’t regret pulling out, at all, even going so far as to call the PC dead. Who’s right?

Lenovo. Though IBM was right to get out–but the PC is only as dead as the television. Old media doesn’t go away quickly. Radio was supposed to make newspapers go away, and it’s only now, 90 years later, that newsprint is hurting. The old stuff adapts and evolves and finds new uses. Some people argue that if newspapers were managed better, they wouldn’t be hurting, but that’s a different issue. Let’s talk IBM PCs.
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Dave Farquhar

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Milestone! I’ve been pirated!

Dave Farquhar Personal, Writing August 16, 20111990s, malware, windows 8, windows 9x, windows nt

In searching for the abstract of my book, I found more than I expected: What appeared to be a pirated PDF copy of the book in its entirety. What’s worse is that it appeared #1 in Google’s search. Numbers 2 and 3 were various pages on my site, #4 was my Wikipedia profile page, #5 was O’Reilly’s page, and #6 was Amazon’s page. So it’s easier to download a pirated copy of my book than it is to buy it. (It’s $2.03 at Amazon right now. Maybe I should buy some copies.)

I’m having trouble deciding whether that bothers me. The likelihood of me ever making another 25 cents off that book is slim. There was some talk at one time of releasing the book under some kind of Creative Commons license, but I never received the paperwork so I guess they changed their mind. As far as I know, it’s still under copyright.

And the copyright doesn’t belong to me, so ultimately it’s not up to me. I wrote it, but O’Reilly owns the copyright. So I e-mailed O’Reilly to ask them if they care.
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Dave Farquhar

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Happy birthday, IBM PC!

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Retro Computing August 12, 2011December 24, 20251980s, 1990s, amd, apple, apple ii, commodore, commodore 64, compaq, dell, Gary Kildall, hp, IBM, intel, lenovo, macintosh, Maxtor, pc magazine, Personal Computer, radio shack

The IBM PC 5150 turns 30 today.

IBM didn’t invent the personal computer, but if your computer has an Intel or AMD CPU in it, it’s the direct descendant of the beige box IBM unleashed on the world on August 12, 1981. Without a huge amount of effort, it’s even possible to run most of that old software on your shiny new PC. You probably wouldn’t want to, except out of curiosity, but you can do it.

I wasn’t one of the people who rushed out and got one. At the time, I was still watching Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. I had my first experience with a computer–a Radio Shack TRS-80–in 1982, and the first computer my family bought was a Commodore 64 in 1984. Even in 1984, there were still plenty of people who questioned why anyone needed a computer in their home. My introduction to the IBM PC and PC-DOS didn’t happen until 1987.
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Dave Farquhar

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Tom’s Hardware asks: Is an SSD the best upgrade for a slightly old PC?

Dave Farquhar Hardware August 11, 2011July 15, 20171990s, building a pc, excel, jmicron, windows 7

Not surprisingly, they find the answer is yes. Specifically, that a PC equipped with an SSD gets about a 30% across-the-board performance increase.

I don’t agree with everything Tom’s Hardware say in the conclusion, namely, that it’s pointless to put an SSD in a netbook. Indeed, when you put an SSD in a netbook, you get several benefits: improved latency, improved battery life, and much faster boot/resume times, all of which are useful.
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Dave Farquhar

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Tradeoffs at the low end: Cores or Cache?

Dave Farquhar Hardware August 4, 20111990s, amd, benchmark, building a pc, math coprocessor, phenom

I’m looking at building myself a new PC for the first time in years. That’s a little bit of a misnomer though. Today, building a PC can mean bolting as few as two components into a case and connecting four cables. Building PCs in the 1990s was a lot more difficult. I remember in 1994, during one of my first builds, someone walking past in the hall, looking at the mess of cards and cables, and asking, “How do you know which one goes where?”

Today, the assembly is pretty easy. Figuring out what to buy is harder. In 1994, the differences between the various flavors of 386 and 486 chips available was confusing, but it all fit on an index card. Mainly the difference came down to the amount of memory the chip could address (386) and whether it had a math coprocessor (486). Beyond that all you really had to worry about was clock speed. Back then the research took 30 minutes and the system took hours to build.

Today there are two chip manufacturers (down from four) but they both have half a dozen product lines. And nobody really talks about clock speed anymore. That’s fine because clock speed was a crude measure of performance, but is throwing numbers like 560 or 840 or 965 on the chips really any better? Today the research takes hours (if not days) and the system goes together in about 5 minutes. Shake the bag right and it could just come out of the bag fully assembled.
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Dave Farquhar

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