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Tech Tip of The Week: Turn Off your Display Using a Windows Shortcut and More
Whatever the case may be, setting up a Windows shortcut to turn off your display(s) couldn't be any easier with the help of a small utility called Wizmo.
But the power of Wizmo doesn't stop there. In our weekly tip we will illustrate a single one of this utility's potential uses. Using different commands Wizmo can also put your PC in standby, hibernation, lock your workstation, reboot, open/close your CD drive's tray, set your system's audio level, and even combine the different commands.
Read our Tech Tip of the Week.
User Comments: 25
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Amazing tip! I find windows 7 shutdown menu very uncomfortable and I use computer's main buttons to hibernate and shutdown.
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Puiu said:
I turn off my laptop's monitor to save battery life using Fn+F6 (i also turn of other stuff this way). I want to know if you can program it do these things automatically after x hours/minutes. I use an little program called Chrono shutdown to set my computer to automatically shutdown when i want to.
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If it's only about turning LCDs off, then Taimur ASAD's TurnOffLCDv101 will be your favourite. It shuts down LCD screens and only weighs 69 KB. But I think it may need additional software like .NET framework. I couldn't run it after a fresh XP SP2 install. After I made the updates, it ran like a charm. Here, give it a try:
[link]
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This sounds awesome, there'll be no need to reach for the top of my monitor or for the button on the DVD drive any more
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Thanks for the tip! Will take a look at this as I've been looking for a utility that would allow me to set the volume on a computer. My mother-in-law likes to show kiddy music videos to my 2 year-old daughter, but being partially deaf, she tends to set the volume very high and I'm worried for my daughter... I guess I could use this to magically force the volume down via a remote script. ;-)
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MBK said:
This seems a little pointless to me, I've put shutdown into the default option of my start menu, don't use hibernate and log-off is a stupid default. Only thing I'd want is an automated shutdown at a certain time or after a certain ammount of time. Then again, I don't own a laptop, so it probably would be handy for powersaving where alternative options arn't available.
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Only thing I'd want is an automated shutdown at a certain time or after a certain ammount of time.
Here you go: Marxio Timer
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Awesome! Now I can finally turn off my laptop's screen w/o closing it!
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think i'll stick to using my finger to turn off my 2 monitors thanks. I'm not that fecking lazy!
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I think this would be something you'd be like wow this is cool, and then 10 minutes later be bored with it and uninstall. For a laptop that doesn't have another way to do it without closing it it is pretty sweet...otherwise, I don't think its worth it. What i really need is something to quickly shut down things when my boss comes in the office...like this webpage + make it look like i'm doing something constructive lol.
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Completely useless for me...
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I just got a new switch installed right under my desk to turn off my monitor and speaker and other peripherals etc but keep the system running, and it is much better then this, also there is one specially for speakers, so I can listen to tunes without turning the monitor on.
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This sounds cool at first, but I mean really, when would you use any of those functions?
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ellulbrian said:
Well, at first I thought it was pretty much useless since the montor's power botton is 6inches away from my hand when I'm using the mouse (practically always
) but actually it will serve to preserve the stiffness of the botton loltks anyways
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I love this program! Not only is it lightweight, it's well written and very customizable. Way to go!
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Sounds kinda nifty.
But mostly it does indeed sounds very extremely lazy lol.
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Wizmo FTW along with everything else Steve Gibson has created for the world.. and mostly for FREE as well.
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This is a nice feature for laptops =) but when u use a desktop it not really worth it
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This is a very cool program thanks for the find.It does a great job.I was actually looking for something like this.
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Wagan8r said:
So... if your power button is broken and you turn off your monitor, how do you turn it back on!?!?
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this sounds great! I have a slate pc (a tablet that doesn't have a keyboard) and when I upgraded to windows 7 the "turn off display" function disappeared. Since there's no cover to close I've been looking for a way to turn off the display. thanks!
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so I installed this and it worked on the first try, however when I tried to resume, the monitor flashed on and off repeatedly until I could delete the shortcut. Guess it won't be working for me...
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Works great! Now I can browse at night from my bed without getting out of bed having to manually turn off the monitor.
Haha .. 
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A fantastic mini-addon! Takes a couple minutes to get the jist of programming the shortcut, but the website's screencapture image of the shortcut properties (and a list of suggested commands) is all you need to get started.
What most people here don't understand is that this is perfect for laptops that DON'T have a means of just turning off the display when you KNOW you'll be back in 10 minutes and don't want to wait for the screen or energy saver timers to kick in before the screen is turned off - you want it off NOW. I also like adding the "quiet" command for this because you can see it work, you don't always need audible feedback.
Lastly, in the shortcut properties, I've assigned keyboard shortcuts to run Wizmo's commands. In the field that says "None" by default, click on it once then press a key on your computer. "Ctrl - Alt -" will be added before that letter automatically, and there's your full command! Now all the Wizmo shortucts can live with the parent .exe file to reduce clutter. Thanks to Steve Gibson for developing the utility! --Travis
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Oh wow .... This is great application dude... really good work... small but effecitve...
Thanks (y)for such a nice application.. I m finding this feature from long time...
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