A couple of years ago I wrote about Reginald and Florence. On my Windows 98 computer, they were the dinosaurs I had marching across my screen indicating that my computer was up to something. I stared at them instead of the boring old hourglass (see Fun with Pointers). When my computer was doing something in the background, Florence, the yellow dinosaur cursor ambled along. When the computer was busy, Reginald the blue dinosaur appeared.
I have to confess that when I moved to my current Windows XP computer, I actually missed Reginald and Florence. I had copied their cursor files from my husband’s Windows NT machine, so I figured I’d have to go through all that again to move them onto my new computer. That seemed way too hard, so I never got around to it. So for many months, I have continued to stare at the dumb hourglass.
Recently, I discovered that it’s really easy to change the Windows XP mouse pointers and my favorite dinosaurs are now included as one of the built-in options you can select. How cool!
To check out new pointers, choose Start|Settings|Control Panel and double click the Mouse icon. In the Mouse Properties dialog box, click the Pointers tab. Use the Scheme drop-down to select a new pointer scheme from the list. As you might imagine, Reginald and Florence are part of the Dinosaur scheme. Click Apply to try out the pointers first and when you find a set you like, click OK to make the change.