Reginald and Florence are a fun aspect of my computing experience. When my computer is doing something in the background, I can tell because my little yellow dinosaur cursor named Florence is marching along. Reginald the blue dinosaur appears when the computer is just plain busy. Watching a dinosaur romp as Photoshop grinds away on some mammoth file more interesting than staring at the plain ol’ hourglass.
Changing pointers isn’t difficult and it can add some fun to otherwise tedious tasks. So if you are sick of the same dull arrow or the hourglass, change your mouse pointers. Assuming you installed the extra cursors from the Windows installation CD, you can choose from everything from fruit to musical instruments.
To find out what pointers you have available, click the Start button, choose Settings, then Control Panel. Double-click the Mouse icon and click the Pointers tab. You’ll see all the pointers that your computer is currently using for different tasks. Highlight the pointer you want to change and click the Browse button. Choose a new pointer, click Open and it appears in the list. Click the Apply button. Repeat the process for the other pointers you want to change. If you decide you can’t stand that much action on your desktop, go back to the pointers list, select a pointer, and click the Use Default button to restore the pointer to the original.
If you find that you don’t have any extra cursors, it means you didn’t install them when you installed Windows. To add them, put your Windows CD in the drive and go to Control Panel again. Double-click Add/Remove Programs and click the Windows Setup tab. From the list in the dialog box, double-click Accessories and select Mouse Pointers. Then click OK twice and wait while Windows installs the pointers.
For even more cursor fun, try out our cursors! (See below.) After you download them, you just put the files in your WindowsCursors folder.
After all, given that you are inevitably going to have to wait for your computer to do stuff, you may as well be entertained.