How to download AVG Free edition

True, you can just go to HelpMeRick.com/links and download AVG free edition, here is how to find it on Grisoft’s site.

Dude! Where’s my icons? What to do when all ...

All your icons are gone off of your desktop and you can’t bring them back. It’s an easy fix: 1. Right-click on your desktop 2. Click Arrange Icons By (or something similar depending on your version of Windows) 3. Click Show Desktop Icons Wait a few seconds and all of your icons will come back. If they don’t you should get a Mac or Ubuntu computer. ...

Photoshop Restoration in Elements

Tips and tricks for restoring old photos and removing blemishes digitally Meeting notes from 02-26-08 Tools needed: A good scanner For prints, almost any scanner will do pretty well, but if you are doing small photos, slides or negatives, you will probably want to go with a nicer Epson scanner such as the  Epson Perfection 4490. These scanners offer transparancy scanning for slides and negatives as well as very high...

When the problem isn’t your mouse

I got a call yesterday that I will call There’s Something Wrong with My Mouse. As I have mentioned before in previous phone call transcripts. I do not write this to make fun of the caller or exaggerate the particular problem. Once in a while it is just fun to provide a view of what it’s like to be a roving computer guy, I did not take notes of the actual quotes, but here is a paraphrased version: Caller:...

Help! My laptop has been stolen – No they di...

Before I get a bunch of comments about the news story on the bad guys who were caught, it doesn’t appear to be the same bad guys at the moment. My stuff was not in the initial find and the dates don’t match up. Maybe the bad guys know each other, but until the police contact me with a find, I am assuming that my laptops are still out there. Yes, both my laptops were stolen out of my car last night. One was an...

I use a Mac, therefore I am

Ya, don’t ask me to elaborate too much on the title of this post, I didn’t mean anything too deep by it. I picked up my new/old Mac that a reader gave me. It is an older system, but It does a great job. It’s a dual 867mhz G4 with a gig of RAM, 10GB hard drive and Leopard OS. While it may seem a little dated by Mac standards, it is every bit as fast as my dual core Pentium that I typically run XP on. I...

Toshiba gives up on HD DVD after HelpMeRick.com an...

On February 12, we announced that we are finally taking sides in the Blu-ray/HD DVD war. We announced that we would be endorsing Blu-ray. Our endorsement turned out to be the final blow for Toshiba.  Yesterday Toshiba finally surrendered and declared that they will be stopping all production of HD DVD devices. While Toshiba has not publicly announced that our endorsment was a factor, the timing speaks for itself. ...

Surge protectors provide false sense of security

The power went out in part of town last night. Before 10am this morning I had already received two calls from people who were having problems as a result. This seems to happen every time we have a power outage or severe lightning storm. In most cases the computers were on a surge protector when the power went out. I have even seem a few on expensive battery backup systems. The only way to protect your computer is to unplug it...

Listen to our show ANYTIME – that means righ...

You can listen to any of our shows at any time. This video shows you how!!

I want your old OS X mac

Vista has been the best thing that ever happend to Macintosh. I have setup more Macs in the last six months than I have the entire seven years I am been a computer guy. I love them and they work great. The downside is that I am beginning to get more Mac problems that I don’t know how to solve and I don’t like learning on my client’s dime. So, I need your help. I need your previous Mac. I am not looking to...

HelpMeRick.com endorses Blu-ray

As of today we are declaring the HD disk format war as over. Best Buy and Netflix are now backing Blu-ray. This brings the number of big companies that remain exclusive to HD DVD or remain uncommitted to a format down to a handful. If you are debating over whether to go Blu-ray or HD DVD, there are two schools of thought. You can buy a Blu-ray and prepare for the future or you can buy an HD DVD and buy all of the cheap movies...

What can we teach you today?

Castellini on Computers is so much more than just a website and show, we are men on a mission. To some degree we even let our mission get in the way of our livelihood. While Rick and I own and operate two separate businesses, we are united in the common goal of helping the digitally challenged survive in the digital world. Much of what we have done together in the past has been done for free as a public service. We produce...

Ubuntu/Linux – what’s the big deal?

Rick sent me a link to this site earlier in the week. I think everyone should see it as it does a great job of explaining why the average person should be interested in alternative operating systems. Here’s a link to the site. ...

What is a blog?

I am sure that this isn’t the first article posted on this topic at HelpMeRick.com, but hopefully it will be the most complete. There are three ways to define blogs: As news, as journals and as a ventilation system for people who want to be important. In fact you could easily draw a vin diagram showing how most blogs overlap. Blogs as News: Blogs are websites that allow users to build and post to as easily as they...

Online Photo Editors

Basic photo editing no longer takes special software. You can now do some wonderful things with photos from any computer on almost any browser from anywhere in the world. Online photo editors allow you to edit photos simply by going to a special website. Once fully loaded, these sites let you resize, adjust brightness and contrast, tweak color and even work with layers. While none of these editors are as robust as Photoshop...