Transferring LP’s and Cassettes to CD

One of my customer's today was using an older Windows 98 machine to try and transfer LP's to her computer so she could then burn CD's. I will have some links at the end of this article for products that help perform this feat, but first I want to put into perspective the time involved: The average song is 4 minutes long. By the time you adjust levels, start and restart the song and then end the song to get it...

Should You Leave Your Computer On or Shut it off?

Ah, the age old question about our computers. Since computers came into the home, users have asked; 'should I turn it off or leave it on?' I'm going to try and not muddy the waters any more than they already are in this short article. I will share some facts and some opinions in this article that will help you make the decision for yourself. First, let me say that there is no definitive answer on this subject...

Retouching Photos

Touching up your photos Before you begin touching up your photo, you should decide what size you want to print it and what programs you are going to use to do the job. There are several tutorial sites out there that will help you learn how to do basic touch ups but the true techniques must be learned first hand using lots of practice. There are the basic tools you will use: l Clone tool: This is my favorite...

Photo Restoration

Digital Photo Restoration Restoring old photos is one of the coolest things you can do in digital photography. The best part is that anyone can do it. All it takes is a scanner and a nice image editing program. Important Photo Restoration Tools There are many several tools that you just can't do without when it comes to restoring photos. Cloning tool This is my favorite tool. Depending on the program it may go by ...

Organizing and Backing Up Photos

Getting organized: The best way to get your photos organized is to start with a system that works for you. My system is to create a single folder for all my digital photos on my hard drive. Inside that folder, called "Digital Pictures," I place a sub-folder for each month of the year. In each month's folder I may place more folders for each activity held during that month. For example: Digital Photos...

Future proofing your new PC

We have talked at length about the upcoming Windows Vista on our show and eluded to it here on the site. Microsoft says that it will come out in the first quarter of 2007 which leaves us about six months give or take. Adam and I had our first look at Vista during this year's Consumer Electronic Show (CES). We weren't impressed. Since then, I have read many Vista articles, reviews, blogs and even downloaded the beta...

Maybe I should run a backup today

I spent much of my day working with a client who had lost everything on his hard drive. The motor died. We checked with a couple of data recovery services on the web and one said it would cost $1100 to recover, the other said the price would start at $599 (lowest possible estimate). I have seen clients lose important information before and it is heart breaking, but it was what my client said later that I think is of...

Creating Data and Music CD’s – July 20...

Creating Data CD's How Stuff Works articl on how CD Burning works . And a second article from them specific to CDR disks . Windows XP aims to help simplify the process and does a reasonably good job at it. Here's how to burn a CD with Windows XP: Go to the folder containing the files you want to copy to a CD (usually My Documents) Find the files or folders you want to copy and RIGHT click on them (remember...

New Computer Specs

Computer prices continue to drop and get more powerful. I answer the question, "What should I buy?", many times every week. The answer seems to change about every six months. Today, I’m going to list my advice that should hold for at least six months: Primary use is Internet, email, small games, and word processing: Any processor 512MB of RAM Any size hard drive Mimimum CDRW Drive Primary use is...

How to burn a CD or DVD in Linux

Paul from Texas called today and wanted to know how to burn a CD or DVD in Linux. We aren’t big Linux (an alternative operating system) users so we found a web site to use that explains how to do it:  Linux Tutorial  

Picasa 2 Revisited

We discussed Picasa 2 late last year, but since then I have discovered many more wonderful things that can be done with the program. In fact, I now use it more often than any other program for my day-to-day digital photography. HOW TO GET PICASA: 1. Either click on this button, or go to www.picasa.com and click on the Free Download button. 2. After downloading, install the program by double-clicking on the Picasa icon...

MSCONFIG: These items are unneccessary

We talk about the Microsoft Configuration Utility (msconfig) so much, that we have a t-shirt available for it in our store. Msconfig is accessed by: Click Start Click Run Type:   msconfig Click OK Once in the utility, you want to click the "Startup" tab. Here is a list of some the programs that can be safely unchecked. After doing so, click OK, and restart the computer as instructed and your computer...

DVD Burners

Seeing all the blank DVD’s and CD’s in a store can confuse a computer user. And with most computers shipping with a DVD-ROM over the past four or so years, it is even more confusing. And to make matters even more difficult, many CD/DVD-ROM manufacturers have black fronts with black text! Yikes that’s hard to read. One of my customer’s today assumed that his laptop had a DVD burner because it could...

I always have my tools with me

Most computer problems have nothing to do with the mechanics of the computer. It is rare that I see a motherboard die, RAM go bad, a video card burn out or a power supply fail. Almost all computer problems are software related. Among the hundreds of millions of lines of programming code, a few 1s and 0s crash together and things go screwy. Whether it is a programming glitch or the problem is caused by an intentionally...

Blood relation does not equal computer expertise

A few years ago, I added two items to my list of common advice that I give. 1. Don’t let your kids fix your computer, no matter how old they are or who they work for. 2. Blood relation does not equal computer expertise. I know that this makes me sound arrogant at times, but my first appointment this morning was a case in point. It was a simple enough job, I was to setup a laptop and get it online. My client didn’t...