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Posts Tagged: Firefox

Another plea for you to use Mozilla Firefox

photo credit: khoogheem

Over the past six months, the spyware problems infiltrating both Windows XP and Vista has become almost mythical. Spyware is the junk that gets into your computer and slows it down, prevents antivirus software from doing its job, halts Windows updates, can disable your CDROM and/or USB drives, and much more. The vast majority of it turns out to be self-induced. By self-induced, I mean that the user willingly downloaded ring tones, free music, free wallpaper, screensavers, registry cleaners, or other junk software. Even with the best security software on the planet installed on your computer system, agreeing to install junk software circumvents your security and the problems begin.

How can you prevent it? First start by protecting your system properly with the tools I have listed on every page here at HelpMeRick.com. You will find them in Continue reading →

The spell checker in Firefox works everywhere!

Firefox Spell Checker

If you are a Mozilla Firefox user, and you should be, you may be overlooking one of its greatest features…the built-in spell checker. It works on any web page, in any text box you need to enter text. Look for any words that have a red, squiggly line underneath them for misspelled words. To correct the word, RIGHT click one time on the underlined word, then click the proper spelling from the list of suggestions. If you need a spell check in smaller text box like an email subject, you might need to RIGHT click in the text box, then click Check Spelling from the menus to force a spell check for that text box

Internet Tips / Riding Shotgun with Rick — No Comments
28
Jan 09

Remember the tabs!

Every day I make my appointed computer help rounds, someone marvels at my use of browser tabs. Tabbed browsing started almost 9 years ago with the Opera browser and continues today with the excellent implementation in Firefox. Internet Explorer finally got on board a couple of years ago and tabs work ok with it too.

If you are not using tabs in your Internet browsing, then you really aren’t browsing, your floundering around the Internets. Learn to use tabs, you can do it. Use my video tutorial (click here) to learn this helpful and time saving technique that will change the way you look and use the web.

Riding Shotgun with Rick — 17 Comments
11
Jan 09

Windows 7 – First Impressions

Windows 7 Desktop

I just finished installing the Windows 7 Beta version released by Microsoft on Friday. I installed it on my Toshiba Intel dual-core processor with 4 GB of RAM. It was running Windows Vista which took more than 4 minutes to fully boot (I consider the boot up process to be finished when the hard drive stops spinning and I don’t have to compete with a still booting computer to do what I want to do), and running any applications was like walking through molasses. I can say that my expectations were pretty low, but I am pleasantly surprised…so far.

It took exactly 21 minutes from when I inserted the install DVD until I reached a workable desktop. Very impressive! The setup was painless and required very little input. In fact, it was so easy, I think that the folks at Microsoft must have taken a page out of the Linux/Ubuntu installs. It was easily the fastest and easiest install of any version of Windows. I hope it doesn’t change much with the final version.
Bootup time is faster than Vista too. With my fresh install of Windows 7 and no security software, boot time was just under 2 minutes.
Overall, the new OS feels snappy and clean. I haven’t seen any User Account Control (UAC) pop-ups yet.
On my Toshiba laptop, like Linux, I didn’t have to install a single driver. Once the quick install finished, my wireless, Ethernet, sound, video, SD card, and web cam all worked perfectly.
Microsoft has revamped and simplified the wireless connectivity…again very Ubuntuish in my opinion.
This beta version of Windows 7 also includes the new Internet Explorer 8 which doesn’t feel much different than 8, but is supposed to be more compatible and flexible than 7. I will test it a little, but still prefer Firefox. I will probably install Google Chrome as well to see how it runs in Windows 7.
The revamped Start menu has a new feature that when you hover on a recently used program it will also present to you your most recently used documents for that program. Nice.
The taskbar has also been changed, but I need to work with it some more before deciding exactly how those features affect uability and productivity.
I plan on installing AVG or Avast antivirus and OpenOffice to test them and will report more about speed and usability.

I’m writing this article and took the two screenshots in Windows 7 using the Snipping Tool introduced with Vista. I did use picnik.com to edit the photos, however, since the updated Paint program, although it does have a new Crop and Resize feature, the resize feature doesn’t have much flexibility.

Stay tuned for more articles about Windows 7 leading up to its release later this year, or early next year. If there are questions YOU have about Windows 7, leave a comment below and I will test them out for you.

Windows 7 taskbar

Riding Shotgun with Rick — 5 Comments
18
Dec 08

Thwarted by online poker

Today marked my second Linux/Ubuntu casualty in almost 2 dozen attempts. As I’ve learned more about Ubuntu the past couple of years, I carefully selected clients who would have little problems dealing with a non-Microsoft operating system.

You may have read my take on Ubuntu usage for the average computer user before, but here it is again to setup the rest of the story: I believe that any computer users who uses only email, word processing, Internet, digital photography, and maybe a solitaire or mahjong like game can function perfectly and happily in Ubuntu. Those who need proprietary Windows programs or like to buy and try out different types of software will not do well with Ubuntu.

OK, that being said, I consulted on the purchase of an Acer mini-desktop about 2 weeks ago from a local big box. It had a fast AMD processor, 4 GB of RAM, and a 320 GB hard drive and of course pre-loaded with Vista. I took the system home and booted into Windows to create the restore DVD set just in case. To fully boot into Vista took approximately 3:30. At initial boot, it took the computer nearly 19 minutes to finish whatever a Vista computer has to finish when you first take it out of the box.

After completing the DVD recovery set, I inserted my Ubuntu 8.10 CD and restarted the system. Literally 15 minutes later I was browsing the web in Ubuntu after the install CD wiped the hard drive, installed itself, shut down and rebooted. Later I timed the Ubuntu startup time: 49 seconds.

Anyway, the folks who I setup this computer for could not play online poker with Ubuntu. After some quick research, the service they use (I forgot which one), is the ONLY online poker service that needs a Windows download. I could have installed and configured the poker service to work under Wine in Ubuntu, bud didn’t. After hearing that “everything is different”, and they wanted to install Windows based software that was never mentioned before today, I inserted the first Vista recovery CD and showed them how to finish it up. They brought the computer back to the big box for a refund and ordered a Dell with XP and probably spent twice as much as the Acer.

My first Ubuntu failure was a couple of years ago and ended because the woman missed her AOL software and didn’t like using AOL web mail in Firefox. Being approximated 21 for 23 on my Ubuntu converts isn’t bad, and is actually kind of humorous that the two defeats were at the hands of AOL and online poker.

Internet Tips / Riding Shotgun with Rick — 4 Comments
16
Dec 08

Switch TODAY!

Just say NO to IE On my way out the door today, I came across this article outlining one of the largest security breaches yet with Internet Explorer. I have been recommending for years that you switch to Mozilla Firefox. Today, I’m taking a harder line and recommending that you should never use Internet Explorer except in the extremely rare instance where a site truly requires Internet Explorer (IE) to run properly. For your safety and the safety of all of us connected to the Internet, please download and use either Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.

Internet Tips / Macintosh / Ubuntu Tips — 1 Comment
9
Dec 08

Pandora Internet Radio – Video Tip

Pandora.com qualifies for yet another Web 2.0 application. Pandora started as a project to find the similarities in music and why we like certain music and why we don’t. The Pandora folks eventually made all their study of music into an amazingly customizable and accurate music service. To sign up is free although I recommend paying for the service if you use it a lot. Once you sign up, you start by building your own radio stations based on your favorite songs or artists. After you build your first station, Pandora starts to play songs related to the song or artist you started with when you built the radio station (which entails that you simply type the name of a musical artist or a song name and click Create).

As the songs play, if you tell Pandora whether you like the selection or not (via a click on a thumbs up or thumbs down icon), it will continue to more accurately pick music for you. You must see the short video below to see how it works, and better yet, give it a try to see why it is such an exciting and useful Web 2.0 application!

Riding Shotgun with Rick / Videocasts — 6 Comments
30
Nov 08

Rick’s Answers his email Videocast – 022

Questions about converting to Firefox, malfunctioning keyboards, Wordpress consulting, Norton 360 problems, video editing, the Magic Jack phone, and more are brought to you by Dixie, Kitty, Jill, Anne, Diane, Elaine, Amber, Norma, Rich and Mike! Have a look!!