Review | Castellini on Computers - Computer help for beginners

Posts Tagged: review

Yet another feature yanked from the NEW Microsoft Office 2007

While working with a small business client today, they asked how to insert a picture into a Word document from their scanner. “Oh, that’s an easy one”, I said to myself. Then I realized they were using the new Office 2007.

In all previous versions of Microsoft Word and other word processor worth their weight, you follow these steps to insert a picture from a scanner into a document:

Click Insert from the menus
Click Picture –> From Scanner or Camera
Use your scanner software to select and scan the item you want and it instantly appears in the document

I looked for the same feature in Word 2007, and it wasn’t there. I immediately clicked to the Help menu in Word and searched for scanner. The first item in the search results (from Microsoft…not on the web) was: “Where did the Insert Picture from Scanner feature go”? Clicking the item reveals this fun fact from Microsoft:

The From Scanner or Camera option for adding pictures to a document is not available in Microsoft Office Word 2007. Instead, you can add pictures from your camera or scanner by downloading the pictures to your computer first and then copying them from your computer into Word.

Wow! Great job Microsoft…let’s take away features that are useful and have been around for years and add features and interfaces that decrease our productivity! Thanks.

Now let’s go through the steps to Insert a picture from a scanner into a Word 2007 document:

Click Start
Click All Programs
Click the Windows Photo Gallery application
Click File from the menus
Click Import from Scanner or Camera
Click the name of your scanner
Click Import
Click Preview button to see your scan
Click Scan when ready
Add keywords to your scan
Click OK
Close Windows Photo Gallery
Start Microsoft Word
Click the Insert tab from the Word Ribbon
Click the Picture button
Navigate to where the scan was saved (usually Pictures –> then a folder named with the date you scanned the picture)
Double-click the pictures
After you finish with your Word document, remember to go back and delete the scan because you didn’t really want to save it…just insert it into a Word document!

Woo hoo!! A brand new program that has already decreased my productivity by moving items around and making me hunt for features I could find in a second on older versions and taken away tried and true drop down menus has now taken away a feature that for more than 12 years could be accomplished in 3-4 steps and turned it into an 18 step feature! I challenge anyone reading this to show me how this is in-any-way-shape-or-form progress?

AVG Antivirus 8.0 Upgrade Advice

The past few days calls and emails started filtering in about the new AVG 8.0 version folks have seen appear on their free versions of AVG Antivirus. The common query is, “Should I upgrade?”

No, home users of AVG Antvirus do not need to upgrade at all. The current free version of AVG will continue to be updated and as it has been for years. The new 8.0 version is the newest commercial product from AVG Technologies (they changed their name from Grisoft last week).

As much as we like AVG Antivirus and their anti-spyware product, we don’t like their full Internet Security package. Like all the other all-inclusive security packages from Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro, etc, the AVG Internet Security product packs in too much software that will decrease the performance of your system. If you like the Swiss Army approach, it is probably the best of these types of packages, but we prefer you select your security packages a la carte.

To review our security recommendations for Windows home users, we recommend:

AVG Antivirus Free Edition
Mozilla Firefox (or Opera) web browser (don’t use Internet Explorer)
Keep the Windows Firewall enabled
Use a router with high speed Internet connections
If you use Outlook, Thunderbird, or Outlook Express, there is nothing better than Cloudmark Desktop to fight email spam
IF you have teenagers (or immature adults) who use your system regularly, add SpyBot Search & Destroy and the AVG AntiSpyware product to the mix and update and scan at least weekly.

Links to all these products can be found on our Links & Resources page.

Riding Shotgun with Adam — 4 Comments
17
Mar 08

Home is where the Wii is

Tonight we had our weekly family night and as the activity part of the evening we made the kids guess what we were doing.

We gave clues like “We (wii) think you will have a lot of fun tonight,” or “We (wii) bet you can’t guess what we are doing,” and “We have already given you the answer in the clues.” They went crazy trying to guess until my daughter said sarcastically, “Oh, I bet we are playing wii.”

They were shocked when we took out the wii.

It was fun to see even our youngest going nuts playing the game. I will join Vinny in posting a review of the wii in the coming days. So far it is a huge success with the kids.

You may wonder why I don’t capitalize wii. Simple, it’s one of those words that just doesn’t look right capitalized.

Here’s a video of my kids playing wii tonight. I filmed it with my Palm Centro, so excuse the less than HD quality.

Riding Shotgun with Rick — 8 Comments
28
Jan 08

Do you use or are you interested in Online Backup?

I wrote about backup last week, I know. But already this year, I’ve seen at least a dozen computer users (many of them running businesses) who either don’t backup at all or have no clue how to backup their important data.

Adam mentioned that he will start using and testing the heavily advertised Carbonite online backup system and post a review soon. I started using Xdrive (an AOL company) again tonight to test how it works compared to when I used it a little 3 or so years ago. Xdrive provides 5 GB of storage for free. After I test Xdrive for awhile, I think I will try and review Mozy and Box.net next.

For those who have heard my plea for you to backup, I’m curious if you are interested in online backup or if you are currently using online backup? Leave a comment below and tell me what your thoughts are regarding online backup, or backup in general.

DP & the Internet / Riding Shotgun with Adam — No Comments
23
Jan 08

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 Elements, they are great for doing basic adjustments especially when working on a computer that is not your own.

Splashup – an excellent photo editor that looks a lot like Photoshop Elements or Corel Paint Shop Pro. It is lacking in any real advanced features, but what it does have it does well. This is the best online editor for people who are used to working with commercial image editing software.

Picnik – an extremely simple image editor that is setup very well for people who are new to image editing. Picnik doesn’t do anything very fancy, but it loads fast and is great for quick tasks like making an image ligher or cropping a photo.

FotoFlexer – touted as the world’s most advanced photo editor, this service appears to live up to its name. FotoFlexer offers the usual basic fixes but then adds on a dozen or more special effects that are likely not offered by any other single online editor. The Interface of FotoFlexer is also broken up into easy categories so finding the right tool is fairly simple given how complex the site is.

Google search for online editing – I found the above site and many more by searching for “online photo editor” in Google.

You can use any of these programs without setting up an account, but to get all of the features offered including online storage of works in progress. Setting up an account is simple for each of the reviewed programs. Typically all you need is a user name, password, email address and a secret question.

General Computer Tips / Riding Shotgun with Rick — 3 Comments
22
Jan 08

Backup…yes, again

I’m late in writing my daily Shotgun report because I have four computers sitting in my office in various forms of failure. Fortunately, at some expense to the owners, I was able to extract some valuable data from two of the machines. The other two machines didn’t fair as well and nothing was salvageable.

Today’s lesson? BACKUP!!!!!!!

I just searched HelpMeRick.com and found no less than 15 articles and tips directly related to backing up your valuable data. In today’s computing world, backing up your data takes less time and money than ever before. And since our computers hold so much valuable data for us today, backing up your data should be paramount for all of us to avoid the catastrophe that can and usually does hit all of us with these imperfect machines.

Currently, I use an external hard drive for my automatic daily backup, but I burn those files to DVD’s once per month to make sure they don’t only live on movable, breakable media like hard drives. I set up my daily backup over a year ago with the easy and inexpensive Second Copy backup program.

Since then, I haven’t had to worry about that part of my backup regime…only my monthly backups to DVD’s using my DVD burning program.

This week, I plan to put together a video tip on using Second Copy backup to add to the plethora of backup tips we have posted here for YOU at HelpMeRick.com. Also, my goal for the first quarter of 2008 is to test the many online backup systems and review them here as well.

Please help yourselves and use these tips to protect yourself and your data. Also, be a good neighbor and forward our backup tips to friends and family who also have precious digital data they need to backup.

Email Tips — 6 Comments
20
Dec 07

Backup Your Email Address Book – Video Tip

You can back up your address book very simply to a floppy disk or USB Flash drive and the heartache it has the potential to prevent far outweighs the thirty seconds it takes to complete the task. Follow these steps depending on the program you use:

Outlook Express Windows Mail Users

Insert USB Flash Drive
Start Outlook Express
Click the Address Book icon from the toolbar.
Click File –> Export –> Other Address Book from the menus
Choose the Text (CSV) option
Click Next
Click in the Save In box and choose your flash drive
Type “address book backup” in the File name box
Click Save
Click OK after backup completes
Pull out your disk, label it and keep it someplace safe

Windows Mail Users(Vista)

Insert USB Flash Drive
Start Windows Mail
Click File –> Export –> Windows Contacts from the menus
Choose CSV option
Click Export
Click in the Browse button and choose your flash drive
Type “address book backup” in the File name box
Click Save
Click Next
Put a checkmark in the First and Last Name fields
Click Finish
Click OK after backup completes
Pull out your disk, label it and keep it someplace safe

Thunderbird Users

Insert a USB Flash Drive
Start Thunderbird
Click Window –> Address book from the menus
Click File –> Export
Click in the Save In box and choose your flash drive
Type “address book backup” in the File name box
Click Save
Pull out the disk, label it and keep it someplace safe

AOL Users

Version less than 6.0, Start AOL, open the address book, insert a floppy or USB flash drive and use the “Save/Replace” button to save your address book.

Versions greater than 6.0 do not have the option of saving to a floppy because the address book is actually saved on AOL’s computers.

Juno Users

Refer to the instructions at Juno’s web site for details if you are using Juno 5.0 or earlier. Juno Platinum users can retrieve email in Outlook Express and use the instructions above.

Riding Shotgun with Adam — 4 Comments
6
Nov 07

Dell 3110cn the best color printer on the market

I have been using the Dell 3110cn color laster printer for 10 months now and I must say that it is amazing. I just checked the stats tonight and we have printed over 1000 pages per month 10,480 to be exact.

During that time we have put $100 worth of toner into it. Currently our black cartridge is at 40 percent, cyan and magenta are at 80 percent and yellow is at 60 percent. The black is the cartridge that we replaced previously. Let’s do some math. A nice durable ink jet printer costs roughly $150. A set of ink tanks costs about $60. Every 700 pages a $30 cartridge needs to be replaced. Color cartridges may go out sooner.

Most users go through about 5000 sheets per year. Between color and black, it is not unusual for an ink jet user to pay out $210 in ink for an economical ink jet and even more if you have an Epson, newer HP or older Canon. Heaven help you if you have a Lexmark that takes $45 cartridges.

Adding the cost of ink and printer, you will likely spend at least $950 combined ink and printer cost in the first four years. Most estimates are much higher than this. The average costs used by many online reviews for ink jet printers is $60 per 700-1000 sheets. If this figure is more accurate that you can almost double the costs mentioned above. True you can save some money by doing refills, but refills typically last about 50-75 percent less time than name brand.

Now for my Dell 3110cn. We paid $500 for the printer and 10,000 sheets we have put $100 worth of ink into it. We can see that in the coming 6-8 months we will need to put another $200 into it for yellow and black toner. It is possible that we could print for two straight years before the cyan and magenta need replaced. Over the course of 4 years we will likely put $800-900 into this printer. That counts the price of the printer.

Back to the ink jet. The $210 figure per year used above was extremely conservative while my laser estimates are likely too high. How about a comparison in quality. Lasers are not the best for photos, but ink jets are far more expensive than taking the photos to a lab. Laser prints are more archival and much more professional looking. The 3110cn is also extremely fast. I barely click the print button before the print is coming out of the printer. Even with the optional duplexer the prints happen almost instantaneously.

I highly recommend the 3110cn.

Riding Shotgun with Rick — No Comments
1
Nov 07

ASUS Eee Laptop PC released today

Remember how excited I was yesterday when I talked about the $199 PC from WalMart? Well, I’m equally excited today with the official release of the ASUS Eee Laptop starting at $299!

This little gem promises to unleash a whole new genre of what I want to call Internet Appliances 2.0. I’m hoping to get my hands on a review unit soon, but in the mean time, read this thoroughly written article from Dave Altavia at hothardware.com.