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word processing

The $399 Power Computer

Last week, I was charged with finding a computer for a customer who only wanted it for Internet, email, and word processing. He didn’t want to add any games, extra programs, or anything else to it. My first thought, as I was listening to his needs, was Ubuntu. One other request was not to break the bank on cost. Lastly, he told me that he would be hooked up to a high speed cable Internet service.

Upon talking a little more, I explained my idea bout an Ubuntu Linux machine. He asked, “Does it do Internet? Email?” I said, “Yes.” He agreed that it sounded fine to him.

Living online with your applications and data

Here I go again talking about online applications and data storage. I keep bringing it up because the idea makes more sense to me everyday.

In just my first two days of work this week, I found multiple examples of how computing online instead of on your desktop makes sense for so many people. It will be a long time before serious photographers, movie makers, engineers, and graphic designers can make do with online applications because their programs require a great deal of computer speed, power, and storage. However, for the bulk of computer users at home and many in small businesses, migrating data online and utilizing online applications can save a great deal of time and money.

Microsoft Office function without the MS price – on a Mac! – Video Tip

This is the first of what we hope to be many Macintosh video tips here at HelpMeRick.com. We posted a similar tip to this one a few months back for Windows and Ubuntu users, but this one applies to Mac users only.

In this tip, I describe to you how you can use the free NeoOffice product from neooffice.org to seamlessly create Microsoft Office compatible documents. Of course, the software also allows Mac users to open any Office document as well. NeoOffice gives Mac users complete abilities to share documents with any Windows user or fellow Mac user.

This short video demonstrates how to set your copy of NeoOffice so that it automatically saves your documents in the Microsoft Office format:

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

Where to buy a book manual for your computer

“Why didn’t my computer come with a manual?”

One of the most common complaints we hear is about how new computers don’t come with manuals. I am here to explain why this is the case.

The sad answer is that if the computer company came with a manual, it would weigh more than the computer.

“But my old computers used to come with manuals…,” Is the next comment.

Back in the old days of computers there weren’t many uses. You would use computers for word processing, finances, Internet and email. In each case there were only a handful of options.

Zoho Writer – Video Tip

We have written quite a bit about Web 2.0 here at HelpMeRick.com and this week I decided to start a mini-series featuring my favorite Web 2.0 web site, Zoho. Zoho offers an online set of productivity tools unequaled anywhere else on the web. Many of the tools are offered at no cost and cover everything from word processing to project management.

In this first installment, I take you on a short tour of the Zoho word processor known as Writer. Writer offers all the tools that almost anyone needs in a word processor with the convenience of being available on any computer using any operating system or browser and at no cost to the user. Some of Writer’s features include:

  • Secure access to your documents from anywhere
  • Ability to export documents as PDF, Word, RTF and other formats
  • Collaboration tools for allowing others to work on your documents from any location
  • One of the best Thesaraus applications I’ve seen
  • Footnotes, headers, footers
  • Tables
  • Text styling
  • Open multiple documents at the same time
  • And any number of features you are used to using in a word processor

Watch this short tour of Zoho Writer to learn more and see it in action. 

Word Processing and Spreadsheet Basics – November 2007

After getting off the “grid” this year with our meetings and covering some very different territories, I decided to go with a mainstream topic today. In today’s meetings, we discussed some word processing and spreadsheet basics.

Our site has a plethora of word processing tips (mostly Microsoft Word), and you can find them all by clicking here.

For spreadsheets, you can just search for spreadsheets in our search engine.

Are you still using floppy disks?

I worked with three customers today who all used floppy disks as their main backup. All three users had Windows XP machines, but felt that floppy disks fit their needs the best. The picture I took here was from a consultant’s desk…there must be 20 floppies in that box. I explained to all these folks how simple, efficient and spacious a USB Flash drive could be for them. Whether they ‘bite’ or not only time will tell.

In my humble opinion, there is no good use for floppy disk any longer unless you happen to be using a DOS or Windows 95 machine. Flash drives are too inexpensive, reliable and easy to use not be using them. This weekend, I saw 2 GB (that’s nearly 2000 floppy disks worth of space) USB Flash Drives on sale for less than $20!

USB Flash Drives work best for backing up data that changes often. Data like Quicken, Quickbooks, email files, address books, bookmarks/favorites, word processing or spreadsheet documents all are perfect candidates. I don’t recommend using them to backup static data like pictuers and music. As cheap as USB Flash Drives are getting, they still aren’t anywhere near as cheap as DVD and CD media.

Internet Explorer prints only HTML

Today I ran into a problem that I hadn’t seen before. A customer’s MSN and Internet Explorer browser (including MSN email and web mail) would only print the HTML coding of a web page or email.

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and is the programming that is used to present web pages to us and the coding behind text color, bold, etc. in email. We had cleaned some spyware from this users computer earlier in the day, and even printed out some pictures, but a few hours later I received a call about this strange symptom. At first, I thought it was just a forwarded email gone awry, but after arriving on the scene and seeing that word processing documents, test pages, pictures, and spreadsheets all printed fine, the culprit was definitely in Internet Explorer 7.

Ubuntu – Day 14 – Final Report

 
Ubuntu Header graphic

I can’t believe it has been two weeks already that I’ve used Ubuntu Linux exclusively. If I had to sum up the experience in one word, that word would be “satisfying.” And my regular readers/listeners know that I can’t sum anything up in one word, so I will use this format to provide a complete synopsis of my Ubuntu thoughts.