I’ve heard you say that before

Imagine for a moment (you won't have to stretch very far) that your son or daughter comes home past curfew and you say something like, "I told you to be home by midnight." In reply your kid says, "I know I heard you say that." Imagine for a moment that you are an engineer who builds bridges. One day a bridge that you design collapses. You confront the builders only to find that they used half of the...

The Incredible Wikipedia

What is a Wikipedia ? In the words of the Wikipedia web site, ?imagine a world in which every person has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing [at Wikipedia].? Sound amazing? It is incredible. Wikipedia, in everyday terms, is an online encyclopedia that is free to access, unlike paid services from Britannica.com and Encarta.com. Wikipedia plays on a term from the Hawaiian language,...

Use copy and paste to enter long passwords

One technique I use to enter long, complex passwords (which we should all be using) is to open Notepad from the Accessories menu and type the password there. Since we only see the asterisks (*) when we enter passwords, it can be extremely difficult to accurately type in some passwords with mixed case, numbers and other characters. The problem doubles when we have to enter a password two times in a row. Here's how I use...

Backup – What, Where, When, and How – ...

It doesn?t take long to back up your files, but it does take discipline.  Just like getting the oil changed in our cars regularly to maintain its health, it is imperative that a good backup program be put in place for you computer creations. Follow these simple rules for backing up your files and you will be able to face any computer calamity: Save your files in a common folder or directory like My Document or Work Make...

New service coming to HelpMeRick.com

For literally years, I have been hunting for an easy to deploy, safe remote control system for computers. I wanted a tool that would allow me to easily access customer's computers so I could help them with their problems from wherever I might be. As you know from our video tips, a picture and voice is worth a thousand words. As hard as we work to properly illustrate and write our tips over the years, the video tips have...

Don’t put folders and files on your desktop

A few days ago one of my clients called me with some strange problems. Suddenly many of her files disappeared from her computer. None of the files seemed to be related. She was missing a few Microsoft Word documents, some photos and her genealogy. After looking around and doing several searches she happened to mention that she used to have a folder on her desktop called "Old Desktop Files." It was a folder with...

Is this a test?

Today I had an appointment that spanned almost every area of what I do on a daily basis. The appointment lasted roughly three hours. In that time I… Helped setup a new iMac. She is making the switch from Windows and wanted some of the features that she was used to in her PC. I set her computer to ask for her password whenever it was turned on or came out of sleep mode so her kids couldn't get online without her...

When to use a CD for backup

Our regular listeners hear us talk about this subject often, but it bears repeating as much as we can talk about it for your data's safety and your sanity. Backing up to CD's is a multi-step process and all the steps need to be followed for it to go right. CD's work great for archiving data that won't change. This includes pictures, music, your finished novel, etc. CD's should only be burned ONE time....

Flower 1997-2007

Today, although I worked all day, technology took a back seat for me. Our female pygmy goat, Flower, died after a short illness. I discovered her this morning in her little barn. We knew that she wouldn't be with us much longer, but after the events in Virginia yesterday and day after day of headlines with the words murder, killings, dead, etc, I broke down when I found our little pet goat. Listening to the news and...

Two guys can’t do it alone

I visited a new customer today that set the record for the most viruses and spyware on a single system. The computer had no anti-virus program of any sort on it, no anti-spyware system, was running the first version of XP, and on dial-up. Needless to say, the computer was hosed and it took more than six hours to clean-up (between what I did in two hours, and the four hours I let the user take care of in secondary scans and...

Ubuntu Linux!!!

Last week I installed Windows Vista on my fine running XP machine (less than six months old) and have been tolerating it since then and learning about its quirks and features. I have actually been using Vista since September and besides the integrated search (which can be added to XP through multiple channels for free), I honestly do not understand what the heck Microsoft did for nearly six years between operating systems....

Format Painter – Video Tip

I demonstrated today's tip in Microsoft Word, but it also works in all the Microsoft Office programs (Excel, Access, Publisher, Outlook, etc), WordPerfect, OpenOffice and others. The tip is simple in its performance and gargantuan in its function. Format Painter copies formatting from one location and applies it to another. In the video example below, I formatted one line of text to have a particular look and it took 31...

Always a love-hate relationship

Lately, I have been working with many Windows 98 and Me computers (and a few Windows 95). For basic functions, limited Internet browsing, solitaire, email, and word processing, these computers work fine especially with a high speed Internet connection. However, it is imperative that Windows 98 and Me users NOT install any software that was developed after 2003. Your hardware and software configuration may appear to meet the...

Viruses: BAD, Viral Videos: GOOD!

One of today's greatest tactics for marketers to get buzz going about a product or brand is viral video. A viral video is in no way related to a computer virus although the nomenclature is similar. A viral video is a video that is funny or amazing that can be seen in the Internet. The clever or otherwise fascinating video is placed on the web and then word of mouth sends people to the hosting site. Soon the video and...

A Faster computer does not equal faster Internet

Just as Rick mentioned that people often expect the computer to run faster once they have faster Internet, the opposite is also expected. Often people on dial-up or slower DSL ask me once they have a new computer whether their email will go faster or their websites will load quickly. Typically the difference between a new computer and a Windows 98 machine with sufficient RAM will be barely noticeable. It may take longer for...