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Rick

Printers don’t come with cables

This is a short one today, but it is something a lot of people don’t know.

When you buy a new printer it typically will not come with a cable. You must also purchase a USB cable. If you are switching from an old printer you can use the old cable as long as it is USB.

Old printers that worked on Windows98 were typically parallel printers and that cable will not be compatible with the new printer.

Before you shell out $20-$30 at the office supply store for a USB cable, check your local discount store (Wal-mart, Target, Kmart) as the cables are typically between $7-12 and you can save a little. 

Care and feeding of your wireless mouse

Wireless mice are not truly wireless.

In addition to the mouse, you also have to plug in a little radio receiver that transmits and receives signals to and from the mouse.

If you buy a wireless mouse, there are a few things you should know.

1. The batteries run down. There are rechargeable varieties, but most mice use regular batteries. If you fail to change the batteries as needed then the mouse will quit working as everything else that takes batteries does.

2. If you unplug your mouse or the batteries run down, it is very likely that you will have to reconnect the signal to the mouse. This usually requires pressing a little connect button on the bottom of the mouse and on the receiver.

What to do if your CD doesn’t autostart or it autostarts incorrectly

Often computers forget how to start up CDs automatically when you put them into the drive or they start up in the wrong program starts up.

To solve this problem go through the following steps:

1. Close any programs that are running.

2. Double-click on My Computer (on your desktop or in the right pain of your XP start menu).

3. Right-click on your CD-ROM icon.

4. Click on Explore from the menu that comes up.

This will open up a window showing the contents of the disk. From this point you can click on the "Setup" icon if you are trying to install a program. If the disk contains pictures or music, double click on the files that you want to look at or listen to. 

Technology solves problems tracking medical records

Have you ever been to a doctor’s appointment where the doctor asked you a lot of questions then referred you to another doctor only to have that doctor ask you all of the same questions all over again?

Are you tired of answering questions about whether you have any allergies? Are you ever curious why the doctors ask you when your last tetanus shot was? Don’t they ever write this stuff down?

As it turns out, doctors offices each track your records, but only certain information gets passed on when you go to the hospital or to a different doctor.

The solution to this problem in on the Horizon. I began my morning meeting with a doctors office that is a client of mine and a local group called Quality Health Network.

Travel tip from a customer…

A major light bulb went off today when a customer of mine talked about a tech travel tip he had recently received.

For better or worse, when many of us travel today, we bring along cell phones, cameras with rechargeable batteries, laptops, MP3 players, portable DVD players and more. These gadgets crave power and usually at the same time! When I travel, I’m usually unplugging lamps, clocks and other devices in the hotel room trying to make room to charge and power my tech. Often times it means sacrificing light in order to get my phone charged.

Don’t assume it is your problem….

If you use a high speed Internet connection, don’t assume that if you have problem accessing the Internet that it is your computer’s problem. I encountered a situation today where a customer, in an effort to save money, had problems with their DSL connection. Before calling me she:

  1. Attempted to troubleshoot the problem herself for two days by playing with the settings of her email and network
  2. Her husband intervened and did the same thing
  3. Called Qwest and spent nearly 2 hours on the phone with them
  4. Called Dell and spent another 2+ hours on the phone with them

Result? Still no Internet connection.

Be specific when ordering habanero sauce

The concept of "going easy" on a certain ingredient at a fast food palce is subjective at best.

Today I ate at one of my favorite fresh mex places and I asked them to go easy on the habanero salsa. I love hot foods, but I don’t like for the spice to cauterize my taste buds to the point that I can’t enjoy the flavor of the food.

She took a big heaping scoop of the salsa and dumped in on the burrito. "Is that OK?" she asked.

It would have been nice if she would have asked about the quantity of sauce before she dumped it on the burrito, but I took it any way. As it turns out, the burrito was very spicy, but I survived it.

Shareware and Freeware – March 2006

We haven’t covered this topic since 1999!

Shareware is software that you can "try before you buy". The developer usually provides the program for free of charge with either some features disabled or a time limit on how long the product can be used. To unlock all the features or use the program past its expiration date, you must pay for a registration number. This type of marketing works quite well for developers who make good products.

Freeware is software that you can use for no cost at all. Developers providing this software usually create the program to either fill a niche or jus practice creating new programs.

Programs by small developers can be found for almost any purpose you need. Everything from organizing pictures to creating labels and from recording music to changing wallpaper. The only places I recommend hunting for and downloading freeware and shareware are:

Download.com
Tucows.com
Nonags.com
Palm Gear (for Palm Pilot users)

Not everyone needs or wants a computer

My first appointment of the day was at the house of a couple whom were given a hand-me-down computer about six years ago. I taught them how to send and read email and a few computer basics back then and haven’t heard from them since. They needed me to look at the old Windows 95 computer today because nothing would come up on the screen. Indeed, Windows had crashed and they elected not to fix it.

After talking a few minutes, they confessed that they really didn’t want to get a new one or fix this one because they weren’t particularly interested in the machine. In fact, they pointed out that they had disconnected from the Internet just a year or so after I had seen them because they hated getting the forwarded email from friends and decided to cancel their service rather than tell their friends to stop sending the junk. Since then, they only played solitaire. And now they think they will just continue on without a computer.