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Rick

This one goes out to all the fans

We have great fans. One of the clients I saw today was so great. He seemed almost star struck and kept saying things like, "I can’t believe Adam is working on my computer."

My favorite thing he said was, "When is there going to be an Adam Cochran show?" If I had my own show it would probably not be very good as I would have a difficult time staying on topic. It would be called the ADHD Hour with Adam Cochran.

Occasionally my clients offer me a refreshing beverage or a piece of candy while I am working on the computer. This particular client offered me an Altoid. I have learned from experience that whenever someone offers you a mint you should take it. And so I did. And so he offered me another and said, “Have as many as you want, I have a lot of them.”

Changing your email address is easy

A new customer that I helped today uses AOL. She stated that she is frustrated with AOL’s support, price, and continuous barrage of advertising among other things. In the next breath, however, she said

Export your PST folder

Lately I have seen several people who use Microsoft Outlook to manage their calendar, email, memos and to do lists.

Microsoft Oultook is similar to the Outlook Express program that comes with all Windows computers, but it adds more features. It is essentially a Franklin Planner for your computer.

One of the great things about Microsoft Outlook is that it is so easy to backup everything at once, you just have to go through a series of steps.

Following this process allows you to backup your email, contact list, calendar, memos, and to do list all as one file.

Here’s what to do:

Missing Menus in Task Manager – THE REAL ANSWER

Pat in Illinois – we found the real answer to your problem with the missing menus and tabs in Task Manager (the thing you see when you click CTRL+ALT+DEL).

It is a simple one step process:

1. double click on an empty gray area at the top of the task bar. 

Set up a home network – Part IV

This is our final installment of our networking tips. In this tip, you will learn how to share files and printers between computers on your network. One of the greatest advantages of a network for home users is the ability to use a single printer to service all the computers.

Windows XP offers a networking wizard that works quite well for most people to setup a home or small business network. You can find it by:

  1. Double-click the "My Computer" icon
  2. Click "My Network Places" from the task list on the left of the screen
  3. You will then see the menu of options at the pictured here
  4. Click the "Set up a home or small office network" option
  5. Click Next twice
  6. The next screen will ask you how you connect to the Internet, choose the second option "  This computer connects to the Internet through a residential gateway or through another computer on my network."
  7. Click Next
  8. On the next screen, give your computer a description and a name as described in the step itself
  9. Click Next
  10. Now you name your network (workgroup) so that the computers can talk to each other. Use any name you like, but keep it to a single word like; Steelers, Network, Rover, etc
  11. Click Next 
  12. Click the "Turn on file and printer sharing" option
  13. Click Next twice
  14. If you are using Windows 98 or Me on other computers in your network, then click the "Create a Network Setup Disk" and click next.  OR  If you are using XP on the other computers, then click the final option "Just finish…"
  15. Click Next  
  16. Click Finish

Using this method will allow you to share files through the "SharedDocs" folder found in My Computer. Any files you save into this folder can be accessed on any other computer via the network. The wizard will also allow you to share any printers you have installed.

Nothing more important in computing than backup…

Destiny played its hand today in choosing my topic for my first installment of "Riding Shotgun". Riding Shotgun is the brain-child of Adam and I. We wanted to create a daily snippet of the things we see, learn, fix, and experience in our daily travels from office-to-office and home-to-home fixing computers and helping people learn about the computers.

Backup, or the lack of a backup, played a big part in my day today. One of my client’s today was a business where their computer would not boot up any longer. Upon arriving on the scene, I learned that their backup was not complete and panic ensued. After looking over the system it was apparent that it wasn’t coming back to life no matter what kind of CPR I performed. So, I pulled the hard drive out of the computer and took it to my office, where I was able to backup their data and transfer it to a CD.