Rick
Defrag, scan disk, and deleting cookies don’t do much
In the computer world, there are hot rodders – people who will tweak their computers to get every last bit of horse power out of their systems.
Just as with automobiles, techniques used by hot rodders were once necessary in the early days when horse power was hard to come by.
Today, most computers come with all the horsepower most people need. Important tasks like defragmenting the hard drive, running scan disk and deleting cookies no longer do anything spectacular to the performance of the average computer.
Cookies are harmless – even the shady ones. Defragging does little on a 250 gig hard drive and scandisk is take care of by utility features in Windows that run every time you boot up or shut down.
Yelp – Real world reviews
On my most recent travels, I discovered yet another great travel web site that I will be using every time I travel. The site’s name is Yelp. Yelp bills themselves as a site of Real People. Real Reviews. Yelp reviewers review everything from restaurants to schools to religious organizations. As their slogan describes, anyone can write a review about any service. I think the service works so well because it works like the feedback on eBay. Everyone has an opinion about everything, but after reading a dozen or so reviews for whatever topic (I used it for finding good restaurants) you can easily titrate the advice into something usable for you.
Why print pictures at home?
We talk about this topic many times here at HelpMeRick.com, but too few people are reaping the benefits (and cost savings) of printing their digital photos via a print shop instead of at home. Printing pictures at home costs a lot of money and takes up way too much time. And unless you spring for the more expensive printers, inks, and paper, the results of home printing are sub-par at best.
Vacation from technology
I just disembarked from a 7 day cruise to Alaska with my family. The scenery was fantastic, the weather was unbelievable, the food was edible, but the availability of technology was virtually absent. The cruise line brochure mentioned that Internet would be available online, but it didn’t say that it would be a $1.00 per minute! And it didn’t mention that an old-fashioned dial-up connection would be faster than the connection provided.
After spending about $6.00 and realizing that resistance was futile, I stored my laptop and didn’t pull it out until today when we left the ship.
I already knew that cell service would be unavailable on the high seas, but I didn’t realize that my cell provider did not cover Alaska.
Understanding exposure
Theory and Practice of Photography
Aperture:
Aperture is the setting of the iris of the camera lens. Just as your pupils in your eyes expand and contract to let in more or less light, you can do the same with your camera by setting the Aperture.
The Aperture measurement is called F-stop. The higher the F-stop number, the smaller the iris is set in your camera.
The trade-off: Each concept of photography seems to have a trade-off that prevents you from wanting to use it all the time.
I have Wii Fit in hand
I made an early trip to Sam’s Club today and picked up three Wii Fits to resell on eBay. It has been month’s since there has been an item worth scalping on eBay. It will be interesting to see whether or not I can actually make a profit or just break even.
eBay raised their rates by about two percent earlier this year. At the moment the $90 Wii Fit device is selling for around $150 on eBay even though they are fairly easy to find on store shelves. Shelves are supposed to be dry of them by next week.
Nintendo has already said that supply will be limited for a while. So far the reviews are mixed as far as using the device as a full exercise program, but everyone seems to agree that the Fit is well made and works as intended.
I no longer recommend Ubuntu or Macintosh
If I keep recommending Linux/Ubuntu and Apple Macintosh to my customers, I will have to find another line of work.
Admittedly, I came to the Linux table very late (just over a year now) and have only been luke warm to Macintosh over the years. Windows Vista put me over the edge last year, and I started looking seriously at other operating systems. What I found in both Ubuntu and Mac OSX was an extremely stable, secure, easy-to-use operating system. I estimate that over the past 18 months or so, I have recommended and help setup more than 2 dozen Apple computers or Linux computers that I either installed Ubuntu on or were bought new.
Widescreen and the intel 8286g graphics chip – don’t bother
I have faced this problem several times now. I have read every post on the Internet and there are no fixes.
The Intel 85865g integrated graphics chip does not support wide screen resolutions. There is no update to the drivers, there is not working hack and there is no hope.
The only solution is to either buy a standard (square) monitor or a different graphics card. Any graphics card on the shelf will handle widescreen resolutions.
Before you post questions and comments on possible fixes, I repeat, I have tried everything and read everything. There is no fix for this problem.
Perhaps someone will find a testimonial of someone who found a fix or a workaround. I have tried it and it doesn’t work.
“If it is free, it must not be any good.”
This statement was uttered by an imbecile. A customer of mine told me last week that he heard this quote from a tech person from some company after a discussion of AVG Free.
The week before this customer’s computer was almost crippling slow primarily because it had one of the newer versions of Norton Internet Security installed. After taking Norton off the system (approximately 20-25 minutes to do so) and adding AVG, the system sped up by at least 50%.
You all know that story, however, I want to instead focus on the “free is inferior” statement. My first rebuttal is Google. Google is free and arguably one of the most useful offerings to mankind in the last 30 years. Is Google inferior?