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2 fantastic alternatives to Mapquest maps

Mapquest.com used to be synonymous with online maps. They offered online maps when few others did and did a good job. Unfortunately, Mapquest hasn’t changed much since the late 90’s except get more and more advertisements hovering around their slow and out-dated system. Their innovation and improvements seemed to stop around the same time AOL bought them.

For faster, easier, and better online mapping, I like two products; Google Maps and Microsoft’s Live Search Maps.

Microsoft Table PC not that revolutionary

coffeepc

People keep sending me video of the Microsoft table PC. It’s a computer that looks like a table. The demonstrations in the video show it doing amazing things like pulling pictures from a digital camera simply by placing the camera on the coffee table.

While the demonstration is impressive, the purpose for such a device is not clear. It would be great for an entertainment device but the dazzle would wear off quickly as soon as the user needed a keyboard with hard buttons so they could touch type.

Save pictures from email – Video Tip

It’s been almost one year since I first posted this tip. We have many new visitors this year, and not enough of you are heading my advice yet on this subject, so I’m posting it again. Please believe me when I tell you that this tip alone can save you countless dollars, time, and tears!

Through my travels, I have noticed that many computer users save emails with pictures because they are unsure of how to save those pictures. Saving lots of pictures in your email program can drastically slow down the performance of the email program over time. Email programs typically can handle thousands of messages, but if something happens to the email database, and you haven't backed up those databases, the pictures will be gone for good. Your best insurance for saving pictures is to save them to a folder on your computer (like My Pictures or a subfolder of My Pictures) then back them up on a regular basis.

To save pictures from your email to a folder on your hard drive, do the following:

Outlook Express

1. Click the paper clip icon in the preview pane*
2. Click Save Attachments
3. In the "Save To" box at the bottom of the dialog box that pops up, click Browse and choose where YOU want to save the pictures and click OK
4. Click Save

* If you read your Outlook Express email in its own window, then RIGHT Click on the

Worst excuse for keeping Norton: I have already paid for it

If you search for the word “Norton” using the search engine in the upper right corner of our website, you will discover that our advice to dump Norton branded software is echoed by dozens of other visitors to the site.

This week I saw a computer that took 27 minutes to completely boot up. It was an older system with 256MB of RAM and a 1.6ghz processor. Even at that, 27 minutes was a long time.

I noticed that they had the latest version of Norton 360 installed. I told them that the system would at least double in speed if they uninstalled Norton. “I know you don’t like it, but we already paid for it.”

Agreed but took the system home intending to reformat it and add RAM over the weekend.

Gmail convertee

Three weeks ago, I switched from using Microsoft Outlook (which I had used since 1998) to Gmail.

What is Gmail?

Gmail is the fast, free web based email from search giant Google. Gmail offers free POP3 access (if you want to download your email into Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc), 6.5 GB of storage (and the number continually grows), and the best web based spam filter I’ve seen so far.

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:

How to add the print and other buttons to Firefox toolbar – Video Tip

We love the Mozilla Firefox browser, but out-of-the-box it doesn’t show the print button. Also, some people like to have the Bookmark and History buttons available as well. This tip shows you how to add any or all of these buttons as well as others you might want.

  1. In Firefox, RIGHT click on a blank part of the toolbar (or Click View –> Toolbars –> Customize from the menus)
  2. Click and drag the buttons you want to the toolbar (you can also drag buttons you don’t need back into the customize box to delete them)
  3. Click Done

To see this tip in action, watch the short demo below!

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

Why good computer guys get grumpy sometimes

Arrogant computer guys really bother me. I try very hard not to be a computer guy who thinks he knows everything.

The problem with this is that I am sometimes competing with computer guys who convince people that they do know everything. When I try to straighten out the situation, I get the line, “but the guy at Best Buy said that Norton is the best.” or “But my son who has worked at HP for 20 years says that Vista is much faster.”

When I try to explain using experience and logic, they don’t want to listen. Logically, wouldn’t it make more sense to listen to someone who isn’t trying to sell something. Even better, someone who deals with problems in real-life homes and businesses every day?