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Computer Tips

Convert and-or Create a PDF file online

PDF Online 

If you ever have the need to create a PDF file so you can share it easily with others, or have the need to convert a PDF file into a word processing file, then I recommend giving PDF Online a try. In just a few steps, you can upload a file you want to convert to a PDF or upload a PDF file you want converted to a Word file. Once the file is uploaded, it takes just a minute or two for the service to perform its magic and give you your finished product. Amazingly simple and amazingly accurate.

Use CCleaner Monthly

CCleaner screenIf you are a Microsoft Windows user, of any flavor, I recommend that you download and use the free CCleaner utility once per month. Our computers create thousands of small files that we never see in order to perform the computing tasks we ask of them. Visiting web sites also creates thousands of files including the oft misunderstood cookies. All these files are called temporary files and are completely expendable. Over the course of time, these small temporary files can build up to such a significant amount that they can drag down the performance of even the fastest system.

CCleaner offers a quick, easy and thorough tool to clean all these files in a single click. After downloading and installing the product (I un-click the option to add the Yahoo toolbar during the install), you will have a CCleaner icon on your desktop like the one pictured (large red C with a blue whisk broom). Double-click it, and click the Run Cleaner button. In just a few minutes, the cleaning will finish and present you with a report detailing what was deleted and how much space was recovered.

IF you don’t want your web history or cookies or recycle bin to be automatically cleaned (deleted), you can uncheck the appropriate box before clicking the Run Cleaner button.

Another dead hard drive

External hard drives are spacious, cheap and relatively easy to use, but…

I resisted talking about backup this early in the year, but a phone conversation I had today illustrated my philosophy about backup perfectly. The gentleman I spoke with suffered an external hard drive failure, and he used it as the sole storage of his digital photos. Once again, my heart sank with his story of woe. He didn’t want to spend the hundreds of dollars it would require from a data recovery company (he also, unfortunately, opened the drive and tried to manually spin the hard drive platters), but was hoping for some sort of magical tech pixie dust that I might be storing in my pocket.

The point of the story is to scare you into backing up your data. Backing up your data means that your important data exists in at least two different locations. By different locations, I’m referring to two different digital media. Hard drive, and external hard drive. Hard drive and CD or DVD. Hard drive and USB flash drive. Hard drive and online backup. External hard drive and CD or DVD. You get the picture.

Exceptional backup systems would include having important data copied

Customizing your iPhone home screen – Video Tip

This is a pretty specific tip for a relatively new device, but with WalMart now carrying iPhones more and more people will want and need to learn how to take advantage of their investment. The iPhone is a wonderful little tool…IF you learn how to use it and make it work for you.

One of the first things you can do with any piece of technology is customize it to fit your needs. With the iPhone, learning to customize the interface makes the unit more usable for you. This week, I show iPhone users how to customize the location of their icons on the iPhone launch screen or home screen.

  1. Touch and hold your finger on any icon
  2. When the icons start to jiggle, take your finger off the icon.
  3. Now you can drag any icon to any position by touching and dragging it to a new location or even a new screen by dragging it to the left or right edge of the screen.
  4. You can also drag the default icons off the toolbar at the bottom and drag the ones you use most often to the toolbar
  5. When you are finished moving your icons to positions that work best for you, push the button at the bottom of your iPhone.

As always, these tips make more sense by watching the video! And even if you aren’t an iPhone user, I think you will find it interesting to see the kind of tech that can be found in a phone today.

Correcting some spyware infections with an often overlooked tool

Some of the nastiest spyware infections can be dealt with easier than previously thought if you try the following steps immediately after becoming infected:

  1. Shut off your high speed modem OR simply unplug the Ethernet cable connecting your computer to the modem or router
  2. Restart the computer in Safe Mode and attempt to run a disk cleanup from the Accessories –> System Tools menu or use the CCleaner or Cleanup program if you have them installed.
  3. Then go to the accessories menu and run System Restore. Choose a date at least two weeks prior to the infection and restore the computer.
  4. After the computer restarts, IF the restore was successful (and it will tell you so), run a full disk scan with your antivirus software and any anti-spyware software you have loaded
  5. Restart your computer again, and this time connect back to the Internet
  6. Update your antivirus and antispyware products and run another full scan

I have had good success with this routine if the infection is caught quick enough (usually within a day or so).

Using the Macintosh Dashboard – Video Tip

This week’s tip is for those of you who have taken my advice and moved over to the Macintosh world. The Mac has a nice feature that remains unused for many new Mac users. It’s called the Dashboard. The Mac Dashboard consists of literally hundreds of helpful or just plain fun, customizable widgets that can be instantly viewed or instantly pushed out of view. Mac computers ship with a couple of dozen widgets ranging from calculators, conversion programs, translation programs, weather gadgets, post-it type notes, and much more.

If you don’t find any Dashboard widgets that work for you, I explain how you can search Apple’s vast library of downloadable widgets…most of which are free.

Watch my how-to video below to learn how to make the most of your Mac Dashboard!

Switch TODAY!

Just say NO to IEOn my way out the door today, I came across this article outlining one of the largest security breaches yet with Internet Explorer. I have been recommending for years that you switch to Mozilla Firefox. Today, I’m taking a harder line and recommending that you should never use Internet Explorer except in the extremely rare instance where a site truly requires Internet Explorer (IE) to run properly. For your safety and the safety of all of us connected to the Internet, please download and use either Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.

Running multiple applications

Since Windows 3.1 in the early 90s, we have been able to run multiple programs at the same time with our computers. Probably the easiest way to take advantage of this feature is learning to use the Alt+Tab keyboard shortcut. At least four times this week, clients asked me what I was doing to switch between open windows so quickly. When I showed them the Alt+Tab keyboard shortcut, the seemed to be both mesmerized and intrigued.

Click on my tip below to watch the video tip explaining and demonstrating this fundamental skill that all computer users should master:

Use Alt+Tab or Command(Apple)+Tab to quickly change applications – Video Tip

Pandora Internet Radio – Video Tip

Pandora.com qualifies for yet another Web 2.0 application. Pandora started as a project to find the similarities in music and why we like certain music and why we don’t. The Pandora folks eventually made all their study of music into an amazingly customizable and accurate music service. To sign up is free although I recommend paying for the service if you use it a lot. Once you sign up, you start by building your own radio stations based on your favorite songs or artists. After you build your first station, Pandora starts to play songs related to the song or artist you started with when you built the radio station (which entails that you simply type the name of a musical artist or a song name and click Create).

As the songs play, if you tell Pandora whether you like the selection or not (via a click on a thumbs up or thumbs down icon), it will continue to more accurately pick music for you. You must see the short video below to see how it works, and better yet, give it a try to see why it is such an exciting and useful Web 2.0 application!

Does that computer have enough hard drive space?

hard drive propertiesWhile counseling a customer on buying a new computer recently, the customer asked if a 500 gigabyte drive was ok compared to another a computer that had a 640 GB hard drive. Other than hard drive capacity, the machines were pretty equal. Unless the person plans to store their 2000 album music collection, edit feature length movies, or are designing the next skyscraper for Dubai, I have them go through this simple exercise:

  1. Double-click My Computer
  2. RIGHT Click the Hard drive icon (usually designated as the C drive)
  3. Click Properties

When the pie chart appears, I ask them to tell me what the total capacity of the drive is (in the woman’s case I was helping today, it was 20 GB), then I ask them to tell me how much of the drive is being used (the blue part of the chart and in this woman’s case it was 8 GB). Then I ask them how long they have used the computer and in her case it was 6 or 7 years.

The demonstration solidifies the answer for them and will for you too if you need to decide what kind of hard drive capacity is needed when buying a new computer.