People always ask about the difference between right-click and left-click. The primary difference is that the right-click always brings up a menu called the context menu.
The items on the context menu change depending on where on the screen you click the mouse.
The video explains the importance of the Properties option on the context menu.
When I help people setup a new computer, camera or printer, the standard question asked by the new gadget owner is; “What shall I do with the old one?” I think that the value of tech curbside recycling is highly undervalued.
Curbside recycling involves hauling your old hardware out to the curb and just leaving it there. In most moderately busy neighborhoods (HOA’s rules aside), a piece of technology on the street will be snapped by a collector or hobbyist in less than 48 hours and often much quicker. The item gets reused or put to work in someway, you didn’t have to fret about where to take it and haul it long distances, and the device more than likely won’t end up in a land fill…a win-win-win situation.
One of the first questions tech support people will ask you if you have problems that need solved is what version of Windows you are using and what version of the program you have a question about you are using. Fortunately, finding out the answer takes just a few steps:
Locating your Windows version
or, you can push the Windows key + the Pause/Break key on your keyboard to get the same screen
Locating the name and version of any program
Use this handy tip to gather important information about your computer before calling for help to save yourself and your computer helper time.
As you know, we whole heartedly recommend and use AVG Antivirus. It is unobtrusive, fast, and most importantly effective. However, one irritating function it has is the default full system scan at 8:00am. Many people are working on their computers at 8:00am and full system scan slows down the system enough to be highly annoying if not unusable in some cases.
You don’t have to wait for the scan to finish. Just RIGHT click on the AVG scanning icon in your system tray (by the clock). It looks just like the AVG icon, but has a little white triangle in the middle of it. After you right click, click “Cancel or Stop Scan”. You will get a confirmation box asking if you are sure, Click Yes, then OK.
One other tidbit to remember about AVG is that it is OK to click the OK button after it completes the daily update. Many computer users wait politely for
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.
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:
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
Three weeks ago, I switched from using Microsoft Outlook (which I had used since 1998) to 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.
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:
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.
To see this tip in action, watch the short demo below!
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