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Riding Shotgun with Adam

The adventures of Rick and Adam in Glenwood

Today Rick and I spent a while in Glenwood working on the handout material for our eBay class to be held on May 2 from 1-4pm. Rick had to get his VW Van worked on and so I went along and we made a business meeting out of it.

After the van was done we stopped at the only tech store in Glenwood (Staples) and looked at all of the computers (about six of them) and other goodies.

We walked over to the digital cameras and looked them over quickly. While we were talking a salesman came over and asked if we needed help. "Yes," replied Rick, "What is a megapixel?"

The salesperson gave a short definition. "Are more megapixels better?" Rick asked. The sales person’s answer was amazing in its accuracy yet it showed how clueless sales people can be about thier customers.

Know your Internet connection types

Rick has called me a cheater for using my user group notes and product reviews in place of a daily column. So, today I am not only writing an official Shotgun article, but I am also turning it in early.

I have seen several clients lately who are using the full priced AOL dial-up service. That means they are paying $25.90 for dial-up Internet. One person even had a seperate line for the Internet (add on another $20/month).

This is proof that AOL is like crack.

I thought I would give a breakdown of alternatives to paying AOL’s outrageous price. Suprisingly, the solution does not have to mean dropping AOL, but in my opinion it should.

Give Picasa a try!

http://www.drwinn.com/graphics/quarter_hourse.gif

I just put that picture there to get your attention. 

I’m not trying to brag, but I know more about digital photography than the average computer user. This is partly due to the fact that I took Photoshop classes in college for about three years.

I love Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, but I can also appreciate that not everyone needs such a powerful program.

How did you learn all of this?

I saw two clients today who were setting up broadband for the first time. They were having identical problems, but the solutions were totally different.

Client #1 had paid for a package through the local cable network for cable TV and telephone service, but had failed to ask for broadband Internet as a part of the package. They had also told her that it would not work on Windows 98.

I bought her a network card, we called the cable service and asked them to turn on the broadband Internet and I got everything up and running.

Client #2 had the cable broadband running just fine on one computer, but the other computer refused to connect. I installed a new network card and everything worked great.

Macs vs. PCs – the truth comes out

I typically don’t post Shotgun articles on Sunday, but this one is good.  One common thing you hear about Mac computers is that they are "more reliable" and "faster" than PCs. This article has some great points. Most of what drives Mac popularity is what the author calls "a cult-like following."

The source is The Inquirer, not the truth-bending grocery store tabloid. The Inquirer in this case is a very popular online computer news magazine. 

Why we recommend the stuff we do

Our listeners and subsribers have probably heard me say, "Don't let your kids fix your computer, no matter how old they are or who they work for."

I say this because many of my appointments come as a result of a full grown son or daughter who "works for Microsoft" or  "Is a computer tech for ___________ University" coming home and "fixing" the computer.

I have no doubts that said son or daughter is great at what they do while they are at their work, but there is a big difference between working in a controlled environment like a business or school and working on dozens of computers a week in completely unassociated environments.

The nuts and bolts of setting up a computer

It seems that we are in a computer buying season. I have several appointments this week to setup new computers. While we have a number of tips on the site about how to setup a new computer for safety, we don’t have much written about the physical setup of the system. Here are a few tips to get things setup quickly and efficiently.

1. Start with the big parts – Don’t take every cable and disk out of the box, just remove the big pieces and set them in their place. The trick to getting large pieces out of the box is to open the box then turn it over. You can then pull the box off the top leaving a neat pile of components.

I always have my tools with me

Most computer problems have nothing to do with the mechanics of the computer. It is rare that I see a motherboard die, RAM go bad, a video card burn out or a power supply fail.

Almost all computer problems are software related. Among the hundreds of millions of lines of programming code, a few 1s and 0s crash together and things go screwy.

Whether it is a programming glitch or the problem is caused by an intentionally designed virus, the majority of computer problems must be solved by tweaking the software.

Twice today I had people comment on my lack of tools. I walk into a home or office with nothing under my arm. Everything I need is on my person.

Dude, where’s my shotgun?

Rick pointed out to me tonight that I haven’t put up any shotgun articles for a few days. It was at that exact moment that I realized that I hadn’t written any shotgun articles for a few days.

I have some catching up to do so consider this article one of the most important articles I have written for several days.

When I fix a computer I try to always approach the computer and the situation as if it were my own. I work hard at using techniques that allow me to get the best job done in the least amount of time. I ask myself three questions to determine the approach that I want to take.

Computer guys are kind of like Zorro

Before I begin, I want to make it clear that I am not complaining in this post at all. I am just explaining the events of the day.

I began my day with a blank schedule. My mother in law was scheduled to arrive to spend a couple of weeks with us so I had blocked today so that I could help my family get ready.

My phone rang at 7am this morning. It was a dentist’s office. They had accidentally done something that had deleted their patient schedule and they were completely lost without it. I told them that I would be right in after I took a shower and got dressed.

As it turns out, they backed everything up on tape drives. It took 3 tries and almost six hours before we finally had a success in getting everything back up. Then one of their laptops died in an unrelated occurance.