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Riding Shotgun with Adam

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Here is a little video we filmed after this week’s show. This is all of the email we read during the program.

AOL is so easy (to cancel)

I helped a broadband user cancel (yet keep) his AOL account today. Over a year ago, AOL stopped charging users who wanted to use their service over broadband. However, they did not tell their members about this change and continued charging them.

My client was still paying $23.95 per month for AOL. The conversation went kind of like this:

ME: Are you still paying for AOL?

HIM: Yes.

ME: How much?

HIM: $24 per month.

ME: You know that AOL is free now for broadband users.

HIM: Really? How is the free service different?

ME: It’s not. It’s exactly the same service, they just don’t charge you for it.

HIM: Why are they still charging me $24 per month?

ME: Because you haven’t asked them not to.

Make your computer easier to read – Video Tip

Setting up a new flat panel monitor can be a mixed blessing. While the new screens are small, sharp and beautiful, they are also high resolution. This means that everything that used to fit in one inch on your screen now fits in a fraction of an inch as more dots are crammed closer together. This makes the image sharper, but the text size and all other objects on the screen much smaller.

Here are a few tips that can help make  the fonts, icons and text much larger and easier to read.

Reconsidering extended warranties

I think that electronics aren’t as well made as they used to be. Correction: I know that electronics aren’t as well made as they used to be.

Not only are products more fragile and flimsy but repair costs are rising. Both of these facts have caused me to reconsider my opinion of extended warranties.

Not all extended warranties are a good deal, but I used to feel that they were almost always a waste of money. Lately though I have had to help people with products that were just barely out of their one year warranty.

Adding an additional year onto most products costs less than $100. A dead hard drive, motherboard, processor or video card in a computer’s second year of life can easily cost more than $100.

Screen magnifiers for everyone!

I ran across this site today while searching for alternative screen magnification programs. Whether you use Mac, Linux or Windows, this site lists screen magnifiers for every platform. While you are here, click on the HOME link. This site is full of great information and product reviews for all computer users with impaired vision.

Solitaire – a superior Vista feature

solitaire

Strange as it may sound, one of the most common complaints we hear comes from solitaire users. “The cards are too small!”  Well, if this is your biggest complaint about your computer, moving to Vista may be the right move.  Of course everything else on your computer will be crippled, but Solitaire and the other games on Vista are wonderful for those with poorer eye sight.

Here is a screenshot of Windows solitaire on a 22″ wide screen!!

Amazing isn’t it. These cards are over three inches tall.

Another sony proprietary technology bites the dust

For every Apple device that becomes a standard there is a Sony technology that becomes obsolete. Apple and Sony both got off to a great start in the early 80s. Apple introduced the Mac and Sony gave us the Walkman.

From that point on, Apple has had only a handful of market failures and Sony has had nothing but. Sony announced their latest casualty this week by discontinuing their proprietary ATRAC audio compression file format.

While the rest of the world committed to MP3 and WMA or Apple’s music format for iTunes, Sony made up their own format only supported by their devices. Sony saw Apple succeeding with their own format and device and figured they could do the same.