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Riding Shotgun with Rick

Digital Camera Burst or Continuous modes

Burst ModeIt's fun for me to share my limited knowledge with people to help them get just a little more out of technology. I had the opportunity today to help a basketball mom learn how to use the continuous mode (burst mode) with her new digital camera. One of the great complaints about digital cameras is their slow shutter response. Fortunately, most digital cameras have improved that feature. One feature that many digital cameras have that can help you get the perfect shot is the continuous shooting mode or burst mode. This mode allows you to hold down the shutter of your camera and have it take a rapid fire of photos. This is known as burst or continuous shooting and it allows you to take 2-3 pictures each second!

These computer oldies are OUT!

I've kept this bottled up for at least two years, and now I'm going to let it out and would love to hear your comments. Computers have been in the home on a large scale for about twelve years now and certain aspects of computing just don't work in today's' tech world. Here is my list of what no longer works:

Anything less than 1024 X 768 resolution. Even many productivity programs require this minimum resolution today. If the print seems small to you at this resolution, there are ways to have the better resolution and bigger text.

Geek Squad Story

Two stories from one day of work. Those of you who know me know that I don't 'slam' other people or businesses. I only relay information that I view as important to save technology consumers money, time and frustration. Here are two actual stories that were relayed to me today about Best Buy's Geek Squad:

Story #1

A new customer of mine informed me that she hired the Geek Squad to come to her house to setup a home network. Their advertised rate for such a service is $159 minimum. The 'professional' who showed up spent nearly seven hours at the customer's house and when he left, the network was not completed and the customer told that it couldn't be done. To the Geek Squad's credit, they didn't charge the customer. 

Quick access to your favorite web sites

No matter what web browser you use, you can create quick access to your favorite web sites by creating a desktop icon. Here's how:

  1. Open your web browser
  2. Navigate to the web site you want to access quickly (like this site)
  3. Click the little icon next to the address in the address bar and drag it to your desktop 

That's it! Now you can double-click on the icon you just made to reach your the web sites you visit the most faster.

55 Minute Uninstall

Wow, it would have almost been faster to backup the data, reformat the hard drive, and reinstall everything from scratch. The long install was of the grossly over programmed Norton Internet Security Suite. Here's the breakdown of my appointment:

8:26am Arrive at customer's house. He tells me that his computer is running extremely slow.
8:32am I sit down and hit the power button on the computer.
8:36am
Still staring at the Windows XP startup logo, I ask the customer to bring in the laptop since he wants me to look at it also.
8:40am
The laptop is booted up and I'm already looking it over.
8:41am
Desktop is finally up…9 minutes!! Yikes!
8:46am
Add/Remove programs is finally up and the list populated. I find Norton Internet Security and click the Remove button.
9:41am
 55 minutes later, I can finally work on the computer. The actual uninstall procedure took about 50 minutes and then another five for it to reboot after removal of Norton.
10:07am
 		I installed and updated both AVG Anti-virus and anti-spyware, tested the Internet connect, tested MS Word (which wasn't working at all an hour earlier) and started the AVG scans all in this past half hour.

The moral of the story is that Norton products slow down even the fastest computers significantly more than any other security product. The installs are long, the updates are long, the uninstalls are long, and the protection is mediocre. Please, save yourself money, time and grief and don't buy or install Norton products on yours or other people's computers.

Open Office 2.0 — FREE Alternative to Microsoft Office

In today's meetings, we downloaded, installed, and worked with Open Office. The FREE altnernative to Microsoft Office. To read why the software is free, read this information from their web site .

OpenOffice programs are completely compatible with Microsoft Office programs and allows you to read, edit, and create Office documents without owning the Microsoft Office suite. Here is a list of the programs and their functions in Open Office:

Open Office icons

AVG AntiVirus Upgrade

The calls are starting to ramp up wondering about AVG's messages regarding the discontinuation of their anti-virus. The message is a little alarming, but rest assured that AVG (Grisoft) is NOT going out-of-business and for home users the product will remain free. Although Grisoft is discontinuing support and updates for their current version, they have released a new version of… Read More »AVG AntiVirus Upgrade

Good security can only do so much

One of my customers today had a problem with general computer slowness, pop-ups and couldn't hook up to their cable connection. This particular client is well known to me because I help clean up the computer on a fairly regular basis. My advice is always the same:  don't use free download services (Bear Share was loaded), online poker sites are known spyware beds (two different online poker programs were loaded), please use the proven anti-virus and anti-spyware software that I install and configure (my software was deleted in favor of the super secure AOL Security Suite).

After removing the AOL security suite and re-enabling the high speed connection, I installed AVG Anti-virus and Anti-spyware. Just doing a quick scan with the Anti-spyware program yielded more than 80 spyware problems which AVG then dispatched of quickly. Is this a slam of AOL? No, just a factual account of yet another example of what I find on computers that use sup-par security systems.  To be fair to the AOL system, the computer user engaged in practices that would tax any computer system, but the problems would not have been nearly magnified with the security setup that we recommend.

Using your solitaire skills (Drag & Drop) – Video Tip

Believe it or not, Microsoft put Solitaire in Windows to help new computer users get comfortable with the mouse and its functions. After years of playing solitaire, this tip will help you put the skills to use. I like to call this technique the "ol' 8 or hearts on the 9 of clubs trick." In computer talk, what you are doing when you move one card to another in solitaire is the "drag & drop."

Drag & drop ( " the ol' 8 or hearts on the 9 of clubs trick") is an extremely helpful and time saving skill to use in other computer activities. One of my favorite places to use it is moving files (pictures, documents, etc) from one location to another. For example, if you open a CD or memory card full of pictures up in one window and open another folder on your computer (like My Pictures) in another window, you can then drag files from one window to another.

Options and Preferences

I had a brief epiphany today as I helped two of my customers. When I'm setting up a computer or troubleshooting one, I am constantly in an out of the Options or Preferences of many programs. Almost all programs, from Quicken to Word to image editing software and of course Internet and email software, contain a section that allows you to customize the experience. For example, in Internet Explorer, I always click Tools –> Options, then the Settings button to lower the amount of saved temporary files to 4 or 5 megabytes. Sometimes this setting is set as high as 3000 megabytes! That's a lot of temporary files.