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Curbside Recycling

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.

Microsoft Table PC not that revolutionary

coffeepc

People keep sending me video of the Microsoft table PC. It’s a computer that looks like a table. The demonstrations in the video show it doing amazing things like pulling pictures from a digital camera simply by placing the camera on the coffee table.

While the demonstration is impressive, the purpose for such a device is not clear. It would be great for an entertainment device but the dazzle would wear off quickly as soon as the user needed a keyboard with hard buttons so they could touch type.

Why good computer guys get grumpy sometimes

Arrogant computer guys really bother me. I try very hard not to be a computer guy who thinks he knows everything.

The problem with this is that I am sometimes competing with computer guys who convince people that they do know everything. When I try to straighten out the situation, I get the line, “but the guy at Best Buy said that Norton is the best.” or “But my son who has worked at HP for 20 years says that Vista is much faster.”

When I try to explain using experience and logic, they don’t want to listen. Logically, wouldn’t it make more sense to listen to someone who isn’t trying to sell something. Even better, someone who deals with problems in real-life homes and businesses every day?

Zonbu is coming to Grand Junction!!

Today, I helped a new customer order a Zonbu computer. I first wrote about this interesting computer about two months ago. I offered to setup these machines up for free for the first three people in our area that buy one. After much deliberation and research, the customer (KC) and I decided that this computer was really the right decision for her needs.

She bought the laptop Zonbu, and I can’t think of anything that this computer won’t be able to do for her. She plans on doing some traveling with it (it has wi-fi built-in). She wants to possibly add a digital camera at some time (it has a good picture manager utility and editor already installed). Of course she plans on using the Internet for research, entertainment, and email (the Zonbu has arguably the best browser installed…Firefox and excellent email programs as well). She might want to play a few games (Zonbu has over 15 installed including Sudoku, Mahjongg, Solitaire, Freecell, and more). In addition to all these things, the Zonbu boasts a world-class word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, database, calendar program, web editor, desktop publishing software, DVD player, music player and organizer, and over 30 games and countless accessories. AND it includes 24/7 support via either telephone or email or chat. AND it includes program and operating system updates automatically maintained via the Internet and a built in web backup system. And this system does not require you be a security expert because it doesn’t require anti-virus or anti-spyware software.

Is this starting to sound good to you? It should, but wait how much does it cost?  $1,000?

What is a blog?

I am sure that this isn’t the first article posted on this topic at HelpMeRick.com, but hopefully it will be the most complete.

There are three ways to define blogs: As news, as journals and as a ventilation system for people who want to be important.

In fact you could easily draw a vin diagram showing how most blogs overlap.

Blogs as News:

Blogs are websites that allow users to build and post to as easily as they send an email. This means that factors like web design, and computer literacy are of little importance.

Top Ten Questions to ask when Buying “Open Box,” or “Display Models”

By Andy Cochran 

1. Does the item have all of its accessories?

This is a very important question when it comes to things like,
battery chargers or special cables for Ipods, MP3 players, or digital cameras, and remote controls TVs. Ask if everything is there before you buy it. Owners’ manuals and most product software can be found online, if it’s MIA at the store. Have a salesperson print the manual, and give instructions on where to download the required software (if there is any) at home.

2. Is the item in good condition?

Good bye pay phones – one more thing our children will never understand

Eighty percent of people now own cell phones and the other 20 percent are standing next to eight people holding a cell phone.

Remember pay phones? Remember stuff that made you ask, “What is that?” on the receiver of the pay phone? Remember having to insert more money to continue the call? Remember being at the airport or mall and searching like mad for a pay phone that wasn’t in use?

AT&T announced this week that those days will be happy memories by the end of 2008. The company plans to end the pay phone business.

I will be first in line for a vintage phone to put with my 8-track player, phonograph, rotary phone, cassette tape, CB radio, typewriter and film camera.

No great holiday computer sales

I was pretty disappointed with the lack of good computer sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Prices for computer have been pretty low since mid-summer, but I was hoping to see some 2GB RAM laptops under $450 and desktops with 2GB of RAM for less than that. Maybe we will see some lower prices before Christmas Eve.

Adam didn’t post any outstanding deals on digital cameras either, so I’m assuming that the camera market was equally as flat as PC’s.

10 Phrases that we never thought we would utter

I know I’m missing some awfully good phrases, but I wanted to write some of them down. Leave a comment and tell me some other strange, modern tech phrases that would be so out of place 15 years ago and before.

  1. “How much RAM do you have in the PC?”
  2. “Send me a text message on your cell.”
  3. “Do you have an optical or laser mouse?”
  4. “Does this hotel have free wi-fi?”
  5. “I need to defrag my hard drive after I run the disk cleanup.”
  6. “Did you google your that?”
  7. “I shopped on eBay, Craig’s List, Amazon, Newegg, and ecost and still can’t find it.”
  8. “If you don’t have an optical or laser mouse, you have to clean your mouse’s ball so it runs smoothly.”
  9. “Should I buy an 8 megapixel or 10 megapixel camera?”
  10. “Which smart phone is the best, the Treo, iPhone, Razr, or Blackberry?”

These are 10 that I came up with, but I would love to hear tech phrases that you come up with that would have sounded ludicrous in the 20th century…so leave a comment!

Stop the Photoshop Elements Browser Popup – VIDEO TIP

Adobe Photoshop Elements has a built-in program that searches for all of the photos on your computer and catalogs them. It then displays thumbnails of all of the photos it finds so that you can get to photos faster.

This seems great, but Adobe did a pretty terrible job with the program. It is slow and way to difficult to use for a basic program. Picasa is free and it works much better.

The worst part of the Photoshop Elements browser program is that it takes over. After installing Photoshop Elements version 3 on up to the current version 5, the browser program pops up whenever you plug in a digital camera or memory card. This is very annoying since the program is slow to load and difficult to understand, especially when you aren't expecting it.

Here is a quick video tip. That demonstrates how to turn off the browser popup feature.