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What do Rick and Adam do during the week and what is their phone number?

A common misconception is that Adam and I spend our week sunning ourselves with our families on some exotic beach before returning to our mansions and counting our stacks of $100 bills.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. I own and operate a business called Grand Valley PC Partners in Grand Junction, CO. All my business is onsite home and office calls to help computer users get out of trouble, setup up new systems or Internet service, and teach users how to get the most out of their computer. I have been doing this for more than 10 years (the radio show is 7 years old).

eBay: Read the entire auction before asking questions

I have another camera up on eBay. Old cameras sell pretty well, but they attract a lot of overseas buyers. Everytime I sell a camera, I get about a dozen people asking the same questions.

Will you ship overseas? How much to ship to my country? Does the item work? All of these answers are spelled out as a part of the auction but people ask any way.

Here are the first two questions that I have been asked by potential bidders:

"hello.could you apply ship to taiwan?how much the delivery cost to taiwan?is it with registered and insurance?are everything work correctly one the camera and lens as that should be?does that with scratches,fongus and haze?or any other problems?thanks~~~"

Picasa 2 Revisited

We discussed Picasa 2 late last year, but since then I have discovered many more wonderful things that can be done with the program. In fact, I now use it more often than any other program for my day-to-day digital photography.

HOW TO GET PICASA:

1. Download Either click on this button, or go to www.picasa.com and click on the Free Download button.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Use the Ethernet port for broadband

If you have broadband Internet and you had the company set it up for you, it is very likely they connected it using the USB cable instead of the Ethernet cable.

The Ethernet cable has an end on it that looks like a giant phone jack and it is the most reliable way to connect your computer to your broadband cable or DSL modem.

Scanners, printers, joysticks, mice, keyboards, and digital cameras are just a few of the dozens of devices that can be connected to your computer’s USB ports. Since this is the case, you must load drivers to get your computer to recognize your broadband modem when connecting through USB.

Travel tip from a customer…

A major light bulb went off today when a customer of mine talked about a tech travel tip he had recently received.

For better or worse, when many of us travel today, we bring along cell phones, cameras with rechargeable batteries, laptops, MP3 players, portable DVD players and more. These gadgets crave power and usually at the same time! When I travel, I’m usually unplugging lamps, clocks and other devices in the hotel room trying to make room to charge and power my tech. Often times it means sacrificing light in order to get my phone charged.

Nothing is by the book

There are two things that make the businesses Rick and I run different from running a computer shop or working as the IT guy in a big company.

1. We see dozens of computers each week and no two of them are the same in any way.

2. Rarely is anything done by the book.

Every person has their own preference for desktop wallpaper, word processing program, Windows version, printer, antivirus, digital camera, web browser, etc.