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Use copy and paste to enter long passwords

One technique I use to enter long, complex passwords (which we should all be using) is to open Notepad from the Accessories menu and type the password there. Since we only see the asterisks (*) when we enter passwords, it can be extremely difficult to accurately type in some passwords with mixed case, numbers and other characters. The problem doubles when we have to enter a password two times in a row. Here's how I use the Notepad trick to circumvent this sometimes frustrating procedure:

1.  Open Notepad from the Accessories menu

2.  Type out the password and verify its accuracy

What is your favorite Castellini on Computers Tip?

I've been trying to think of a way to formulate this question into our weekly poll, but is just won't work. Instead, I'm asking you straight away to post a reply to this article telling us what your favorite tip or story from our web site is. Not only will it be educational for us to find out what people like about the site, but you will also bring some older tips or stories up to the front again for our new visitors.

Please post a reply below and either copy and past the link to your favorite tip or story, or the title of the tip or story. Also, if you have time, write a quick note on why you like that particular tip.

Rick’s 3 Rules of Email

  1. Never Forward Email
  2. Never Forward Email
  3. IF you must forward email, ALWAYS use Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) and ALWAYS clean up the header information from previous email.

Some computer users who encounter my rules of email sometimes pass off my thoughts as being too strict. Unfortunately, I know it isn't true. Today, for the upteenth time, I worked with a customer who has had her email address for less than a year and already is inundated with more than 75 spam per day. Luckily her Internet provider has a decent spam filter, but she still has to put up with a lot of unwanted spam. The only thing she uses the email address for is correspondence with some family, friends, and two religious oriented weekly email newsletters.

When to use a CD for backup

Our regular listeners hear us talk about this subject often, but it bears repeating as much as we can talk about it for your data's safety and your sanity. Backing up to CD's is a multi-step process and all the steps need to be followed for it to go right.

CD's work great for archiving data that won't change. This includes pictures, music, your finished novel, etc. CD's should only be burned ONE time. CD-R's have the capability of being written to many times, but this also increases the likelihood of problems with the CD. Burn them once and store them in a safe place.

Will old media kill itself off?

Viacom is suing YouTube (Google) for $1 billion for copyright violations. People (not YouTube) have posted clips (not entire shows unless the shows were under 10  minutes) on YouTube without Viacom's permission.

As a result, many YouTube visitors were turned onto Viacom regular programing as well as many other programs like, The Office, 24, Desperate Housewives, The Family Guy, Ali G, and Lost.

While some of these people would have started watching these programs without the help of the Internet, most people use the Internet to get caught up on episodes that aired before they started watching.

Copy Shortcut for a program to other Windows’ Users

Caller, Marvin, needed to have a program he installed in his user account be available to his wife and daughter. Here's the solution:

1. Make sure that when installing a program if the program gives you the option to install to just you or all users, choose All Users.

2.  IF, that doesn't bring up the icon to the other users, RIGHT click and choose Copy on the program's icon, then Click My Computer, double-click "Shared Documents", Click Edit –> Paste. Now you can log into each of the other users, and copy that shortcut to the desktops of the other users who need access to the program. 

A rare Microsoft Access Tip

Many years ago, I attended a Microsoft Access (database program) class and one tip stuck in my head, but I forgot the exact steps. The tip was a keyboard shortcut to copy the exact information from the previous record's field to the new record's field. For example, if you are entering a database of people from New Mexico, instead of having to type Albuquerque(the most common city in the database) every time you get to the "City" field, this keyboard shortcut could be invoked instead. 

This tip evaded me for years, but today I finally found it and wanted to document it here for any Access users and myself. The shortcut is to push the Ctrl + '   (Control + Apostrophe) keys on the keyboard! Works great. 

Learn how to check your backups

I'm glad to see so many of my customers really starting to take backing up seriously. As we start storing more and more crucial or even irreplaceable data on our computers, it is absolutely imperative that you learn to backup your data properly. 

Once you start backing up, you may start to wonder, "Hmmm, does that disk really have the information that I need on it?" If you are backing up by simple using the Send To function or copying data straight to a flash drive or CD/DVD, then the easy way to check your backup is by double-clicking the drive in My Computer. This will open the drive and let you peer at its contents. If nothing shows up, then your backup method is failing, and you need to adjust. If the data is there, then pat yourself on the back and enjoy the feeling of seeing that your data is safely located on a disk other than your computer's hard drive.

Run, don’t walk, to buy a new computer

One of my favorite Sci-Fi movies of the past few years was iRobot. The film was so loosely based on the Isaac Asimov book that they had to put "inspired by" rather than "based on" in the credit.

The film took place in the near future in a time where every home had a robot.

One main corporation was responsible for supplying most of the robots. As a new line of robots was introduced, the corporation gladly exchanged everyone's existing robots for free for a brand new model.

What no one suspected was that the new robots were rigged to take over the world.

Downloading programs is like buying a program package at the store

My analogies are usually pretty bad and often more confusing than the original idea that I'm trying to explain. However, I think that I have come up with an analogy for downloading and installing files that might make a few light bulbs go off above computer users' heads. Let me know if this makes sense to you:

Install from CD
Install from Internet
(download)
Buy computer program package
from retail outlet.
 Download installation file from Internet
to a known location on your computer
Insert CD from package into your
computer
 Double-click the file you downloaded
from the Internet
Follow on-screen instructions to
install your program
 Follow on-screen instructions to
install your program
Take CD out of computer and
store in case you need to reinstall.
The disk is no longer needed to use
the program.
 		Once the program installs, you can either
copy original download to a CD or delete it.
The program is now ready to use.