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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.

How to add the print and other buttons to Firefox toolbar – Video Tip

We love the Mozilla Firefox browser, but out-of-the-box it doesn’t show the print button. Also, some people like to have the Bookmark and History buttons available as well. This tip shows you how to add any or all of these buttons as well as others you might want.

  1. In Firefox, RIGHT click on a blank part of the toolbar (or Click View –> Toolbars –> Customize from the menus)
  2. Click and drag the buttons you want to the toolbar (you can also drag buttons you don’t need back into the customize box to delete them)
  3. Click Done

To see this tip in action, watch the short demo below!

Yet another feature yanked from the NEW Microsoft Office 2007

While working with a small business client today, they asked how to insert a picture into a Word document from their scanner. “Oh, that’s an easy one”, I said to myself. Then I realized they were using the new Office 2007.

In all previous versions of Microsoft Word and other word processor worth their weight, you follow these steps to insert a picture from

Your hard drive is meant to hold stuff

Every week I’m out making my rounds, I hear this expression; “My computer is really slow it must have too much stuff in it and needs to be cleaned out.”

Your computer can never have have too much “stuff.” Your hard drive is designed to hold tens of thousands of documents, pictures, music and more. The number of files you store on your computer has next to nothing to do with your perceived speed of the computer.

Computer speed directly relates to how much RAM (temporary memory, not storage/hard drive memory) it has, how fast the processor is, and most importantly how clean your computer is. By clean, I’m referring to physically clean and what types of files are stored on the system.

Remember to take out the trash!

If you really like saving all of your email, you might seriously consider getting a Gmail account. With today’s emails sometimes weighing in at 5 megabytes and more, email programs (Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc) can get extremely sluggish. Sluggish performance eventually leads to corrupt data which means you lose all your email.

You can take steps to avoid this, however, by following a few simple

Brain transplant

If I could impart one aspect of my computer knowledge to everyone who uses a computer, it would be the ability to understand file management.

File management, in the computer world, means how information (files) are stored and utilized on a computer system. Understanding file management, means understanding:

Use the Task Manager to troubleshoot program problems – Video Tip

While Windows is far from a perfect operating system, it does provide some tools to help deal with its imperfections.

One of the tools you can use to shut down a troublesome program without having to completely restart your system is the Task Manager.

For instance, if a program happens to freeze or stops responding to your mouse clicks or keyboard strokes, try this technique before reaching for the power button:

  1. Push Ctrl+Alt+Delete on your keyboard to brink up the Task Manager window (Close Program window in Windows 95, 98, and Me)
    • NOTE: Windows Vista users:  Ctrl+Alt+Del will bring up a screen where you have to click the Start Task Manager button before moving to the next step.
  2. Find and click ONE time on the program that is giving you trouble, then click the End Task button
  3. The program should close and disappear from the Task Manager list.
  4. If not, wait a few seconds and you should see another window pop-up…click the End Task button again or preat step #2

Using this technique should allow you to return to Windows and continue on with your computing…again, without the need for a full reboot of your system. It doesn’t work one hundred percent of the time, but it does work often enough that you will be rebooting your computer less. Watch the short video below to view this technique in action and learn a few other tricks not outlined here:

How to fix Windows Mail when you can’t delete messages

I ran into a problem today with a Windows Vista machine that apparently isn’t unique. This tip only applies to Windows Vista users who use Windows mail.

Problem: Can’t delete any messages in Windows Mail…which also prevents new messages from being read.

Symptom: When you try and delete a message in Windows Mail, you get an “Internal Error” message then have to restart the program.

Solution:

Deep Cleaning Temporary Files in Windows XP

Temporary files are used by our computers to provide behind the scenes speed and function. When we use any program from Solitaire to programming a database, our computers are performing hundreds or thousands of duties behind the scenes…creating, modifying, and sometimes deleting files.

The files left behind are known as temporary files. Temporary files are just that; temporary and expendable. Thousands of them can stack up over time taking up valuable space and slowing your computer.

Since Windows 98, Microsoft has provided us a great little tool called Disk Cleanup. Disk Cleanup can delete Temporary Internet Files, Temporary Windows files and more all in one easy to use utility. Disk Cleanup can be found by:

1. Click Start
2. Click Programs (All Programs)

Troubleshooting 101

By now many of you have figured out that computers are unruly beasts. They seem to be fine one day and schizophrenic the next. As a person who troubleshoots computers for a living, I’m going to let you in on a little trade secret. 

When something on your computer seems to be a little left of center, stop and ask yourself three questions: