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Be courteous with your attachments

The ability to send attachments via email is great. You can attach an important work form to your employees or just a silly picture to a friend.

If you enjoy sending attachments, here are a few things to keep in mind.

1.      Not everyone has the same programs that you do. If you are sending a spreadsheet document from Microsoft Excel or Quattro Pro, save the file as a .csv (comma separated value) instead of the default format. If you are using Microsoft Word, Works or Word Perfect, save your file as a .rtf (rich text format) file. These formats can be read by any computer. Microsoft PowerPoint is also a common format for email attachments and very few home computers actually have the program on their computer.

Picasa 2

What can you do with Picasa 2?

Picasa 2 is a free program made by Google that allows you to organize your photos without any effort on your part.

Besides organizing photos it also has some great creativity tools including gift CDs, slide shows, and blogging tools.

HOW TO GET PICASA:

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

Top 10 Digital Camera Tricks

Top 10 Digital Camera Tips:
(in no particular order)

1. Use Rechargeable Batteries:
Make sure your digital camera supports them. Look for at least 1800 mAh. Get more than one set.

2. Save those batteries:
The three best ways to save batteries are…
1. Don’t use your LCD except for macro and composition shots.
2. Don’t over use your zoom lens.
3. Don’t connect your camera to your computer (use a media reader).

Open Office – The FREE Office Alternative

Microsoft Office has dominated the office space (spreadsheet, word processor, presentation creation, etc). Over the recent few years, Open Office has made huge strides. Backed by Sun Microsystems and now Google as well among others, this suite of office products is poised to take off.

Open Office includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, database program, and graphics program.
 
The download is huge and can take up to seven hours with dial-up Internet…so don’t attempt it unless you have a fast connection or a lot of time.

What should I back up?

Recently, you have heard me talk a great deal about flash memory drives and there usefulness for backup. One of our listeners/newsletter readers, recently asked what files are important to backup.

So, tip number one in backup is to backup only those files that you create. These include but are not limited to:

  • Financial program data (Quicken, Money, etc) 
  • Email and other address books 
  • Saved email messages
  • Important word processing documents, spreadsheets and/or databases you have created 
  • Calendar/appointment information 
  • Digital pictures (from digital cameras AND scanners) 
  • Internet favorites or bookmarks 
  • Genealogy research 
  • Downloaded programs or utilities (backup the original installation file) 

You get the picture. Anything important to you that you have created and don’t want to lose, should be backed up.

Programs (with the exception of downloaded programs as noted above), do not need to be backed up because you can rebuild them with original installation CD’s and disks.

For even more information about backup use our site search engine to search for backup for even more specifics about backing up your important data.

How to Install Shareware

Last week we discussed how to download shareware.  This week we will finish the project and talk about installing and using shareware.

Many shareware programs you will download are in a compressed format called a ZIP file.  If this is the case, then you will need an “decompression” utility such as WinZip to get to the programs installation files.

Double click on the file you downloaded and one of two things will happen:
1.  WinZip will start and show you the files inside the “compressed package”…if so, look for a setup or install file and double-click on it to start the installation process
OR
2.  The installation process will start and you just follow the onscreen instructions.