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Printer Troubleshooting 101

Lately, I’ve run across many printer problems so I’m going to share with you my formula for approaching a printer problem.

  1. Shut off computer
  2. Shut off printer
  3. Check cable from printer to computer and make sure it is securely plugged in on both sides
  4. Check cable from printer to power source and make they plugged in well.
  5. Turn the printer on and wait for it to go through all of its startup activities (wait until it is quiet)
    • If the printer happens to be a HP printer, I will sometimes unplug the power cable from the back of the printer, then

Rick’s Answers his email Videocast – 003

It’s been awhile since I recorded answers to your email, but I plan to start doing this at least twice per week. So, keep sending your questions, and I’ll keep answering them.

Solution to strange folders synchronizing error in Outlook 2007

I ran into a problem with Microsoft Outlook 2007 that I never seen. When Outlook was running, a small icon in the system tray was working like crazy on synchronizing folders. Synchronizing folders in Outlook 2007 is usually reserved for large office environments where users share calendars, contacts, etc. This particular computer user was on a standalone system.

The little icon itself wasn’t the problem, but the fact that it was trying to synchronize folders to nowhere ate up large chunks of computer power slowing down the system to almost unusable. After some web searching and poking around some of the tech web forums (nothing was found on Microsoft’s support site), I found that many other people were having the same problem, but no real solution was found.

More Linux success stories

I want to keep singing the praises of an operating system that I used to make fun of on our show; Linux. In partial defense of myself, Linux traditionally has been known as the geeks operating system, and a user needed to be permanently attached to a forum for help and have an affinity for the command prompt or as its known in Linux, the terminal.

Great digital photography debate topics

Technology is no different than politics in that there are a variety of topics that people have opinions on. While you may not know much about these topics now, what you know about them can have a great impact on knowing who to listen to when it comes to learning more about digital photography and related topics.

PC vs. Mac:

The Mac people will tell you that Macs are better for graphics, easier to use more stable.

Bresnan Email Woes

Although this tip targets one particular Internet provider, ANY computer user will benefit from the advice I give at the end of the article. In Western Colorado, a company called Bresnan provides a large swath of the cable services…including cable Internet. Overall, I have no problems with the Bresnan service. They run an extremely speedy and pretty stable Internet connection.

However, my beef with the service has always been their sub-standard email service.

  • Only 50 megabytes of space per email address (most services offer 1000 megabytes and up)
  • Horrific spam filtering…filters legit email, and lets a lot of spam through
  • Web mail application is among the worst I’ve seen

Over the past few weeks, Bresnan customers have been pleasantly surprised to see that all of the sudden 99% or more of their spam messages have stopped arriving in either their screened mail folder or their inbox. They were happy. What they and I didn’t start to figure out until this week was

Zoho now supports Yahoo or Google accounts

Zoho.com If you haven’t had a chance yet to try out the Zoho.com online productivity applications and you have a Yahoo or Google account or email address, you can now use that account information to sign-in to any of the Zoho.com applications. This new feature from Zoho gives literally millions of computer users the opportunity to see what online applications are all about without going through any new sign-up process.

Use Disposable Email Addresses to thwart spam

In our monthly computer user group today, the discussion some how made its way to disposable email addresses. Many web sites offer free, disposable email addresses you can create for one time use to sign up for a temporary web services, or make an inquiry to a web site that you don’t want to have your real email address. Beyond anonymity, using a disposable email address will reduce the amount of spam that comes into your real email inbox.

Craigslist is full of scammers – but they are easy to spot

I recently wrote about the wonders of Craislist both on HelpMeRick.com and in our free weekly email newsletter.

Someone posted a comment that I think needs to be addressed. There are many many scammers on Craigslist. However, they are stupid and easy to detect.

Here are a list of ways to detect a craigslist scammer.

1. The item is priced very low, but not too low. A $50 digital camera that retails for $5,000 is obviously a scam. Craigslist scammers typically would price such an item at $1,100 making it almost believable. Think about it, would anyone really sell an item for half as much as they could easily sell it for on eBay.