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
Woo hoo! As I left for work this morning I looked at my indispensable Palm Treo 755p and saw a site that is usually reserved only for vacations to larger cities than mine…or Craig, Colorado. I saw TRIANGLES!!
Triangles in the world of the Sprint Palm Treo indicate that I am in a high speed zone for my Sprint data plan. Since many cell phones have the capability of accessing email and Internet content, carriers have expanded their networks, slowly, to allow for higher and higher speeds.
Sprint offers two levels of data speed in their network. For years, I have toiled (tongue firmly mounted in cheek) under the capacity of checking weather, directions, movie times, email and more with my Treo at maybe fast dial-up or ISDN speeds…indicated by the little arrows above my signal indicator.
When Sprint rolled out their high speed network a few years ago, my hamlet was not included. My phone has been capable of the new speeds for more than a year, but unless I traveled to a metro area or the smaller town of Craig, Colorado (which I drove through once about six years ago) I could not access the higher speeds which approach a strong DSL connection like speed.
To make a long story short, my day was smoother, the sun was shinier, and the wind was windier today with my Treo 755p by my side happily sucking in Internet data at speeds probably 5X faster than yesterday. Triangles…my new favorite shape.
This weekend, an emailer asked the question of how to use the backups that we describe on our site. An excellent question I’m sure others have had as well.
Over the years, I laid out step-by-step methods for backing up your email address book, favorites/bookmarks, and even your email. To use these backups, simply use the “Import” function to bring them back into a new installation of a program or even a new computer.
Ya, don’t ask me to elaborate too much on the title of this post, I didn’t mean anything too deep by it.
I picked up my new/old Mac that a reader gave me. It is an older system, but It does a great job. It’s a dual 867mhz G4 with a gig of RAM, 10GB hard drive and Leopard OS. While it may seem a little dated by Mac standards, it is every bit as fast as my dual core Pentium that I typically run XP on.
I haven’t used it for any digital photography stuff, but I didn’t want it for that. I wanted a mac so I could use it exclusively for a few weeks and learn how to help my Mac clients adapt to “the switch” from Windows.
Vista has been the best thing that ever happend to Macintosh. I have setup more Macs in the last six months than I have the entire seven years I am been a computer guy. I love them and they work great.
The downside is that I am beginning to get more Mac problems that I don’t know how to solve and I don’t like learning on my client’s dime. So, I need your help.
I need your previous Mac. I am not looking to buy a used Mac, I am begging. I will gladly pay shipping, but I am hoping that someone has a G4 or G5 (or Intel – sheeya right) mac mini, iMac or PowerPC that they are no longer using. Of course I would take ibooks, powerbooks or MacBooks too.
Here’s where I really get picky…
Today, I helped a new customer order a Zonbu computer. I first wrote about this interesting computer about two months ago. I offered to setup these machines up for free for the first three people in our area that buy one. After much deliberation and research, the customer (KC) and I decided that this computer was really the right decision for her needs.
She bought the laptop Zonbu, and I can’t think of anything that this computer won’t be able to do for her. She plans on doing some traveling with it (it has wi-fi built-in). She wants to possibly add a digital camera at some time (it has a good picture manager utility and editor already installed). Of course she plans on using the Internet for research, entertainment, and email (the Zonbu has arguably the best browser installed…Firefox and excellent email programs as well). She might want to play a few games (Zonbu has over 15 installed including Sudoku, Mahjongg, Solitaire, Freecell, and more). In addition to all these things, the Zonbu boasts a world-class word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, database, calendar program, web editor, desktop publishing software, DVD player, music player and organizer, and over 30 games and countless accessories. AND it includes 24/7 support via either telephone or email or chat. AND it includes program and operating system updates automatically maintained via the Internet and a built in web backup system. And this system does not require you be a security expert because it doesn’t require anti-virus or anti-spyware software.
Is this starting to sound good to you? It should, but wait how much does it cost? $1,000?
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:
I am sure that this isn’t the first article posted on this topic at HelpMeRick.com, but hopefully it will be the most complete.
There are three ways to define blogs: As news, as journals and as a ventilation system for people who want to be important.
In fact you could easily draw a vin diagram showing how most blogs overlap.
Blogs as News:
Blogs are websites that allow users to build and post to as easily as they send an email. This means that factors like web design, and computer literacy are of little importance.
I fielded a call from a client today who wanted to know how to transfer a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) form he received via email to Microsoft Word so he could fill it out using his computer, save it, then email it back. My short answer was that he couldn’t do it.
Technically, it can be done through a series of computer hocus-pocus, Jedi mind tricks, a great deal of knowledge about the Windows clipboard, Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Word and a lot of time. Knowing that this client didn’t have these tools at his disposal, I elected to tell him that it couldn’t be done.
Adobe Acrobat forms (PDF files) are not easy to edit or annotate because the purpose of a PDF is to preserve the formatting and integrity of the original document. Some PDF form designers can make their forms fillable using our computers, if they choose to do so. For example, many government sites like the IRS have forms that can be downloaded and printed or filled out right from our computers. Again, these forms are designed this way and not all PDF forms can be filled in via computer.
It bothered me all day that I still didn’t know of a better solution for this common question; how to fill in a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) form on the computer. I did some research tonight and found that our new favorite PDF reader (Foxit Reader) has this capability built-in (see illustration). However, the free version will let you fill it in, but if you save, print, or email the filled in form, it will have some verbiage along with it stating that the feature is a pay feature. If you pay Foxit $40, you can use the feature and not have the trial verbage printed on your form. If you need to fill out a lot of PDF forms, this looks to be a great solution.
I write and talk about Web 2.0 all the time and lo-and-behold there is a
Today, I helped my customer who I installed Ubuntu for almost four months ago. “It has been working great so far”, he informed me. We mainly worked on fine tuning some aspects of the desktop and panels (Ubuntu toolbars). He also wanted to use a calendar, but didn’t know how to approach the included Evolution program which is similar to Microsoft Outlook. However, as I pointed out last summer during my “14 days with Ubuntu”, I like the direction Evolution is heading, but it is far from polished.
Although Evolution comes with Ubuntu automatically, I still recommend using