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Firefox

Ubuntu on the road

I continue to experiment with the Ubuntu operating system. This past weekend, my family and I made a quick trip to the South Dakota Black Hills and I took my Ubuntu laptop along for the ride. My Ubuntu laptop is an older Compaq (almost six years old) that was destined for the trash heap by its previous owner. It no longer performed well for them and required reformatting and upgrading to run Windows XP and other software at any appreciable speed. I rescued it, installed Ubuntu Linux on it, bought the cheapest wireless card I could find, and now I have a completely functional and quick second laptop.

Mozilla Firefox Revisited

By Rick Castellini 2002. Revised by Adam Cochran 2007

Earlier this summer, my co-host, Adam, decided to do an 'on air' review of a product. The product he chose is Mozilla Firefox, an alternative web browser. Being on the radio and downloading, installing and reviewing software was a new experience for us, but the impression was instant and impressive for both of us.

Mozilla loads most web pages much faster than Internet Explorer and makes a dial-up connection seem snappier. Because Mozilla does not use any code from Internet Explorer, it is inherently less likely to be plagued by the various security holes that Internet Explorer fights against on a daily basis. The software is free and I've put together a list of features and tips that I like about this great little browser:

Is this a test?

Today I had an appointment that spanned almost every area of what I do on a daily basis. The appointment lasted roughly three hours.

In that time I…

Helped setup a new iMac. She is making the switch from Windows and wanted some of the features that she was used to in her PC. I set her computer to ask for her password whenever it was turned on or came out of sleep mode so her kids couldn't get online without her permission. I also setup a gmail account and a POP3 email program that worked like Outlook Express.

  • Consulted her on ways of getting better range from her wireless network.
  • Tuned up her kids' computer and removed lots of

Adjust font size in Firefox – Video Tip

I had a client today with a few vision problems. The small fonts and certain colors were difficult for him to see.

Hold CTRL+(+ key) to increase font size adn hold CTRL+(- key) to decrease the font size. However, this change is only temporary.

To make more permanent changes to the font size go into Tools->Options and select the Content tab. You can make changes on that main screen and under the Advanced button.

Oh heck – just watch the video below (click "read more if the video isn't already showing), it makes more sense that way.

Ubuntu Linux!!!

Ubuntu Desktop - click for larger view Last week I installed Windows Vista on my fine running XP machine (less than six months old) and have been tolerating it since then and learning about its quirks and features. I have actually been using Vista since September and besides the integrated search (which can be added to XP through multiple channels for free), I honestly do not understand what the heck Microsoft did for nearly six years between operating systems. Yes, it is pretty, but who cares how pretty it is…my email is slower, programs are slower, menus, options, and preferences have all been moved to different places…

Alphabetize your Favorites (or Bookmarks)

Sort menus alphabeticallyThis question came up a couple of times on the show on Saturday and numerous times recently via email; How do I alphabetize my favorites or bookmarks?

Internet Explorer

  1. Click Favorites from the menus
  2. RIGHT Click on any item in the favorites list
  3. Click Sort by Name from the menu

Mozilla Firefox

  1. Click Bookmarks from the menus
  2. RIGHT Click on any item in the bookmarks list
  3. Click Sort by Name from the menu

That's it! You can do that as often as you need to keep your lists in order. Incidentally, you can apply this same technique to your programs menu…

Temporary Internet Files – Don’t let them stack up

Cleaning out temporary files on our computers (see the archives for Disk Cleanup) remains an extremely important step in keeping them running clean and error free. Programs and Windows create temporary files, when needed, to perform certain functions. The Internet uses temporary files to store cookies, and recently visited web sites and their graphics.

Temporary Internet files serve a useful function when you visit web sites on a regular basis. By storing the graphics and some of the text, our browser doesn't have to re-download the files, thus the page loads faster. On the other hand, these files are extremely small and too many of them on our computer (10's of thousands in some cases) can cause a sever performance drop in our computers.

Dial-up users: Are you tired of waiting for email with large attachments?

I have been utilizing this tip much more lately as dial-up users get pummeled with email containing pictures that haven't been resized and an endless parade of forward spam with large attachments from friends and family with high speed connections. For every one megabyte of space an attachment contains, it takes 5-8 minutes for a dial-up user to download it. Many joke emails, slide shows or movies being passed around today can be 5mb or larger…tying up the dial-up users phone line for an hour or more!  If you don't want to tell the offending parties to take you off their list, you can do one or both of the following procedures to gain some control over you email again.

Block Internet Explorer 7

Internet Explorer 7 finally became final last week and is starting to be deployed as a Windows Update. While I believe that IE 7 is a huge step in the right direction, the changes in the look and feel of the browser will throw many for a loop. Even after working with IE 7 for the past five or so months as it made its way through the beta stages of development, I don't think it holds a candle next to the Firefox browser . If you aren't afraid to learn the new nuances of IE 7 and don't want to change to Firefox, I say go for the upgrade. However, if you are perfectly comfortable where you are right now with Internet Explorer 6, then you might want to download and install this tool , made available through Microsoft, that prevents the automatic installation of the new Internet Explorer 7.