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How to send an email attachment

We have a few program specific tips on our website about how to send email attachments. Each step is broken down step-by-step.

 I am writing this more as a general guide for emailing attachments. I have seen a few mistakes lately that have caused problems for first-time attachment senders. Here are a few tips to help you avoid problems.

1. If you are emailing photos and you use Outlook, Outlook Express or gmail, download and install Picasa – selecting, resizing and sending photos is a one step process.

2. Don't ever scan a document as "text" when scanning. Sometimes this will open the scanner software's OCR feature which converts it to a text document rather than an image. This sounds good, but it will cost you a lot more time and it probably will just frustrate you.

Add more USB ports easily

PCI USB Expansion CardMany new computers over the past few years come with a minimum of six USB ports (four in the back and two up front). With cameras, scanners, printers, MP3 players, external hard drives, mice, keyboards and more, what seemed like a lot of ports quickly dwindles. You could add an external USB hub that plugs into one of your ports then gives you four more, for a net gain of three. Hubs can be found for about $20-30. More often, however, I'm recommending people spend less than $10 and get a PCI USB expansion card that gives you a net gain of four or more USB ports.

Shopping story

By popular demand (thanks Jack), here’s the shopping store. A customer of
mine took advantage of the amazing computer deals at a local big box store
with matching initials. It was one of those computer, monitor, printer
packages. Turns out they sold her an ‘open box’ printer and though
apprehensive the manager assured her everything would be fine.

I show up to set everything up and take one look at the box and asked to
see her receipt. They charged her full price for the printer (three-in-one
HP) and gave her a gift certificate for $8.50. There was no packing
material around the printer, the cartridges were already installed and dry,

Moving to a new computer requires patience

I've helped many new people this fall move to a new computer. Like moving to a new house, it takes time and patience before everything gets just right on your new computer. It is important to know that you can't simply hook up a new computer and start using it. You need to uninstall any unwanted software, properly configure and update your security software, setup your Internet and email connections, and then most importantly, transfer your data from the old computer to the new one.

Inevitably, when I work with a new computer customer, I get the deer in the headlights look when I if there data is backed up or know what data they want to move and where it is stored. You have heard me mention many times how important file management and backup are, but I have also mentioned that this is the most difficult part of computing to learn and understand. Many computer users can get by not learning about files, folders and backup for years, but when moving to a new computer, this will make the transition a lot tougher and longer. 

Things we say for our health

Today I visited a client who listens to the show regularly, or so she said.

I was there because the computer was running very slow and locked up often. On her computer were three programs (or groups of programs).

1. AOL

2. AOL Security Center (AOL's antivirus, antispyware and popup blocker)

3. Norton System Works

"I know you guys say not to use these programs but my son said I need them, he works for a big computer company in California."

As I explained that her problems were caused by AOL, AOL Security Center and Norton she said, "I knew you were going to tell me that I shouldn't be using those programs but…"

Geek Squad Story

Two stories from one day of work. Those of you who know me know that I don't 'slam' other people or businesses. I only relay information that I view as important to save technology consumers money, time and frustration. Here are two actual stories that were relayed to me today about Best Buy's Geek Squad:

Story #1

A new customer of mine informed me that she hired the Geek Squad to come to her house to setup a home network. Their advertised rate for such a service is $159 minimum. The 'professional' who showed up spent nearly seven hours at the customer's house and when he left, the network was not completed and the customer told that it couldn't be done. To the Geek Squad's credit, they didn't charge the customer. 

Internet Explorer 7 Keyboard shortcuts

General shortcuts
table with 2 columns and 9 rows
Turn Full Screen Mode on or off 
F11 

Cycle through the Address Bar, Refresh button, Search Box, and
items on a web page  

TAB  

Find a word or phrase on a page 

CTRL+F 

Open the current webpage in a new window  

CTRL+N  

Print the page  

CTRL+P  

Select all items on the page  

CTRL+A  

Zoom in  

CTRL+PLUS  

Zoom out  

CTRL+MINUS  

55 Minute Uninstall

Wow, it would have almost been faster to backup the data, reformat the hard drive, and reinstall everything from scratch. The long install was of the grossly over programmed Norton Internet Security Suite. Here's the breakdown of my appointment:

8:26am Arrive at customer's house. He tells me that his computer is running extremely slow.
8:32am I sit down and hit the power button on the computer.
8:36am
Still staring at the Windows XP startup logo, I ask the customer to bring in the laptop since he wants me to look at it also.
8:40am
The laptop is booted up and I'm already looking it over.
8:41am
Desktop is finally up…9 minutes!! Yikes!
8:46am
Add/Remove programs is finally up and the list populated. I find Norton Internet Security and click the Remove button.
9:41am
 55 minutes later, I can finally work on the computer. The actual uninstall procedure took about 50 minutes and then another five for it to reboot after removal of Norton.
10:07am
 		I installed and updated both AVG Anti-virus and anti-spyware, tested the Internet connect, tested MS Word (which wasn't working at all an hour earlier) and started the AVG scans all in this past half hour.

The moral of the story is that Norton products slow down even the fastest computers significantly more than any other security product. The installs are long, the updates are long, the uninstalls are long, and the protection is mediocre. Please, save yourself money, time and grief and don't buy or install Norton products on yours or other people's computers.

AVG AntiVirus Upgrade

The calls are starting to ramp up wondering about AVG's messages regarding the discontinuation of their anti-virus. The message is a little alarming, but rest assured that AVG (Grisoft) is NOT going out-of-business and for home users the product will remain free. Although Grisoft is discontinuing support and updates for their current version, they have released a new version of… Read More »AVG AntiVirus Upgrade

Good security can only do so much

One of my customers today had a problem with general computer slowness, pop-ups and couldn't hook up to their cable connection. This particular client is well known to me because I help clean up the computer on a fairly regular basis. My advice is always the same:  don't use free download services (Bear Share was loaded), online poker sites are known spyware beds (two different online poker programs were loaded), please use the proven anti-virus and anti-spyware software that I install and configure (my software was deleted in favor of the super secure AOL Security Suite).

After removing the AOL security suite and re-enabling the high speed connection, I installed AVG Anti-virus and Anti-spyware. Just doing a quick scan with the Anti-spyware program yielded more than 80 spyware problems which AVG then dispatched of quickly. Is this a slam of AOL? No, just a factual account of yet another example of what I find on computers that use sup-par security systems.  To be fair to the AOL system, the computer user engaged in practices that would tax any computer system, but the problems would not have been nearly magnified with the security setup that we recommend.