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Internet

What do Rick and Adam do during the week and what is their phone number?

A common misconception is that Adam and I spend our week sunning ourselves with our families on some exotic beach before returning to our mansions and counting our stacks of $100 bills.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. I own and operate a business called Grand Valley PC Partners in Grand Junction, CO. All my business is onsite home and office calls to help computer users get out of trouble, setup up new systems or Internet service, and teach users how to get the most out of their computer. I have been doing this for more than 10 years (the radio show is 7 years old).

Just wait and try again

So many computer problems can be solved by simply shutting the computer off, waiting a few minutes then trying again. This is especially true with the Internet. Whether you are using dial-up or high speed, restarting your computer (and high speed modem) is the number one thing to try. Internet companies even repeat this mantra while you are waiting on hold for them to help you.

One other tip with Internet problems is wait for more than just a few minutes. The Internet is a giant organism…it lives, breathes, and has hiccups. These hiccups can last anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours. When a problem occurs accessing web sites or email and you have already tried shutting the computer on and off, DO NOT ASSUME that the problem is on your computer. More often than not, the problem lies with the Internet itself or your provider. Wait a half hour to hour, then try again. If access continues to be interrupted after two or three hours, then and only then call for help. 

Check the Cables

Two common questions I get throughout my travels as a computer help guy are: 1) My sound doesn’t work, 2) My modem (dial-up or high speed) is acting funny.

Interestingly enough, a large majority of the solutions happen to be cable related. For the sound, make sure that your speakers are plugged into the ‘sound out’ or speaker jack. It usually is marked green on the back of your computer. If you happen to have two round green plugs on the back of the computer, always use the lowest one. Also, with most speakers, make sure that you have the power cable plugged into the speakers and the power outlet. And lastly, if your speakers have an on/off button, make sure that it is powered on and the volume turned up both on the speakers and on your computer volume control

sTRanGe Occurence

A client’s adult daughter had a problem where the ONLY site that she couldn’t pull up on the Internet was her bank. After thoroughly checking her computer for viruses and spyware, making sure firewalls were set properly, checking Internet settings and trying the site with multiple browsers, I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. She is a cable Internet user and was sharing the connection via a Linksys wireless router. Nothing I could think of made a difference.

Today, she called me and was gleeful about her computer…she could get to her bank’s web site, log in normally. Turns out that after she unplugged the router and connected straight to her computer, the site became available. I have never heard of a router blocking just a single site (routers do act as firewalls as well). I told her how to reset the router to its factory settings in case someone may have ‘tweaked’ the router to block the banking site. If the factory reset didn’t work, she would have to get another router in order to share the Internet again.

RAID – It’s not just for cockroaches anymore

I worked on a computer this weekend that had two hard drives (150 GB each) in a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks) configuration. It was the first time I had worked with this type of computer. There are different flavors of RAID available and they are described as Level 0, Level 2, etc). In simple terms, RAID automatically makes copies of everything on the first hard drive to the second hard drive…also known as mirroring.

This is done for a couple of reasons. The first is obviously backup. RAID allows for continuous seamless (and transparent) backup from one drive to the other. Performance for some applications like high end graphics or Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) becomes slightly better with hard drives configured in a RAID format. Up until recently, RAID has been reserved primarily for computer servers (think large offices, Internet providers, web hosting, etc). Hard drive costs have dropped dramatically in recent years and storage size is skyrocketing. These two factors are propelling the implementation of RAID in personal computers.

“I want to go back to AOL”

This painful statement came from a customer of mine who made the leap to DSL (at the request of her kids, not me) a couple of months ago. She dumped dial-up and AOL and opted for DSL with a local Internet provider.

Changing from AOL is never easy and many ex-AOLers go through major withdrawls. However, once the shivers go away and a person gets settled with a real Internet provider, they are quite happy. AOL does things their own way and this keeps many a customer for them. Luckily, their high prices, slow connections, and abismal support has led millions away to a better place.

Picture Slideshows….take a cue from TV

My daughter ‘graduated’ from middle school today. During the ceremony, a group of ambitious students put together a 60-75 slides, using Microsoft PowerPoint, documenting their 8th grade year. PowerPoint and other slideshow making programs give us great flexibility in putting together our pictures like never before.

Does anyone use the old slide projectors anymore?

These students had a minimum slide time of 20 seconds and some slides were on screen for almost 30 seconds. Needless to say, the impact of the program was dramatically reduced because of the extremely long time the audience had to stare at the same picture. The students also put the slideshow to music. Being of the video and Internet age, I would have thought these students would have questioned the length of slides, but I also expected their tech teacher to point it out as they were putting it together. The kids showed some gumption in doing the slideshow, so I have no fault with them at all…I just wish the teachers would have helped guide them.

Norton causes problems…blah,blah,blah

This is going to be a short one because I have to get to the digital photography user group soon. I just wanted everyone to know that I saw two computers with exactly the same problem today.

They were connected to the Internet, but couldn’t view the Internet. In other words, they could get windows updates and use programs like Yahoo! Messenger, but they couldn’t view web pages.

Here’s what I did to fix the problem:

1. Uninstalled Norton Antivirus

I then Installed AVG to make sure that their system was protected.

Both systems also perked up significantly after changing the antivirus.

Sending pictures via email

Computer users are always grateful to learn new tricks of the trade. One ‘trick’ that was implemented with Windows XP more than five years ago continues to escape many computer users…send pictures via email efficiently. Sure you might be sending digital photos as attachments, but can you send more than one at time? Are you resizing your photos before sending them so they don’t require horizontal and vertical scrolling? Do they travel quickly through the Internet or do they take a long time to transmit?

No matter now…this tip will get you sending multiple, appropriately sized photos quickly with Windows XP.