At least once a year, I write a short article about my current computer recommendations. The holiday season is upon us, and I haven’t written an article like this in awhile, so here goes.
In the past six months, I ask more questions than I give when approached with this question.
If I find that the person has a 2-4 year old computer with Windows XP, and just thinks the computer is slow, I go with this advice:
Adobe Photoshop Elements has a built-in program that searches for all of the photos on your computer and catalogs them. It then displays thumbnails of all of the photos it finds so that you can get to photos faster.
This seems great, but Adobe did a pretty terrible job with the program. It is slow and way to difficult to use for a basic program. Picasa is free and it works much better.
The worst part of the Photoshop Elements browser program is that it takes over. After installing Photoshop Elements version 3 on up to the current version 5, the browser program pops up whenever you plug in a digital camera or memory card. This is very annoying since the program is slow to load and difficult to understand, especially when you aren't expecting it.
Here is a quick video tip. That demonstrates how to turn off the browser popup feature.
With Microsoft putting out less-and-less usable software and better-and-better options becoming available online, there is no reason to shell out hard earned money for Microsoft Office. If you aren’t quite ready to move your data and applications online (search our site for Web 2.0), then OpenOffice.org’s free office software is a wonderful option.
Apple products are beautiful and functional. Many people brag about their iPod or Mac’s stability, but there is a good reason that Macs are so stable. Apple is very restrictive as to what others are allowed to do with their systems.
For example, if you have a iPod, you can only use iTunes if you want to sync music to it. If you have another brand of media player, it will not work with iTunes.
Most standard hardware such as keyboards, mice and printers are compatable with both Macs and PCs, but when it comes to software, Apple has some very strict standards that developers must meet and money must exchange hands to apply for Apple approval.
I setup my first Quad Core processor computer today. It wasn’t for me, unfortunately, but I was impressed with the machine. My client ordered a Dell XPS Intel Quad Core machine with 4 GB of RAM and Windows XP. It was easily the fastest computer I have seen to date. With all that RAM, a 256mb video card, and the new Intel Quad Core processor everthing literally flew on this machine. One example is Adobe Photoshop Elements version 5. On most computers with 512 to 1 GB of Ram, Elements takes between 30-60 seconds to fully load. On this mahine today, it loaded in less than 10 seconds. I was floored.
I’m helping another client with an Ubuntu setup. This time it is an Xubuntu setup on an almost 10 year old Gateway computer that has just a 350mhz processor (less than a fifth of the speed of modern processors). Xubuntu was designed for just such machines…it is leaner and requires less resources than the other flavors of Ubuntu Linux.
The install worked pretty well and the Internet works fine on a wired Ethernet connection, but the customer needs the wireless card to work instead. Unfortunately, wireless is a weakness in the current releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives. And because Xubuntu is slightly different than Ubuntu, I’m pretty much starting over with figuring out a solution.
If I was independently wealthy, I would give discounts to customers with Windows Vista. Alas, I am not independently wealthy and my business supports my family, so I charge for time I spend in a client’s office or home. One customer , today, could have saved 30-40% off their bill had they bought one of the few remaining laptops with Windows XP.
I ran across this site today while searching for alternative screen magnification programs. Whether you use Mac, Linux or Windows, this site lists screen magnifiers for every platform. While you are here, click on the HOME link. This site is full of great information and product reviews for all computer users with impaired vision.
I worked with three customers today who all used floppy disks as their main backup. All three users had Windows XP machines, but felt that floppy disks fit their needs the best. The picture I took here was from a consultant’s desk…there must be 20 floppies in that box. I explained to all these folks how simple, efficient and spacious a USB Flash drive could be for them. Whether they ‘bite’ or not only time will tell.
In my humble opinion, there is no good use for floppy disk any longer unless you happen to be using a DOS or Windows 95 machine. Flash drives are too inexpensive, reliable and easy to use not be using them. This weekend, I saw 2 GB (that’s nearly 2000 floppy disks worth of space) USB Flash Drives on sale for less than $20!
USB Flash Drives work best for backing up data that changes often. Data like Quicken, Quickbooks, email files, address books, bookmarks/favorites, word processing or spreadsheet documents all are perfect candidates. I don’t recommend using them to backup static data like pictuers and music. As cheap as USB Flash Drives are getting, they still aren’t anywhere near as cheap as DVD and CD media.
For every Apple device that becomes a standard there is a Sony technology that becomes obsolete. Apple and Sony both got off to a great start in the early 80s. Apple introduced the Mac and Sony gave us the Walkman.
From that point on, Apple has had only a handful of market failures and Sony has had nothing but. Sony announced their latest casualty this week by discontinuing their proprietary ATRAC audio compression file format.
While the rest of the world committed to MP3 and WMA or Apple’s music format for iTunes, Sony made up their own format only supported by their devices. Sony saw Apple succeeding with their own format and device and figured they could do the same.