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Amazing Jams and a quick Microsoft Tip

We never promote products on the site unless we test them first. Today, I helped a new customer with their computer security and backup needs. This gentleman also owns and operates a fruit jam operation. After working on his computer, we talked about his business and his products…jams. He grows most of his own fruits and only picks them at their peak ripeness. When he offered to give me a taste test, I said "sure". The first spoonful was his strawberry jam…WOW!! Is this what jam really tastes like? My mouth exploded with sweet, rich flavor of strawberries….not sugar and corn syrup. I was literally blown away by the depth of the taste and its affect on my palate. Then he continued to impress me with his pear, apricot and wine jams. All I can say is unbelievable. Where can you get this culinary delight? Look to his web site for phone numbers and ordering information; Colorado’s Mountain Fine Jams and Jellies. You will not be disappointed.

Make sure you have the disks

I do my best to support small local businesses, because I own and operate a small, local business. However, when it comes to purchasing a computer, too many times I have seen the small computer shop put together a machine that is more expensive with less features than a name brand computer. And worse, the computer does NOT come with the original Windows CD and accompanying license.

If you aren’t given and can’t obtain the original Windows installation disk when you purchase a computer, then the copy of Windows on your computer (and probably other software as well…think Microsoft Office) is illegal. The software will work fine, but when it comes time to reinstall after a hard drive crash or if you want to upgrade, you are stuck with having to purchase full versions of these programs. 

The backdoor to your Outlook Express addressbook

If your hard drive crashes and you need to find your Outlook Express addressbook – here is where you will find it in Windows XP.

C:/Documents and Settings/(your user folder)/Application Data/Microsoft/Addressbook/(here you will find your addressbook).

Before you try this maked sure you go into Tools/Folder Options and choose to show hidden folders.

The addressbook will be called something like "addressbook.wab" you can also search for the address book by going to Start->Find/Search. Type in "*.wab"

“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.

Fact: Palm is better than Windows Mobile

I had the pleasure of setting up a new Windows Mobile powered cell phone/PDA today.

In the past, I have probably setup five similar devices and they have never gone smoothly. Today’s was the worst.

I have setup dozens of Palm powered devices and I have never had a major problem with setup that wasn’t hardware related.

As I setup the Windows Mobile device today I would go all the way through the install and then the device would attempt to sync with the computer for dates, addresses and notes. A Window would immediately pop up that said something like, "Can’t sync, reconnect the device and try again. If that doesn’t work use the ActiveSync troubleshooter."

MSCONFIG: These items are unneccessary

We talk about the Microsoft Configuration Utility (msconfig) so much, that we have a t-shirt available for it in our store. Msconfig is accessed by:

  1. Click Start
  2. Click Run
  3. Type:   msconfig
  4. Click OK

Once in the utility, you want to click the "Startup" tab. Here is a list of some the programs that can be safely unchecked. After doing so, click OK, and restart the computer as instructed and your computer should run just a little better.

  • jusched – Java update utility
  • realsched – RealOne Player update  utility
  • qttask – QuickTime system tray icon
  • realplay – automatically starts RealOne Player
  • Microsoft Office Fast Start – a starter program to help launch Office applications a hair faster
  • Anything Adobe – Adobe Reader is used so seldom, that having it start its utilities every time we start our computer is a waste of precious computing cycles and resources
  • Sonic Update – update utility for Sonic CD burning software
  • Kodak Updater – This update utility from Kodak really eats at performance
  • Music Match or mmplayer – an audio player that has no business starting automatically
  • iTunes Helper – especially if you don’t use an iPod. If you do own an iPod, it isn’t a necessary program to run at startup
  • AOLSP Scheduler – And anything else labeled with AOL…again,  unnecessary to start all this stuff at startup.
  • Microsoft Works Calendar or Update – neither should start at boot up
  • Money Express and/or Agent – related to Microsoft’s Quicken like program "Money"
  • Qagent – Quicken utility
  • Quickbooks Update – Quickbooks updates can be initiated from Help in the Quickbooks program. 
  • Tkbell – related to RealOne player
  • Iomega – related to Iomega external or internal drives and how icons are displayed
  • Reminder – Greeting card programs of various brands. If you don’t use the reminder program, uncheck this box. 

These are the most frequent programs we come across that do NOT need to start automatically. Unchecking the boxes in msconfig has absolutely no effect on running the actual programs. For more information on what the heck is starting up automatically on your computer, check out this easily navigatable list. 

 

Make Disk Cleanup Run Faster

WARNING:  This tip involves editing the Registry, so only perform these steps IF you feel comfortable making changes to a part of the computer where one wrong move can bring your whole system down.

Performing these steps will disable the "compress files" part of the Windows Clean Up utility:

  1. Click Start –> Run
  2. Type:   regedit
  3. Navigate to and expand the following registry key:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE  –> SOFTWARE –>   Microsoft –>   Windows –>  CurrentVersion –> Explorer –> VolumeCaches