Skip to content

photos

Missing file names under documents or photos in thumbnail view

Lately, more than a few people have had trouble with missing file names in the thumbnail view of some of their folders. It isn’t entirely apparent why this happens, but fortunately the cure is pretty simple. If you are one of the poor souls who happens to be missing their file names, follow these steps:

  1. Open the offending folder to see the thumbnails
  2. Click View from the menus (or the view button on the toolbar), and click Details
  3. Hold the SHIFT key down on your keyboard and Click View from the menus (or the view button on the toolbar), and click Thumbnails


You should now see thumbnails with file names under them.

Online Photo Editors

Basic photo editing no longer takes special software. You can now do some wonderful things with photos from any computer on almost any browser from anywhere in the world. Online photo editors allow you to edit photos simply by going to a special website.

Once fully loaded, these sites let you resize, adjust brightness and contrast, tweak color and even work with layers. While none of these editors are as robust as Photoshop Elements, they are great for doing basic adjustments especially when working on a computer that is not your own.

Smoother Internet Audio and Video – Video Tip

The Internet is firmly a multimedia haven now. Video and audio make the Internet a much richer experience for everyone…providing you have a fast Internet connection OR learn the technique I describe in today’s tip.

When it comes to online audio and video, you need to know about streaming. Without a knowledge of streaming, you will continue to have choppy audio, stop and start video and overall be frustrated. Streaming means that a little of the audio and/or video is fed to us at a time.

Because audio and video make huge file sizes (10-20X that of photos), they cannot be sent via the Internet in one chunk. Instead, they are broken down into smaller pieces and fed down the Internet pipeline little pieces at a time (streaming). If our Internet connection can’t decode and play the little pieces of information fast enough, we interpret that as slow, jerky, choppy, and or stuttery (stuttering) audio and video.

The key to correcting this lies in this week’s video tip. You can thank me by leaving a nice comment or better yet, hit the donate button on our site. Either way, you WILL enjoy audio and video on the web more after learning this little trick.

Dell 3110cn the best color printer on the market

dell 3110cn I have been using the Dell 3110cn color laster printer for 10 months now and I must say that it is amazing. I just checked the stats tonight and we have printed over 1000 pages per month 10,480 to be exact.

During that time we have put $100 worth of toner into it. Currently our black cartridge is at 40 percent, cyan and magenta are at 80 percent and yellow is at 60 percent. The black is the cartridge that we replaced previously. Let’s do some math. A nice durable ink jet printer costs roughly $150. A set of ink tanks costs about $60. Every 700 pages a $30 cartridge needs to be replaced. Color cartridges may go out sooner.

Most users go through about 5000 sheets per year. Between color and black, it is not unusual for an ink jet user to pay out $210 in ink for an economical ink jet and even more if you have an Epson, newer HP or older Canon. Heaven help you if you have a Lexmark that takes $45 cartridges.

Adding the cost of ink and printer, you will likely spend at least $950 combined ink and printer cost in the first four years. Most estimates are much higher than this. The average costs used by many online reviews for ink jet printers is $60 per 700-1000 sheets. If this figure is more accurate that you can almost double the costs mentioned above. True you can save some money by

Stop the Photoshop Elements Browser Popup – VIDEO TIP

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.

Photoshop and Photoshop Elements Red Eye Removal Tip

Here is an alternative method for removing red eye in Photoshop Elements. It is more complicated than using the red eye tool, but it allows much more versatility in fine tuning the adjustment. The results are also more realistic.

Is anyone out there?

There is no doubt in my mind that our site has the most relevant and easy to understand computer information for the average and beginner computer user. Unfortunately, the average computer user doesn’t know how to browse the web well and has trouble finding the information they need to know.

Search engines are confusing. Searching a web site is even more baffling. These computer users do well when they have a recipe of what to do in front of them or can watch someone else perform the steps.

Enter the above average computer user…YOU!

We desperately need your help in spreading the word about HelpMeRick.com Your neighbors look to you for help and computer advice. Your co-workers look to you when they need to find a lost file. And of course your family knows that you know the answer to their latest computer dilemma.

Unofficially, YOU provide tech support for a multitude of computer users. Those computer users you help need to be visiting HelpMeRick.com to help get answers to their questions and to improve their computer knowlege. You can help them get the computer education they need by using the thousands of answers we provide here at the site.

Send your tech support charges links via email to the exact answer to their question at HelpMeRick.com. No reason for you to have reinvent the wheel.

  • Grandma needs to know how to send an email attachment. Send her here.
  • Dan across the hall from you at the office would like to know how to organize his photos easier and then email them. Send him here and here.
  • Your neighbor, McElroy, is supplying free Internet to the neighborhood, unintentionally of course, but can’t get his kid’s computers to print to his printer. Send him here.
  • Your sister-in-law called and said that there computer is so slow that the household is almost at full mutiny. Print out the tips found here and mail them to her because her computer is so hosed that the Internet connection is unusable.

Get the picture? Help us, help you. Help us, help your friends.

Then tell your friends to visit HelpMeRick.com often so they don’t get in these messes to begin with or can learn new skills that make them more productive computer users.

And finally, let them know that they also should send their friends, family, and co-workers to HelpMeRick.com for education and computer help. Knowledge is power, and powerful computer knowledge can be found right here.

Desktop Shortcuts Make Computing Easier – Video Tip

Learning to make Windows work for you instead of you working for it can yield many more happy and productive hours using your computer. One highly under utilized feature of Windows is the shortcut icon. Learning to use and manage shortcuts will give you a huge advantage with your computer.

Photoshop Elements 6 is out – Yawn.

Adobe released a new version of Photoshop Elements this week. I haven’t read everything about it, but looking over the "What’s New" section on the website it appears that there is little to get excited about.

The new features and upgrades fall in four main catagories, organize, edit, create and share. These four catagories can be narrowed to two, useful and arts-and-craftsy.