I don’t do it too often, but this month I decided to hold an all Q&A (2 hours) user group meeting. It truly is amazing how many questions 30 or 40 ravenous computer users can generate. Sometimes one question leads to another, and an entire “topic” can take up a half hour. You have to be at one of the meetings to truly experience the type of knowledge and information that gets shared and explored. Some of today’s topics included:
Here is what we will discuss at tonight's digital photo user group:
1. How to find information in the Manual
If your camera didn't come with a manual, it is likely on the disk that came with the camera. You may also download it from the manufacturer's website.
2. How to insert and remove the camera memory
3. How to set your camera on full auto mode – this is the setting that lets the camera do all of the thinking
It may be indicated by a green square, the letter "A" or the word AUTO.
I continue to experiment with the Ubuntu operating system. This past weekend, my family and I made a quick trip to the South Dakota Black Hills and I took my Ubuntu laptop along for the ride. My Ubuntu laptop is an older Compaq (almost six years old) that was destined for the trash heap by its previous owner. It no longer performed well for them and required reformatting and upgrading to run Windows XP and other software at any appreciable speed. I rescued it, installed Ubuntu Linux on it, bought the cheapest wireless card I could find, and now I have a completely functional and quick second laptop.
Imagine for a moment (you won't have to stretch very far) that your son or daughter comes home past curfew and you say something like, "I told you to be home by midnight." In reply your kid says, "I know I heard you say that."
Imagine for a moment that you are an engineer who builds bridges. One day a bridge that you design collapses. You confront the builders only to find that they used half of the bolts that you indicated in the design. "I heard you say that we should use that many bolts," comes the reply from the builder.
In each case, the next sentence that follows is an excuse from the offenders as to why they thought this should be an exception.
Although Photoshop Elements is the "easy" version of Photoshop, it is still far from intuitive. While this may seem like a bad thing it is actually what makes it a great program. When programs get too intuitive, they begin to think for you and limit options. Photoshop and Photoshop Elements do neither.
The newer versions of Photoshop are much better about guiding you to certain areas and offering better tutorials, but the best way to learn is still to just to dive in and get your hands dirty (too many idioms?).
I think there are three ways to approach Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. The best way depends on how you learn.
A few days ago one of my clients called me with some strange problems. Suddenly many of her files disappeared from her computer. None of the files seemed to be related. She was missing a few Microsoft Word documents, some photos and her genealogy.
After looking around and doing several searches she happened to mention that she used to have a folder on her desktop called "Old Desktop Files." It was a folder with files that she had on an old computer.
Instantly I figured out what was going on. I looked in her Word and PAF under the File menu and noticed that all of the missing files had been in that missing folder.
Adobe Photoshop Elements is the standard photo editing software for consumers and many professionals. The latest edition offers many new features, but are those features worth upgrading from previous versions of the program?
First, there is no upgrade version but since the program can easily be found online for under $70, it won't hurt too bad if you do want to upgrade.
Photoshop Elements has been a solid program since its introduction. Previous consumer photo editing programs only allowed you to make alterations in steps, any fine tuning was out of the question. Elements changed all of that by offering so many professional level tools that many professionals made the switch.
Last week I installed Windows Vista on my fine running XP machine (less than six months old) and have been tolerating it since then and learning about its quirks and features. I have actually been using Vista since September and besides the integrated search (which can be added to XP through multiple channels for free), I honestly do not understand what the heck Microsoft did for nearly six years between operating systems. Yes, it is pretty, but who cares how pretty it is…my email is slower, programs are slower, menus, options, and preferences have all been moved to different places…
I write often about backup because I'm passionate about the topic. Too often, I see customers who have never backed up there important data and recovering it is either impossible or financially unfeasible.
I visited a young mother today with a laptop that was afflicted with a virus that destroyed all her data. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to recover the data. She could probably send the hard drive into a service like DriveSavers , but the cost would be in the thousands. She elected to just have the drive reformatted and said she would start over when I bring the computer back.
Yahoo announced today that they will be removing all size limits to email storage on free Yahoo email accounts. The service will begin rolling out unlimited storage in May. Yahoo is also debating a lift on storage limits for Fliker.com photo sharing accounts.
Yahoo hopes that lifting the storage limits will lead lock customers in for good.
Even if Google does match the offer, the real loser in this battle is Microsoft and Windows. If you can access your email, calendar, documents, and photos from any computer anywhere no matter what operating system you are using, Microsoft will have a difficult time finding a market for future versions of Windows.