I had some trouble syncing up this video with the narration today, but there are at least 11 questions answered in this episode. Questions in this edition include questions about Ubuntu, printers, a proposition (?), Windows Media Player, Firefox, and two questions I couldn’t fully answer. No AVG questions this time around.
Enjoy!
If your computer still performs all the functions you want it to do, there is no need to replace it. However, no matter if you’ve been using the same computer for a month or seven years, all computers need and crave RAM (Random Access Memory).
RAM provides the ‘umph’ for our computers and an abundance of it helps Windows’ performance tremendously.
Hard drive space (physical storage of your data) and RAM (temporary memory for running programs) utilize two distinctly different types of technologies. So, don’t equate free hard drive space with RAM. Instead, use these guidelines for figuring out your RAM needs.
Because of the dramatic drop in price over the past two years of RAM, here are my current recommendations for your computer system (the numbers are in megabytes):
I’m in the middle of a pretty major house refurbishing right now and am making frequent trips to the hardware stores and elsewhere. Today, while asking a Lowes rep a question, I glanced at one of the computer screens and saw Firefox for Lowes on the title bar. I was blown away that a major corporation had the good sense to use Firefox, then as I scanned the monitor, there was no sign of a start button. Instead, I immediately recognized a Linux like Start button that looked similar to the Xfce desktop that Xubuntu uses.
Lately, I’ve run across many printer problems so I’m going to share with you my formula for approaching a printer problem.
Windows Vista stripped out the ability to make an easy quick access toolbar to your most used files and programs. I posted a video last year on how you can make such a toolbar, but it certainly isn’t as straight forward as it was in XP.
In my quest to find an easier way, I ran across two program, RocketDock and ObjectDock. I tried them both out and ended up liking the RocketDock a little better. Both are free and work well, and for $20 you can get even more features for ObjectDock.
If you like easy, quick access to your most frequently used programs and files, give RocketDock a try.
Microsoft released the 3rd service pack for Windows XP about three months ago. Microsoft packages many operating system updates and fixes into one large package and then releases it as a service pack. Because these are extremely large files that apply many updates and changes to our systems, they can sometimes have trouble.
Since I use Firefox exclusively for my browsing, I haven’t seen this problem yet, but today I ran into a computer that could print from anywhere but Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). Turns out that, in her case, the upgrade to AVG 8.0 caused the problem. A standard installation of AVG 8 installs a security toolbar in Firefox, if you use it, or Internet Explorer 7. The toolbar is meant to help users from clicking on potentially harmful web links. However, the toolbar, like most toolbars, slows down browsing speeds and in the case of Internet Explorer 7 with Windows Vista, it also disables the ability to print!
Adobe released version 9 of their PDF (Portable Document Format) Reader program. Once the king and almost sole PDF reader on the market, it, like so many other mainstream programs, has become bloated beyond recognition. This software bloat slows down the performance of even the fastest computers, and for this reason, I firmly stand against software bloat.
I want to keep singing the praises of an operating system that I used to make fun of on our show; Linux. In partial defense of myself, Linux traditionally has been known as the geeks operating system, and a user needed to be permanently attached to a forum for help and have an affinity for the command prompt or as its known in Linux, the terminal.
Frequently, computer users hire me to call and talk to tech support for them. That may seem like a waste of money to some people, but consider that many computer users have to over come TWO language barriers. Yes, I said two language barriers.
The first language barrier for both the overseas helper and the computer user seeking help is understanding each other. We have a hard time understanding the accent and language use of the person trying to help, and they, too, have a difficult time picking up our use of the English language and our accents that are foreign to them.