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Windows

HP printer jam recovery

Overall, HP printers are my favorite. They are dependable, they do a great job and they are fairly economical on a price per page basis. I have seen some good things from Canon printers lately, but HPs have a much longer track record.

Every brand of printer has its problems and HPs are no exception. One of the biggest problems with HP printers is that they get caught in a loop. If you turn the printer off in the middle of printing, or the computer locks up and you have to restart part way through a print job, don't be surprised if your HP goes bananas when you turn the computer back on.

How much computer can $40,000 get you?

Over the past few weeks, I have been working with a local business (that I will not name) to help them change their computer setup. The business is of the type that they need to worry about security, privacy and large-scale record keeping.

When I help out with this sort of job, I have no problem admitting where my limits of expertise are and I help the client find another business that has the book learning to do the job they need. I am grateful for the real geeks who can do this type of job because I prefer to work with the people rather than the machines.

The business client has kept me on board for the job though because I will be there to setup the individual computers and help the employees through the process.

A word for our Dial-up readers (and our high speed Internet emailers)

Lately, I have helped many dial-up computer users get their email unclogged. It became clogged because their friends and family who have high speed Internet sent them messages that were way too big for email. Usually these messages contained either large digital photos or video jokes or messages that bring dial-up users email to screeching halt. 

DIAL-UP USERS:

  • You absolutely need to know how to check your email using your web browser (this tip explains how ).
  • When email stops coming in or you see messages repeating themselves, it is time to check your email as above and then delete any messages that are larger than 500 kilobytes (kb). This will allow your email to flow again into your email program
  • Inform the offending parties that send these overly large messages that your system can't handle the volume and to please remove you from their forward lists.

HIGH SPEED USERS:

How to buy a computer book

When teaching my basic computer classes, I often get the question, "What is a good computer book?"

This is also followed or preceded by the complaint that the individual's computer did not come with a manual.

As strange as it may seem, there is a very good reason why the average computer doesn't come will a full instruction book. The reason is that there is too much to know about a computer to fit in a single manual.

Most computers come with a small user guide that shows how to turn it on and what numbers to call for tech support. Strangely this little guide is often a file on the computer, so you must turn the computer on in order to read it.

What IS a blog?

Over the past few weeks I have been asked this question several times. For some reason people always place the emphasis on the word is in this question.

"So, what is a blog?" is a different question than "What is a blog?

By placing the emphasis on the word is, I read this question to be rephrased as, "I keep hearing about blogs and they sound interesting, but no one can really define it for me, can you explain?"

A blog is a sort of online journal. Some people describe it as a diary, but since it is public and can be used for purposes other than personal information, a journal is probably a better description.

Palm handhelds still rock

Palm has shifted focus the last few years to smartphones (like the Treo I'm writing on right now), but they still manufacture and sell PDA's (portable digital assistants). I helped a customer setup a new Palm Tungsten E2 today. I set it up so that she could sync (transfer data from computer to PDA and vice versa) between both her Windows desktop and her Mac laptop…very slick. Now she has the option of accesing her calendar, address book, notes and much more from any of the three devices.

Palm handhelds; they organized and changed my life. It will take a true miracle device for me to fall out of love with Palm.

These computer oldies are OUT!

I've kept this bottled up for at least two years, and now I'm going to let it out and would love to hear your comments. Computers have been in the home on a large scale for about twelve years now and certain aspects of computing just don't work in today's' tech world. Here is my list of what no longer works:

Anything less than 1024 X 768 resolution. Even many productivity programs require this minimum resolution today. If the print seems small to you at this resolution, there are ways to have the better resolution and bigger text.

Internet Explorer 7 Keyboard shortcuts

General shortcuts
table with 2 columns and 9 rows
Turn Full Screen Mode on or off 
F11 

Cycle through the Address Bar, Refresh button, Search Box, and
items on a web page  

TAB  

Find a word or phrase on a page 

CTRL+F 

Open the current webpage in a new window  

CTRL+N  

Print the page  

CTRL+P  

Select all items on the page  

CTRL+A  

Zoom in  

CTRL+PLUS  

Zoom out  

CTRL+MINUS  

55 Minute Uninstall

Wow, it would have almost been faster to backup the data, reformat the hard drive, and reinstall everything from scratch. The long install was of the grossly over programmed Norton Internet Security Suite. Here's the breakdown of my appointment:

8:26am Arrive at customer's house. He tells me that his computer is running extremely slow.
8:32am I sit down and hit the power button on the computer.
8:36am
Still staring at the Windows XP startup logo, I ask the customer to bring in the laptop since he wants me to look at it also.
8:40am
The laptop is booted up and I'm already looking it over.
8:41am
Desktop is finally up…9 minutes!! Yikes!
8:46am
Add/Remove programs is finally up and the list populated. I find Norton Internet Security and click the Remove button.
9:41am
 55 minutes later, I can finally work on the computer. The actual uninstall procedure took about 50 minutes and then another five for it to reboot after removal of Norton.
10:07am
 		I installed and updated both AVG Anti-virus and anti-spyware, tested the Internet connect, tested MS Word (which wasn't working at all an hour earlier) and started the AVG scans all in this past half hour.

The moral of the story is that Norton products slow down even the fastest computers significantly more than any other security product. The installs are long, the updates are long, the uninstalls are long, and the protection is mediocre. Please, save yourself money, time and grief and don't buy or install Norton products on yours or other people's computers.

Using your solitaire skills (Drag & Drop) – Video Tip

Believe it or not, Microsoft put Solitaire in Windows to help new computer users get comfortable with the mouse and its functions. After years of playing solitaire, this tip will help you put the skills to use. I like to call this technique the "ol' 8 or hearts on the 9 of clubs trick." In computer talk, what you are doing when you move one card to another in solitaire is the "drag & drop."

Drag & drop ( " the ol' 8 or hearts on the 9 of clubs trick") is an extremely helpful and time saving skill to use in other computer activities. One of my favorite places to use it is moving files (pictures, documents, etc) from one location to another. For example, if you open a CD or memory card full of pictures up in one window and open another folder on your computer (like My Pictures) in another window, you can then drag files from one window to another.