I was reminded of that fact the other day when one of the people in my WordPress workshop was figuring out how to manipulate what can be a fairly complicated program. He was doing well and in general conversation, mentioned that he always had a hard time finding his work when he saved it to his computer. That’s when I found out that he’d been unaware that the My Documents folder was meant to hold those files. He had been saving everything to his general hard drive, so it was much more difficult to re-locate anything later.

We went over some basics about saving to folders, saving to a memory stick, and creating folders within folders for even better organization. It made me realize how often I also start learning a new program without having the basics I need in place first. That’s why a lot of programs sat on my computer after purchasing and were never used. They were all good products, but I didn’t have the foundation to use them properly.

Did I ever tell you about my very first car? I knew how to drive, but didn’t know that I was supposed to add oil. I didn’t get to enjoy it very long, all because I didn’t have the basic knowledge to take care of it properly. Are there times in your life you went straight to the intermediate level without taking the time to begin at the beginning?

Technorati Tags: computer basics, learning from the beginning

There are also characters you might sometimes want to use in your text and they can be hard to locate. For instance, where would you find the character that makes the copyright symbol without having to hunt all over? The answer in this case as well is to use a keyboard shortcut. Below are the most commonly used ones. Please try them out and see for yourself – you might even want to print them out and keep the list near your computer.

For the Degrees symbol: ALT + 0176 = °
For the Cross symbol: ALT + 0134 = †
For the Trade Mark symbol: ALT + 0153 = ™
For the Copyright symbol: ALT + 0169 = ©
For the 1/4 symbol: ALT + 0188 = ¼
For the … symbol: ALT + 0133 = …
For the cents symbol: ALT + 0162 = ¢
For the Registered symbol: ALT + 0174 = ®
For the 1/2 symbol: ALT + 0189 = ½
For the 3/4 symbol: ALT + 0190 = ¾

Any others I should add?

Technorati Tags: keyboard shortcuts, character symbols

Ink jet printers have a small black cartridge. With a laser printer, the cartridge (I think it’s called toner) is almost as wide as the printer and fits into another part called the drum.

My husband has an identical, brand new, laser printer. So when mine stopped working, I took his whole ink unit out and put it into my printer. Then i ordered a new cartridge so I could give his back.

I added my used toner to a collection of them that I needed to dispose of and planned to take them to a computer store for recycling. I ended up buying new ink from a local business and giving him the bag for recycling. Can you see where this is going?

Next step, put my hubby’s laser ink back in his printer and put the new one in mine. As soon as I opened the package, I realized my mistake. I had no drum to put the cartridge in.

It was in the bag, with the cartridges to be recycled. Thankfully, I was able to retrieve my drum and put it back into my printer. If I’d dropped it off at a big box store, the outcome might have been very different.

This was an easy and possibly very expensive mistake to make. The toner fits into the drum and if you aren’t paying close attention, they look like one piece. The price of a new drum had I needed to replace it? I could probably have bought a new laser printer instead:(

I know that’s probably the case, because my netbook had a battery life of 8 hours when I first bought it. Now I’m lucky if it will go six hours without needing to be charged. In fact, my daughter-in-law said that when she bought her laptop, she was told to remove it when at home if she planned to keep it plugged in. Why didn’t anyone ever tell me that?

I’m feeling a little annoyed at the thought that my carefulness has been for nothing. Why didn’t anyone ever tell me that before!!!

And while I’m ranting, do you ever see instructions on the memory sticks telling you not to pull them out of the USB ports when you’ve finished using them? It was only after I ruined two of my laptop ports that I ever found out that I needed to get the ‘safe to remove’ message first.

What did you learn the hard way that you should have been told about?  (I’m talking technology here remember) Go ahead, rant away but keep it clean or I’ll have to censor you:)

Technorati Tags: laptop batteries, using your laptop

1. 1. To add a Youtube video to a Blogger blog, copy and paste the embed code associated with the video.
2. Buy a child’s mouse for both children and older people. The mouse is bigger and a little easier to maneuver.
3. If you write a blog, keep a journal or spreadsheet of both the titles you’ve written about and any that you plan to do.
4. If you add a video to WordPress and it doesn’t show up, you may need to click ‘publish’ first.
5. To add audio to WordPress with the audio plugin, you have to be in Visual Mode, not HTML. You also need to save it first. If the audio still won’t work, try a different theme.
6. If you have too many files on your computer, try organizing them into topic related folders. If you are doing a special project, all of the files related to that project should be kept together in one folder.
7. If you set up a template in Open Office, you can write your manuscript or report and with one click, turn it into a PDF file.
8. Taking a family trip? Print off all of the possible places to visit and plan your itinerary before you go.
9. Keep up with friends and family in other countries by using the chat feature in Facebook. Agree on a time and have a live conversation rather than posting an update.
10. Family member can’t make it to your special event?  Take a group shot and then use photo editing software to add them to the picture.
11. My photos only showed as icons and since they weren’t all labeled, it was pretty hard to find what I wanted. To fix that, I had to go into my Pictures folder, click ‘Tools’, then ‘Folder Options’ and make sure the box beside “always show icons, never thumbnails” isn’t checked off. You want to see your thumbnails and I always did before. Not sure why my picture view suddenly changed.
12. When sending the same email to a group, you can create a group in Outlook Express. But if the ‘Create Contact Group’ option doesn’t show up on your contacts page, this is what you do: After opening the contacts list, right click on the open space on the top right side and select ‘customize this folder’. Then choose ‘Contacts’ from the drop down and click ‘okay’.
13. If you have trouble playing MP4 videos, right click and try again with the Windows Media Player instead.

There you have it. A baker’s dozen of the computer problems I’ve managed to solve, although in some cases it took me hours to do it. Which is why I write the solutions down for the next time I need help.

What computer tips have you learned lately? We’d love to know.

Technorati Tags: computer tips, home computer use