Archive for Home Computing Tips
09.09.08
Posted in Computer Hardware, Home Computing Tips, Computer Kids at 12:58 pm by webmaster
My daughter says I am a computer junkie. That may be, but this time it was for my grandaughter. She is in second year university and needs a good laptop. I saw a newspaper ad for the Acer Aspire One for a great price of only $399. So of course I had to go check it out. That model weighs less than 3 pounds and has an 8.9 inch screen, but I thought it might be okay for her.
The store ended up being sold out but there was a comparable style available for me to check the size. I realized that the screen was too small for a student to use as her main computer. I almost needed my magnifying glass to see the icons on the desktop.
The best laptop buy ended up being an Acer Aspire. With instant savings of $200, the laptop only cost me $599 plus tax. Since my grandaughter is in an arts program, a mac computer would probably have been the best one for her, but it was way more than my budget allowed. The Acer laptop has 3 G of memory and a 250 GB hard drive, so it should meet her needs for school. And it looks nice too, even has a built-in webcam - a nice plus since I see her in person so seldom.
Bottom line: grandaughter is all excited about her new laptop, I’m in her good books, saved some money, and I got to feed my computer addiction all in one shot. Not bad.
[Acer Aspire laptop, student computer[/tags]
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08.04.08
Posted in Computer Hardware, Home Computing Tips at 12:07 pm by webmaster
I have a new Acer computer with Windows Vista. It took a while to get used to it but I’m doing okay now. The only problem is, I keep getting a message that there is no hard drive space left, even though it’s a 160 Gig hard drive. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong and then when I checked to see drive C, I realized that the computer had been partitioned.
There is a C drive which is full and holds Windows and all the other programs I have. Since it’s also the default, any documents or pictures I save go there too. There is also a D drive, which should have contained my documents and pictures. It’s totally empty and has all kinds of space. Apparently, it’s good to keep windows in a totally separate area just in case there’s ever a problem. If Windows had to be re-installed, I wouldn’t lose my work since it would be on another drive. But the fact that I had no idea what was going on made it more than a little bit bothersome to me.
Once I figured that part out, I started saving everything to the D drive. But I pity the poor person who doesn’t know how to do that and lets the computer save to its default space. Anyway, in spite of my new-found knowledge, I am still having problems. When I install a program, even if I save it to D, at least part of it goes to the C drive and I get the “no more room” message. This C drive only has 13 GB of space on it and there is no option to expand it. I had a programmer friend of mine over yesterday and he couldn’t do it either.
So now I have emailed Acer and am waiting impatiently for an answer. Since I encouraged my mother to buy the same computer, I need to find out for her sake too. Any helpful tips would be greatly appreciated!
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03.20.08
Posted in Computer Hardware, Home Computing Tips at 2:45 pm by webmaster
I have an older laser printer, but it still works well and lasts for a long time before I have to change the ink cartridge. It’s a Brother printer, in case you’re interested and even though it’s over five years old, I was able to download a driver so that it would work with Vista.
I got into the bad habit of leaving the laser printer on the whole time my computer was on, often hours at a time. After a while, I started getting an annoying cough and could see smoky air in the hallway outside my study. Since I still had my old computer at that point, I thought the fumes might be from it, since it was probably full of dust that I couldn’t get at.
Then I read an article on healthy computing and it mentioned the fumes that laser printers emit and the fact that many people get sick from the fumes. So my problem wasn’t the old computer after all, it was the constantly running laser printer.
Once I realized that and started leaving my laser printer turned off until I needed to print, my cough got better and the smoky air disappeared.
Technorati Tags: laser printer, fumes, computer
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03.18.08
Posted in Computer Software, Internet and Email, Home Computing Tips at 2:23 pm by webmaster
One reason I love using Wordpress for my blog is because of all of the great plugins that are available. Some of them are a little complicated to set up, so I haven’t tried them yet. But the majority so far are fairly simple.
There is a sticky plugin, which I use to keep certain posts always at the top of the page, a spam comment catcher which is amazing, and a podcast plugin which I hope to try soon.
These plugins can be found at various sites on the Internet and are then downloaded to your computer. The next step is usually to unzip the file and read any instructions that are included. Then the plugins need to find their way to your website file manager and into the folder marked wordpress plugins, which is usually in a folder called wp-content. Trust me, it isn’t as complicated as it sounds.
Your plug-ins can either be uploaded from your site or you can use an ftp program on your computer to send them. Once the plugins are in the plugin folder, they will show up on your wordpress Plugins tab where you click for a one time activation.
If you do a google search for wordpress plugin video tutorials and watch one, my instructions will make more sense to you.
Technorati Tags: Wordpress, plugins, uploads
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03.16.08
Posted in Computer Software, Internet and Email, Home Computing Tips at 2:07 pm by webmaster
Most of you are probably familiar with unzipping files when they are either sent to you or downloaded from the Internet as a zipped file. It’s usually just a matter of clicking on the file, selecting the unzip option and you’re done.
But I had never zipped files up myself before. Why would I want to, you ask? Someone wanted me to send them a number of files, so they had to be zipped or they would be too big for my email program to handle. Besides that, a zipped file keeps confidential items safer until they reach their destination.
Using the zip program I already had, it was just a matter of creating a folder (some zip programs call it an archive) and then clicking add and selecting each file I wanted to include in the zipped material. Took all of 5 seconds or so and I was done.
Last step was to create an email and insert the zipped file as an attachment. Oh, another tip -if you are sending a private message email from a forum, you can’t attach a file there. You’ll have to send it with your regular email program.
Technorati Tags: zip, files, attachment, email
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