Archive for the Category ◊ General ◊

Should I get an iPad?
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 | Author: Brendan

I have had several clients recently ask me what I think of the new Apple iPads and if they should purchase one.  Let me give you my opinion of the iPad.

Pros:

Lightweight

Easy to read

Easy to transport

Long battery life (up to 10+ hours)

Cons:

Running iPhone Operating System, not OS X

Can’t run more than one Application at a time

No Flash

Hard to type

No CD/DVD Drive

Battery built in (so no easy way to replace battery)

No camera built in

Overall:

These are a luxury item and not a replacement for your home computer or laptop.  If you want an item to check email, read the newspaper, and replace magazines, this could be a great purchase for you.  But with the on-screen QWERTY keyboard it is difficult to compose long documents and with the in-ability for multi-tasking it is not going to cut it for a laptop replacement.

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How do I take a screenshot?
Monday, August 23rd, 2010 | Author: Brendan

It can be helpful for many reasons (to send to a technician, to send something to a friend, make documentation, etc.) to be able to capture exactly what is on your screen at any given moment.  This image off your computer is called a “screenshot”.  The process of taking a screenshot is very simple and can be used to email, to past into Microsoft Word (and other applications), and many other reasons.

To capture an image of what is displayed on your computer monitor (screenshot) follow these steps:

1. On your keyboard: Press the “Prt Scr” button.  This button can usually be found to the right of “F12″.

*On some laptops you must use the “Fn” key and the “Prt Scr” button.

Now the image has been copied to your “clipboard”.  Meaning you can “paste” it into any application that allows copy/paste execution.

To practice: Open Microsoft Word and “paste” (“ctrl + v” , or edit—>paste).  You should see an image of what your screen looked like when you captured the image.

Once you feel comfortable copying the screen image and pasting into a blank document try it with other applications (Outlook, Etc.).

I hope this helps and if you have any questions feel free to contact one of our technicians.

Category: General, Shortcuts and Tricks  | Comments off
Monthly Maintenance Package
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 | Author: Brendan

So I try to use this blog as a forum to help with computer tips and not promote my services and products… but I am going to make an exception today to promote the Computer Solution’s Monthly Maintenance Program.

The Monthly Maintenance Program is a service where a certified technician remotely connects to your computer on a monthly basis to run some preventative maintenance tools.  We update antivirus programs, windows updates, clean your registry to speed up performance, de-fragment your computer, and many other items which will keep your computer running well and increase overall performance.

The Monthly Maintenance Program is $30/month or $300/year (if paid in full), will not only improve the speed and performance of your computer, but also prevent you from calling one of our technicians and paying an hourly rate for work.

Get your computer running like it should!  Contact us today to sign up!

Category: General, Services  | Comments off
Save any document as a PDF file
Saturday, July 24th, 2010 | Author: Brendan

So you are writing a word document, quickbooks invoice, excel document, etc. and you want to save it as a PDF so people will not be able to edit your work and will have an accessible file format.  Unless you have purchased Adobe Acrobat (not Adobe Reader — which is the free one) then you don’t have the option of saving any file as a PDF.  With a free download (another open source piece of software) you can install PDFCreator and you will be making PDFs in no time.

Goto: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

1. Download the file and then follow the steps through the installation process.

2. You will now have the ability to save documents as a pdf as well as it will create a “printer” to make PDFs.

If you go to print a document ( durango pc repair + P) and select the PDFCreator “printer” then it will prompt you where you want to save your PDF file so that you can email or store it.

I hope this helps and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask!

Category: General, Software  | Leave a Comment
Outlook or Internet Based Email?
Friday, June 04th, 2010 | Author: Brendan

Ok… so in my work I still see too many client using Outlook and Outlook Express.  These options compile a large mail folder (.pst in Outlook .dbx in Outlook Express) on your computer that requires a lot of space on your hard drive first off.

Second, what if you want to check your home email from the office, or while traveling, etc.?  With Outlook you are confined to only check emails from your home computer, if your hard drive fails, all of your personal information (emails & contacts) can be lost.

Why are soo many people still limiting what they can do with their email?  Comfort I guess… but the benefits of using a third party like Google’s Gmail to manage your Pop3 (the kind you would set up in Outlook) email is easy, safe, accessible worldwide, and searchable.

If you set up your email (ex: example@gobrainstorm.net) through an internet based email service, you will still be sending email as example@gobrainstorm.net not the Gmail account you set up, so nothing will change in regards to your email account except for the way you access your emails.

Don’t be so tied to these programs and break free by using a FREE and more convenient option.

How to set up POP3 in gmail, http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Set-Up-a-POP3-Account-in-Gmail .

Take control of you email!

Category: General  | One Comment
Connecting Your Windows 7 PC With An External PC
Sunday, May 16th, 2010 | Author: Brendan

So it could be for a presentation, could be you want to watch Hulu from your computer on your tv, or you are connecting your laptop to an external monitor to have two monitors.

Well with Windows 7, it is very easy to transfer your output to either duplicate your screen, extend your screen (so that you can have two different desktops), or turn off multi-monitor display.

1. Press and hold the durango pc repair key and press “P” and you will see the below image.

2. While holding the durango pc repair key press “P” each time it will change the options for outputting display.

3. If you want to turn off the multimonitor display just press durango pc repair and “P” until the farthest left option is selected and the picture will return to just your main computer.

Try it out… play with it… this is a very convenient way to hook your PC to your TV or external Monitor for multi-tasking.

Category: General, Windows 7  | Leave a Comment
Locking Your Computer
Monday, April 19th, 2010 | Author: Brendan

This is a useful tool if you have sensitive information open and want to protect it from being seen, mainly useful in the workspace setting.

If you are going to walk away from your computer you can easily lock your computer so that it has to been unlocked when your back and you know no one can access your information.

This can be achieved several ways listed below:

1. Press the Windows Key (durango pc repair) + “L”

2. Press “Ctrl” + “Alt” + “Del“, then select “Lock this computer”

I hope this helps!

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New Tech Blog!
Friday, March 12th, 2010 | Author: Brendan

The direction of the site has changed.. I am going to be posting frequent blog items in regards to Personal Computing Security.  This site will be your one stop resource for personal computer security as well as the site for your on call IT support team in Southwest Colorado.

Feel free to contact me with any comments or sugesstions.

Brendan

970-903-4061

computersolutionco@gmail.com

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