the computer solution

Should I get an iPad?

Brendan — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:31:43 +0000

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.

How do I take a screenshot?

Brendan — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:06:19 +0000

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.

Dangerous ‘Dislike’ Scam Spreading on Facebook

Brendan — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:20:00 +0000

It seems that everyone uses FaceBook these days and due to the billions of users there are a growing number of security threats to be aware of.

There are many opportunities to “Like” content on Facebook — and increasingly on sites all over the web — but Facebook doesn’t offer a “Dislike” button that people who don’t like a status update or a New York Times story can click to express their opinion. Facebook wants you to remember this.

That’s because a bogus Dislike button is appearing as an option on status updates. When a user clicks this nefarious button, he or she may wind up with more reason to dislike the page: The scam steals their identity or hijacks their account.

“Beware of the fake Facebook ‘Dislike’ button. As always, we advise you not to click on suspicious links on Facebook,” Facebook said in a security post. “We’re working hard to stop these from spreading. If you see one, report it to us, and warn any friends who might be affected.”

So be careful and we will attempt to bring to light more FaceBook scams as they are becoming more and more commonplace.

Monthly Maintenance Package

Brendan — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:36:13 +0000

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!

Save any document as a PDF file

Brendan — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 21:08:34 +0000

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 ( + 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!

Microsoft Word Page Break Tip

Brendan — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:27:06 +0000

When using Microsoft Word there are many times where you need to skip to the next page, for references or other reasons. Instead of pressing “Enter” many times to get to the next page there is a much easier way to enter a page break and skip to the top of the next page.

1. Press “Ctrl” and “Enter” to insert a page break and advance to the top of the next page.

I hope this easy shortcut helps your word processing!

How do I check what programs are using the most resources?

Brendan — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:52:03 +0000

So your computer is running slow and your not sure why? A good place to start is see which applications are using the resources in your computer (CPU or Central Processing Unit / RAM or Random Access Memory). To do this follow the steps below:

1. Press all three buttons together (“ctrl” + “alt” + “del“) or right click on the start bar on the bottom of the screen and select ” Start Task Manager“. For Windows 7 or Vista, after pressing “Ctrl” + “Alt” + “Del” you will have to select “Start Task Manager“.

2. Now you will see the “Task Manager” screen.

3. Click on the tab that says “Processes“. You will see many columns and the two that are most important for this purpose are “CPU” and “MEMORY“. (see image below)

4. If you click on either of the tabs (RAM, CPU) it will sort lowest to highest and vice versa. Order from highest to lowest and see which programs are requiring a lot of resources as their might be an issue with this program.

Note: “System Idle Process” is good, and under the CPU column, System Idle Process should be above 90%. (That means that 90% is available for any tasks needed. If it is much lower than that you have too many processes running.

How to Print with a keyboard command

Brendan — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:35:47 +0000

To save some time… as always it is faster to use keyboard commands instead of removing your hands from the keyboard and using the mouse.

If you need to print a document, webpage, pdf or any other item all you need to do is press “ctrl” and “p” buttons to initiate the print options (see image below). This will save you several seconds instead of taking your hand off the keyboard to go to the mouse and going to “file” then “print”.

Example:
1. You are browsing the internet and want to print a page

2. Press “ctrl” and “p”

3. You press enter if you don’t need to change any options.

4. You printed your document without even moving your hands from the keyboard

Outlook or Internet Based Email?

Brendan — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:06:53 +0000

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!

Office Software

Brendan — Thu, 27 May 2010 14:54:17 +0000

As the release date of Microsoft Office 2010 looms near I want to highlight alternative options for you to consider before purchasing this software.

I am firm believe in open source, free software… and if you haven’t tried Open Office, you might be pleasantly surprised with this free Microsoft Office imitation. As Microsoft Office continues to change the extensions on their file formats (with Office 2007 added an “x” on the extension so you can’t open it with older versions of office like 2003) to force you to buy their latest software. If you want to do a little research I would recommend Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org/).

Open Office includes:

Writer (similar to Microsoft Word)

Calc (similar to Microsoft Excel)

Impress (similar to Microsoft PowerPoint)

Base (similar to Microsoft Access)

Draw (similar to Microsoft Visio)