Archives for January 2009

Future Technology

on January 24th, 2009

Future Technology

 

With the start of the new year, we thought you might be interested to know about a couple of the new computer related technologies that are on the way.

 
Other than cooling fans and your DVD/CD drive, the last mechanical device in your computer is your hard drive. Hard drive prices have been coming down while hard drive sizes have been going up. The reason is solid state-drives. Most of you are probably familiar with flash drives. They are also known as jump drives, thumb drives, and so on. Solid-state drives are the same technology that flash drives use.
 
There are several advantages to solid-state drives. The biggest advantage is that they are less likely to crash and loose your data. They are also quiet (no moving parts) and are faster.
 
The disadvantages to solid-state drives are capacity and price. Capacities, however, are going up pretty fast and prices are slowly coming down so you should expect to start seeing more and more computers with solid-state drives as time goes on. 
 
Solid state drives are actually available today. Dell, for example, offers a 128GB solid-state hard drive as an option on some of their laptops, but it will cost you an extra $500. Prices are coming down, though.
 

Another technology to watch out for is OLED. You’ve heard of LED (Light Emitting Diode). LED’s are used in LCD monitors and televisions. The O in OLED stands for Organic. The advantage to OLED is that is cheaper to manufacture and uses a lot less power. However, they are still working on the durability of OLED. Right now, OLEDS that emite blue light only last about 5 years. The first OLED products are coming on the market now, but are very expensive.

Posted in Hardware | No Comments

Vista Service Pack 2

on January 24th, 2009

Vista Service Pack 2

 

Speaking of Vista, service pack 2 for Vista is on the way and is slated for release in April, but there are rumors it will be delayed to May or June. For the most part, service pack 2 is just a collection of fixes just like most service packs. But it does add some improvements. Improvements include improved searching capibility, upgraded bluetooth support, blue-ray DVD support, improved WIFI support, and several others that are too technical to try and explain here.

Posted in Windows, Windows Vista | No Comments

The Real Cost of Printers

on January 24th, 2009

The Real Cost of Printers

 

When shopping for printers, the printer that cost the least to purchase is not necessarily the cheapest printer to own and operate. In fact, the cheaper printers usually cost more over the long haul to operate. So in addition to the initial cost of the printer, you should also consider the cost per page.

 
Cost per page is a calculation of how much it costs, per page, to use a printer. It takes into consideration the cost of the ink for that particular printer. The cost per page for a printer is different for black and white printouts versus color printouts. So for a color printer, you will usually find a cost for each.
 
Here’s an example. The HP OfficeJet J5780 sells for around $150 while the HP OfficeJet K5400dtn sells for around $200. The J5780 is cheaper to purchase, but let’s take a look at the cost per page and figure out how much it really costs to operate this printer. The J5780 has a cost per page of 4 cents for black and white and 10.7 cents for color while the K5400dtn has a cost per page of 1.5 cents for black and white and 6 cents for color.
 
So if you owned the printer for several years and printed 1000 black and white pages and 2000 color pages, you would spend about $255 in ink for the J5780 versus $135 for ink for the K5400dtn. That’s a difference of $120. So even though the K5400dtn costs $50 more, in the long haul, you would have saved $70.
 
Notice that both of the printers in this example are HP. That means you can’t assume that all printers made by a certain manufacturer have a lower or higher cost per page than another manufacturer. So be sure to look at the specs for each specific printer model.
 
There is another factor that is important to consider. You know that a printer will start alerting you when the ink starts getting low. You probably also know that you shouldn’t change the ink cartridge just because the printer says it’s low. You should wait until one of two things happen before you change the ink cartridge.
 
1. If you see a degradation in print quality.
2. The printer refuses to print until you replace the cartridge.
 
Number 1 is obvious, but number 2 is the one I want to touch on. Tests show that some printers will tell you the cartridge is empty and refuse to print, even though there is a substantial amount of ink still left in the cartridge. In some cases, the cartridge is nearly half full (or half empty if you are a pesimist)! That’s a lot of wasted ink!
 
It’s also important to point out that it also depends on if you are using an ink cartridge from the manufacturer, or a 3rd party cartridge. Tests show that 3rd party cartridges report being out of ink before the cartridges from the printer manufacturer.
 
The worst offender was Kodak printers which wasted 43% of the ink.
Next was Canon which wasted anywhere from 24% to 42% depending on if you use a Canon ink cartridge or a 3rd party cartridge.
Next was Epson which wasted anywhere from 8% for Epson cartridges to 41% for 3rd party cartridges.
 
The one anomoly to this is HP. Unlike Canon, Epson, and Kodak, HP printers never refuse to print based on the amount of ink it thinks you have in your cartridge. So with HP printers, just keep an eye on the print quality and when it starts to degrade, replace the cartridge.
 
One other important point to consider. Some color printers have one color cartridge that contains several colors while others have seperate cartridges for each color. The disadvantage to the single color cartridge is that if one color inside the cartridge runs dry, you have to replace the cartridge, thus wasting what was left of the other colors. When you have seperate cartridges for each color, there is less ink waste.

Posted in Printers | No Comments

Put it on My Tab

on January 19th, 2009

Put it on My Tab

 

Have you discovered tabs in your web browser yet? Pretty much all web browsers support tabs these days. A web browser is a program that lets you view web pages on the internet. The most popular web browsers are Internet Explorer (comes with windows), Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera. The latest version of these all support tabs.

 
Tabs basically allow you to have multiple web pages open in the same browser without having to have more than one instance of the web browser open. To switch between the web pages, you can click on the tabs in the top part of the web browser.
 
Tabs are really useful when you are searching for something or want to compare things. Let’s say I do a Google search on something. I will get a list of links from Google. If I click on one of those links, it goes to that page. Now if I want to see the search results, I have to click the back button. Then I loose that page and go back to the search results. Then I can click another link in the search results and so forth. Lots of back and forth.
 
You can use tabs to make this process faster and easier. When you get your search results, instead of clicking a link, hold the control key down and click the link. The link will be opened up in another tab. Go through the list of search results control-clicking the onces you think my be what you are looking for. Once you have several tabs, click on each tab to check it out. You can close a tab that isn’t what you were looking for by clicking the little x in the corner of the tab. If you want to go back and see the original search results, just click on that tab. No waiting. Bam! It’s there.
 
To compare things, have one in each tab. Then you can easily switch between the tabs and compare. This is great for shopping for the best price. You can go on an online store and act like you are going to purchase something. Get to the point where you know the full price including shipping and tax. Then do the same thing at a different online store in a different tab of your browser. Once you have done this at several online stores, you can click on each tab to compare the final price. Pick the lowest one, go to that tab, and complete your transaction. 

Posted in Internet | No Comments

Managing Your Music

on January 19th, 2009

Managing Your Music

 

These days, many people have their music on their computer. Whether you ripped your music from your CD’s, or downloaded them over the internet, some people have quite a lot of music on their computer. This is a huge topic that is too big to cover in depth in this newsletter, but I am going to touch on some important information about it.

 
Although there are many different formats music can be stored in, most people’s music is stored in one of 3 formats, WMA, MP3, and M4P.
 
WMA is the format used by Windows Media Player which comes with Windows.
M4P is the format you get if you purchased and downloaded your music from Itunes.
MP3 is probably the most common format.
 
WMA and M4P files are large while MP3 files are smaller and take up less space. However, some audiphiles complain that there is a loss of quality in the music on MP3. I can’t hear a difference, though.
 
Both WMA and M4P support Digital Rights Management (DRM). This is a method for restricting the use of the downloaded music. MP3 does not support DRM. Because of that, if you have music in the MP3 format, you can do whatever you want with it without restriction.
 
Until recently, if you purchased music online for download from walmart.com, amazon.com, and other similar online retailers, your music was in WMA format and there were restriction on where you could play that song and what you could do with it.
 
Now, however, most online music retailers have converted over to MP3 format. The last remaining online retailer that still used DRM has been Itunes. But now even Itunes is converting over to DRM free songs.
 
If you have music in a format with DRM restrictions on them, you can generally convert them into DRM free MP3 files by burning them to CD and then ripping them back off the CD into MP3 format. That’s because when you burn a CD, none of the DRM information is burned to the CD.
 
Once you have all of your music in MP3 format, you want to organize it. There are lots of different ways to organize your music. If you have a lot of music, then using folders to sub-categorize your music is a good idea. Some people sub-categorize by genre, the artist name, or year. The possibilities are endless. It’s your music and you can organize it in a way that makes sense to you.
 
It’s also a good idea to use a standard file naming convention for your songs. For example, you could use: artist name – song title.mp3
 
In this example, if you have the song Michelle by the Beatles, you could name the file:
 
The Beatles – Michelle.mp3
 
But having the word "The" might be a problem. So you could do this:
 
Beatles – Michelle.mp3
 
or this
 
Beatles, The - Michelle.mp3
 
The good part is you can do it however you want. Just be consistant to avoid confusion.
 
When you play a song on a computer, an IPOD, phone, or an MP3 player of some sort it displays information about the song. This is called metadata. It includes information like artist, song title, album, genre, year released, and so forth. It’s a good idea to have this information consistant. For example, if you have songs from several different albums from the same artist, the metadata between them could be inconsistant. In keeping with our example, one album might have the artist listed as "Beatles" while another might have it as "The Beatles". This means when you sort by artist, all of the songs by the Beatles will not be together.
 
There are lots of utilities out there that try and help you organize your music. Many of them cost money, but my favorite one is free. It will let you update the metadata. It will also allow you to rename the song files. And the best part is that you can do it in mass instead of just one song at a time which can take a long time if you have a lot of music.
 
Some examples of some things you can do with this utility is that you can select all of the songs by an artist and type the artist name in once and it will go and update all of the songs to have that artist name.
 
Something else you can do is select a range of songs and tell it to rename the song file. You can tell it what format to use (ex: artist – song title) and it will go and rename them all using the metadata in each song and the song file format you specify. It couldn’t be much easier.
 
Getting your metadata and song file names all standardized makes organizing, finding, and listening to your music much easier.
 
The name of this cool utility is mp3tag. You can download it for free by clicking here.

Posted in Computer Troubleshooters | No Comments

Sending Large Files Over the Internet

on January 19th, 2009

Sending Large Files

 

Over the Internet

 

There are times when you need to send someone a large file over the internet. When you need to send a file someone, the most common way to do it is to attach it to an e-mail. However, you can’t do this with large files. Internet service providers and e-mail providers generally restrict the size of e-mail attachments from anywhere from 1mb to 5mb.

 
So how do you send someone a large file?
There are several ways it can be done.
 
If the file is just a little to big, you may be able to compress the file, depending on what type of file it is. Music files, graphics, videos, and zip files are generally already compressed, so you won’t be able to compress them any further. Other files, however, can generally be compressed.
 
To compress a file, right click on the file and choose Send to Compressed (zipped) folder. It will create a file with the same name with .zip on the end. Take a look at the size of the file to see how big it is before you try and send it.
 
Another way to send a large file is to break it up into pieces and send the pieces. You can use a free utility called gsplit to split a file up. Then you send the pieces in seperate e-mails. It also creates a small program that you have to send as well. The person on the other end can run that program to put all of the pieces back together. This method is a lot of work because you have to send each piece. The person on the other end has to put it back together. This option is generall not very good for really large files (because there are a lot of pieces) or for the less experienced computer users.
 
An easier way is to use a free service like drop.io. Point your web browser to drop.io. Create your drop. You can then upload your large file. You have 100mb of storage space on drop.io.  You can get more for a fee. You can set up a password if you want to keep your files private. You can send your friends the address for your drop.io and they can then download files from it. Other services like drop.io are also available.
 
By the way, if you are on one of our service plans, you have an even easier option to allow someone to download a large file directly from your computer. Just right-click on the file and choose Send-to logmein sharing. It will create a link. Just copy that link into an e-mail and send it to your friend. Your friend can then simply click on that link to download the file directly from your computer.

Posted in Internet | No Comments

Block Yourself

on January 19th, 2009
Interested in reducing the amount of spam you get?
Most e-mail clients have the ability to block senders.
If your e-mail allows you to block senders, add yourself to the block list.
On the surface, this sounds strange but it really does help reduce the amount of spam you get. Many spamers make the e-mail look like it’s from you. So if you block yourself, those spam messages won’t get into your inbox.
 
The only drawback to doing this is if you send yourself e-mail. Some people send themselves e-mail’s to remind themselves of things they need to do. If you do this, then you have two options. You can either not block yourself and just deal with the spam, or get yourself a free e-mail address from Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail and use that to send e-mail to your primary e-mail address.

Posted in E-mail and Spam | No Comments

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