Advert for Windows error cleaner - don

This particular one will not do any harm, however, it is an annoying lure. This, and ones similar to this, will ask you to download and install a tool, it will run and report that you have errors, BUT, it will not let you clean up the errors unless you’ve bought it.
The so called “errors”  are not really a problem, they might have an affect of slowing down your computer - a small amount, but unless you are installing or removing software very regularly (daily or weekly) then the accumulative effect will be negligible and certainly not worth buying a tool, such as this, to resolve that small level of  annoyance.

Warm regards to all
David

When you need to send bulk mail, it is valuable to be able to at least print the address labels.

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Straight forward table method

At a recent Monday evening we covered a straight forward way of creating a address label page - by creating a grid of 2 x 7 and then to type the addresses into each grid section…

<First name> <Last name> <Address one> <Adress two> <city> <County> <Post code>	<First name> <Last name> <Address one> <Adress two> <city> <County> <Post code>
<First name> <Last name> <Address one> <Adress two> <city> <County> <Post code>	<First name> <Last name> <Address one> <Adress two> <city> <County> <Post code>

There are useful webpages to show you how to do this in word.

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Mail Merge method

The alternate, more complicated but extensible way of achieving this address labeling is to use the MS Mail Merge approach. Microsoft have a very good set of pages to describe the mail merge process.

When going through processing of digital photographs there are a few key stages …

• Uploading to the computer
• Viewing and manipulating the photographs
• Publishing or emailing to friends
• Printing

This log will cover just the uploading and manipulating aspect. Downloading Picasa and uploading photographs.

At a recent Monday evening session we went through the whole process of downloading Picasa and importing photographs and using Picasa to view the photographs and manipulate them into albums. Much of this is already well documented on the internet, so I’ll refer to those existing documents - rather than write them again.

Key tutorial or links.

Picasa - download and install.

Picasa is a photograph catalogue application which also allows manipulation of the photographs to crop, change the colour or brightness of the photograph - to get the best out what might even be a ‘dark shot’. Picasa can be downloaded in one of two versions currently Picasa V2.7 and Picasa V3.0. Click on either of those links to take you to those download websites then follow this useful training video to show how to download and install Picasa.

Transfer your photographs to the computer

How to transfer digital Photographs from your camera to your computer.

This tutorial shows you two ways of doing this;

• one using the inbuilt Windows “copy” function
• one showing the use of Picasa to copy the photographs over.

Use of a hierarchy for organisation As with any files you are adding to your computer, consider the hierarchy that you will store them in. For many people the use of “My Photographs” works well - it would be best to create new directories (or folders) within “My Photographs” to collate various photographs you have. Alternatively you could choose to start a new area on your disk off the “C:” base folder … perhaps c:photographs. Creating a new base folder or using “My photographs” is equally valid and only a matter of personal preference. Within your choosen base folder having a further hierarchy will help see colllections of photographs at a glance, suggestion would be to collate them chronologically by year and month;

• 2008
  • Jan 2008
  • Feb 2008
  • Mar 2008
  • etc

…which also offers a sense of when the photgraphs were taken. This is not prescriptive though and I’m sure you can find a hierarchy that suits you best … perhaps …

• Family & Friends
• Holidays
  • Greece 2007
  • Spain 2008
  • France 2008
• Gardens

Using Picasa to view, organise and manipulate the photographs

Finally once you have Picasa installed, it offers a wealth of tools, as alluded to previously.

There is a useful Picasa tutorial site to offer more information and help about it - also a video showing an overview of Picasa V2 (Picasa V2.7 or Picasa V3.0 will be similar but may be subtly different). Hopefully this will lead you to being to start processing your photographs and possibly using Picasa for uploading the photographs.

If any of the links on this page no longer work or take you to the place you expect, please let me know, thanks - David

There are two main different ways

1. Through your internet browser

2. Through an emailing client [program] that runs on you local machine

The key differences between these two approaches are;

1. Browser based. The internet browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox or …) is used to log on to your email account and then you read and write your emails through that account. The emails are always on the email ’server’ [and not on you local machine. You need an internet connection to be able to use emails this way.

2. Email program based. The emails are stored both on your email 'server' and on your local machine. The email client [program] talks to the ’server’ and sends and receives the emails between the two computers.

You can write emails whilst you are not connected to internet in this approach and you have a local copy of the email to refer to if you are not on-line.

If you are used to using the Browser approach, the supplier of the email service usually have a way of configuring your local email client [program] to allow the local email client[program] to connect and send and receive the emails.

If you use the browser approach, there will be Internet Explorer already available on a Windows machine. There are other browser choices - like Firefox, Safari, Opera or Chrome [Google browser]. There is a personal preference part to your choice.

Email Clients [programs].

Windows tends to have Outlook Express installed as the default email client. There are a number of others.

Microsoft Outlook is a very full functional email client which also offers a very good contact manager [address book] and copes very well with browser interface too - it can behave like a combined email program and browser too.

Another very popular email client is Thunderbird. This comes from the Mozilla stable which was derived from Netscape series of tools. Thunderbird is a very capable email program and can be extended to add more capabilities as they are required [you install additional programs that Thunderbird adds to it's tool bar]. Many people around the world develop these new programs as needs are identified - new items are available every week which you can choose to take or ignore; it makes for a very exciting adventure keeping up with new technology.

Thunderbird has it quirks and is not as easy to set up as the Microsoft equivalents, but it is touted as being ’safer’ that Outlook Express and less vulnerable to internet security attacks.

Email tutorials

For each of these email applications, there is plenty of websites and supports already written. Here are some links to the key information websites.

Microsoft Outlook Express Tutorial

Microsoft Outlook tutorial and help

Thunderbird Tutorial

There is lots of reading here; probably more in these tutorials than I currently know. If you follow the tutorials and need an explanation, please let me know and I’ll focus on it one Monday session.

Regards

David

If any of these links break and no longer work, please let us know. Thanks.

There are alternatives though which are very good, have a high degree of compatibility with the MS suite.

One such alternative is Open Office (”the free and open productivity suite”) - which is free !.

Another alternative is Lotus Symphony - again is free !

What do they offer ? where can I get more help with them online ? …. read on

What do these suites offer ?

Please go and see the individual sites to see all the features that the suites offer and which suite may be best for you. In a nutshell …

Word Processing

If you need to write a document with any level of formatting or need or a “professional” or “formal” appearance, you will want to use one of the more advanced word processors available. This will offer you many styles, fonts and document formatting together with the ability to add pictures, clip-art or tables of data.

Presentations

Probably less valuable in the every day life, a presentation manager is a way of creating documents with , largely, bullet points of information that then in my experience, is used to show via a projector to an audience.

Spreadsheets

I use spreadsheets a lot for work. They are a great way of manipulating data for complex mathematics and statistical interpretation of the data.

At home they can be just as useful for a little home accounting of month to month finances and budgets.

More help on productivity suites ?

Each of these suites has good help already publicised on the Internet; here the links to the tutorials.

MS Office tutorials

Open Office tutorials (Down-loadable)

Open office tutorials (on line)

Lotus Symphony tutorials

If any links in this document no longer work, please let us know. Thanks.

The whole issue of computer security warrants a significant document on it’s own - much of which has already be publicised. This blog entry is not intending to document all aspects of the security issues.

Information on the net

There are many places to read and review information on the net. One such place is at Microsoft itself. This is particularly relevant as so many of us are Windows® users.

If you read and like the information that Microsoft offers, you can sign up for a newsletter to be sent to your email address monthly (other interesting newsletters are also available for email subscription).

A further basic security article also echos and elaborates on the points being made by this entry.

Virus protection

A good virus protection tool is valuable. There is so much of the internet that is safe and a few places that are not. In my opinion, for much of the access to the internet, the risk is small - however - if a problem strikes the impact of a problem or ‘infection’ can be high.

There are good virus protection tools available at varying costs like Symantec and Norton Anti virus

through to AVG (free) which is used by the Church Hall computer suite.

Mal-ware

This can be every bit as nasty as a virus but tends to be limited to capturing information about internet sites you have visited, causing random adverts to pop up or can reduce the defenses of the computer making it more vulnerable to virus attacks.

Once again there are tools to help monitor PC, downloads and internet activity. The tool providers tend to be similar to those providing anti-virus secuirty, although there are others.

One other suggestion of one such provider is Lavasoft who provides a product called Ad-Aware

Phishing emails or forms

These are emails or internet sites that are designed to try and get information from you. Many are ’spoofs’ of some real institution - like a bank or financial institution (typically) asking you to validate your login or account details on line. They can be very convincing - looking like the ‘real institution’ that you may go to to login or provide the ‘key details’ that someone else needs to impersonate you or access you on-line or electronic accounts.

The most important thing to remember is that no institution will ever ask you to validate your account details on line. If you therefore get such a request - it is not real !

Examples of such phishing emails can be see at the Microsoft security site.

Regards,
David

Using your computer safely (PDF)

David and Tom welcome you.

These support pages are intended to capture some training material for the Church Hall computers and a journal or blog capturing discussions held at the Monday evening support group meetings.

We hope you find this site of value. If there is anything you would like to see or discuss please let us know.

David