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May 2011

1. Windows Explorer and right click on the required drive 2 Select Properties click the General tab and then click Disk Cleanup 3 DiskClean Up will then scan the drive and provide you with a list of possible actions and an estimate of the space that can be saved Depending on your system anumber of different file types are analysed when the initial disk scan is conducted After the analysis completes you can choose what to do with them The analysed files include e Downloaded program files e Temporary Internet files e Recycle Bin e Temporary Remote Desktop files e Setup Log files e Backup files for a previous operating system e Offline files e Compressed old files In addition to the Disk Cleanup tab the More Options tab offers further opportunities for freeing up hard drive space There is nothing on this tab that isn t available elsewhere within Windows in standalone fashion and some will be dealt with below There may be other categories that appear in your Disk Cleanup window but in all cases highlighting the item will display an explanation of the category in the Description area Error Checking Previously called Scan Disk or Check Disk this utility is known as Error Checking within the Windows XP Vista 7 system Error Checking will check the hard disk for defects in its platters It will also check file systems If errors are found it will attempt to fix them These errors are found i
2. There are limits on what you can pick up he said OneNote also defeats attempts to make copying a Web page impossible Scott noted In Vista and Windows 7 you can use the clipping tool to mark the portion of the Web page you want and paste it into OneNote where it s instantly searchable Scott also showed a notebook for work where he stores information on problems that are repetitive but don t come up often enough so fixing them becomes automatic He stores fix it information in the notebook and can then search for words matching the problem He can store registry fixes and similar information keeping the links live all the time Another use he said is to gather pricing information from a variety of websites for airline tickets and so on paste it into OneNote and compare all the data in one place OneNote also adds a Pasted from tag with information you paste from a website OneNote does not pick up CSS formatting and the background images on a Web page so it won t display the information the way you see it on the Web page Information can also be copied from a PDF file he said Spreadsheets imported from websites are readable but they don t necessarily import in a spreadsheet format Scott said that if he wants material from a spreadsheet to be imported into a different spreadsheet he copies the material into Note Tab Pro He then does a search for two spaces and replaces them with a tab He then pastes t
3. s The process is much like what happens in a commercial laundry or dry cleaner where everybody s clothes are tagged and thrown together into a large machine Afterwards somebody looks at the tags to get them back to their proper owners Contrast this to a bank deposit vault where only your key can open the box where you place your documents Even at such competent vendors as Google there have been instances of data leaking from one customer to another and many cloud vendors are start ups who have much less expertise than Google This means that you should take responsibility for safeguarding your data For example if you back up your disk in the cloud encrypt any files such as those containing passwords or on line banking data that present security risks I store my passwords using KeePassX http www keepassx org Its file is always encrypted on your PC s disk and you can safely back it up anywhere I also use Gnu Privacy Guard gpg http www gnupg org to encrypt files and e mail Both of these programs are available for the Windows Mac and Linux platforms By the way when you encrypt a file be sure that only the encrypted version is ever placed in a directory that is backed up in the cloud Safety also is not trivial Vendors do go out of business and even if they keep operating they may find that providing cloud services isn t profitable Not all of them back up their storage which means that their hard
4. CD ROMs are much slower than hard disks but you can see exactly how Linux works with your hardware Keep in mind that unless you copy your results to aread write device anything you do in the live session will be lost when you log off The next level of commitment is to install Linux in a dual boot configuration Here each time you boot you choose either Linux or Windows For instance you might choose Windows to watch a Netflix movie work on your taxes or sync your iPhone and choose Linux to surf the Web retouch you photos or update your Web page Again the installation will be much easier with the help of a Linux savvy friend Just be sure to back up your files before you begin Another good approach is to replace Windows with Linux on an old computer Linux is a rather large clan of operating systems the most common of which are Ubuntu Red Hat Fedora and SUSE However I recommend that you first try Linux Mint whichis a variant of Ubuntu Its appearance closely resembles Windows and you will probably be comfortable almost immediately It shares Ubuntu s compatibility with hardware which minimizes the chances of problems during and after installation There are hundreds of other versions of Linux and each one has its niche for example to recover files from damaged disks to be fast on old and slow hardware to accommodate children to run on netbooks and smart phones and one even lets you use an old PC as a TiVo ty
5. I know that there are always more options and WLM is a fine option Being downloaded from the Internet it is always up to date and free Try it if you want to use a local email program with lots of features and an uncomplicated interface All screenshots Jo Grazide iTunes Playlists Apple s iTunes software contains a neat feature called Smart Playlists In essence it turns iTunes into a disc jockey drawing its material from your downloaded music files Choose the New Smart Playlist feature from the file menu and select the criteria by which you want iTunes to make its selections You can have the program search for songs by specific artists genres number of times played you might want it to find some songs you haven t listened to very much for instance or even sound quality You can further set the number of songs minutes or megabytes to keep your playlists manageable Finally click the Live Updating box to have iTunes continually change the Playlist as you add new songs to your folders Reprinted with permission from Smart Computing Visit www SmartComputing com Groups to learn what Smart Computing can do for you and your user group NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 23 New handheld computer that also phones SmartPhone Verizon Motorola Droid X Android OS 2 2 Froyo By Merle Nicholson Secretary Tampa PCUG Florida January 2011 issue Bits of Blue OK this is an article about an Android phone
6. a full time student who is not eligible for Associate membership O 10 Associate Member a family member of a Regular or Student member Associate memberships run concurrently with sponsors memberships Make check payable to Napa Valley Personal Computer Users Group Mail application renewal to Napa Valley Personal Computer Users Group Attn Membership Director P O Box 2866 Napa CA 94558 0286 The NVPCUG is an accredited IRC 501 c 3 nonprofit organization Your dues payment may be tax deductible as a charitable contribution To request a Corporate Membership Application Renewal form e mail Membership nvpcug org Revised 2 14 2010 NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 28
7. identical to your Kindle If you stay connected on both it tracks your last read page so you can switch devices and not lose your place It s wonderfully readable It s not a substitute for the Kindle if you own one but it s handy and if you happen to owna mobile phone there s no real need to buy a Kindle if you don t want to Email Well it s email It s the mail that I get from my mail server I do reply to email from the phone when I feel I have to and since the voice to text feature works here as well it s pretty easy Calendar It s pretty good completely integrated with Google Calendar Voicemail Google voicemail takes your voicemail messages translates them to text and places a message on your phone to read or play your option Music player There s a sync app that detects when you re plugged into a PC and syncs your PC music to the device There s also a DLNA app that plays media from a network with a media server Otherwise it s a decent MP3 WMA player that also does videos Camera An 8 Megapixel camera with face detection and panorama stitching It has two fairly bright LEDs for flash and plenty of manual settings Very good zooming as you d expect with 8MPixels to work with Camcorder The camera also functions as a 720p HD video recorder The device also has a mini HDMI port for playing to an external device such as a wide screen TV It comes with a 16GB SDHC
8. recommending that you turn the phone off once a day to clear out unused programs in memory Second in spite of the claim of 220 hours of standby and 480 minutes of talk time this thing eats battery Pll admit I pretty much actively used it all one day for 10 hours and ran the battery down I used it for phone calls very little The display when on eats most of the battery so a continuous charge is necessary if you re going to use it for navigation There s an extended battery for 50 which is way too much Media Card When shopping for a digital camera consider what type of memory card the camera uses Most digital cameras including sub 1 000 digital SLRs digital single lens reflex use SD Secure Digital cards which come in different capacities and speeds The number of images you can fit on a card depends on the camera s megapixel count and the resolution or quality level you select when shooting Determine the maximum number of images you want to put on the card that will help decide what capacity card you need Also find out if the camera is SDHC Secure Digital High Capacity compatible and will work with high capacity 4GB SD cards Only cameras with an SDHC designation specs are available on most manufacturers Web sites are capable of using a card with more than a 2GB capacity Reprinted with permission from Smart Computing Visit www SmartComputing com Groups to learn what Smart Computing can do for
9. CCleaner to start data cleanup on the computers in use by the staff so Iam familiar with its use When run CCleaner gives you a nice interface with a number of options for cleaning temporary files left behind by Internet browsers IE Firefox etc Windows Explorer Windows itself and other applications that use temp files To check on what it finds you can click on Analyze vice Run Cleaner That way you have a chance to determine what the application will be doing I expected it to list a number of IE and Firefox temp files but was surprised at how many system and application temp files it found In all over 350 MB would be cleaned off the drive After running the cleaning function I clicked to scan the registry for problems During this scan CCleaner looks for unused items missing shared DLL s and application paths obsolete software references leftover installation references fragments and a few other items CCleaner lists all that it finds for you to review Your Computer s Health Part 3 cont on page 18 NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 17 Your Computer s Health Part 3 cont from page 17 Again given that the PC was only 7 months old I was surprised by the number of leftovers from updates and software removals Cleaning these items will result in a cleaner registry which will speed bootup and shutdown times and increase system stability When you click to Fix selected issues you will be given
10. So don t dismiss the feature Some tips are quite thought provoking So much so that you will have to use the Show Me button for an explanation The Show Me button will guide through whatever steps are needed to complete the task of that particular tip window Another great item in the Tips Window is the What s New button Every time you update Legacy the information under this button will change There s a lot of new stuff under this button so take a few minutes to look through What s New For example in the latest version Legacy has added a Best Fit button for the children s column We used to select one two or three columns to list the kids In days of yore large families were the norm With three columns and five kid s spaces in each column we recorded up to fifteen kids for a family and we could see all their names However in later years when we became more aware of the cost of raising a family the off springs became fewer and fewer However if you selected to use fifteen spaces for kids three columns with five spaces each every family got fifteen spaces even if they only had one two or three kids The best fit button for children will adjust the columns for each family depending how hefty their herd of children is or isn t This gives your family view screen a better look Another new feature is a beefier search engine You can search an entire file for missing information such as given names marriage
11. a longer happier life any veteran could fill you in on that there are now studies showing that people who volunteer at least two hours a week do in fact receive health benefits from volunteering According to an article by Adam Voiland at http health usnews coma 2007 report which drew on the results of 30 studies said volunteering can indeed be good for your health Voiland says the report indicates that people who volunteer enjoy longer lives higher functional ability and lower rates of depression and heart disease Volunteering keeps a person active and interested as well as helping stay connected with other people Voiland quoted Steven Post director of a research group at Case Western Reserve University that focuses on the scientific study of altruism compassion and service as saying The helping impulse is very fundamental When it is locked off we do not flourish If we look around there are friends neighbors and family who could use a helping hand now and then There are also nonprofit organizations whose mission is to help people You may be belong to one In fact if you re reading this newsletter chances are you belong to The Olympia Microcomputer Users Group Any group needs leadership and OMUG is no exception All our officers and key members are volunteers and if you talk to any of them my guess is that you II find they enjoy taking an active part in our computer users group keeping
12. and learn Our hectic life has programmed us to get things done quickly After all there s so much todo and so little time As an example I work on my family history almost every day If m not researching my family tree then I mentering newly found information into my genealogy program I m doing this all the while I m trying to maintain ahome and family which I m sure you know consumes a lot of our time With all these demands we tend to hasten through most of our least important tasks so we can give more time to the important stuff At the end of the day we also would like a little time to relax and unwind Even though we enjoy on our computers I think our computer tasks fall into that least important task list Hence we get the computer tasks done quickly always using the same methods and or steps that we have always used because it s quicker and we re never really looking at how we could improve on doing these tasks We re going to look at some of the basics of the Legacy program that we use in our genealogy group I m sure that some of these items will help improve our computer and genealogical skills I ll be starting at the opening screen which we usually look at briefly if at all before we head to the guts of the Legacy program This is where we cheat ourselves because we don t take the time to stop look and learn The first thing I like to see when starting Legacy is the Legacy Home screen This
13. ask questions about computers and computer related problems and receive helpful information from other meeting attendees Questions z may be submitted before the meeting by emailing them to Random Access moderator Jerry Brown at Questions nvpcug org The May 18 2011 Computer Tutor topic will be member Jeff Solomon will be talking about What is Cloud Computing the subject he was going to cover How does Cloud Gami Computing work amp What does Cloud Computing mean to PC Users like us If you have an idea or question that the Computer Tutor Jeff Solomon at tutor nvpcug org 22 This month Bernhard Krevet will surprise us with a TBA computer topic If you have a suggestion on which feature and topics should Intel 2 A discusses in the future please contact Susy Ball at susyball aol com See ya all at the meeting Could you use some practical information that would help you make better use of your computer Come to this meeting Guests are always welcome Admission is always free Interested in becoming a member See page 28 for application information NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 NAAG SPECIAL NTEREST GROLPS amp Mac GaP In SIG meetings you can learn about a subject in greater detail than is feasible at NVPCUG general meetings SIG meetings are open to everyone Meeting times and locations occasionally change so for current meeting information see our Web site www nvpcug o
14. but adequate ventilation and room temperatures below 80 are simply common sense procedures Whenever you notice degrading system performance always look for potential hardware problems first Software can be at fault but it s far less likely to be the root of your problems ok Your Computer s Health Part 1 By Art Gresham Editor UCHUG Under the Computer Hood User Group CA January 2001 issue UCHUG Drive Light www uchug org leditor101 uchug org At the start of this new year the UCHUG Drive Light is going to present a series of articles on the general topic of Your Computer s Health You say you are doing most of those things recommended to keep your body healthy annual physical dental checkups good diet bathe regularly stay physically active And you do what you must do to keep your auto healthy like oil changes tune ups check the tire inflation and tread depth wash it occasionally and use good quality gasoline Even in your home you take out the trash wash the dishes vacuum the carpet change the heater air filter flush the toilet But are you as regular about the same kinds of things with your computer Like other areas your life your computer has several facets that you should care for with some regularity from weekly or monthly Some areas are software or data based to help keep the computer running at full speed Others like simply opening the case and removing the dust accumulated on the cooling fi
15. by a guy whois three times older than the demographic that normally buys these things So I m going to say Facebook here and now the first and last time because I d don t have a Facebook account I haven t friended anyone so I certainly don t care where they are And I haven t gone hunting for dates for 47 years Just so you know who I am Ive replaced two pocket devices with one Android SmartPhone two weeks ago had a tiny wireless telephone that I used for well telephoning and a five year old PDA a Dell Axim x50v The old Dell is still functioning almost as well as it did when it was new Its connectivity options are limited to wireless b and Bluetooth I used it mostly to syne with my Outlook calendar and contacts and keep family pictures to bore people with The charging sync connector is getting flaky and I bought a new part to replace it but the tiny soldering required put me off some and also prompted me to look elsewhere Don t get me wrong I can solder NASA taught me how a lifetime ago But this is tiny close together and there are about twenty things to be soldered The phone I ve had for two years has been just a telephone to me it connects to a hands free device I bought for the car but it will also take pictures and do messaging in which had no interest I discovered that the process to keep the camera from taking pictures of the inside of my pocket made it hard to take any kind of
16. by noting the free space and after all finished I can see a measurable improvement there Other areas will be alot harder to note accurately did the system start shut down faster this time Did that program seem to load faster So to start Open My Computer Right Click your hard drive usually labeled Local Disk C and click Properties Note how much space is used and free then close the dialogue box Repeat for each hard drive Note that you can probably run the Defragmentation program from the Tool tab on this dialog window but resist the urge for now we have miles to drive before we are ready to do that step Before defragmenting you should delete as much of the unneeded unwanted unused files and programs as you are comfortable removing While I am primarily thinking of temporary internet files useless log files and other truly worthless stuff you may also have duplicate copies of data photos important files that have been leftover from other activities While there are anumber of tools for finding and deleting those clones we will leave that to a much later discussion But you say your drive is so large you don t even know where to begin Well start with the biggies first Why waste 20 minutes hunting and deleting 50 tiny files that save you two megabytes of disk space when there may be two or three directories you can delete in 30 seconds and save 5 gigabytes of space But how do you find them Use a to
17. can t watch movies on line from Netflix in Linux and thereisno Linux program equivalent to TurboTax e Some hardware doesn t work with Linux Again there are ways around this but they require some experience with Linux The most common offenders are printers scanners and anything made by Apple This isn t a problem if you are buying a new machine you just buy only the devices you know are Linux compatible By Dick Maybach n2nd charter net e MostPCs come with Windows and not Linux installed You will have to install a new operating system which is something most PC users have never done Despite what you may have heard installing Linux isn tdifficult in fact it s much easier than installing Windows but it does require some care Let s suppose yov ve decided to look into Linux How should you start First find a Linux user who is willing to help not because Linux is so difficult but because it s new to you He orshe will probably recommend the toe in the water approach Many versions of Linux are available as a live CD which lets yourun Linux without writing anything to yourhard disk Shut down remove the CD ROM and your machine boots Windows and has no idea it had been running Linux Set up your boot order To do this set up your PC to boot from a CD ROM insert a Linux live CD and turn on the power You will most likely have to select between trying Linux right and installing Linux wrong
18. card Slideshow and picture management naturally Password management I use the PC version of KeePassX and I was delighted to find they make an Android version Free e Swype I saved this for last It s an alternative screen keyboard that allows you to enter a word by sliding a finger from letter to letter It uses error correcting algorithms to guess the word and presents alternatives A world record was set on a touchscreen and Swype using a Samsung Galaxy S The world record text message consists of 26 words and was typed in 25 94 seconds which corresponds to a speed of 60 words per minute e The few things I don t like It s a mystery to me that Android applications don t have an exit or close Instead they stay running until you either shut down each service manually or turn off the phone Pd guess the up side to this is that everything launches very quickly It s so fast in fact that you take it all for granted I haven t found a disadvantage to this although I ve read complaints that it must be taking up cpu cycles and therefore must be draining the battery and contributing heat to global warming I guess I doubt all that but what I really don t understand is why I find apps suchas Skype running when I ve never used them There are programs you can purchase to you manage these but it s also widely held that you d live a calmer life if you just ignored it all Finally I did read a built in tutorial
19. dates death dates etc You can also search for missing sources for facts or events I know I m guilty of not entering complete information or sources mostly because I don t have them at the time of entry I should have however immediately made a To Do list for the item that still needs my attention so I don t forget it Alas Pm not really swift doing that either and the item is soon forgotten This is just what we ve been talking about Too much to do and not enough time to do it right This heftier search options has been a blessing to me because it helps me correct my ineptness Now I can search for the items I didn t have time to do the first time around and either fill in the missing information or make a proper TO DO list so I handle them at a later date The Legacy program can help us work quicker and better if we just take a moment to Stop Look and Learn X NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 20 System Requirements Windows 7 Windows Vista Windows XP Windows ME Windows 98 Windows NT Windows 2000 Legacy runs on newer Macs with Windows installed under Bootcamp Parallel or Fusion Legacy runs on Linux machines witha Legacy Family Tree Basics Part 2 Windows emulator like VMWare or Sun s Virtual Box Note runs on both 32bit and 64bit Windows platforms By Bill Ellis Regular Newsletter Contributor Computer Users of Erie PA December 2010 issue Horizons The Official Journal of CU
20. gets me into that Stop Look and Learn frame of mind If I started Legacy in any other screen suchas the Family View screen I would simply start entering the family data that I had gathered Beside the Legacy Home and Family screens you can also start Legacy by opening the Pedigree Descendant Chronology Index or Research screens You can also decide to open Legacy by going to the last screen viewed when you closed the Legacy program the last time you used it The Options menu at the top of the window is where you can make any one these choices Click Options and then click on Customize and go to the General Tab The Startup View panel in the General tabs section is where you make your selection as to which screen you would like Legacy to start up in In addition to starting up in the Legacy Home view I also like to see the Tool Tips that Legacy has to offer and I start them at the same time In order to see the Tool Tips click on the View menu Click on Tips Window at the very bottom of the pop up window You can get to this Tips Window from almost anywhere in Legacy If you want the Tips Window to show up every time you start the Legacy program as I do just select that option at the very bottom of the Tips Window screen Some of the stuff in this Tips Window is pretty straightforward You ll look at some of these tips and say Gee Whiz I know that cause I m already doing this Believe me they are not always that simple
21. it alive to fulfill its mission OMUG s purpose according to our Bylaws shall be to provide a non profit educational self help organization for personal computer users to cultivate cooperative relationships among computer users in our community and to promote knowledgeable use of personal computer hardware and software Think about why you joined OMUG and why you keep renewing your membership each year Maybe you have computer expertise to offer and you enjoy helping others Maybe you don t know a lot about computers and are looking for help Whatever your reason computer expertise or lack of it is irrelevant to participating in leadership of our group People with many different lives leisure and work experiences have served as OMUG officers You can too Online Marketing Inside Out Review by Gregory West Member of Sarnia Computer Users Group scug ca and Port Huron MI Computer Group bwcomp org prospectorl16 gmail com Blog by Brandon Eley amp Shayne Tilley Published by SitePoint Pty Ltd ISBN 978 0 9805768 2 5 Pages 184 USA 29 CDA 29 http oreilly com catalog 9780980576825 Online Marketing Inside Out has nine dynamic chapters that guide you through your next modern marketing campaign Chapter one explains how marketing is changing pointing out things you need to know before you begin planning your next promotion or campaign You will learn how to make money from a website by pag
22. pictures at all and that Verizon was going to charge me to get them off my phone after I did take some I have a good camera anyway Verizon is making it pretty easy to get anew phone and a data mail plan to go along with it But Amazon is doing it better by reducing the price of this model Droid X down to 120 50 cheaper than buying direct from Verizon That s after a 30 credit accumulated at Verizon for having fulfilled my last 2 year contract That s 120 no tax no shipping no activation fee plus I later discovered that because I went to Amazon through the TPCUG link 65 was credited to the TPCUG I activated the phone with Verizon within a few minutes of delivery to my house but after the on line activation failed Apparently Amazon and Verizon work it all out because the Amazon price is reduced by Verizon s 30 and Amazon checks while you wait online to verify the Verizon eligibility if you ve told Amazon that you re an existing Verizon customer and have www tpcug org Merle merlenicholson com given the phone number you want to use OK now about Android phones or rather what I ve learned so far There seems to be a consensus that the latest version of the OS version 2 2 is the best so far and 2 2 apparently has some much needed new features Being a Google product you guessed it it had a lot of features imbedded in it that depend on Google I m not especially fond of going to one source for eve
23. the option to save the registry prior to the cleanup or cancel the operation It took about 10 minutes to do the all of the cleanup The next application to install and run is Advanced System Care This application will allow you to further clean up the registry remove Spyware clean up more junk files and past browser history You may ask why do this as CCleaner did some of the same functions Each of the applications will take a slightly different approach to scanning your system and find different items the other did not find Sure enough there were a few more registry issues and temp files missed by CCleaner Advanced System Care also has a system diagnosis section not in CCleaner that will analyze and fix system performance system configuration and security problems Another few issues were cleaned up Advanced System Care also took about 10 minutes for the cleanup I could have also used it for disk defragment but wanted to use a separate defrag program so loaded IOBit Smart Defrag Smart Defrag is another application that has a nice clean interface that is easy to use and understand When ran it I found fragmentation after 7 months was less than 1 only 71 Back in the earlier versions of Windows I would have expected at least 10 15 fragmentation It seems that the OS may be getting better at not fragmenting files Still any fragmentation will use extra space and take extra time for the hard drive heads to move to pick up bit
24. the programmers a little more time to get some of the bugs ironed out if there are any The support panel has several items in its list There are two items here that I feel are of great importance They are watch training videos and tips from the experts When you choose watch training videos you will be able to view a video of the basics of legacy for free This is a really good training video for alllevels of genealogists Youcan also preview all the other videos to see if they meet your needs Some you can view for free while others you can preview before you decide whether or not to buy it Clicking on the Tips from the experts will take you to a very long list of How To instructions Here is where you can get tips on a ton of Legacy s functions such merging split screen view importing and exporting and so on The Tips from the experts go hand in hand with the help screen that is within the Legacy program and in most cases will also give you step by step instructions So my friends Don t be shy Dig into what software you ve been using all this time and see what it has to offer To my genealogist friends I wish you happy hunting k System Requirements Windows 7 Windows Vista Windows XP Windows ME Windows 98 Windows NT Windows 2000 Legacy runs on newer Macs with Windows installed under Bootcamp Parallel or Fusion Legacy runs on Linux machines with a Windows emulator like VMWare or Sun s Virtual Box No
25. these alone Summing Up In using WLM there is little to worry about It will download your messages keep your appointments once you enter them and handle your contacts In fact it handles contacts only too well I was happy to see that it has the uncanny ability to find and list my Facebook contacts as well as the ones imported from MS Outlook Itwon tlisttheiremails or any unavailable information but it does three things I like It gives me a picture of the friend from their Facebook profile a link to their online Facebook page and whether they are currently there So even if P m not online I can quickly get to their page and see what my fellow networkers are up to LinkedIn also seems to be important enough to be included in this feature No Calendar sync A quick mention of the Calendar since it does not sync with Google calendar unless have alot of time to re enter my appointments Google will have to be my source of information I have read recently that Yahoo Mail will sync with WLM and Google but have not had the time to really investigate this With the way that the Internet is combining profiles and individuals information it would just be one more intertwining of online information Perhaps in time there will be a better way to do this I will miss MS Outlook But I will not miss the fact that one fine day it just stopped working gave me strange error messages and was unwilling to be reinstalled properly
26. thick 14 gauge or 12 gauge speaker cable to maintain conductivity and to ensure your speakers can produce the full spectrum of sound Reprinted with permission from Smart Computing Visit www SmartComputing com Groups to learn what Smart Computing can do for you and your user group NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 12 THIS AND THAT By Elizabeth B Wright Member Computer Club of Oklahoma City February 2011 issue CCOKC eMonitor www ccok org wright599new sbcglobal net Last Fall my husband and I were part of a tour group which visited several countries The most amazing part of the trip was how many of our fellow passengers had brought laptop computers and Kindle book readers Since nearly all of us had digital cameras we used our computers to download the images after each day s adventure That gave us some reassurance that even if our cameras had been lost or stolen the downloaded images would be safe on the computer We were able to leave our computers in the care of the tour company while visiting the various sites of interest Then we would have them with us later in our hotel rooms The smartest thing I did was take with me a very small ACER Netbook and a very small Seagate 500G external drive Also several USB flash drives for extra storage The netbook computer was so much easier to carry than a full sized laptop and all I needed it for was photo downloading and email I did not try to do any photo enhancing or e
27. web or if your total backup size is small a CD Never keep these backup devices in close proximity to your computer that generated the backup Remove them from your house if possible store them in a bank vault store them at work or store them offsite on the web If you are going to use one of the procedures described above I also recommend that you create a system repair disk as described at http tinyurl com 2c404qo As part of the repair procedure your backups will be recognized on external drives other hard drives in your computer etc and will illicit questions on whether you want to restore from these items or not Want to know more Do a Google search on Windows 7 backup tutorials or attend any of my classes where I address the subject of backup in week four of my sessions oll Rg J B gt Control Panel All Control Panel tena Backup and Restoce wl ty e P Back up or restore your files Backup Windows Backup has not been set up iset up backup Restore Windows could not find a backup for this computer Acton Center Windows Ezy Transfer a NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 19 Legacy Family Tree Basics part 1 By Bill Ellis Regular Newsletter Contributor Computer Users of Erie PA December 2010 issue Horizons The Official Journal of CUE www cuerie com cueriel verizon net Legacy Family Tree Genealogy software http www legacyfamilytree com Stop look
28. you and your user group NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 25 A Free Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away By Larry Anders Member Tampa PC Users Group FL www tpcug org I had been highly opposed to Apple products for years because of what I feel to be the small mindedness of Steve Jobs and the Apple management by not making their code available to developers which would allow software to be developed so there would be more choice at reasonable prices If so I m sure there would be a Mac in my house instead of just seven PCs running various Windows operating systems Above you II notice I said had been Then I purchased my first iPod and I was hooked I did not get the first version iPhone but I have had the 3GS now for almost two years It is about the 10th cell phone I ve owned and by far the very best I have been tempted to try an Android phone but so far have had no reason to give up the iPhone The Apps for the iPhone make it an everyday challenge to find something useful and typically for free Why Mr Jobs can t see that allowing all these people to develop software for the iPod iPhone iPad has made his products extremely successful is beyond my understanding He has still kept control by not allowing anything to be installed except through the iTunes App Store Even the free Apps If something similar was allowed for the Mac I think he would see the popularity of the Mac increase also I just can t validate p
29. your computer system needs a way to play the streams This can be as simple as a sound card and desktop speakers or headphones or as complicated as using a high quality sound card to connect to your stereo system Overheating What To Watch For Any component inside your computer can overheat under the right circumstances but due to their nature there are several pieces of hardware that are at high risk for heat damage At the top of the list is the computer s CPU Whenever you launch a program on your computer or use an application that s already running the CPU must work a little harder to keep up Eventually the CPU is forced to operate at the peak of its abilities and that s when it consumes the most electricity and generates the most heat When the CPU overheats programs that typically run fine may generate error messages or the entire computer may crash Some CPUs are designed to reduce their speed when they overheat so if you experience severe slowdowns in programs after a certain amount of time has passed heat is the likely culprit Video cards are the second most likely type of hardware to overheat especially if you use the computer to play graphics intensive 3D games Most video cards contain their own memory and CPU and when the memory overheats it tends to cause white sparkles to appear randomly on screen where as heat problems resulting from the card s CPU generally cause the game to slow down or crash Whe
30. E www cuerie com cueriel verizon net Legacy Family Tree Genealogy software http www legacyfamilytree com This is a continuing article about the Legacy program s Home Page I mentioned in the previous article which was published in the December 2010 issue of Horizons that our hectic lifestyle keeps us from investigating all the amazing features that are included in the software programs that we use every day We stick to the same old tried and true procedures because it s quick it s easy and it gets the job done I hope this article will encourage you the take a little time to look further and see what your software program s have to offer As mentioned in the previous article to startup in the Home page window you need toclick on the Options menu item at the top of the screen In the drop down menu click on Customize In the customize window are several tabs You should be at the General tab view If not click on the General tab to bring that view forward The very first item on the left is called Startup View In this section you can select one of several views that will tell Legacy which view you would like to have Legacy start up in The first view item is called Legacy Home This is the one that I would like you to select if it hasn t been already selected Now go to the bottom of the screen and select save From now on whenever you start the Legacy program you will see the Home view screen with several panels Thes
31. Napa Valley Personal Computer Users Group http www nvpcug org P O Box 2866 Napa California 94558 Volume 28 No 5 oan RA AORN on 10 11 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 24 26 27 28 Inside This Issue NVPCUG Special Interest Groups Officers List NVPCUG Calendar MS Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 A Happier Longer Life Volunteer Online Marketing Inside Out Tips amp Tricks Tutorial Disk Maintenance The Mac Corner Cloud Computing Should You Try Linux Well it depends on Word Templates Can Simplify Your Life Working with Page Numbers in Word 2007 THIS AND THAT Troubleshooting PC System Slowdowns Your Computer s Health Part 1 Your Computer s Health The Oh Oh Moment Part 2 Your Computer s Health What Junk Files Part 3 Online Marketing Inside Out Windows Lab Legacy Family Tree Basics Part 1 Legacy Part 2 When Outlook dies Windows Live Mail lives New handheld computer that also phones SmartPhone A Free Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away MS program stores all types of data Membership Application Renewal COMPUTER NEWS May 2011 The Napa Valley Personal Computer Users Group will meet Wednesday May 18 7 00 9 00 P M At the Napa Senior Activity Center Laks Jefferson Street Napa California The meeting begins with Random Access an open floor question and answer period during which attendees can
32. Restore on or off k References e http en wikipedia org wiki System Restore e http windows microsoft com en US windows vista What is System Restore e http windows microsoft com en US windows vista What types of files does System Restore change Your Computer s Health What Junk Files part3 By Bob Woods Webmaster UCHUG Under the Computer Hood User Group CA March 2011 issue UCHUG Drive Light www uchug org webmasters uchug org The UCHUG Drive Light is presenting a series of articles on the general topic of Your Computer s Health I have a Compaq laptop that is around 7 months old that I use for reading e mail surfing the web publishing the changes to the UCHUG web site and occasionally playing games Since I have any important files backed up on external devices I have not been too concerned with making a full backup image of the hard drive on this PC I also have not run any cleanup utilities After all if it ain t broke why fix it But after having the PC for 7 months I thought it might be time to take on these tasks In the January 2011 edition of Drive Light Art Gresham started a series of articles on PC maintenance Part 1 of the series was tips for basic hard drive and OS data cleaning I figured that there is no better time to do a cleanup than before imaging the hard drive Following Art s advice I first loaded CCleaner I am a volunteer in the IT department at the USS Midway Museum we use
33. apshot of the hard drive which includes all the programs the operating system and all your data that you have generated and saved on your hard drive If your computer ever stops working youcan use this system image which does not allow you to select individual items to completely restore your system to the state it was in when the image was made including your programs operating system and your created data If you re into video tutorials goto the below URLs to view a tutorial on how to create a system image or to view a tutorial on how to backup files and folders of your choice http tinyurl com 4w94999 http tinyurl com 4gjloug If you want a step by step procedure for a system image go to the below URLs for the files step by step procedure http tinyurl com ybfgx7o http tinyurl com yg46n9u I strongly recommend that no matter which procedure you choose try to save more than one backup This procedure is normally called generational backups What this means is that youalways have the option of retrieving information from more than one backup There are times that you do not recognize that your masterpiece item be it document image graphic etc was modified incorrectly and you do not have the original item saved on your hard drive only the modified version That is when a generational backup becomes just as precious as gold You can browse the backup in the backup and restore window to navigate to the item in qu
34. apter tags your interest and keeps you coming back as a reference point for helping you develop your own online marketing campaign This book is for those who have a web site and want to promote it or anyone else who wants and or needs to learn this amazing subject of online marketing Even if you are already doing online marketing and feel fairly successful this book will take you to the next level of expertise and guide you in directions you may have possibly passed by Take a look at this video http gregorywest wordpress com 2011 03 29 982 o NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 18 Windows Lab Use Windows 7 Backup By Barney Babin Cajun Clickers Computer Club LA member and instructor for XP Vista Workshop and Windows 7 April 2010 issue Cajun Clickers Computer News As those of you that have taken my classes know I am paranoid when it comes to the subject of backup Windows 7 includes a good backup program that can either take an image of your hard drive or backup selections made by you Pm assuming here that you understand that you NEVER backup either your image or your individual files and folders to the same hard drive that your Windows operating system is installed upon which is normally drive of concern during backup I m also assuming that all of your programs and data reside in the same partition normally C Drive So what is an image An image is an exact copy think of it as a camera sn
35. arasota PC Monitor www spcug org Vlabash Comcast net Your PC used to be a rocket ship with turbo boost Today a glacier could whiz right by it What happened Listing all the possible causes could generate a useless lengthy list so let s focus on some likely culprits and look at what can be done to either eliminate or tone down their effects on performance Windows 7 has been out for over a year now and one of its virtues is that it requires far less system resources to operate than either XP or Vista Nevertheless initial lightning like response tends to fade over time and system hang ups become all too common Before reformatting your hard drive let s examine some less drastic methods of getting your PC back to its initial unspoiled state The odds are good that you have enough physical RAM to run your most common applications without your machine having to swap data in and out of memory often enough to be a problem but are your memory chips performing the way they should Computers have become very powerful compared to machines in the past Your digital watch probably has more computational power than some main frames built in the 70s Buying memory used to be a simple affair You needed to know the maximum speed your motherboard would support and how much memory would fit into a slot and that was it Motherboards today will allow a mix of speeds without apparent trouble but the system will default to the slowest memory sp
36. as well as keeping my clumsy fingers off of the very sensitive controls Amazingly the videos are of very high quality for such a small device so even though mine are not particularly good it should be possible to lift some still shots from them to use with the rest of the still pictures we took Upon returning home I copied all of our pictures even the bad ones to flash drives and gave them to our son Not only will that give us a backup if something happens to our computers but he actually wants to look at them That is the greatest compliment of all HOVER CRAFT I recently received one of the slickest SPAM emails I have ever seen The website was made to resemble a Microsoft offering complete with pictures of products that looked like Microsoft Office programs But when you hovered over the link it did not go directly to Microsoft Hovering is NOT clicking Remember this When you hover the mouse pointer over the link i e placing the mouse over the link on the screen but not pressing any buttons it should produce the actual link at the bottom of the screen Using our club webpage as an example pretend the fancy arrow is your mouse pointer and that it is hovering over the option to view details for Randy s study group The real mouse arrow does not show in a printscreen image At the bottom of the page under the curved arrow is the actual web URL which will transfer you to the page containing the information for th
37. ates Office button New My Templates for future use An interesting feature of online templates is that many of them contain usable content rather than just formatting suggestions For example under the Letters category the Apology for Poor Service letter is an actual apology which could be sent by a business in response to a complaint from acustomer Another letter from the travel letters subheading is Complaint about Lost Luggage For those of us who want to write this letter but aren t sure how to word it this template could save the day Customizing a Template Of course anything in a template can be modified even the template itself To edit an installed template bring it up in the preview window Nextto Create new select Template instead of Document so that it opens as a template To edit an online template download it first and then save it as a NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 10 template file type dotx Now youcan delete placeholders and replace them with text that will not change such as your name and address You can change the font or font size or any other formatting aspect of the template When done save it as a template file type with aname thatclearly identifies it such as Median letter template revised and be sure it gets stored with other templates in the My Templates folder In the Save As dialog box choose Templates as the saving location You can always d
38. aying twice the price for software just because it s a Mac It s good but not that good For Christmas I was given an iPad by my wife and kids Now you want to talk about what I think is the best invention of the 21st century Since December I use my PCs at least 50 less My iPad sits next to me on the couch when it is not in my hand Email Messenger and text messaging is with me now wherever I am between the iPad and iPhone The two are very similar but the 9 screen on the iPad is much easier to read and work with The iPad comes with several built in Apps such as Calendar to track your appointments Notes to keep lists of things Maps complete Google maps Videos to watch your favorite videos YouTube iTunes App Store and Games They also include Safari Apple s Internet browser Email Photos access to your photos graphics and screen captures iPod for music and Contacts That s plenty to keep you going until you learn how to start downloading some of the thousands of Apps available with more coming every day If you re into anything there is probably an App for it Also there are free Internet music streaming sites that will allow you to listen to any kind of music whenever you want with no hiccups Apple has also released iBooks which will probably be apermanent fixture in the nextiOS upgrade In my opinion it s one of the better free eBooks reader programs Larry anders net If you re us
39. bring up their wedding information At the very bottom of that window you need to put a check mark in the Anniversary reminder Now that you have the reminders ready to go you need to do one more thing Go Legacy Family Tree Part 2 cont on page 22 NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 21 Legacy Family Tree Part 2 cont from page 212 back to the Legacy Home view screen and click on the Option button in theupper right of the window as you did before Click on Options in the drop down menu This time click on the Reminder Options tab to bring that window forward if itisn t already forward There are three reminders listed Put a check mark in the ones you will be using Just above these three reminders you will need to tell Legacy how many days in advance you would like to be reminded of these events Once you ve done that click save and you re all set The remaining three panels on the right Statistics Updates and Support are pretty self explanatory The Statistics tells you the number of individuals families and sources in the family file that you are working with The update panel tells you if you are up to date with the latest version of Legacy If this panel tells you that you need to install the latest update you can click on that panel to download and update the Legacy program Whether you update your Legacy program or not is your choice I like to wait at least a week after an update is out before I install it This gives
40. cument is complete I was never a fan of templates They were too restrictive I am the do it myself type There was never the right kind of document for my task among the limited choices And if I could remember to save the template as a document I was never exactly sure where it was being saved on my computer With the greatly enhanced improvements to templates in Word 2007 and 2010 I have changed my mind The template choices now have been expanded to include hundreds of document types and they are much easier to find and save Word 2007 2010 users can even edit templates or create their own templates from personal documents Using a Template Word 2007 provides templates from two sources installed within the Word program and online at the Microsoft website To view the installed templates click the Office button or File button in Word 2010 then New and then Installed Templates Here you will find thirty letters fax cover pages resumes and agendas formatted with the new themes of Word 2007 Click one to see its preview and then click Create new which opens it as adocument leaving the original template intactin its original location After replacing the placeholder text with your own save this document to a folder of your choice Often the placeholder body text includes tips for changing the formatting using the new style and theme galleries in Word 2007 The online templates offer an impressive numb
41. d of cooling mechanism which is most commonly a fan Accumulation of dust can overwork a fan and cause it to fail Clean the dust out with a can of compressed air and monitor the fan afterwards for signs of failure Bearings can get loose and cause vibration When you hear noise develop because a fan is failing don t hesitate replace the fan Clean out the interior of your machine with compressed air while you re at it If quality control wasn t the best when your machine was built the heat sink used to cool the processor may not be placed properly above the CPU the thermal paste may be of inferior quality or have been improperly NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 14 applied This condition appears mostly with home built systems and sometimes even in commercially assembled units A poorly designed case can contribute to excess heat due to internal airflow restrictions It s best to check this out before you buy but if you didn t installing extra fans is usually possible unless you have a laptop Overclocking can generate enough excess heat from the CPU to cause failure If you are experienced enough to handle overclocking consider a water cooled system It can be expensive and it s certainly more complex but that s the price you pay for extra performance Keep the ambient temperature comfortable If you feel too warm it s probably too high for your system You needn t keep your computer in a refrigerator
42. diting while still on the road That was saved for my return home And here it is January and I still haven t finished Itis abit difficult to explain how Inearly lost some of my pictures but here goes We took four cheap point and shoot cameras with us on the trip Three of them used SD memory cards At some point during the trip at least one card was interchanged between two of the cameras In addition to that confusion somehow the numbering system was duplicated in two of them causing pictures with the same numbers appearing ontwo memory cards Somehow almost surely because of the daily downloading procedure both sets of numbered images were salvaged It took me quite a while after we returned home to figure out the problem and actually retrieve all of my images At least I think they are all accounted for My personal accessories included in addition to the still cameras a newly purchased FLIP video camera It has limited memory so each day I not only downloaded the videos but also erased them in the camera This was a bit risky and I am not too sure some videos were not lost I don t remember taking any that I can t find but itis possible In my defense most of my videos were not any good anyway Word of advice If you are going to travel with a new device purchase it far enough in advance to learn how to use it If I could do it over again a small hand held tripod would have been very useful for stabilizing the camera
43. e panels are as follows Legacy News To Do items Birthdays Death Dates and Anniversaries Statistics Updates and Support You will also notice a long white bar across the top of these panels with the word Address in front of it This is the same address bar that is in your browser when you re surfing the Internet and is used in the same way We ll talk about that address bar a little bit later When you open Legacy in this Home view screen you can connect to the Internet via cable DSL or dial up You will have to tell Legacy how it needs to get connected To do that click on the Options button near the upper right of the screen In the drop down menu click on Options In this window are two tabs One is called Internet Options and the other is called Reminder Options Click on the Internet Options tab to bring it forward if it isn t already forward The Internet Options tab gives you two selections to choose from Choose the one that is right for your type of Internet connection and click on save Now that you are connected to the Internet and you have started Legacy in the Home View screen you can use the Legacy News panel This panel lets you read some of the latest news from Millennia The articles in the panel are short excerpts of the full story If you would like to read the full story just click on the highlighted underlined text and you will be transported to the Millennia web site At the Millennia site you can read all
44. e End key then Page Numbers cont on page 12 NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 11 Page Numbers cont from page 11 the Tab key Then enter the content such as author s name or date You may need to use the Tab key to adjust the position of content items Formatting Page Numbers Office 2007 is full of new galleries which are collections of preformatted content which can be added to a document with a single click To see the page number gallery of styles start with a document that does not contain page numbers On the Insert tab click Page Number and then one of positions such as Top of the Page A gallery opens that shows page numbers in various positions on the page Some include graphical elements others text such as Page X of Y as in Page 3 of 14 More options can be found in the Building Blocks Organizer Click the Insert tab Quick Parts Building Blocks Organizer and scroll to the Page Number gallery Page Number Format Number format 1 2 3 E Indude chapter number Chapter starts with style Heading 1 Use separator hyphen Examples 1 1 1 A Page numbering Continue from previous section Start at 2 To change the actual number type such as from numeric to Roman numerals click the Page Number icon and select Format Page Numbers Choose the style you want from the drop down list Of course you can always select just the page number and fo
45. e group It is in very small print and hard to read but it is there It says Go to http www ccokc org documents Win7 Resources pdf http bit ly h2TmCh and the quotes are included in the URL Omena Para ee E s and Iam mai ommy A tn Computer Resolutions Jeff Blount CTS Ford Audio Visual Systems Inc Windows 7 Resources Randy Mulanax Date Change Open Office 2nd Thi Baumwart Build a Computer 3rd Tuesday 1 30 p James Mobile Devices 2nd Friday 1 30 p m Doi llins Bill James Social Networking 3rd Friday 1 30 p m Rill James Windows 7 4th Wednesday 1 30 p m Randy Mylanax Bill James Macintosh Study Group 2nd Monday 6 30 p m Cli iy 1 30 p m Neal Mulanax Bill In the case of the suspicious website the URL address contained some words after the initial part of the link including Microsoft which would again lead you to believe it was a legitimate Microsoft offering If this had been truly from MS I think that company s web address would have been in the first part of the link in other words microsoft com Since the Golden Rule is to never click on links incorporated in unsolicited email I decided the offering was SPAM and deleted the email from my web server never to be seen again hopefully NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 13 Troubleshooting PC System Slowdowns By Vinny La Bash Regular Contributing Columnist Sarasota PCUG Inc FL December 2010 issue S
46. e to read almost anything be da be CA bb da be dabe a bb CA be A bb Cabe da bE Ca Meeting Locations A Napa Senior Activity Center 1500 Jefferson Street Napa B Piner s Nursing Home 1800 Pueblo Ave Napa C Jerry Brown s home 23 Skipping Rock Way Napa D Peterson s Family Christmas Tree Farm 1120 Darms Lane Napa E DeLong Room Sonoma Library Sonoma CA NVPCUG Calendar May 18 7 00 9 00p m NVPCUG General Meeting A May 23 10 00 11 30a m Sonoma Computer Group E Jun9 6 30 8 30 p m Napa Valley Mac User Group A Jun 13 5 30 7 30 p m Investors SIG meeting C Jun 15 7 00 9 00 p m NVPCUG General Meeting A Jun25 10 00 11 30a m Sonoma Computer Group E Jul 11 5 30 7 30 p m Investors SIG meeting C Jul14 6 30 8 30 p m Napa Valley Mac User Group A Jul 20 7 00 9 00 p m NVPCUG General Meeting A Jul 23 10 00 11 30a m Sonoma Computer Group E Aug 6 10 00 11 30 am Board of Directors meeting D Aug 8 5 30 7 30 p m Investors SIG meeting C Aug 11 6 30 8 30 p m Napa Valley Mac User Group A Aug 17 7 00 9 00 p m NVPCUG General Meeting A Aug 27 10 00 11 30a m Sonoma Computer Group E NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 4 A Happier Longer Life Volunteer By Sr Dorothy Robinson Editor Olympia Microcomputer Users Group WA December 2010 OMUG News www olymug org newsletter olymug org Although there may be some situations where volunteering would not necessarily get you
47. e views optimize the values within search engines SEO and how the main players in social mediacan help you go deeper inside the communities spreading the word of your company or product Even though email marketing has been around forever it seems this book sparks a new interest showing many advantages and the authors walk you through every step towards a successful email marketing strategy Having your own sales people working for you online is easy when you create an affiliate marketing program that is covered in Chapter seven The advantages of having an army of salesmen all over the world promoting for you is explained in easy to understand terms in this chapter This is followed in sequence with Chapter eight wherein you learn gregorywest wordpress com about the world of online advertising as you will be able to plan implement test and optimize what you setup with your online advertising I really like the way this book is set out The Table of Contents leaves nothing to imagination The Preface wand Chapters have extensive headings that guide you through the various topics so that you can easily look something up and jump right in on that subject For example in Chapter two s listing you will find headings such as Press Releases Then followed with sub headings Press Releases in the 21st Century When to Write a Press Release Stand Out From the Crowd and so on Every chapter tags your i
48. ed to using Kindle Google or any of the other readers there is an App out there for that too I downloaded a free App the other day that makes 23 469 classic books available at your tap And I did say free One App especially like is the Dragon Speaking App for both the iPhone and the iPad There is no need to type Just start the App push Record and start talking It recognizes when you stop allows you to insert commas periods and new paragraphs When you re done with the dictation tap Copy then paste it wherever you want or tap Email and it will send it directly into your email Oh yeah did I mention it was free The iPad does not come with a text program like the iPhone but there are several free Apps that will take care of this problem I use one that Iam more than happy to pay for but see no reason to do so as the developers do not ask me to There is a small nonintrusive ad area in the lower left corner and that s it The same with Messenger Iam currently using Dragon Speaking with a free App called Documents to create this article Documents allows you to review and edit Word and Excel documents I wouldn t expect to be able to work on some gigantic files I expect a version of Word and Excel to be out soon assuming Apple will allow a Microsoft App to infiltrate their domain Another thing I am really pleased with are Apps available for our younger computer users My daughter and son in law both
49. ee if you can regain your computer s health System Restore allows you to roll back most system files registry keys and installed programs the DLL Cache folder local user profiles and more When installed and not disabled more about that later you may manually create a restore point or use one of the automatically created points And it does this without affecting your personal files or data such as e mail documents or photos We will discuss full backups that include your data in a future article Also note that in Vista and later versions it has been improved and now uses Shadow Copy Technology with even more backup capabilities So where do you look to see if you have any restore points You should do this today to be sure itis not disabled Open System Restore by clicking the Start button clicking NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 16 All Programs clicking Accessories clicking System Tools and then clicking System Restore Be sure to select Restore my computer to an earlier time then click Next You will see a calendar of the current month and several of the dates should be marked in Bold These dates have restore points available and some may have more than one as shown below You may have multiple restore points for several reasons Wikipedia lists the Restore points that are created e When software is installed using the Windows Installer Package Installer or other installers which are awa
50. eed to avoid conflicts Most memory chips are fine but if you try to save money by buying cheap RAM you could be purchasing chips with minor flaws that don t show up until you stress your system with video editing high end games or some other application with far reaching RAM demands A high quality motherboard will have built in mechanisms to let your system keep working but you may pay a steep performance price To check out your memory and other system components download the free Belarc Advisor program to see what you have It is an amazingly extensive analysis of your system You can download the program at http www belarc com free download html Until recently heat generated by memory chips was not an issue That s changed with the newer type RAM chips and the only way you can know if your memory is overheating is to power down open the case and touch the chip If you have to pull your hand back your memory is probably running too hot If you think your memory chips are overheating check your motherboard manual to see if you can installa RAM fan Another alternative is to install a fan card in a PCI slot Multitasking and resource hungry applications need RAM and lots of it If you are running on a manufacturer s minimum specifications you probably don t have enough physical memory to accommodate the more demanding tasks Memory is cheap and there is no good reason not to have the maximum amount of memory that
51. elete templates from the My Templates folder the same way you delete any file Save a copy of the document fr Word Document Save the document in the default file format beu mat future documents s m Word 97 2003 Document Wl Saens panj Save a copy of the document that is fully compatible with Word 97 2003 Find add ins for other file formats Learn about add ins to save to other formats such as PDF or XPS A Prepare gt ig Send gt A Publish gt a Close Other Formats L Open the Save As dialog box to select from all possible file types a Word Options X Exit Word J Saving Word Templates in Word 2007 Create a Template with the Hidden Tab I have often wished I could create a template from a document that Iuse regularly It s easy with Word 2007 To do this you will need to reveal a hidden tab on the Ribbon the Developer tab Click the Office button then Word Options Put a check mark next to Show Developer tab in the ribbon and click OK First open or create a document that you wish to be the basis for a template For illustration let s say itis a meeting agenda Decide which areas of the template will change in subsequent uses such as the date or agenda items In the Developer tab you can add a Date Picker from the Controls group It s the second icon in the bottom row This will add a drop down calendar to the template from which to choose a da
52. er and variety of document types Accessing these couldn t be simpler Click the Office button then New Under the heading Microsoft Office Online in the left column select the category of template you want Besides the standard letters and resumes you will find interesting new categories such as calendars greeting cards and stationery which are colorful and professionally formatted To use the category Lists as an example under the subheading Home are various shopping lists emergency contacts list and a travel checklist to name a few Other types of lists include Medical family medical history medicines and vitamins etc and Menus illustrated templates for menus to celebrate all kinds of occasions Merely reading through the forty categories of online templates should inspire anyone to try some Once you have chosen a specific template from the online selections click it to see the preview Some of these templates have been created by Microsoft others have been submitted by users In the preview window you will see the template s rating 1 5 stars based on user feedback the file size and estimated download time If it is a user created template it will include license agreement and terms of use links although these templates have been thoroughly screened To get an online template click Download Almost immediately the template will appear on your screen as a document with the template stored in My Templ
53. es and optimize their placement on the hard drive for increased reliability and performance To run Disk Defragmenter 1 Open Windows Explorer and right click on the required drive 2 Select Properties click the Tools tab and then click Defragment Now When Disk Defragmenter first opens you ll see a list of the hard drives displayed at the top of the screen Clicking on the Analyse button will display a graphical representation of the amount of defragmentation on the selected drive When the Defragment button is clicked a graphical representation of the defragmentation during and after defragmentation is progressively shown This graphical NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 6 representation does not appear in Vista or Windows 7 You can schedule the Disk Defragmentation Utility to automatically run at a pre determined time in both Vista and Windows 7 For the technically minded you are also given the opportunity to view a defragmentation report after the drive is analysed and when it has been defragmented The Mac Corner For the majority of users the Disk Defragmentation Utility included with Windows is sufficient to keep the hard drives in relatively good condition If you are the type that wants to extract the best possible performance from a system consider upgrading to one of the premium defragmenter products By Danny Uff a member of the Help Line Mac OS X and Windows XP Tiger Leopard N
54. estion and retrieve it in its original state provided that you have retained enough generational backups to be able to do so www clickers org ccnewsletter cox net By now you should be asking the question how often and where The how often depends totally upon your usage patterns the importance of your documents such as sentimental value business associated irreplaceable etc which may be daily biweekly weekly etc but don t extend the time too long because if your system dies you only have data from your last backup period and anything from that date to the present instant will be lost thus frequency of backups can become extremely important In my case I backup files and folders as they re created via amirroring program to other hard drives atmy house and offsite on the web I also just copy and paste some items onto flash drives for convenience fast simple transport etc I perform a full image of my drive at least once a day but remember I do morethingsonacomputer than youdoinmy volunteer positions so your pattern will be totally different than mine If you re performing full images I recommend using external drives additional internal hard drives network drives etc that will have ample room for multiple backups If you are backing up certain items only the Documents folder is usually where everything is saved and will normally be able to be conveniently saved to flash drives DVD offsite on the
55. etworking Lehigh Valley Computer Group PA January February amp March 2011 issues The LVCG Journal www lvcg org www connectingpeoplesoftware con Backing Up Your Photos with iPhoto Digital photos are great They allow us to save those memories onto our computers Gone are the days of boxes and boxes of old aged photos in some drawer yes I am old enough to remember them or bent photo corners Yep it s great Until your computer crashes and you have no DVD or printed back up of those memories Do you wish you knew a way to back up those photos that you spent hours importing into iLife s iPhoto application Well it s easier than you think First you ll need an external back up source If you only have a couple photos then a USB flash drive should do nicely But if you re like me you have thousands of photos old and new so you may need to save them to a CD DVD external hard drive or an Internet back up service Secondly there are two ways to back up your photos using iPhoto 1 If you do not have them sorted into groups events etc just highlight all the photos and then use the File gt Export command 2 If you do have them sorted then your best bet is to save the actual data file that iPhoto uses Backing this up is a snap e Open Finder then select the Pictures folder e Within that folder is a file called iPhoto Library Make sure this file is saved to the external source you are backing up too That s al
56. food Although the term means little the concept is very valuable and is something that most computer owners use every day I define cloud computing as using storage or processing resources on the Internet Most of us already use cloud computing far more than we realize for example every e mail we receive sits on our ISP s disk until we download it to our PCs and when we use Google Maps much the processing and all of the storage occurs on Google s hardware In the extreme cloud computing could evolve to the point where our computer would consist of only akeyboard mouse display and perhaps a printer with just enough processing power and software to support a Web browser Google foresaw this as the future of home computing and began developing their Chrome operating system to support it A simple example of cloud computing is a backup service which continually backs up all your data whenever you are connected to the Internet You don t have to think about it and because your backups are stored ata different location they are safe even in case of a local catastrophe A similar use is synchronizing data among several computers where the data might be files contacts and your favorite Web sites and with care their passwords Many people also use the cloud to share information with others for example by using Facebook for personal information Flicker for photos or Google Docs for documents Cloud storage is both convenient and i
57. from the first page The second page will contain the footer and page number 2 You can now insert a footer that does not include a page number on the first page if you wish without changing the numbering on the rest of the pages If you want the first page to be unnumbered but the second page to display page number 1 insert a footer with page numbers in the document then double click in the footer area of the first page Under Header and Footer Tools select Different First Page Then click Page Number Format Page Numbers In the Start at box type 0 and then click OK It is also possible to change the numbering style or format in different sections or chapters of a book or long document A section within a long document can for instance include no page numbers even though the surrounding sections are numbered Working with page numbers is just one example of the depth of options available within Microsoft Office programs The more you become familiar with the options and how to use them the closer you will come to E utilizing these programs Speaker Cables Keeping speaker cables inconspicuous is usually a priority and often this requires stringing the cables along baseboards around doors or behind your drywall Unfortunately long speaker cable may reduce sound quality because electrical resistance increases with the length of the cable If a single speaker cable is longer than 40 feet consider purchasing a
58. hat material into a spreadsheet and Excel uses the tabs to create new columns NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 27 napanet INTERNET SERVICES Offering Financial Services throughout the Napa Valley with offices in American j ae Calistoga 947 Lincoln Avenue Napa St Helena Napa CA 94559 5066 and Yountville 707 299 1000 800 863 3557 Www Well afargo com www napanet net custserv napanet net Napa Valley Personal Computer Users Group Membership Application Renewal O New O Renewal O Information Update Please Print Full Name Nickname Street PO Box City ZIP Code Phone check preferred O Home O Work E mail check preferred O Home O Work Ocupation Profession Retired Do you want to be added to the following NVPCUG e mail lists News and announcements OYes O No General discussion of computer related topics Yes O No If you do not want your preferred phone number and or e mail address published in the NVPCUG Directory which is for the exclusive use of NVPCUG members check the appropriate box es O Do not list phone number O Do not list e mail address Family members whom you want to sponsor as Associate Members Associate Members have the same membership rights as their sponsors except for receiving newsletters Full Name E mail Address Annual Dues O 30 Regular Member an individual who is not a full time student O 20 Student Member
59. have iPads so my 5 year old granddaughter is well versed on using the iPad I typically get her to teach me some secret thing when she comes over on the weekends I spent a lot of money for the overhead movie system in my Tahoe for her to be able to watch movies etc when we are in the car Lately though she would rather have my iPad while we are driving around There are some excellent educational Apps free of course that help teach her to read do math draw and all sorts of other things In any case as I have thanked Bill Gates and the team at Microsoft in the past for making computing enjoyable with Windows I now need to thank Steve Jobs and the gang at Apple for heading in a new direction and once again making computing enjoyable I can t wait for the 22nd century to get here Sent from Larry s iPad x NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 26 Microsoft program stores all types of data By John Weigle Editor Channel Islands PCUG California January 2011 issue The Outer Microsoft s OneNote was one of the subjects discussed by Toby Scott Channel Islands PCUG Technical Advisor at their December 2010 program in December OneNote has been compared to a three ring binder as a place to store all types of information in a searchable form But it s far more useful than just a binder full of paper as Scott showed in the demonstration OneNote first appeared in the Microsoft Office suite in 2003 but not in all ver
60. ipping it would still be more than I paid Size This has a very long name but it is really a small laptop sized mouse which is OK for me because that is what I was looking for USB Nano Transceiver The USB Nano transceiver only sticks out about a centimeter from the USB slot on the laptop making it possible to leave in the laptop all the time which Idoso the mouse is always ready to go If for some reason you don t want to leave the Nano transceiver in all the time there is a slot in the bottom of the mouse where it can be stored Either way you need to keep it where it will not be lost as it is so small Supported Operating Systems e Microsoft Windows 7 e Microsoft Windows Vista e Microsoft Windows XP SP2 e Apple MacOS X10 2 Power Itis powered by one AA alkaline battery which should last about eight months according to the paperwork This should be extended if you use the on off switch on the bottom of the mouse to power it off completely between uses especially if you do not use your laptop all the time Conclusion Ihave only been using this for about a month at the time of this review and found that it lived upto my expectations Everything just worked when I unpacked it installed the battery and plugged the Nano transceiver into my Vista laptop Author Bio Grandfather South Florida user group enthusiast blogger participant of creative writing prompt blogs still working full time and lov
61. itor Susy Ball Editor nvpcug org The materialin Computer Newsis intended for noncommercial purposes and may not be reproduced without prior written permission except that permission for reproducing articles with authors properly credited is granted to other computer user groups for their internal nonprofit use only The information in this newsletter is believed to be correct However the NVPCUG can assume neither responsibility for errors or omissions nor liability for any damages resulting from the use or misuse of any information The NVPCUG is an IRC 501 c 3 tax exempt nonprofit educational organization EIN68 0069663 andisa member of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups APCUG an international organization Donations to the NVPCUG are tax deductible as charitable contributions to the extent allowed by law Copyright 2008 by NVPCUG ra abe opal amp epost Pe Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 Reviewed by Steve Costello President Editor Boca Raton Computer Society Inc Florida April 2011 issue Boca Bits http brces org president brcs org Introduction I was in Office Depot in February just doing my usual wandering through the aisles after my regular check up with the doctor a couple of doors down I spotted the Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 on sale for 17 instead of the regular 29 I have seen it online since then for as low as 15 00 but with sh
62. l program that I could access from any computer As far as WLM I would say the only real inconvenience is the loss of my Outlook calendar but I can manage using the online Google calendar whenever I m on my desktop First Impressions When you first use WLM you are obligated to establish a connection with your ISP Internet Service Provider Since I use Gmail Verizon Hotmail Yahoo I can add these by going to the accounts Tab clicking on the Email icon and adding an account Since I sync everything on Gmail s server there is no need to do this In fact it gets kind of confusing when lots of email accounts are listed at least for me So I stick to my Gmail account and things have been going smoothly NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 22 Tabs and Ribbons Cosmetically the interface is clean uncluttered and easy to understand You start with a Quick Access Toolbar and tabbed ribbons familiar to those of us using current MS Office apps The tabs are Home Folders View and Accounts Let s take a peek at each TE gt ca 20x s s br a B Screenshot of Home ribbon The Home tab is where you compose create Photo emails mark as junk and for those Calendar challenged like me an opportunity to add a message to that calendar This may be the workaround I need Anything to save typing You will see a sign in request on the right side You don t have to be amember of Hotmail or Windows Live or sign in I do
63. l there is too it Now to restore the photos just get the external source and copy the iPhoto Library file back to the Pictures folder then go back into iPhoto and bingo All of your events places faces and photos are back again Printing from an iPad By now you may have seen the jazzy iPad TV Commercial that shows the device printing its output to an HP printer Some Mac users have asked me if this was a real feature of the iPhone iPod Touch and iPad The answer to that question is yes and no YES It is a real feature for the said devices and by having the current update to its operating system If someone does have an Airprint compatible printer it does work like a charm NO It does not work if you do not have an Airprint compatible printer danny uff gmail com What is Airprint anyway It is a new printer protocol developed by Hewlett Packard that allows a user to print from a device such as a cell phone to a compatible printer If the user is on the same WiFi network as the printer then the user s device can pick the printer out of the air and send it to the printer However if the person is not on the same network he or she can still print to that printer by sending the document or whatever else you re printing to a special e mail address for that printer The user sets all this up when they first set up the device Hewlett Packard is the only company making such printers and they can range from 100 00
64. lly begin defragging each time my computer is inactive for five minutes and Deep Optimize every weekday at 7PM which is when I am usually eating supper or watching TV Now I can relax knowing I have cleaned up and defragged with es little effort Your Computer s Health The Oh Oh Moment Part 2 By Art Gresham Editor Under the Computer Hood User Group CA February 2011 issue UCHUG Drive Light www uchug org leditor101 uchug org Oops Darn What The You know the feeling Yesterday everything was fine Today you are wondering what happened overnight What can you do if your computer seems to have suddenly gotten sick Perhaps it was caused by that neat new application or game you installed yesterday or maybe something got installed when you visited that website that promised to speed your computer s internet access but when you the page opened it ran a moment and then seemed to hang up with no sense that it really did what was expected Maybe you should not have installed that app game utility because it was some kind of rogue or worthless program or worse and you are now stuck with a sick system Don t you wish you could go back in time to last weekend when everything seemed to be running fine Well you can Probably If you are running a Microsoft Windows ME XP Vista or 7 then the System Restore is available to offer you protection for many of these kinds of illness and might be worth checking to s
65. n To Update Drivers Some driver Web sites recommend that you update your drivers regularly Newer drivers often expand functionality so updating your drivers has a benefit However the old saying If it ain t broke don t fix it applies to computing Anew driver can cause problems witha functional configuration as easily as an older driver can Conventional wisdom says the following 1 If a device quits working or crashes your PC even though you have changed nothing reinstall the existing driver 2 Ifyou are installing an older device on a new system or if you have made changes to your system and a device is acting up look for an updated driver 3 If your device has never worked well or at all with the default driver especially if the device and PC are of different vintage experiment with old and new drivers to find the best one Reprinted with permission from Smart Computing Visit www SmartComputing com Groups to learn what Smart Computing can do for you and your user group NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 2 Napa Valley Personal Computer Users Group Contact Information Officers for 2011 Board of Directors President Jim Gray Vice President Ron Dack Secretary Marcia Waddell Treasurer Roy Wagner unlisted unlisted 252 2060 253 2721 President nvpcug VicePresident nvpcug Secretary nvpcug Treasurer nvpcug Other Directors Susy Ball Julie Jerome Bernhard Krevet Dick Peterson Bob Simmerman Ra
66. n to make it your footer Ifyou find a footer you like which does not include a page number it is possible although not easy to add a page number to the footer To do this insert your footer choice and double click the footer area to select it You will notice that a Header and Footer Tools tab appears above the Ribbon whenever a header or footer is selected Put your cursor in the footer where you want the page number to appear Because many of these gallery footers contain tables you may have to press Ctrl tab to set a tab stop within the table cell in order to put your cursor exactly where you want it Once the cursor is set under Header and Footer tools click Page Number Click Current position which opens the Number Style gallery Click a design for your number from the gallery and it will appear in the footer Warning If you choose an option other than Current position such as Bottom of the page the page number will replace the footer instead of adding to it Aneasier approach is to insert the page number first and then add other elements and information to your footer To do this on the Insert tab in the Header and Footer group click Page Number Choose Bottom of the page then click a number style from the list making sure the design puts the page number in the area of the footer where you want it to appear left center or right To insert content after the page number in the footer press th
67. nexpensive indeed many vendors offer up to two gigabytes free All the above examples are data storage ones but there are also cloud processing services such as Google Docs Google Docs supports the common office tasks such as word processing spreadsheets and presentations which means youcan perform these without purchasing an office suite and having to keep it updated It also allows on line collaboration where for example several people edit the same document although few home users are likely to need this feature Like cloud storage cloud processing is inexpensive or even free By now you may be thinking What s the Catch Somebody has to pay for these services as providing them requires non trivial costs for computer hardware support staff and communications In some cases the free service is a limited sample to entice you to purchase a more versatile one In others you are the product being sold Your habits and preferences are valuable commodities that advertisers will pay to learn about For many of us this is a fair trade in return for the convenience of Google s search engine we tolerate the ads in the sidebar and being By Dick Maybach n2nd charter net directed to sites that want to sell to us However there are some security and safety caveats involved Security is complex foracloud vendor your data are stored on the same disks the same memory and pass through the same processors as everybody else
68. ns and fans that will help it stay cool and functional for more years Maybe you already have a plan and actually do make data backups we all do have Acronis don t we but what are you doing to be sure your computer stays alive so that you never have to actually use one of those backups Have you actually complained recently about how much slower your computer seems to run than it used to do We want to present some ideas to help you form a plan or get started We each have a wide variety of things that we do some are very common and widely known Others may be very unique much deeper or something you simply never thought of doing What you choose to do will of course depend on how you use your computer But the important thing is that you know that your computer s health is your responsibility and if you take out the trash occasionally then something is likely to become well trashed Let s start with the basics Here in Part 1 we want to look at basic hard drive OS data cleaning For this article Iam using XP so your newer Vista Win7 will have some slight differences Windows includes a number of good basic tools that you can and should be aware of and using For starters how full is your hard drive or hard drives and how much space can you free up so you can download more of the great utilities more ideas about those soon and photos from all the holiday parties and family gatherings I always like to start
69. nside your hard drive may be caused for a number of reasons These include e system crashes e applications that have been improperly closed e the existence of harmful programs such as viruses It is important to know that Error Checking is not a data recovery tool Its job is to maintain the file system and if your directories or files get in the way of this objective they will be sacrificed Before checking volumes or drives for errors make sure that all other programs are closed and disable your screen saver To run Error Checking 1 Open Windows Explorer and right click on the required drive 2 Select Properties click the Tools tab and then click Check Now 3 You will be given the options of automatically fixing file system errors and recovering bad sectors Note Vista and Windows 7 will not allow Error Checking to run while the system is operating It must be scheduled to run at boot time Disk Defragmentation When files are created deleted or modified it s almost a certainty they will become fragmented Fragmented means the file is not stored in one place in its entirety and different parts of the file are scattered across the hard disk Fragmentation causes the drive heads to search for all the pieces ofa file in different locations The more fragmented files there are onadrive the more performance and reliability suffer The Disk Defragmenter Utility is designed to reorganize fragmented fil
70. nterest and keeps you coming back as a reference point for helping you develop your own online marketing campaign This book is for those who have a web site and want to promote it or anyone else who wants and or needs to learn this amazing subject of online marketing Even if you are already doing online marketing and feel fairly successful this book will take you to the next level of expertise and guide you in directions you may have possibly passed by Take a look at this video hetpe gregorywest wordpress com 2011 03 29 982 x NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 5 Tips amp Tricks Tutorial Disk maintenance By Les Townsing a member of the Melbourne PCUG Australia April 2011 issue PC UPDATE www melbpc org au editor melbpc org au Cleaning up your hard drive can restore your PC s Performance There are three important utilities provided in Windows that help to improve a PC s performance e Disk Clean Up e Error Checking previously known as Check Disk or Scan Disk e Disk Defragmenter Disk Clean Up Over time unnecessary data and leftover files gradually collect in all PCs as you use them As this garbage collects itslowly clogs up your system taking up space and making performance slower and slower The Disk Cleanup tool helps you free up space on your hard disk by searching for files that you can safely delete There are a number of ways to start Disk Clean Up My preference is 1 Open
71. ol My first tool choice is OverDisk Freeware http users forthnet gr pat efotinis programs overdisk html which was featured in Your Computer Health Part 1 cont on page 16 NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 15 Your Computer Health Part 1 cont from page 15 the January 2007 Drive Light Open a disk letter and see the folders and files as a series of concentric rings asif you were looking down onto the disk itself and seeing the files laid out below The neat thing is that the biggest folders and files are graphically displayed and you can quickly zero in on the folders that are the biggest It may be your email folders that have grown out of control and need to be archived Perhaps you will see a folder for a program you have long since forgotten about and no longer use By starting here you will have an idea where the big fish are hiding Check each drive letter or partition and see what sticks out Now that you know a little more generally about what and how much is on your drive let s get down to getting rid of those pesky junk temp trash and other files The problem is that they are tucked away in folders nested 6 levels deep or under names that appear self important or downright mysterious Don t be tempted to just dive in with Explorer and manually delete them helter skelter Use a Tool Actually for this I use several different tools because each seems to catch a few files that the others miss You may want
72. older are immediately asked if they want to send e mails to notify people that the information is there Anyone can see the shared files but they can be password protected to limit access he said It s also possible to copy entire Web sites and while the format of the page does not remain all links remain live Those who put data in a shared file can give users permission to edit it but they not those who visit the shared folder have the power to limit and grant access permissions The cloud version of Office which includes Word Excel PowerPoint and OneNote can be used from SkyDrive Edge www cipcug org jweigle vcnet com Information entered in OneNote is saved immediately so users don t have to remember to save before closing the program A search in OneNote looks through all notebooks lists where the term is found and highlights it in the opened notebook Hundreds if not thousands of templates are available for OneNote users including ones for home school and business But Scott noted Not all free template downloads are useful Text can be saved from many pictures such as a screen shot of a DOS box and copied to another spot in OneNote A search will find the information in the image whether you ve copied it out to text or not the highlight was hard to see on the DOS screen shot however This does not work on heavily artistic graphics like the CIPCUG logo on the society s Web page however
73. on up They can be found at major retail and online stores In app Purchases Back in mid December there were a slew of reports on parents letting their kids play with their iPhone iPod Touch or iPad getting billed for what is known as in app purchases In app purchases let a user purchase items within an iOS application such as more levels to a game expanding an already purchased app etc using the user s iTunes Credit Card or Checking Account One mother in the United Kingdom discovered that her 4 year old child spent more than 80 00 U S Dollars on in app purchases story via CNN Fortunately there is a way to disable this feature so that little kiddies or even you don t accidentally purchase something while in an application 1 Tap SETTINGS Tap GENERAL Tap RESTRICTIONS Enter a Restrictions pass code Select Enable Scroll down to In App Purchases and make sure it is set to OFF 7 Exit Settings Personally I have to say that with all of the experience I have with computers I almost made a mistake with the above and have disabled this feature on my devices Ne ee ek NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 7 Cloud Computing Although you can hardly pick up a computer publication without being assaulted by references to cloud computing the term has been abducted by marketing organizations to the extent that it means almost nothing Today cloud is to computing as natural is to
74. or some of the articles and even add your comments at the end of each article You are also given the choice to submit your own article s When you have finished with the Millennia site simply click on the little house icon thatis just above the address line and to the left There is also a little house icon at the very top of the page DO NOT click on that one When you click on the little house icon you will be transported back to the Legacy home view from whence you came Below the Legacy News panel are two very interesting panels One is the To Do items panel and the other is the Birthdays Death Dates and Anniversaries panel Both of these are reminder panels They remind you of items that need your attention For example when you create a To Do item for an individual or an event you can fill in a reminder date of your choosing As that date approaches the To Do item will be posted in the To Do panel as a reminder You can also create a reminder for birthdays anniversaries and dates of death In order to create this type of reminder go to each person s information screen where births deaths occupation etc are stored In the lower right side of the window are two selections They are birthday reminder and death date reminder If you check one or both of these options the dates of the checked events will be posted in the corresponding reminder panel The same holds true for anniversaries Click on the couple s marriage date to
75. pe video controller Give Linux a try You will probably like it and if you don t at least you will have better reason to use Windows other than being ignorant of everything else NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 9 Word Templates Can Simplify Your Life By Nancy DeMarte Columnist Office Talk Sarasota PCUG Inc FL January 2011 issue Sarasota PC Monitor www spcug org ndemarte Verizon net Templates Installed Templates My templates New from existing Microsoft Office Online Featured Access databases Agendas Books Brochures and booklets Budgets Business cards Calendars Cards Certificates Charts and diagrams Contracts Envelopes Faxes Flyers Forms Inventories Invitations Invoices Job descriptions Labels Letterhead Letters Lists and to do checklists Memos Minutes Newsletters Planners Plans and proposals PowerPoint presentations and slides Projects Receipts Records Reports New resume samples Resumes and CVs Schedules Statements Stationery and specialty paper Time sheets Templates have been a feature of Microsoft Word since the early versions These pre formatted documents are offered as time savers to users who need a quick business letter resume agenda or other document Each template includes placeholders with instructions for what should be typed there such as recipient name The user fills in the required information and the do
76. re of System Restore note e When Windows Update installs new updates to Windows e When the user installs a driver that is not digitally signed by Windows Hardware Quality Labs e Every 24hours of computer use 10 hours in Windows Me or every 24 hours of calendar time whichever happens first This setting is configurable through the registry or using the deployment tools Such a restore point is known as a system checkpoint System Restore requires Task Scheduler to create system checkpoints Moreover system checkpoints are only created if the system is idle for a certain amount of time e When the operating system starts after being off for more than 24 hours e When the user requests it On Windows Vista shadow copies created during File Backup and Complete PC Backup can also be used as restore points Older restore points are deleted as per the configured space constraint on a First In First Out basis Wikipedia To begin a restore simply click on the date you want and then click Next a couple times Your system will restart and hopefully you have healed the patient If you do not see any restore points you might want to check that the process is not disabled To do this in XP you can right click My Computer open the Properties and click on the System Restore Tab There you will see a checkbox where you can Turn of System Restore on all drives Be sure that is un checked For Win 7 see the FAQ How do I turn System
77. rg or contact the SIG leaders Investors SIG Meets Monthly second Monday 5 30 to 7 30 p m Jerry Brown s home 23 Skipping Rock Way Napa Leader Jerry Brown 707 254 9607 bqandjbb sbcglobal net Napa Valley Mac User Group Meets Monthly second Thursday 6 30 8 30 p m Napa Senior Activity Center 1500 Jefferson St Napa Leader Ron Rogers 707 226 5352 ronrogersnapamug gmail com Sonoma Computer Group Meets Monthly fourth Saturday except Mar 2011 10 00 11 30 a m DeLong room Sonoma Library Sonoma CA Leader Beth Pickering bethpick emailx net Requirements For Web Radio You will need a player a software application capable of playing back Internet radio streams Popular players include Microsoft Windows Media Player 9 Real Networks RealPlayer10 Apple iTunes and many MP3 music players We will focus on using Windows Media Player 9 You ll also need an Internet connection A dial up connection is sufficient forreproducing audio with AM radio quality Many Internet radio stations offer streams designed for dial up users If you have a broadband connection you have a wider choice of playback quality Some radio stations offer near CD quality streams although often only as part of an added cost subscription package Depending on the format even lower bit rate broadcasts can sound remarkably good With a broadband connection you have your choice of any of the available stream bit rates Finally
78. rmat it yourself Double click in the area where you ve put the number then select the page number to reveal a mini toolbar just above it Here you can easily change the font and apply attributes such as color boldface or italics To change the size of the number using the mini toolbar either click the large or small capital Aicon which grows or shrinks the selected number or change the font size number The new format is copied immediately to all other page numbers in the document Removing Page Numbers The easiest way to remove all page numbers ina document is to select one of them and press the Delete key If you have created a footer which includes a page number and other content the content will remain even if the page number is deleted Managing Page Numbers Often you will not want a page number to appear on the first page which might be a cover sheet or title page It isn t difficult to remove the page number from the first page but don t just delete the number 1 This will cause all the other page numbers to disappear as well Instead remove the first page number using the Different first page command Let s say you have added a footer which contains the author s name and the page number Double click in the footer area of the first page which opens the Header and Footer Tools tab Click to put a checkmark next to Different first page in the Options group Your footer and page number will be removed
79. rything but Google has noteliminated all your choices and with time now I m completely comfort able with it Email would bea good example I musing my own email server account for email not my Gmail account My mail is still managed on my home PC because I run a business and my Outlook is essential My Outlook 2010 isn tjust an email contact list calendar it truly categorizes and manages that searchable client data going back several years So the phone brings in all my incoming mail from my private server and I can send replies or initiate new mail through my server The web based Gmail Contacts manages your contact list on your Android phone pretty much seamlessly Texport files calendar by broad date range and contacts one at a time from Outlook and then log into my Google email account and import each of those files I really don t know if the data is on the phone or in the cloud but I ve decided I don t care The contacts and calendar data appear in my phone not instantly but within maybe an hour I m not sure So far no one has discovered my Gmail account and that s just fine On the phone I pretty much just read any incoming email that I m especially interested in reply if required and then just erase all the phone s email There are programs purchased and free that improve the Outlook to Android transfer process but haven t yet seen any need to fully automate the exchange Here s a lis
80. s Such e things as office suites desktop publishing Web page design photo audio and video editors computer aided design and games to name a few are there for you to try out and use Many of these can import and use Windows documents such as from MS Word PowerPoint and Excel e It s more secure While no software is absolutely secure Linux is far ahead of Windows This is partly by design and partly because PCs running Windows are far more common than are those running Linux Malware designers tend to target the most common configuration Linux users must keep their systems up to date a one click process and must use the built in firewall but they very seldom worry about computer e It s more fun Linux users are continually trying new programs They are free so why not try to find which you like best Linux is also much more customizable you can make your desktop look like Windows like a Mac or like something only you could love Finally because it s open you are free to poke around its guts to figure out what is really going on under the hood e viruses Good reasons for caution There are also good reasons why you might not want to e Linux is not Windows It doesn t run most Windows applications There are ways around this but they are more trouble than most Linux novices will find comfortable Worse some Windows applications have no Linux counterparts For example although it may change today you
81. s and pieces So even at less than 1 fragmentation I was willing to take the time to perform the defragmentation Total time was about 15 minutes to defrag the 50 GB of data stored on a 220 GB drive At the end of the whole process I saved hard drive space cleaned up the registry and eased the burden on the hard drive So did I see a performance improvement Without running a benchmark it would be hard to tell but the system does seem a bit quicker But the overall benefits to the health of the system should result in better performance and longer hard drive life As for the backup it went smoothly and is much cleaner as I did not back 2 un necessary temp files and junk in the registry Online Marketing Inside Out Review by Gregory West Member of Sarnia Computer Users Group scug ca and Port Huron MI Computer Group bwcomp org prospector16 gmail com Blog Ey sitepoint by Brandon Eley amp Shayne Tilley gt Published by SitePoint Pty Ltd HARENS ISBN 978 0 9805768 2 5 _ INSIDE OUT SY DRANOON LEY A SHAYNE TALLEY Pages 184 eo USA 29 CDA 2995 A http oreilly B com catalog mz 9780980576825 Online Marketing Inside Out has nine dynamic chapters that guide you through your next modern marketing campaign Chapter one explains how marketing is changing pointing out things you need to know before you begin planning your next promotion or campaign You will learn how to make money from a websi
82. sions he said It was in most of the versions of Office 2007 and is in all of the 2010 versions including Home and Student It is also available as a stand alone purchase for about 75 66 OneNote is the perfect place to store a tremendous amount of random stuff in notebooks that can all be examined with a single search Scott said Each notebook can have tabs to further divide the information Notebooks are listed on the left and the tabs for a notebook run across the top of the program Pages can also have sub pages I probably have 10 000 notes of one kind or another Pd like to be able to get to and some of them I can t find anymore Scott said OneNote becomes a central depository for this kind of information he said A notebook could cover plans for a trip he said When the trip is over and you don t need it anymore you can delete it with a right click The program is quite flexible he said because you can enter data into OneNote almost any way you can get information into a computer You can cut and paste information import Word and Excel documents and copy and paste text from an image for example a screen shot Text in an image is searchable 2 6 OneNote wants to tie into SkyDrive Microsoft s to the clouds he said It gives you 25 Gig of storage but you cannot store files larger than 50 Meg Stored items can be personal private or shared Users who put information in a shared f
83. so under my Hotmail name as this allows the computer to sync and recognize my name on many other sites such as Facebook Windows Live Mesh and others too tedious to mention here I am a social networker and am comfortable with such arrangements but you don t have to subscribe to these The email program will still work for you happily I really like the Photo email option In the example shown above notice how the pictures I chose are inserted as an album and also that a picture tools and a photo album tools ribbon is provided Even though that may be considered overkill on Microsoft s part itis still handy in case you want to do a bit more work before sending your pictures out Hope I r eee H a as Cane y Screenshot of View ribbon Also useful is the View ribbon Here you can change the layout of your screen My favorite button here is the Account color among others you can change your theme to Fuchsia or Smoke Other colors you can use are Lime or Twilight Someone must have had a sense of humor when they wrote this app But you can use a different color for multiple accounts so there is a reason for this virtual rainbow The Accounts ribbon is one I hardly go to i t Ens Newsgroup Propertes BAM tden we dowloaded menage Screenshot of Accounts ribbon Anything here is handled elsewhere In fact IMAP folders or Newsgroup is a bit beyond what I need in my email program so I leave
84. t of most of the functions and programs I m actively using Most are free and already installed A few were free from the Android Market and just two were purchased e Browser The Internet browser is surprisingly good considering the screen size It responds to 2 finger zoom and pan rapidly so with a small amount of manipulation you can see any part of even a large page in all detail A very large number of websites have pages optimized for mobiles Wikipedia is one excellent example NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 24 Navigation Google navigation is just amazing and it s free unlike the optional VZNavigator which has a 10 monthly fee from Verizon Type in or speak a destination and Google looks up and presents all the possibilities select the one you wantand the route is presented with voice directions as you drive When you reach the destination it presents a Google Street view This really surprised me when I stopped and it showed a photo of the front of my house Maps Google maps satellite view and Street View just like on the PC Nothing seems to be missing Car Locator This is asmall GPS program that lets you quickly set the location of your car and then find it later using a directional arrow as you walk with the distance in feet or meters 3 Kindle This is a Kindle book reader there are versions available for many other devices including PC s The library of digital books you own here are
85. te Runs on both 32bit and 64bit Windows platforms When Outlook dies Windows Live Mail lives By Jo Grazide Leader Word Processing Workshop Brookdale Computer Users Group New Jersey March 2011 Issue Bug Bytes http bcug com gio520 gmail com ar z Ept SY SYS ces m Lagan sin i Screenshot of Windows Live Mail showing message window with attached photo images I had been using and enjoying the features of Microsoft Outlook 2007 since 2007 never imagining that one fine day I would log in only to see a message saying something to the effect that Outlook was in use and that I had to close a pst file or face the consequences In fact MS Outlook simply stopped I was unable to move appointments open an email or do anything that I was accustomed to in order to make my activities on the computer enjoyable and efficient For lack of a better option I decided to turn to Windows Live Mail WLM a part of the Windows Live Essentials suite that was already installed on my system along with my favorite photo management program and even my antivirus app Since this was already present I didn t have to do much except launch it It happily grabbed my mail downloads from Gmail and politely asked me if I wanted it to be the default email program I said Yes I was pleasantly surprised I use Gmail but I was pleasantly surprised I use Gmail but only for the convenience of having an online calendar and emai
86. te and gives options for formatting the date To add a placeholder for a text item the Controls group includes a Rich Text command Aa which will add a placeholder You can then use the Properties command to add text which describes what should be typed there such as Agenda Item 1 Save your creation as a template dotx or dot in My Templates as described above It will be readily available when you need it Templates can help us do a variety of tasks with Word without the tedium of creating all our documents from scratch Explore the template choices and you will ee find some that meet your needs Working with Page Numbers in Word 2007 By Nancy DeMarte Columnist Office Talk Sarasota PCUG Inc FL April 2011 issue Sarasota PC Monitor www spcug org ndemarte Verizon net Adding page numbers to a document seems like a simple task You open your document position the cursor and on the Insert tab in the Header and Footer group click Page Number But Word offers several customizations for this process It all depends on where you want your page numbers to appear and how you want them to look Inserting Page Numbers Your first decision is where you want to position the page number in a header footer or in the margin The most commonplace is ina footer Fortunately the Footer gallery has many footers which include page numbers Click the Insert tab then Footer and scroll to see the gallery choices Click a desig
87. te by page views optimize the values within search engines SEO and how the main players in social mediacan help you go deeper inside the communities spreading the word of your company or product Even though email marketing has been around forever it seems this book sparks a new interest showing many advantages and the authors walk you through every step towards a successful email marketing strategy Having your own sales people working for you online is easy when you create an affiliate marketing program that is covered in Chapter seven The advantages of having an army of salesmen all over the world promoting for you is explained gregorywest wordpress com in easy to understand terms in this chapter This is followed in sequence with Chapter eight wherein you learn about the world of online advertising as you will be able to plan implement test and optimize what you setup with your online advertising I really like the way this book is set out The Table of Contents leaves nothing to imagination The Preface wand Chapters have extensive headings that guide you through the various topics so that you can easily look something up and jump right in on that subject For example in Chapter two s listing you will find headings such as Press Releases Then followed with sub headings Press Releases in the 21st Century When to Write a Press Release Stand Out From the Crowd and so on Every ch
88. to try these and then just use the one that gives you the best results I recommend and use these the end of every month usually after I finish the Drive Lightas that is one of my major monthly milestones sorta like smoke detector batteries and DST First and one of the fastest is CCleaner Freeware from http www piriform com which was mentioned in the August 2009 Drive Light In addition to quickly finding all those useless files it contains a very good registry cleaner My next tool is very similar called CM Disk Cleaner Although it does not appear to be being updated it is available on several download sites including http www scanwith com download CM DiskCleaner htm Next is the very advanced Advanced System Care Freeware from IOBit This is probably one of the most complete and easy to use tools A very good review and download is available from download cnet com Now that you have a nearly automated way to find all those files deleted many cleaned up the registry and feel you have made some good progress go back and look at those drive properties and see if you have saved any space You probably have especially on your C drive and perhaps your primary data drive NOW is when you can run your defragger Either use the one supplied with Windows or use a free tool also from IOBIT called Smart Defrag But you say defragmenting takes so long and your time is so valuable Well have mine setup to automatica
89. ware failures and software bugs can destroy your data If you use the service for back up or synchronization this isn t a problem because the chances of simultaneous failures in the cloud and on your PC is negligible However if you store your only copy of your photograph or music collection in the cloud you are risking disaster In the case of cloud processing you should also be concerned about the format in which your data is stored It does little good to download the file containing your novel if it s stored in a format that only the now out of business cloud vendor could read Finally cloud computing is new so you should expect some glitches time quantum An amount of time in which a process runs without interruption Also known as a time slice Reprinted with permission from Smart Computing Visit www SmartComputing com Groups to learn what Smart Computing can do for you and your user group NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 8 Should You Try Linux Well it depends on There are many good reasons why you should e It s fast Every time I use Windows I can feel myself growing older as it creeps through booting up shutting down and starting a new program My wife had an old laptop with XP that had become unusably slow under XP She replaced the operating system with Linux and it s now back to its original speed e It s free Not only is Linux free but so are the great majority of its application
90. ylene Thompson Tom Uboldi and Dean Unruh Appointed Officers Computer Tutor Coordinator Jeff Solomon 553 2114 Facility Arrangements Coordinator Dianne Prior 252 1506 Greeter Coordinator Raylene Thompson unlisted Greeter Coordinator Bob Simmerman 259 6113 Librarian Dean Unruh 226 9164 Membership Director Bob Simmerman 259 6113 Newsletter Editor Susy Ball 337 3998 Product Review CoCoordinator Susy Ball 337 3998 Marcia Waddell 252 2060 Co Programs Director Bernhard Krevet unlisted Susy Ball 337 3998 Publicity Director VOLUNTEER NEEDED Random Access Moderator Jerry Brown 254 9607 Webmaster Ron Dack unlisted e All telephone numbers are in Area Code 707 NVPCUG General Meetings Held the third Wednesday of each month 7 00 to 9 00 p m Tutor nvpcug Facility nvpcug Greeter nvpcug Greeter2 nvpcug Librarian nvpcug Membership nvpcug Editor nvpcug Reviews nvpcug Reviews2 nvpcug Programs nvpcug Programs nvpcug Questions nvpcug Webmaster nvpcug Napa Senior Activity Center 1500 Jefferson Street Napa NVPCUG Computer News May 2011 Page 3 org org org org org org org org org org org org org org org org org NVPCUG Computer News Computer News ISS 0897 5744 is published monthly by the Napa Valley Personal Computer Users Group Inc NVPCUG P O Box 2866 Napa CA 94558 0286 Subscriptions 30 for one year 12 issues Ed
91. your system can handle The amount of RAM you can install is determined by the chip set on your motherboard Consult your user manual Windows 7 can handle up to 192 gigabytes That s overkill but there is no good reason to work with less than 4 gigabytes Background applications are like invisible gremlins throttling performance Take a look in the notification area located at the bottom right section of your display Every icon there represents a program All of them are running Most of them are performing their function in the background but they all consume system resources Left click on the Start orb and type System Configuration in the search box After launching the tool click on the Startup tab and uncheck the boxes of any unneeded startup programs Manufacturers assemble their systems to work not necessarily to work at optimum performance Don t overlook the BIOS settings as a cause of system slowdown Most people accept the default BIOS settings and never check them It s always a good idea to get your motherboard s user manual and examine the BIOS settings that optimize performance Sadly there is no centralized database you can reference but you can use Google or Bing search engines to find out The odds are good that your default settings need to be changed Intel and AMD have gone to great lengths to design processor chips that are efficient and generate less heat That hasn t eliminated the need for some kin

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