This week we led off by making equal fun of John McCain. I know, I know this is a computer show so we really don’t have to give equal time, but we thought it was funny and so, there ya go. If you do a search for “Younger than McCain” there will be a ton of sites out there, but here is a video to give a clue as to what you are gonna find.

We mention a few things that everyone needs to their computer:

• Max out the memory of your computer. XP in general can only access a maximum of 4GB of RAM. Even at that the 32bit version will not allow you to use all of the RAM due to the 32bit Addresses scheme. It gets sort of geekish, so I will leave at the tech details. If you care to know, then drop us a line. We would be happy to chat. Here a few of the links we mention on the memory side of the house:

• Crucial.com – We love this link. It is easy to use and has neve given me any bad information.
• Kingston.com – a great choice as well. The have a long history of providing quality memory.

• Ramjet.com – These guys cater to Mac’s, but I have purchased memory for all sorts of stuff from them.

• The next big thing is get a listing of what is on/in/attached to your computer. The best tool that we have found(that is also FREE!) is Belarc Advisor. These guys have a complete line of software for managing companies computer inventory, but the part we are interested in at the moment is free. Get your free download, Install it and let it run. The program will generate a web page and then you need to print it out. This is really good stuff for talking to any tech guy about what computer you have.

If anyone is interested in the Book we are trying give away, drop us a note at the email link at the top left of the page. If no one claims it soon, I will probably take it off the list, as I may have need of it myself.

The last really big thing we talked about was a question from a guy named Sam about cleaning LCD screens. Well, here is a list of what we went over:

• DON’T USE PAPER TOWELS!!!
• DON’T USE ACETONE, OR ANYTHING WITH ACETONE IN IT!!!!!
• Do use the softest CLOTH you can find. The microfiber ones are great. The lens cleaner that you get with your glasses are terrific. I have even heard of people using baby wipes. I don’t recommend the baby wipes, but the guy insists that they make his computer smell better. I figure he has other problems.
• Do use a mixture of Isopropyl Alcohol and Distilled Water.
  • There are a number of products on the market that just work well. I was amazed that one of the most suitable seems to be the good ol’ original windex. Saying there are a number o “saftey” precautions. I never knew windex was so dangerouse.
• Here are a few “Smart Guys” that seem to know a thing or two about cleaning LCD’s. I figured I would mention them, but they are not by any means the “authority”. They more like examples of the large number of sites that I found while verifying my information:
  • lifehacker.com
  • wikihow.com
  • ehow.com

Let us know what you want to know. Email us! Let us know how you think we’re doing and what you’d like to hear about. We want to talk about the computer stuff you’re interested in!

We’re on iTunes now! Check us out and subscribe to the podcast.

Thanks for listening and don’t forget to write!

Harold Pulcher
The other guy on the show – Computer 101 On KLAKE, 97.7

 

 Show Download [24:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted: April 28th, 2008 under After Show, Interesting Sites.
Comments: none

We had the bright idea this week. We figured that since we had a real live Podcast thing happening, it might be a good idea to tell you guys how listen to it. I am pretty sure that most of you have heard of an iPod, Apple, or just Podcasts in general.iTunes does come with QuickTime. It is included with the download. QuickTime videos are some of the sharpest and highest quality on the net. Not that windows media player can’t do the same, it is just that quicktime started this way. I know, I sound like Mike now.This is Computer101, so here is what you need to do listen to us:If you have iTunes already then skip to step 14:

1. Go to the iTunes download site
2. On the left hand side of the page, pick the stuff you like. Personally, I never have any thing send me email, as I get too much aalready. However, there could be some good info there. It is totally up to you.
3. Enter in your email address, if you are willing
4. Click the “Download iTunes Free” button, and save the file to a location that is easy for you to remember, like My Documents. It is about a 60MB download so it may take awhile depending on your connection.
5. Once your download is finished, then go to where you saved the file and double click on it.
6. Click Next, Accept the License Agreement, and Click Next again.
7. This screen allows you to tell iTunes how invasive it can be on your system. Since I have a number of different media player on my system, I usually uncheck every thing. The only problem I have with the defaults is that it adds the Updater to your startup programs. Not a really big deal, but the fewer startup programs you have the better. Pick your options and click on “Install”
8. If you are running Vista, you may have the User Access Control pop up. Click continue to allow the program to do what it needs to do.
9. Click “Finish” after the installer is done. If you don’t want to start iTunes immediately, them make sure you uncheck the box before you click.
10. When iTunes starts you have a couple more things to do. So, accept the license agreement(again).
11. The Setup assistant should now start, Click Next. Click Next to let iTunes search your hard drive if you like
12. I would not let iTunes “keep my iTunes Music Folder organized”. This is the default. Mike may disagree, so I am expecting him to chime in here on that. Click Next.
13. Click Next, Select “No, take me to my iTunes Library”, and click next again. iTunes will scan your drives for music, when that is done(or you hit “stop”).
14. Click the “Podcast” item on the left hand side. If this is your first time a popup will display and ask if you want to go to the podcast directory. You want todo this so click on “Go To Podcast Directory”.
15. On ther right hand side click “Power Search”
16. In the title box type “Computer 101″, and in the author box type “mike” <– our leader type guy.
17. Click the Search Button
18. Hopefully “Computer 101 on 960am/KIMP” is the only entry that comes up. Look to the right and click the button labeled “Subscribe”.
19. There will be some whirling around. When/If the confirmation box comes up click “Subscribe”
20. Listen to the greatness that is Computer101

This will only get you the latest mp3. Just to the left of the name there is an Arrow. If you click that, it will show you all t he podcasts that are available. Download all that you want.To listen, just select the Podcast and click the Play button.We really, really, really, really tried to find something funny about Obama. It just isn’t happening. We don’t know whether or not that he “Just isn’t that into funny”, or no one knows enough about him yet to be funny. We found it funny that would couldn’t find anything funny. The best we could was the video “I Got A Crush…On Obama”. The link is a google search. I thought that some of it may be a bit racey for the site and couldn’t bear to put the link directly here. It really isn’t that funny, but she laughs at the end of the video. What do you want for a dollar?On the passwords here is a bit of info on what a really good password consists of:

• Needs to be at least 8 characters
• Must not match any portion of your name, your spouses name, your kids name, your dogs name, etc…
• Should not be the any of the following passwords: password, abc123, 12345678, or the same as your logon name.

• Should have at least 1 upper case character: A-Z

• Should have at least 1 lower case character: a-z
• Should have at least 1 numeric digit: 0-9
• Should have at least 1 special character: #, $, %, &, |, ?, etc…

With all that in mind it seems funny to me that a number of large Banks will only allow a password of 4 numeric digits. Doesn’t seem all that secure to me, but apparently the Banks don’t listen to Computer 101.I did some searching and found a couple of links that you might be interested in. Keep in mind that this is not a recommendation, just pointers to a couple of password related programs that you may find useful.

keepass.info: Is a program to help you “remember” your passwords. Using only one master password, you can store and retrieve any number of passwords along with what site or system they go to. Just don’t loose or give out that master password.pctools password generator: Is a web tool to help generate strong passwords. This is for the people that do not have a great imagination and have a hard time coming up with passwords on their own. There are a few other tools on the site as well for checking the “strength” of passwords. I just had fun playing with the password generator. For instance I asked for a 64 character password. I don’t think I will be using it, so here it is if you are so inclined: yaqucufepusEchachuwredesaVamEpr7Pepachawr2he9usapredEmudeR7Zezeg

Let us know what you want to know. Email us! Let us know how you think we’re doing and what you’d like to hear about. We want to talk about the computer stuff you’re interested in!We’re on iTunes now! Check us out and subscribe to the podcast.Thanks for listening and don’t forget to write!Harold PulcherThe other guy on the show – Computer 101 On KLAKE, 97.7

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted: April 22nd, 2008 under After Show.
Comments: 1

So, we started our Equal Opportunity candidate bashing today. Harold found a website that generates funny little sayings about Hillary every time you refresh. Enjoy!

Here are those instructions for fixing a corrupted inbox.

In Outlook Express, first you want to create a new folder. Click on “Local Folders” in the left column. Now right click on the “Local Folders” and choose “New Folder”. This will create a new folder in your local folders area. You then have a chance to label it, so just type something like “Filed”. This is where you’re going to try to back up your emails from your inbox to.

Now click on your “inbox”. Select all the emails in your inbox. You can do this easily by clicking (to select) on any one of the emails in your inbox. Now hit ctrl-A. (That’s hold down the “ctrl”, or control key, then type the letter A.) You should see all of the emails in your inbox as selected now. (They’ll all turn dark blue).

If you right click on any one of those emails and choose “Move…” (or “Move to…”) then another little window will come up where you can select the new folder we just created above.

That will move all the emails out of the inbox, effectively backing them up in another file, since every one of those folders down the left hand side is a separate file, also referred to as a DBX file, since they end in .dbx (i.e. inbox.dbx, or sen items.dbx).

Now you want to get rid of the old inbox. Shut down Outlook Express. (this gets really “steppy”). Double click on My Computer. Choose Tools>Folder Options. Choose the View tab. Choose “Show hidden files and Folders” by clicking the little button to it’s left (these are called “radio buttons” by the way.) Click “Ok” to close the window. Now, in the My Computer window you just opened you have to do this:

Double Click on Local Computer. Double click on your C: drive. Double click on “Documents and Settings”. Double click on Local Settings (this folder will look a little hazy, because it’s usually hidden, but we just selected to “Show Hidden Files and Folders”! Aren’t we clever!). Click on Application Data. Click on Identities. Click on the long serial numbery looking thingy. Click on Microsoft. Click on Outlook Express. Now you’ll see all the little files that make up your Outlook Express mail. Pretty cool, huh?

Now, remember, we’ve backed up all the email in the inbox. So we could just delete the inbox. WAIT! Let’s go ahead and rename it. It doesn’t take up too much space and you might need it some other time if this doesn’t go well. So, right click on it and choose “rename”. Now call it something like “inbox_old.dbx”. That should do it. Close all your open windows.

Now when you open Outlook Express, the inbox should be empty (it was last time we were here), but the file itself should be rebuilt. If you drilled back down into that folder again, you’d see inbox.dbx AND inbox_old.dbx.

That’s a good way to fix your Outlook Express when your inbox goes nuts. You can do the same with any folder in Outlook Express. Just choose the other folder name instead of inbox. Email us if you have any questions!

We talked about the Treo vs. the iPhone. Really these days it’s more about the Blackberry or the iPhone. What do you think? Post a comment below and get something started…

We also talked a little about shared calendaring. The cheapest way to do it if you already have Outlook (not Outlook Express) is to use the calendar in Outlook in and send events to your colleagues. They can accept them through email. If you want to have live scheduling, probably the most economical solution might be to use an online calendar sharing program, like Yahoo Calendar, Google, or an online Intranet, which has per person associated costs.

Let us know what you want to know. Email us! Let us know how you think we’re doing and what you’d like to hear about. We want to talk about the computer stuff you’re interested in!

We’re on iTunes now! Check us out and subscribe to the podcast.

Thanks for listening and don’t forget to write!

Mike Squires
Host – Computer 101 960am, KIMP

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted: April 17th, 2008 under After Show.
Comments: none

We covered the whole gamut today!

You don’t usually have to type the whole “http://www” part of web address to get there.  Those things are mostly implied.  But if you want to get to this page directly, you probably should type the whole thing, since we don’t use “www” in our address.

Harold and I discussed the woes of HTML email.  I don’t usually use HTML for my emails.  I think the English language is colorful enough without having to add hues. (or embolding, or underlines).

We also talked about the toys to get us… I mean the geeks in your life… if you aren’t sure what we like.  I especially like the titanium spork.  It should go well with my uranium mess kit. Check out Think Geek!

Let us know what you want to know. Email us! Let us know how you think we’re doing and what you’d like to hear about. We want to talk about the computer stuff you’re interested in!

We’re on iTunes now! Check us out and subscribe to the podcast.

Thanks for listening and don’t forget to write!

Mike Squires
Host – Computer 101 960am, KIMP

 

 Get your Geek On! [24:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted: April 9th, 2008 under After Show.
Comments: 1

Well, we really mailed it in this morning. (sorry, bad joke)

Harold and I discussed different email opportunities that you have with free email and inexpensive providers. there is a difference between yahoo.com and Yahoo! Small Business type email. You get what you pay for!

Also, dont forget that often times, email domains are the only marketing tool you use when sending emails. Why give extra time to Hotmail when you could be promoting yourself. The five domains we mentioned still haven’t been registered online. We think they would be great for some thriving Mount Pleasant business. Listen to the show to find out which ones I mean!

Let us know what you want to know. Email us! Let us know how you think we’re doing and what you’d like to hear about. We want to talk about the computer stuff you’re interested in!

We’re on iTunes now! Check us out and subscribe to the podcast.

Thanks for listening and don’t forget to write!

Mike Squires
Host – Computer 101 960am, KIMP

 

 Email! [24:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted: April 1st, 2008 under After Show.
Comments: none