Computer Tips for Travelers

Windows 7 after 4 months

chrisadmin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:14:44 +0000

I bought a new computer last November. It has Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit operating system. I was worried that my old but important programs from Adobe (Dreamweaver and Fireworks) were not going to work, but, as it turns out that hasn’t been a problem. My screen goes black for a second every time I open or close them, but they work OK – so I can hold off on purchasing the upgrades Other than that, it took me a while to find anything to say about Windows 7. That’s because it’s not remarkable for what it does, but rather for what it doesn’t do.

It doesn’t crash.

With Windows Vista, XP, Windows 98, and even earlier, I would need to restart my computer at least every couple of days. You see, I use my computers hard. I never have less than 3 applications going, and often 7 or 8 applications in addition to 10 or 12 Websites. That has always resulted in a computer that gets bogged down and needs to be given a clean start before I can work again. It was not unusual to have to restart my computer more than once in a day. Now, with Windows 7, I’ll go a week or even 10 days before noticing, ‘OMG, I haven’t restarted the computer in so long!’ Even then, it rarely crashes, but it may alert me that I have so much going on that I’m running low on memory (and that’s usually when I have both Dreamweaver and Fireworks running.) I’ll restart to clear it out. This is a very good thing.

Learning to use Windows 7 is almost the same as learning Vista. For our Members, you can see all our Vista ‘Show-Me’ videos on the Members’ Home Page. If you’re not a member, you can view the free videos on our Vista page. We will have some Windows 7-specific videos sometime this summer, meanwhile, Microsoft provides lots of good help and training on Windows 7.

It’s not that much different from Vista – but it is quite a bit different from XP. If you’re still using XP – we do not recommend upgrading your computer to Windows 7. New operating systems are primarily structured to work on new hardware. There is no reason to upgrade your XP machine to Windows 7 – we adhere to the saying ‘If it’s not broke, don’t fix it!’

But …

If you’re buying a new computer, don’t ask to go back to XP! Following the same logic as above – new hardware works best with new operating systems. You wouldn’t buy a new car and ask to put an old engine in it would you?

See our past article on ‘7 Tips for Buying a New Computer‘ for more thoughts on your purchase decision.

Re-Energize your Travel Blog

chrisadmin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:40:30 +0000

by Chris Guld, www.GeeksOnTour.com
If you have a Blog using the Blogger.com platform, you may be disappointed at the lack of choices for the ‘Templates’ you can use. Templates are what give your blog its look and feel. Colors are part of the template. Column-sizes are part of the template. You can have the same content (your blog posts) but change templates to give it a fresh look. It’s like buying a new outfit for yourself. You’re still the same person but you look completely different in evening dress as opposed to shorts and t-shirt!

Below are 4 of the 16 choices you are given when you create a blog. You can just pick any one with the knowledge that you can change to another at any time you want. And, when you change later there are more choices because each of the 16 have multiple variations when you revisit them. These templates are old and tired.

More Templates from Outside Sources

The good news is that you’re not limited to the templates that come with Blogger. There are hundreds of templates available from outside – third party – sources. Here is a listing from Blogger of third party template sources.

The bad news is that they’re not as easy to install as the built in templates. And, they’re not supported by Blogger, so if you have a problem, you’re out of luck unless you can get support from the source. Many of them are free – which is a great price but don’t expect any support for that. Here are some samples:

Step by Step Installation

When you find a template you like, you should see a button to ‘Download’ it to your computer.
What gets downloaded is a compressed or ‘zipped’ file. You need to unzip it. Right click on it and ‘Expand All.’ (Macintosh – Double-click the zip file)
Now log in to your blog, choose the Layout link, then the Edit HTML tab and you should see the screen below. Click ‘Download Full Template.’ This makes a backup on your computer of the template that you are currently using. This is important in case everything gets messed up – you can alwyas return to the way it was.
Upload the template you just downloaded (and unzipped): Click Browse and find the downloaded template (it will end with .xml) on your computer, then click upload.
If you have installed widgets into your sidebar, you may see an error message like that below. It’s best to delete the widgets so you can start clean, but if the widgets are important to you, you can click ‘Keep Widgets’ here. Then, you may need to deal with repositioning them in the new template.
Click the ‘Save Template’ button at the bottom, and you’re done. Take a look at your new blog!

There may be things in the new template that don’t work right with your old content. You’ll need to deal with each of those things individually. For example, if you had an image in your blog’s header that no longer fits in the new template, you need to go to the Page Elements and Edit the Header to remove the image. If there is some canned text in the new Template, you need to edit HTML to find that text and change it so it speaks for you.

What if you just can’t get the new template to look the way you wanted? Well, that’s why you downloaded your old template! Start with step #4 and re-upload your old template.

What if you ignored my advice and didn’t back up your old template? You can always just choose another standard Blogger template by clicking on ‘Pick a New Template.’

Have fun! Try a few templates … you wouldn’t go to a clothes store and only try on one outfit now would you? If you’ve been delinquent in posting to your blog – you may find that a new look will re-energize you.

Would you like me to show you how to do this? My pleasure! Here’s a Free Video on Changing your Blogger Template

And, if you want to go even further with ‘Tweaking’ the template, here’s a Video on Editing the HTML of the Template This one does require a Geeks On Tour Membership.

Happy Blogging!
Chris Guld, www.GeeksOnTour.com

Cell Tower Overload

chrisadmin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:44:48 +0000

RV Rallies present major issues for Internet Access. Rarely is Wi-Fi provided throughout the rally grounds, and, when you try to use your Cellular provider for data, you may find it doesn’t work so well. That was our experience at the FMCA SE Area rally last week in Brooksville, FL. At times like these I wish we had our Satellite Dish back.

If you doubt that cell tower overload is a factor, check out this article on AT&Ts troubles due to all the iPhone users out there. Actually, this article has me a little worried about Verizon as well, once the Droid (Verizon’s answer to the iPhone) catches on. You see, once you have Internet browsing capabilities on your cell phone, you use it a lot more. When I use my phone to make a voice call, I’m on for 5 – 20 minutes. When Jim uses his new Droid to browse the web, he’s on for hours. Both usages connect to the Cellular Tower, but the data usage represents a quantum leap in loading the Tower’s connections.

Wi-Fi – A Better Antenna will Get You a Better Connection

chrisadmin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:51:13 +0000

by Chris Guld, www.GeeksOnTour.com
We’ve said this time and time again, but it’s been a while and we have a lot of new readers. If you’re using a Wi-Fi hotspot and it’s not working so great, get an external Wi-Fi adapter. We have quite a collection of them over the years, but we recently bought a new one to go with our Windows 7 64 bit computer. Here’s the one we purchased, a Hawking HWDN2:

There are lots of choices, just look for ‘Wireless Network Adapter.’ It will also say 802.11 somewhere in the description. 802.11b is the oldest technology, then comes g, and the latest and greatest is n.

Turn off your Internal Wi-Fi

It’s important to understand that these do not ‘boost’ the Wi-Fi adapter built in to your computer. They ‘replace’ it. You should turn off the internal adapter in your computer in order to properly use an external adapter. See the Geeks on Tour ‘Show-Me-How’ video ‘Turn Off your Internal Wi-Fi.’

Improving our Wi-Fi Experience

When we parked at our current RV park, and tried to connect to the Wi-Fi, it took a while to make the connection and browsing was very slow. So we took our new Hawking Wi-Fi adapter out of the box, used the included CD to install the drivers, plugged the adapter into a USB port and turned off the wireless switch on the computer.

This time the connection happened a little faster, but, more importantly, the browsing was faster. Still not as good as our DSL at our home park, but better nonetheless. Wi-Fi is 2-way radio. Low-powered, 2-way radio. The radio and antenna built in to your laptop computer is often not good enough for the distances and obstructions in an RV park. Plugging in an external adapter (radio and antenna are both inside) with a wire to your USB port allows you to move the adapter over to a window, or even outside a window so as to get an unobstructed line-of-sight to the source of the Wi-Fi – the Access Point. Unobstructed line-of-sight is the most important factor in a good Wi-Fi connection. Notice, in the photo of our adapter above, that I have it pointed out a window. Notice also that I have the metal mini-blinds raised above the adapter. Those metal mini-blinds can make a big difference in your connection!

For other, past articles/videos on this topic:

The #1 Best way to Improve your Wi-Fi Connection
WiFire Long Range Adapter
Get the right Wi-Fi Adapter
54Mbps is Not better than 11Mbps
Wi-Fi for Beginners

Other Geeks on Tour Show-Me-How videos on this topic.

Copy Files to a USB Drive

chrisadmin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:16:44 +0000

This was one of the exercises in our Boot Camp last week and we think everyone should know how to do it. We preach backup all the time, but we don’t preach a particular way to do it because there are so many choices. As long as you know that your important files are being duplicated somewhere outside of your computer, and you know how to get a file back if needed, then we’re happy. We don’t care how you do it.

If you don’t currently have some way to do backups, you need to know at least the very basic way of copying files. That is to use the copy command and then paste the file to an external location – the easiest being to a USB drive.

These little USB drives, aka ‘Thumb’ drives or ‘Travel’ drives are available at any electronics store for around $10. Actually, I’ve seen them at convenience stores they’re so popular now. Sometimes they’re even given away as advertising specialties. Jim has a Swiss Army Knive with a USB drive as one of the attachments! They act just like the disk drives in your computer in that they can hold computer files. You can copy computer files to them, delete files, rename files, and overwrite files. If you remember the old floppy disks – you get the idea.

So, if you have files on your computer – probably your C drive in My Documents – you can Copy them. Then, using My Computer, navigate to the USB Drive which you’ve plugged in to a USB port – it will probably show up as drive F: or G:. If you don’t know what drive letter it is, here’s a trick. With My Computer open – you should see your drive letters show up – unplug the USB drive. You’ll see one letter disappear from the screen. Plug it back in and you should see a letter appear. That’s it! Double-Click on it to open. Now you can Paste. The file(s) that you copied from your C drive will now be duplicated on your little thumb drive.

There are a variety of reasons to do this. Usually it’s because you want to give the file(s) to someone else. Just hand them the thumb drive and they can reverse the process: plug the thumb drive into their computer, find the files and copy them, open their C drive, find an appropriate folder and paste. We often copy files to a thumb drive in order to go to a copy center and get a document printed.

Even if you can’t attend one of our Boot Camp classes, you can purchase the book and DVD for $20. Geeks on Tour Members have access to all the videos as well as a .pdf version of the book.

Leesburg, Florida and Computer Boot Camp

chrisadmin — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 14:27:13 +0000

We’re at Holiday Travel Resort in Leesburg, Florida. This is a very large and active park. Nearly 1,000 sites. I’d say the majority are permanent, park models, but there are plenty of RV sites as well. Here’s our site:

They’re on a waterway that we’re told leads to the gulf. We’ll check that out in our Google Earth class tomorrow! Very old Florida feel with the Spanish moss.

When I say ‘active’, I’m not kidding. Take a ride around and you’ll see people playing volleyball, tennis, shuffleboard, and softball. And, our friend Roxie, who scheduled our computer classes here, told us it was difficult to reserve the rooms because of so many activities already on the schedule. And, she made the arrangements last October!

Every seat was taken for our hands-on Computer Boot Camp, and I was very impressed with their eagerness to learn. Even though we chopped the class down to one day – 6 hours, I think it went quite well.

By the end of the week, we had 16 new members for GOT Class (Geeks on Tour Online Classroom.) It made us realize the partnership we are now developing wit computer clubs, so we’re starting a new page here to list GOT Clubs!

To see more about the HTR Computer Club, check out the club’s blog.

Turn your Computer into a TV

chrisadmin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:37:58 +0000

by Chris Guld, www.geeksontour.com

When we first bought our motorhome, it had 2 TVs. One in the front, living/dining area, and one in the back – the bedroom.

We got rid of both of them and set up a TV tuner with a projector and a window-shade screen. It’s great! We have a big screen with surround sound – a pretty good home theatre for any house, let alone a 30 foot class C motorhome!

When I recently purchased a new Windows 7 laptop, we wondered what to do with my old laptop. It was still working fine, ( see rule #1 for buying a new computer) so I wasn’t going to send it off to recycling. How about a TV for the bedroom! Jim found a stud in the wall and installed a TV shelf bracket that fits my old laptop just perfect.

The antenna connection was already there, all we needed was the TV tuner. The one Jim got is the ATI TV Wonder (he got a great deal – $25 – by buying it on the daily special at Woot.com), but he’s also used the Hauppage. Just google for USB TV Tuner to see lots of other choices. Basically this tiny box is the guts of a television! Just plug one end into the USB port of your computer, and the other end into an antenna.

Of course, there is software as well, and you need to be sure whatever you get works with your computer’s operating system. Once you have it all set up, you have TV! Ours even came with a remote control. And, since it is still a computer – it is even better than a TV – you can get the Guide from the Internet, you can record and playback shows using your computer as a Digital Video Recorder (DVR.) And, if you can’t find anything on TV you can use the computer to play a DVD or watch Internet video on Hulu.

Be aware that this system is a bit of a resource hog. Don’t expect it to work on a computer that’s too old – read the system requirements on the tuner. And, be ready to get a bit geeky in setting it up.

I actually have no clue what’s involved in setting it up That’s Jim’s job! But, I do like having TV in the bedroom – when Jim’s watching football on the big screen, I now have other choices!

Computer Backups are Worthless

chrisadmin — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:44:23 +0000

Has this ever happened to you?

Your computer crashes and you take it to a techie who gets it working again but needs to reformat (erase) the hard drive. You get your computer back with nothing on it. No problem you think, you have a backup of your important data on Disk, either CD/DVDs or a USB hard drive. But when you try to restore you find:

there is something wrong with the backup disks, either the data is corrupted or there simply is no data on the disk(s)
or:
the backup was made with software that you don’t remember or don’t have. You need that software in order to restore.

If you can’t restore … your backups are worthless.

To prevent this happening to you, here are a few suggestions.

When you do your backups, *always* check the results.
If you backup to CD/DVD, take that disk to another computer, put it in the drive and see what happens. Does it come up to a ‘Do you want to restore’ prompt? Are the files on the disk that you expect? If you backup to a USB external hard drive, explore the results. Are the files where you expect them to be? Do you know how to restore them?
Periodically test your restore capability.
Pretend to lose a file that you want to recover from your backups. The easiest way to do this is to rename it. For example, let’s say you have an Excel spreadsheet called TaxRecords.xls. Rename that file to zzzTaxRecords.xls. That way you still have the file, but your computer sees that the file TaxRecords.xls is gone. Now try to restore that file from your backups. For an example of this, see the Geeks on Tour Show Me Video on Backup to an External Hard Drive.
Use a backup procedure that creates file by file copies of your data rather than backup ‘packages.’
There are dozens, maybe even hundreds of different ways to make backups. Every USB hard drive comes with software to make backups, there are lots of free backup programs you can download, and there are many backup programs you can buy. They all work a little differently. I like the ones that result in file copies rather than backup ‘packages.’ If I can see a file, I can copy it. If I only see a backup ‘package’ I need the original software to restore it.

I am currently using Windows 7 backup utility to backup my entire computer to a USB hard drive. When I look a the USB drive, I see a folder labeled with the name of my computer. When I click, I get options to Restore (and it works just fine), but I can’t look inside and see all the files. All I see is this one ‘package’ that somehow contains all my files. What if I changed computers and no longer had Windows 7? How would I get my files? I don’t know.

I am also trying out the online backup service called Carbonite. If I want to restore a file, I can browse all my online backed up files and pick the one I want. True, this is using the Carbonite software, but it’s a service … with support … that I’m paying $50/year for. I can trust that when I want to restore files to any computer in the future – I can.

My favorite backup program is still a freeware package called Karen’s Replicator. You can set it up to copy whatever folders/files you want on any schedule you want, and you can see the results. You will see the actual files – not a backup ‘package.’ For more information on this program see this past Geeks on Tour Newsletter.

Use Picasa to backup your photos.
Picasa gives you the best of both worlds. First of all, it is SO simple to make backups of your pictures to CD/DVD – Picasa even burns the disk. It will backup all the special Picasa features (edits, albums, face recognition) along with your pictures so you can restore to another computer, but it also is making file by file copies of your photos. You don’t have to use the Picasa restore process to get your pictures back. I have 10 years worth of photos backed up with Picasa. I have no intention of using the restore feature to put all those on another computer. But I know that, if I want a particular picture from 2002, I can find it on my backup CD. Here’s a Geeks on Tour Show Me Video on How to restore a single picture from a Picasa Backup.

A happy computer user has good backups that they know how to restore.

BACKUP! BACKUP! BACKUP!

Happy Computing!
Chris Guld, www.GeeksOnTour.com
Computer Education for Travelers

Netbooks

chrisadmin — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:09:00 +0000

Computers can only connect *everyone* if *everyone* has a computer. It has been widely accepted that this will happen when the cost of a personal computer drops below $100. We’re not there yet, but the current crop of ‘Netbooks’ are a big step in the right direction. We just bought an Asus Netbook for $350.

It’s called a Netbook because it’s primary purpose is to connect you to the Net. As mentioned in the Gmail article above, if all your data is in the Clouds (on the Net) then it doesn’t matter what device you use to access it.

In addition to being inexpensive, it’s also very lightweight – under 3 pounds – and small. I can actually fit it in my purse (yes, it’s a big purse!) And, it has a long-lasting battery. We have used it off and on for 2-3 days without having to recharge. The manufacturer claims 10.5 hours of battery life.

These Netbooks have been out for about 2 years now, but we waited for Windows 7. They are relatively low powered – usually coming with only 1GB of memory – so they couldn’t run Vista and were being sold with XP. Once we got used to Vista, there’s no way we could go back. Windows 7 works like Vista, but it’s not so much of a memory hog.

The Netbook does not have a CD/DVD drive. It’s meant to be a computer for people who just need their email, some web browsing and a little bit of managing pictures and documents. We think it is just perfect as a second computer for travelers who leave their main computer at home. The link below is the Netbook that we bought (pictured above.) If you buy one using this link, they will know that you were referred by Geeks on Tour.
ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005HA-PU17-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook – 10.5 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Starter)

If you really want to see the future of personal computers, check out the plans for future ‘One Laptop Per Child’ $75 tablet computers. If you follow that link, it’s a slide show – if you wait it will cycle to more pictures. One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is on the leading edge of the movement for small, easy, durable, and inexpensive computers. It’s a fascinating project – if you’re interested, here’s a video of the founder of OLPC – Nicholoas Negroponte. .

Using Gmail for All your Mail

chrisadmin — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 01:05:00 +0000

Jim just bought a Droid smartphone and he’ll be able to read and write his email on that little device now. So, what does he do when he’s sitting at his computer and sees the same email sitting in his Outlook inbox? He’s using the web-based Gmail program to read all his mail on the Droid. And, Outlook is programmed to download his email to his computer – creating a duplicate set of email.

To eliminate this dilemma, he’s decided to use Gmail for everything. The Gmail.com program can fetch his @geeksontour.com email and his @jimandchris.com mail as well as his @gmail.com mail. All 3 sets of email will be collected in his gmail.com inbox. Then he can use the web-based gmail program on his laptop, and be looking at the exact same thing from his Droid.

This is an example of ‘Cloud Computing’ where none of your data resides on your computer, rather it resides on the Internet … in the clouds … and you just use a computing device to connect to it.

You can use Gmail without using a gmail address

There are two ways to set up gmail to get email from your other addresses.

You can import all email and contacts from your other email. Then just use your @gmail.com address from that point forward.
You can set up the gmail program to fetch your other email and collect it in your gmail inbox. You can also set gmail to automatically label the fetched email so you know where it came from.
Using the ‘Fetch’ method means that people will continue to email you using your other address (e.g. @geeksontour.com) and gmail will make your responses be *from* your other address as well. Gmail will just be acting as your mail center for all the address you have set up.

The image below is a screenshot snippet of my gmail inbox. I have it fetching my @geeksontour.com email. Notice the green ‘labels’ telling me what email address each message was sent To. Only one message – the Daily Blog Tips – has no label, meaning it was actually sent to my @gmail.com address.

When I reply to a message, it will be ‘From’ the same account as it was To.