April’s Here. More Friday Fun

It being April 1st, I think it’s fair to issue a BOLO (Be On the Look Out). Pranksters, there be.

April Fools’ Day has hit the Internet and, as usual, there’s no shortage of fake news stories, gag product announcements, and corny jokes. Some are funny. Some are sort of lame attempts at being funny.
Keep this in mind, and don’t get duped.

Not so fun – ny: April is – of course – tax month. Yippee.
Two weeks. To help, on the IRS site there is a page called “FreeFile”, and here you will find the “partnership links” to the free versions of 19 accepted tax prep programs — of which H&R Block’s Free File and also TurboTax are available.
To qualify, you must have an Adjusted Gross Income of $56,000 or less.

Today’s free link: FreeFile at the IRS
Note: there’s two buttons on the page; “I will choose” and “help me choose”. Though all of the programs there are accepted by the IRS, I would recommend clicking the “I will choose”, and then selecting either H&R Block or TurboTax.

News

Holy cow! (Not sure I like this…) New, today (I think): Gmail Motion (beta)

A new way to communicate
The mouse and keyboard were invented before the Internet even existed. Since then, countless technological advancements have allowed for much more efficient human computer interaction. Why then do we continue to use outdated technology? Introducing Gmail Motion — now you can control Gmail with your body.

How it works
Gmail Motion uses your computer’s built-in webcam and Google’s patented spatial tracking technology to detect your movements and translate them into meaningful characters and commands. Movements are designed to be simple and intuitive for people of all skill levels.

Huh? “Patented spatial tracking technology” ? (One of those words makes me nervous..)

* * *

I am looking out my window at what appears to be our 3rd straight day of gorgeous, warm sun. I have been valiantly resisting – after weeks of rain and gray and cold – the urge to play hookie. But since it’s Friday, I think I will stop resisting and just plain do so. Give myself a three day weekend. Spring is here!

No. I will not be pulling any “pranks” this year. I must be getting old.. I cannot even remember back to wanting to do any April Fool gags .. sigh.

Do Not Try This At Home Department:

* Baseball is back: In the first game of the season, the World Champion S.F. Giants…
lost to the (arch-rivals) Dodgers. Off to a good start, 0 – 1.

[Note: my “playing hookie” does not – necessarily – mean I will not post articles, or answer my phone… but just in case, have a great weekend folks!]

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April 1, 2011 Posted by techpaul | e-mail, Google, Internet, News | Beta, free, FreeFile, gestures, Gmail, motion, programs, tax-prep | 2 Comments

Added Security For Social Networking

A new version of WOT

Folks, I received a ‘heads up’ yesterday that I want to pass along to you.

“It has been a while since I updated you on what’s going on at Web of Trust. Our free website reputation rating add-on has grown to 18 million users worldwide who have rated over 31 million unique domains for trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy protection and child safety.

There is a new version of WOT that will benefit our users of social networking sites Facebook and Twitter. The new version of WOT offers the same protection as usual with the addition of reputation rating icons in Facebook, Twitter and with shortened URLs by most popular services, such as bit.ly and t.co.
This will greatly reduce the incidence of risky URLs being passed along and opened.

A beta version of WOT for Social Media is available at http://www.mywot.com/beta. (The beta is available for Firefox users only.)”

Folks, I have not had a chance to test this beta, but I am a fan of Web Of Trust (aka “WOT”) and have recommended it here many times before (see, You have received an eCard.. WOT?). If you use Firefox, and you Facebook and Tweet, you may want to give this add-on a test drive, and be safer on the web.

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March 15, 2011 Posted by techpaul | computers, security | add-on, Beta, browser, download, Facebook, Firefox, free, Internet safety, Internet security, security, social networking, software, techpaul, twitter, wot | 2 Comments

A word about betas (reader question)

Q: The Firefox 4 (beta) looks pretty good. Is there anything I should ask you about Firefox4 before I install it?

A: Dear Reader,
“Beta” quite literally translates to “not ready for Prime Time”, and the “rule of thumb” is: do not play with betas on production machines.

If you have a computer you can use as a “testbed”, that has nothing of real value on it, and you wouldn’t care much if it crashed, you can go ahead and play (aka “test it out”) with a beta program.

In this specific case, (Firefox 4) this is, like, the 9th version of the beta.. meaning, it is getting close to “release”, and so is probably fairly refined and stable.
But.. what would the gain be for going ahead and trying it? What benefit? What would the cost be if it crashed your machine? Only you can weight that.

To me.. Firefox is a web browser, meaning — it opens web pages. Browsers have been doing that for years now… The only reason I can really see for updating a web browser is security. Personally, I will wait for Firefox 4.1 before I switch.

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March 3, 2011 Posted by techpaul | advice, browsers, computers, Firefox, Internet | Beta, firefox 4, techpaul | 6 Comments

Click, click, fixed!

Some time ago now, I told you about Microsoft introducing 1-click “fix it” buttons on some of their support pages, (see, Microsoft “One-click” Fixes) which greatly simplified D-I-Y repair.

Microsoft’s has now released a new program (beta) called Fix It Center, which combines downloaded tools and online “fix its”. This gives those of you running older versions of Windows (XP, Vista) some of the same diagnostic and repair tools found in Windows 7.

Fix it Center finds and fixes many common PC and device problems automatically. Fix it Center helps to consolidate the many steps of diagnosing and repairing a problem into an automated tool that does the work for you.

When downloaded and installed, Fix It Center scans your computer, and automatically downloads the appropriate toolset for your setup. Thus, Microsoft Fix it Center personalizes solutions for your device, showing you only what matters to your hardware and software.

These tools not only find and repair ‘glitches’, but help prevent new ones, and best of all, it’s automated. (It’s not automatic, you need to open it and run it occasionally [or set as a Scheduled Task] but it does run several diagnostic routines, and then offers the solutions.)

I have installed it on several machines without issue, and am quite impressed. This tool is a great way to “optimize” your machine, even if it currently has no ‘glitches’.
Automated stuff like this could put us techs out of business… (well, not really, but you should, IMHO, look at this tool.)

Visit Fix It Center Online and find out more.. and maybe download it too!

Today’s recommended reading: A FREE Way to Monitor Your Kids Online Activity
“If you are a parent who has children who use the computer to access the internet it is very important that you educate yourself and your child about the dangers of the internet. It is important to have strict guidelines in place on their computer usage and a method to supervise and monitor their online activities.“

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May 4, 2010 Posted by techpaul | advice, computers, free software, how to, Microsoft, PC, performance, tech, troubleshooting, Vista, Windows, XP | Beta, diagnose, download, fix, fix it center, free, Microsoft, one-click, performance, repair, review, software, techpaul, troubleshooting, Vista, Windows, XP | 6 Comments

Vista’s painless data migration tool–Holiday Edition

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Tech–for Everyone is taking a short break for the Holiday, and I am re-posting a prior article. This post appeared 11/2/07, and the second half describes a very cool method to transfer your data and settings to a new machine. I sincerely hope you all have a safe and a happy holiday. My online Tech Support business is open as usual.

Loyal friends and true of this series may have the feeling that I have nothing nice to say about Vista. Today I’m going to prove that concept as untrue. I do have some nice things to say.

But first let me review some of the truths that aren’t so nice:
1) Vista is “resource intensive”. That means it’s big, and it takes a lot of RAM to run properly — Vista should be run on a dual-core CPU and have at least a GigaByte of RAM memory (fast RAM memory), and really should be run on two Gigabytes. And..

2) Vista doesn’t like really old devices. It is becoming easier to find device drivers for older hardware, and this ‘truthism’ is becoming less true, but if you have a really old device, (say a printer that attaches via a parallel port), or an old and never-was-popular device (say a very early Radio Shack TV ‘tuner’ card), then you should be prepared to buy a more up-to-date replacement.

3) The first “Service Pack” hasn’t been released yet.

Because of these facts (as I have mentioned before in such articles as Upgrading to Vista) I have advised my readers not to “upgrade” their existing (and therefore older) machines to Vista — especially without having first run the Vista Upgrade (Compatibility) Advisor tool. And I did warn folks that an Upgrade cannot be undone.
Why pay money for a operating system that will bog down, and your sound card and video capture card won’t run? That’s what will happen if you Upgrade a 2½-to-5 year-old PC. Just because it works dandy-fine on XP, doesn’t mean it’ll work on Vista.

No. Don’t Upgrade to Vista.. upgrade to a new machine (that has Vista on it). I stick by that opinion. Unflinchingly.

Vista is slick. It’s more secure. It’s going to bring us (eventually) advances in our video games. It actually competes with Apple. It doesn’t bury Settings so deeply nor hide them so well. It has new (to Windows) features. And…
1) It does some (most, actually) things better than XP does.

What do I mean? Well, recently I had the unique pleasure of installing a whole new network: everything was new — brand new Vista PCs, new WAPs/routers, and Gigabit Ethernet on Cat6. This was quite a bit of a different experience than adding Vista machines to an existing (XP-based) network.. or even of adding XP machines to a XP-based network. Granted, this was a SOHO network of less than 10 machines, and I wasn’t dealing with Active Directory, but the difference was night and day.

I was most impressed by the fact that each machine joined the network, and saw its neighbors, effortlessly. This was easy to see happening, too. Vista shows you a dynamic network map. Routers and the Internet were automatically detected.
Folder sharing worked as it should.. no strange Permission errors.. no “folder climbing”, as with prior editions. For you audiophiles, Vista and Windows Media Player (can) readily and automatically shares (like a server) each machine’s music libraries.. a couple of clicks, for that.

And this is what blew me away– all the machines were to share an older HP DeskJet. And the network’s owner didn’t want to purchase the equipment make a print server, but to use one of the PCs.. like most people do at home. So I installed the printer and then clicked on “Share this printer”, like I’ve done a thousand times before. Then I went to each machine and opened their Printer section of the Control Panel, and there was the printer! Whoa! All I had to do was make sure it was set as the default printer (one click).
Did I say, “blew my mind”? I was floored. No “Add new printer” wizard. No trying to browse to a \\XPmachine\HPDeskJet share. No error messages. Wow. This was Plug and Play the way it’s supposed to be! Too easy.
My hours spent installing the network was a mere fraction of what I was (from experience) reasonably expecting. Not good for my bottom line; great for Vista owners.

For those of you who have ever used a User State Migration Tool, or Easy Files and Settings Transfer tool, to migrate your data from an old computer to your new computer — or purchased a special program, or cable — you know that getting your new machine exactly as you had your old machine required some time and effort.

The owner of the new network wanted me to replicate his XP set up onto one of the new Vista machines, and the usual method has been to to use one of the techniques mentioned in the paragraph above. But I didn’t. I used an adjunct to Window’s built-in Easy Files and Settings Transfer tool, which will be today’s free link.
I downloaded this program to both his XP machine and the new Vista machine. Then I plugged his XP machine into the new network. Surprise! The XP machine was instantly seen and recognized. (Try doing the reverse, and see if the XP machines find the Vista..)
Then I launched the Windows Easy Transfer Companion on the Vista PC and followed the wizard. The two machines established a connection and the XP machine transferred its installed programs, and all the files, and all of the owners tweaks and settings (like bookmarks, and custom toolbars). All I did was watch.
This was, by far, the fastest and easiest user state migration I’ve ever experienced, and truly was like the title of this article — painless. Again, this is bad for a PC Tech’s bottom line, but great for Vista owners.

Today’s free link: When you buy a new PC, you will almost certainly want to transfer all kinds of things from the machine you’ve been using to the new one. Microsoft has “a companion” for the Easy Files and Settings Transfer tool called the Windows Easy Transfer Companion. It is actually a ‘stand-alone’. This tool not only transfers your documents and personalized Settings tweaks, but the programs you have installed. This is a huge time saver.
I did my transfer over the local network, but you can use the other methods of data storage to make the transfer as well– including USB thumb drives. [Note: while Microsoft still considers this program to be in beta, I experienced absolutely no hiccups or difficulties at all.]

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December 25, 2007 Posted by techpaul | advice, computers, hardware, how to, PC, tech, Vista, Windows, XP | Beta, Easy File and Settings Transfer Tool, new Vista machine, User State migration, Vista features, XP to Vista | Leave a comment

Vista’s painless transfer tool