Email Attachments
You get a new PC or one that has been reloaded. You set up your email program. Now you get a message from a friend with an attachment in it but when you click on it you are asked for the program to use. What has happened? Is the computer not working? Is email broken? Did a virus mess up the email?
The usual answer to this question can be looked at two ways. The person who is sending your the attachment is sending one that is of a type you’re computer has never seen before or that a program that was previously on your PC hasn’t be loaded or reloaded on the PC.
Let’s look a little bit into how the computer operates. Your PC (or Mac) basically has two things in it programs and data. The data is the interesting stuff that you, or your friend, put together to do something interesting. Data can be an email you typed to a friend, pictures of the baby, music you downloaded, a spread sheet to keep track of household expenditures or an email, picture you received from someone. Anything you type into the computer, read, print or feed into your MP3 player is data.
Data by it self is useless. It is like a CD (or phonograph) without the player (record player). The music is there but without something to play it you can’t enjoy it. That is what programs do in the computer. The programs “play” the data.
When you double click on the icon for the picture of the baby the system looks to see what kind of data that icon has. Since its a picture it will bring up a program that will “play” the data in the picture file and show it on your screen. The same goes for all other types of data. Letters you typed could bring up the Microsoft Word program. Music data could start iTunes. Each type of data is “played” by a different program. The opposite is also true: each program “plays” certain types of data.
Back to our original problem. The attachment in the email is just some data. If the computer doesn’t have the program to “play” that type of data it complains and ask you for help. The trick here is that you have to find out what program will “play” that data. You can do that by asking your friend or by right clicking on it and clicking on “properties.” The next step is to find a program that will “play” that type of data.
Most types of data you are likely to encounter can be played with free programs. These can be downloaded and installed from the vendor that created the program that your friend used to create the attachment. Don’t just search for a program to play your data. More likely than not you will get a program that has been tampered with to include viruses.
So if your attachments are not playing. Find the program that will play that type of data. Install it and you will be enjoying your computer even more.
PC Tips
Using your computer can be easier, more convenient and more fun when you know some of the ways of using it. Here are
some tips that have helped many of my clients.
Put a program’s icon on the desktop – Some programs that you use may be reached through the “programs” in the “start” menu, then in a folder there, etc… If you want to put a program on your desktop go to it via the “programs” menu as usual. Right click the program and hold the click. While holding move the mouse pointer to anywhere on your desktop. Let go of the button. In the menu that pops up click on “copy.” Now to open that program just double click that new icon on your desktop.
Make your Internet bigger – When on the web do you need a bigger screen. You can see more of the web page by this tip. Go to the Internet (web browser: IE, firefox…). Look above the number keys. Hit the key labeled “F11.” It will make your browser window a bit bigger. To get out of it hit “F11” again.
Quick link to a web page – You can quickly go to a web page by using a bookmark (favorite). Just go the page you you want to access. Hold down the key labeled “Ctrl” and hit “D” (ctrl-d), let go. In the pop up that appears click “done” or “save.” Now look to the top of your window and click on the menu labeled “bookmarks”, “favorites” or possibly a star icon. You should see the web page listed there. Now whenever you want that web page you don’t need to search your history you can find it in your bookmarks.
Quickest link to a web page – Put a web page link on your desktop that you go to often. Go to your web page. Click in the address bar (where it has “http://…., showing your web page’s address). Now click ctrl-a then click ctrl-c. Now right click on your desktop click on “new” then click “short cut.” Then click ctrl-v. Hit enter and give the short cut a name. Hit enter again. Now just click on recently created icon that is on your desktop and your Internet opens up to that web page.
See more on your computer without going to a double screen – In the upper right click on the little box so that it looks like a stack of boxes. Make the window that results the size you want by putting your mouse pointer over any corner until it becomes a double arrow. Now click and hold. Move the mouse pointer around until it is the size you want then let go. Move the window by clicking and holding in the the wide area to the left of the three buttons on the right. Move the mouse pointer until the window is where you want it. You can then open another window and do the same. This allows you to refer to one thing while using another.
Questions? Ask at info@affinityCM.com or IM me at kurtrr on skype.
This and That
Shopping For Viruses
This Christmas more people a shopping on-line than ever before. The criminals of the Internet have their “presents” out there too. Remember to be safe. If a pop-up appears that is not one of your programs, tempts/frightens you to click a button or to hurry and get rid of the pop-up/window. DON’T! Don’t even move the window. Just shut off the computer. (Hold the off button for six seconds until it shuts down, if necessary.) You’ll have less problems with that than dealing with the viruses that are attacking now.
Computer Floods
You also may have noticed that computers are up in price. Be they Mac, Windows or Linux the hard disks that store your programs, pictures, word documents, etc. have risen in price from 150% to 300%. This is because of the recent flooding in Thailand. One of the largest manufacturers had it’s main factory submerged. All the vendors are attempting to fill the backlog. The shortages are expected to continue through most of 2012.
Happy Birthday PC
Dec. 19, 1974: The Altair 8800 microcomputer goes on sale… At its heart was the Intel 8080 microprocessor, with the remarkable capacity of 8 bits, or 1 byte. The kit offered a 256-byte memory, just about enough to contain one sentence of text. From Wired.com.
What’s Hot
The latest contender to Apple’s iPad is Amazon’s Kindle Fire. This $299 alternative is back in stock after an impressive launch. However, like the iPad, what can be loaded on it is restricted by the vendor. The Fire is more an e-reader than an e-tablet but certainly is more versatile than any previous reader. The Nook Tablet is another in this category. You can still get these for under the tree.
What’s Cool
A present from me to you. Here is a nice Christmas tree app for your android device. Scan this QR code. It will bring you to the download in the android market place.
Questions? Ask at info@affinityCM.com or IM me at kurtrr on skype. Your question may be in an upcoming blog/column.
The Speed of a PC
How fast is your computer? “It’s good enough for me”, you may say or “Its
too slow.” What is speed and what controls it? Just for fun let’s compare some computers.
2 gigaFLOPS for a normal home computer
8 gigaFLOPS for a powerful office computer
10,000 gigaFLOPS for the K supercomputer (5 million times faster than the home computer).
FLOPS is a measure of how many calculations a computer can do in a second. The K computer is more commonly stated as running at 10 petaFLOPS (between peta- and giga- prefixes is tera- for one trillion).
So what does this mean? Well, any good IT person will tell you it means almost nothing to us average Joes and Josaphines. There are many factors that go into how fast a computer will behave for what you are doing. The scientist working on combustion simulations for a new rocket nosel may need the K computer. But, using that same computer to do a term paper could cause it to use a lot more processing power than your home PC would. Continue reading
affinity Computer Masters’ 10th anaversery
This is the celebration of affinity’s 10th annaversery. Come join us for refreshments and prizes. Come to our offices/shop at 721 S. Mustang Road, just 1/4 mile South of Reno Ave on the West side in Mustang Creek Plaza. The festivities will be held Wednesday, the 9th from 4:30 to 6:30. We’re looking forward to seeing you there.
Kurt, Susan, Matt
Hidden PC Costs
Why does buying a PC cost so much more than what is listed in the ads?
People get frustrated when buying a Personal Computer / Mac / Laptop when the price for the PC ends up so much more than what is listed on the sticker. What are these sometimes hidden costs and what needs to be factored in to find out how much it will really cost in the end?
The price on the tag from the mass producers of PCs that you see on-line or on the store shelves is only for the hardware, either the Windows or Mac system and mostly superfluous software that advertise to you or extract information from you.
The most confusing of these “free” or “preloaded” products are the office and Internet security products. Free software usually means that the product is available for you without loading it. In order to use it you give personal information via registration to a third party. The “preloaded” products are much the same. They merely ask to to buy the software right away. Continue reading
Dumb Smart Phone
Believe it or not I only recently obtained a smart phone. My only justification for not getting one sooner is that my PDA was still working. That’s a “Personal Digital Assistant” for those of you who don’t remember back that long ago. Now we’ve heard of texting and driving being a problem and the teens can no longer legally do that. We’ve also heard of distracted driving. Well the smart phone definitely causes that. This article is a bit more personal than most but I think my experiences with technology are as per tenant as the next guys.
I’ve always tried to not talk while driving. I’ve had a couple of close calls while driving and phoning with a regular cell phone and I’ve had difficulty in stopping that behavior. I attribute this to my using wireless phones before there were cell phones. Perhaps this is why teens may have difficulty in stopping their texting wile driving. They have been using, some from a young age, before they were driving and have become habituated to responding to the tone that indicates a text message has arrived.
I began to look at my text messages while driving (not responding) but I found this also too distracting and have ceased doing that. I don’t think adults are any better at texting and driving than kids. Continue reading
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