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| Issue 9 - Autumn / Winter Newsletter 2009 |
Welcome to Issue 9 of the Hillside Computer Services Newsletter.
It hasn't been that long since Issue 8 "came off the presses", but there have been quite a few developments in recent months, such as OSX Snow Leopard and Windows 7 being released. More about those further on. So what else have I got for you? Some articles on digital photography and dealing with those dreaded call centres, an odd joke or 2 and some other nuggets of information. Happy reading. Oh yes, don't forget that you can print this newsletter off to read at your leisure. Just press the print button on your web browser.
Organising Your Digital Photographs
Out on my visits to customers, it is surprising/ encouraging to see how many people have now got digital cameras. What is even more surprising is how many people haven't organised their pictures into any semblance of order.
The rationale behind this process is that many people take a photo on their digital camera, download it to their computer and then the picture never sees the light of day again because you can't find it. Therefore giving your folders and images tangible names makes it easy to find them.
It isn't difficult to do, though it can be time consuming - an ideal activity to undertake during these long and dark nights.
I shall skip the process of moving your pictures across from your digital camera over onto your computer as you've more than likely accomplished this by now (if you haven't, give me a call and I can go through it with you if you like) and shall just talk about organising them, which will aid you in finding a particular image in the future.
If you open your My Pictures or Pictures (if using Windows Vista or Mac OSX) you will see something like this, a whole pile of folders anonymously named.
Please note that these screen shots are from Windows XP. The processes are identical whether you use Vista or mac OSX.
If you were to double click on one of these folders, you would probably see something like this:
Once again fairly anonymous and doesn't mean much.
So what you can do, is to start naming your folders in relationship to their contents i.e. Holiday - Greece 2009, Aldeburgh 2008 or Garden 2009 etc. The choice is yours. Here's an example:
Now that you've named your folders to something tangible, you can now start re-naming your images (this is the time consuming bit, but worth it in the end). You'll end up with something like this:
You don't have to rename all of them, just the ones you are particularly proud of and need to / want to find again easily. It's far easier trying to find a folder containing your recent holiday shots called Holiday 2009 than trying to navigate through umpteen untitled folders.
Online Printing
Now that you've organised your images, you probably want to print a few prized pictures off to either frame, or just to show friends. Your printer may not be up to the job, it may be short of ink or you have no photo printing paper, or even can't be botherd, so give these people a try.
Snapfish is an on-line photo printing service and I've heard very good reports about them. Quick turn round of prints, good quality and not too badly priced either.
All you do is go to their web page, register, upload your images from your computer, pay and wait for a couple of days for you pictures to be delivered.
You can even get your favourite picture put onto mugs, mouse mats and calendars!
Photobooks
Did you know that you can have you pictures professionally printed as a book?
blurb.com is a company which specialises in professionally printing photobooks / albums. You can produce a book of your holiday photos, weddings, portfolio etc. You can choose the size and format of the book, how many pages, hardback or paper back, paper quality and loads more options. All you do is create an account, download the photobook creation software onto you computer (PC and Mac). Install the software and away you go. Once you've produced your book, you then upload it to their site and pay for it. The book is delivered in about 10 days (from the USA). What's also good about Blurb is that you can put captions against your pictures (you do the whole compositing of the book - all the design processes and proof reading). If you are an author (budding or otherwise) or a poet, there are templates to guide you in the layout.
They make ideal presents and people can buy your book from Blurb if you wish and you get paid for the sale. Not bad in today's climate.
JPGS / JPEGS
Still on the subject of photography, if you are adjusting your images, tweaking brightness or contrast and then save your tweaked image as a JPG / JPEG, you will lose some definition from the image. This type of file is known as lossi.
This is due to the way in which JPG files are constructed. They use an algorithm (sum), which compresses the data when saved. If, for example you have a JPG image with an area within it of 200 red pixels, all touching and exactly the same colour, the JPG algorithm makes a "note" saying that such and such an area has 200 pixels of the same colour and compresses the area because pixels are all identical.
So, if you open a JPG file, which in effect expands the file, and you then make a change to the file e.g. crop the image and then re-save it, some of the information or to put it another way: definition stored within the file is lost. This is particularly noticeable when using low resolution images.
The way to overcome this is to download the images onto your computer. Open them up with your favourite image editing software and re-save them with a TIFF extension. TIFF is an image file format which is lossiless. It doesn't lose any definition when the file is changed. The TIFF format will still see this hypothetical area of 200 red pixels, all of exactly the same colour, BUT it will treat each pixel individually.
So, to recap. Open your unedited JPG file with your favourite piece of image software; Photoshop Elements and then Save As, and select TIFF as the file extension NOT JPG. The results will not be immediately apparent until you view the image full size, zoom in onto the image or you print out the image.
News
Apple OSX - Snow Leopard 10.6
Things have been moving pretty rapidly over the past 2 months. Apple have released their new operating system: OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard. There are quite a few changes to the operating system. Apple have done wonders by really optimising it and making the actual operating system smaller in size that 10.5.6 (Leopard). That means that you've got more space on your hard drive for your data and other applications.
The Finder has been re-written, so that the machine runs quicker, boot up times are miniscule. There is a new version of Quicktime and Time Machine's backups take even less time. The whole operating system is 64-bit. This means that applications run a lot quicker than their 32-bit counterparts.
There aren't that many visual changes in Snow Leopard from Leopard. Most of the work in this new release has been getting things running quicker and more efficiently.
Another plus, is that an upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard is only a paltry £25.00. Other software manufacturers should take note.
Watch this space, because in the next few weeks I'll be taking the plunge in upgrading my Mac Pro Desktop to Snow Leopard. I can tell you one thing for certain, and that it will be far less traumatic (and quicker to do) than when I upgraded my Windows XP PC to Vista 2 years ago! See the Spring 2007 Newsletter for all the gory details.
Please note: Snow Leopard will only install on Intel based macs NOT PPC models. If you are unsure what processor type you have, give me a call.
Microsoft Windows 7
Windows 7 finally hit the streets a few weeks ago in less than their normal aggressive hail of publicity. In fact the release was overshadowed by Apple's release of Snow Leopard. I have only seen a couple of adverts in the PC press and a couple of adverts on TV. However, this time around, Microsoft released a pre-release version for anyone to download and install (at their own risk) to try it out and report any anomalies / peculiarities before the final version was released.
Well, I am pleased to say that I successfully downloaded and installed the pre-release software - Windows 7 Ultimate. Downloaded and installed my printer drivers, installed my copy of Microsoft Office 2007, installed some anti virus software and got my Internet / email up and running within a couple of hours. No real problems were encountered.
The minimum system requirements (according to Microsoft) are:
- 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
- 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
- 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
- DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
- Internet access
- Depending on resolution, video playback may require additional memory and advanced graphics hardware
- For some Windows Media Center functionality a TV tuner and additional hardware may be required
- DVD/CD authoring requires a compatible optical drive
- Windows XP Mode requires an additional 1 GB of RAM, an additional 15 GB of available hard disk space, and a processor capable of hardware virtualization with Intel VT or AMD-V turned on
- Music and sound require audio output
The general consensus is that you will need more memory (RAM), preferably 3 GB and a lot faster processor than a 1GHz one. Reading between the lines of the various web forums, it would appear that if you have a well specified PC of less than 12 months old, then you should be able to run Windows 7 on it. If your PC is between 12 and 18 months old, then you MAY be able to upgrade to Windows 7.
What's new then? Well, pretty much everything, though the OS does look very much like Vista.
- Pin, allows you to pin programs and files onto the taskbar
- An improved and faster search facility
- Live Task bar Previews - similar to that of Vista, but with larger on screen previews
- Snap, allows you to arrange two windows exactly side by side (I'm not too sure of the point of this - Mike)
- Jump Lists allow you to quickly access your most commonly used files and programs
The Ultimate and Professional editions allow applications to be run in Windows XP mode, that is if your particular piece of software won't run under Windows 7in its native mode.
So, I hear you say "Can I have it and how much is it?" Yes, you can have it, though it would be prudent to leave it for a few months and let other users find the problems with it (the same as car manufacturers bringing out a new model car).
As usual Microsoft has released the operating system in the usual variety of flavours, namely Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate editions. Prices range from approx. £150.00 for Home Premium right up to £230.00 for the Ultimate edition. So there is bound to be a version that suits you.
Parallels 5
This is a real boon to Apple users who want to be able to run Windows software on their Intel based machines. I have had the older version of Parallels 4 installed on my Mac for a few months as my accounts software isn't available for the Mac and seeing as it's taken me years to learn to do my accounts (and to be honest, I couldn't cope with learning a new accounts package from scratch), this is the easy option.
Parallels 5 allows you to install numerous versions of operating systems onto your Mac e.g. Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Ubuntu. The list goes on. It is fully Windows 7 compatible, whereas the version I have (4) is a little problematic with Windows 7. You can even have multiple operating systems running simultaneously. I must admit that it's quite a kick having XP, Vista and Ubuntu all running at the same time and being able to move documents between each of them and being able to print from any of them.
Install Parallels 5 onto your Mac's hard drive. Install whatever version of Windows (or whatever OS you'd like to install) you want to run (you do need a legal copy of the operating system you'd like to install. None are supplied with the package). All the necessary software drivers are installed - sound, graphics, USB etc. All you need do then is install your printer drivers and what ever application software you need. In my case it was QuickBooks, and away you go. Dead easy and less than £60.00.
AVG Free Anti Virus version 9
A new version of AVG Free Anti Virus has been released, which supescedes version 8.5. If you wish to continue using AVG then you MUST upgrade to Version 9 as 8.5 will stop being supported on 1st December. The program will still work after that date, but you will not receive any new anti virus definition files and therefore you will not be protected by the oodles of nasties lurking in cyberspace.
If you haven't upgraded yet, and you'd like me to do it for you, then please contact me as soon as possible.
Hints and Tips
How to speed up your PC
If your PC is flagging a little, or not as fast you thought it was, or should be, then there is a fairly simple upgrade that can be done. That is to add some more memory (RAM). When windows XP first came out, it ran quite happily with 256 MB RAM. Over a period of time the PC has undoubtedly had numerous Windows XP Updates applied, you've added loads of documents which used to open instantly and now seems to take an age to open, all anti virus programs slow PCs down. These days Windows XP runs far quicker and reliably with a minimum of 1 GB RAM.
This is true also of Vista, though the amount of RAM differs. Originally it ran reasonably happily with 512 MB RAM. Now Vista with all of it's updates etc. needs a minimum of 2GB RAM, though it does prefer 3 GB.
The upgrade isn't something you can easily do, as it means the removal of the PC's side panels and new chips fitting inside.
How much is this gong to cost me? Well it all depends on the make and model of the PC (they all use different types of memory, which of course means different prices) and also how much RAM you'd like fitting. Give me a call or drop me an email and we can have a chat about it.
Call Centres, love 'em or hate 'em?
Personally I cringe and my blood pressure rises abruptly whenever I have to contact a call centre. I hate the nasty "Press 1 for sales, press 2 for accounts, press 3 for World peace and Press 4 to be unexpectedly cut off" systems.
There was an interesting piece on Channel 5's Gadget Show a couple of weeks ago, telling you how to overcome the problems which you, me and most other people experience.
Firstly, as you may know, the majority of call centre staff work form a script. They do not and cannot deviate from this script. So, before you telephone one, write down on a piece of paper whatever the problem you are experiencing. Reread it and make sure that it makes sense. Try to use the correct terminology. Also make a note of any account numbers / names, which are appropriate ie. your email address: fredblogs@internetprovider.com. So instead of saying "my wireless thingamabob is playing up", say instead "my account name is fredblogs@internetprovider.com and my Netgear 123 XYZ wireless router has lost connectivity". If you aren't sure what the correct terminology is, then 'phone a friend, or ask the audience.
Using the correct terminology will aid the call centre staff to ascertain what the problem is a lot quicker and more efficiently without having to second guess what it is you're trying to tell them.
OK. So, you've now written down exactly what you want to ask the call centre, and you're ready to pick up the 'phone. Don't. Do you really want to pay up to 50p per minute phoning an 0871 number? No, of course you don't. Instead you go on line and go to this site:
http://www.saynoto0870.com/search.php
Enter the name of the company you want to contact, and you'll be given the geographic telephone number for that particular company (01, 02 etc.).
If the company isn't listed, you can try this site:
http://gethuman.com/numbers/uk
This gives instructions in bypassing all the "Press 1 for this, press 2 for that" malarkey and will generally let you beat the 'phone system, hopefully avoiding endless waits and button pressing.
Once you eventually get through to a human being and your problem isn't resolved in the manner to which you would expect, you can rattle of an email to the Big Boss. Don't bother complaining to the supervisor or team leader, go straight to the top. This link will give you a list of CEO's, their email addresses and some other details.
http://www.connectotel.com/marcus/ceoemail.html
Hopefully after reading this, the next time you need to contact a call centre, it should be a lot less stressful and quicker.
Jokes
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach him to use the Internet, and he won't bother you for weeks!
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Endpiece
Christmas Closing - a note for your diary
I am aiming to close for Christmas at 5.00 pm. prompt on Tuesday 22nd December and will re-open on Monday 4th January. If you do need to contact me URGENTLY, please, either leave a message on the answer machine or send me an email. I will be occasionally popping into the office during this time, but please bear with me as I may not be able to get back in touch with you until the New Year.
Well, that's about it for this time. I hope you enjoyed the read and picked up a few idea and tips.
Until next time I'd like to wish you all a Very Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New year.
Don’t forget that back issues of the Newsletters are available to view and then be printed off from www.hillsidecomputers.co.uk
For more information and details on any of the issues mentioned in this missive or any computing problems / queries, please contact me, and don’t forget to send me your email address if you’d like to be kept in touch with what’s happening in the computer world. Your details will not be passed on to any third party.
Happy and safe computing.
Mike Hamilton Hillside Computer Services (01284) 830830 Hillside Computer Services |
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