 |
| Issue 7 - Summer Newsletter 2008 |
Welcome to Issue 7 of the Hillside Computer Services Newsletter.
In the PC world things have been even quieter than at the beginning of the year. There haven’t been any new major releases of hardware or software. There doesn’t seem to be any real reason I can put my finger on as to why not. It may be due to new developments waiting in the wings. Who knows?
So how am I going to fill this issue I hear you ask? Well loads of ways actually, there’s a competition and news on ways to save money to try to beat the Credit Crunch. And details of a series of workshops I’m running on digital photography.
Anti Virus News
AVG Free Anti Virus from Grisoft, which a large number of you are using have released a new version of their software. Unsurprisingly it’s called AVG Free Anti Virus 8.0 and offers a redesigned interface, more options and tools and runs much quicker than previous versions and is more effective.
If you are still using version 7.5, this version will stop being supported in the very near future i.e. no more anti virus definition files will be released and you will not be fully protected against virus intrusion. Now that version 8 has been released if you are an existing AVG 7.5 user or you want to start using AVG 8 for the first time, then call me and I can install and configure this new version for you. It doesn’t take long to do and will help ensure that your PC is protected against nasties. To quote Grisoft, “Only AVG 8.0 stops exploit threats before they become a problem”.
Speaking of nasties, there was a report on the BBC’s technology web site a couple of weeks ago about the increase of computer viruses, Trojans and Spy ware. A very interesting read. What astonished me was that at present there are more than 1.4 million viruses in circulation. What astonished me even more was that 25% of this 1.4 million have been “released” this year. EEK!
Therefore it is even more important to:
A) Make sure that your PC is protected with anti virus software
B) That the software is regularly updated (daily)
And
C) Regularly scan your PC for virus threats / intrusions. I highly recommend that you scan your PC at least once a week, ideally twice a week to be doubly sure / safe.
Not wishing to scare monger, I do know of quite a few people who for various reasons didn’t keep their anti virus software updated and lost all their work, emails, photos, the whole lot and ended up having to have their PC’s rebuilt and starting off from scratch. This is a time consuming job as well as an expensive exercise.
You have been warned!!
Ways to beat the Credit Crunch with your PC
(well, not exactly beat it; ease it at least)
OK on to less intimidating thoughts. Everyone likes a bargain don’t they?
Getting stuff for free isn’t a totally new concept is it? You can either steal something you want or you can trade or swap an unwanted item for something you’d like, or someone will give you the item you want for free. Or how about getting something even better than what you’ve got?
So let’s have a look at saving money first. If you are a Radio 2 listener, then you may have heard Martin Lewis talking about saving money on The Jeremy Vine Show on Friday lunchtimes (I know what you’re thinking “You’re too young to be a Radio 2 listener”. I know, but I do like Pop Master on Ken Bruce - usually mid 20’s and the odd 36 scores have been known and I do like Ask Elvis on Steve Wright). Anyway Martin has a web site called Money Saving Expert and is a great site for finding out about getting cheap flights, best broadband deals and how to get the best credit card deals etc. Have a look at his site, you’ll be surprised as to how easy it is to save on these and many other things.
For more money saving deals especially on your utilities take a look at uSwitch. You’ve probably seen it advertised on TV. You can check to see whether you’re paying over the odds for your utilities and then change over very easily to another utility company for a better deal. This is the voice of personal experience speaking now. Our electricity supply was provided by Npower Juice and were paying nearly £700 a year. I had a look on uSwitch because I thought the price was a bit high. I easily found a cheaper tariff provided by Scottish Power and am now saving nearly £200 per year by changing suppliers. Not bad for 10 minutes work on the web and so easy to do.
Free or cheap software is often a bone of contention. I used to be of the school of thought that “if it’s that good why are they giving it away”. Well, things have moved on. Yes, there is a huge amount of truly terrible free PC (and Mac) software out there. But once in a while gems do turn up.
Amongst these gems is Open Office. This is a software suite compatible with Microsoft Office. What this means for the budget conscious of us is that for a swiftish download you can install a suite of programs which are free, but enable you to create, open and edit Microsoft Office format documents.
Let’s take the scenario that you don’t have Microsoft Word installed on your PC and someone sends you an email with a Word file attached. What are you going to do? You can’t open the document because you don’t have the correct program installed to open it. Your only course of action would be to email the person back requesting that they send the attachment to you in text format. By doing this the document will lose all of it’s formatting, styles and layout. A bit of a compromise.
The applications included in Open Office are:
Program: Compatible With / Comparable to:
Writer Word
Calc Excel
Impress PowerPoint
Base Access
Draw A basic drawing package for producing diagrams and flow charts
Therefore, if you download and install Open Office, it will give you Microsoft Office compatibility without the expense. Not bad for a freebie eh.
Another program that’s worth it’s weight in gold is The Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program). This is very similar to Adobe Elements and Photoshop but without the financial implications. It allows you to easily crop, manipulate , adjust brightness and contrast and apply a whole host of effects to transform your digital images.
Skype is a great money saving product. Skype is a piece of software lets you make and receive free telephone calls from your PC across the Internet to other Skype users. Just connect a microphone and speakers to your PC and away you go. The other alternative is to attach a web cam to your PC and if the person you are calling has one fitted too you can not only hear them, but you can see them too. We have friends and relations in Australia and use Skype all the time to see and speak to them. A great boon across the miles. And all for free.
The final freebie bit of software for this edition is Mozilla Firefox 3. This is an alternative to using the slow and security vulnerable Internet Explorer (IE). It is an excellent application and is much faster to load pages than IE, more secure and is highly customisable (if you wish). And makes bookmarking and organising favourite web pages a breeze.
If you have any problems downloading / installing / configuring any of these superb applications or are unsure how to do it or what do do with it once you have downloaded it, then give me a call or drop me an email.
Printing. This money saving tip is more of a “how I can save money in the long run” rather than a quick and instant fix. Most of you have inkjet printers and would have found that the cost of replacement cartridges to be very expensive, especially if you use the genuine replacements rather that the often poor quality re-filled units.
The initial cost of buying an inkjet printer is very low indeed especially as you get a full set of cartridges included. Actually when I say “a full set of colour cartridges included”, what I actually mean is you get a set of sample cartridges, which are probably only good for 30 or 40 pages. Then you’ll have to buy a full set which can cost up to £60.00 depending on how many cartridges your printer takes.
I remember reading an article in a “techy” computer magazine from about 18 months ago where the cost of replacement inks was being discussed. At that time the cost of a gallon of inkjet ink was in excess of £5000 per gallon (it’s probably a lot dearer now). The journalist who wrote the article interviewed the Marketing manager from Lexmark (who manufacture home and business printers) and asked him to justify the high costs to the consumer (you and me). The Marketing Manager quoted King C. Gillette, the founder of the shaving product empire who said, ”If you can sell a man a razor, you can sell him blades for life”. Hmm. Food for thought!
If you do a lot of printing out of emails, documents / letters and web pages and if it doesn’t matter that the page isn’t in full “technicolor”, then the answer is adding a monochrome laser printer to your system. OK, they are more expensive to buy than an inkjet printer, but the running costs are a fraction of the price. You would still retain your colour inkjet printer, but use that for high days and holidays and use the laser printer for your everyday printing.
I use three printers in my office, a monochrome laser for my day to day printing. A colour laser printer for when a splash of colour is needed i.e. my invoices and these Newsletters. My hugely expensive Epson A 3+ inkjet is used for very high quality printing of photographs and is also hugely expensive to run.
Unless you have the specific need for one, I wouldn’t recommend a colour laser printer for home usage for numerous reasons: the size of the units are massive. They are very, very heavy and also extremely expensive to buy replacement cartridges for - about £400 for a full set for my Xerox Phaser, which will do about 1000 A4 sheets.
It costs about £70.00 for a genuine replacement toner cartridge for my aged, cheap and cheerful monochrome HP LaserJet. And that will print out over 6,500 pages for less than a 10th of a penny. Or, to put it another way, I only need to replace the cartridge every 2 to 3 years. I think that the cost of the printer was in the region of £200.00 when I bought it several years ago, so as I mentioned earlier, the initial purchase cost of the printer was quite expensive but the running costs are minimal.
Monochrome laser printers are rapidly coming down in price as they have now moved from the business world into the home computer realm.
Makes you realise doesn’t it at how easy it can be to save a few bob with very little effort?
Links to the web sites mentioned in this article:
Martin Lewis's Money Saving Expert - www.moneysavingexpert.com
uSwitch - www.uswitch.com
Open Office - www.openoffice.org
Gimp - www.gimp.org
Skype - www.skype.com
Firefox 3 - www.mozilla.com
NEWSLETTER & COMPETITION
Right, that’s got your attention
. As you can probably appreciate, it takes a lot of hard work and a huge expense in producing these Newsletters quarterly, especially as I produce over 500 copies per issue, it’s over £150.00 in postage alone plus my time, paper, toner and envelopes!!
In an effort to become more environmentally friendly and as part of my money saving exercises this will be my last “paper” version of the Newsletter.
But not to worry. Every quarter I shall send you an email with the link to the new Newsletter on my web site instead of posting it out to you. There you will be able to view the Newsletter at your leisure and print it out if you wish. The Newsletter will be able to be read and printed by using Adobe Acrobat Reader as it will be in PDF format.
A real benefit apart from the cost saving implications is that in producing the Newsletter in this manner will allow me to add more content, add direct links to web sites mentioned - no more copying web addresses and greater functionality.
To do this I do need your co-operation. If you would like to receive the Newsletter in it’s new on-line format I need your current email address as people chop and change email addresses fairly frequently. I’m sure my records are out of date. I would also ask that you keep me updated of your email address changes in the future.
I would appreciate it if you would send me an email with Newsletter in the subject box. I can then add you to my address book and inform you when the next issues is available for viewing / printing.
If you DON’T contact me by email, then I am afraid that you won’t receive the link for the on-line issues.
As an extra incentive for you to “subscribe”, I am running a competition. The idea is simple. Whoever sends me the 123rd email request to receive the Newsletter in this new format will receive a fantastically stylish and fast Lacie 500 GB External Hard Disk Drive. You can use it to back your work onto or for storing your massive collection of digital photos and music on. This is a superb hard drive which costs over £150.00 and I shall deliver and install it for you too.
Those people who try to send me 123 emails from their own account will not receive the prize!! You can bet your bottom dollar that someone will try to beat the system!
The successful entrant will be notified by email and will have their name published in the first electronic edition.
Rest assured that your details will not be passed on to any third party and will only be used by Hillside Computer Services for newsletter emails and news.
Making The Most Of Your Digital Photographs
A lot of you I know have taken the plunge into digital photography and are having lots of fun with it. However, some aspects of it can be a challenge, especially as to what they can do with their shots once they have been taken.
Responding to these needs I am running workshops of four, one hour sessions in the comfort of your own home to teach you:
To use either your existing imaging software or Gimp (see earlier article)
Saving images to your PC
Filing and naming of images
Burning images to CD / DVD for backup and archival purposes
Image manipulation and adjustment
Image editing
Printing and using the correct paper for the correct job
The cost of these four, one hour sessions is £100.00 and will provide you with the knowledge required to turn an alright image into a great image.
To see examples of what can be achieved with digital photography, visit my photographic web site:
Digitally Diverse - www.digitally diverse.co.uk
Please contact me for further details.
Joke
 |
| (Taken from a computer magazine a very long time ago) |
Remember that if you want to receive the new format Newsletter on-line then please send me your email address. If you are lucky enough to be the 123rd sender you will receive a fantastically stylish and fast Lacie 500 GB External Hard Disk Drive for you to use to backup your work onto or for storing your collection of digital photos and music on etc. This is a superb hard drive which costs over £150.00 and I shall deliver and install it for you too.
Happy and safe computing.
Mike Hamilton Hillside Computer Services (01284) 830830 Hillside Computer Services |
|
