Our daughter, June Reames, will
talk about using your computer to create Christmas booklets. Fabian Mueller
(an exchange student from Germany) will tell about Starry Night Pro – an
astronomy program. The rest of the time will be devoted to our usual questions
and answers.
Windows XP
To learn about some of the features
in Windows XP, try going to the START menu, and choosing HELP. From Help
– type in Walkthrough. This will give you a choice of five topics
that deal with such things as digital photos and music.
If you have a large enough
hard drive, you can install Windows XP as a second operating system. This
would allow you to have two operating systems on (like Windows XP and Windows
98). When starting the computer, you would be asked which system you wanted
to boot to.
When you download a file, you
transfer a copy of it from some computer out on the Internet to your computer.
To make this a useful feature, you have to know exactly where such files
go when they reach your computer. If you download a file and are unable
to find it, you might as well have never downloaded it at all.
When you click on a download
link on a Web page, your browser will display a small dialog box indicating
that you have chosen to download a file. The browser then presents you
with the choice of opening the file or saving it to your hard drive. If
you elect to save the file and click OK, a Save As dialog box appears.
This works just like the Save dialog box you get in almost any Windows
application; you select where the file should go by navigating through
the directory tree in the small window. Remember where you ended up, and
then click Save.
Pop Up Windows
Longing for the days before
advertisers came up with the bright idea to interrupt your surfing sessions
with pop-up windows? Panicware’s Pop-Up Stopper may be for you. You can
configure the software to run at startup and alert you when it prevents
pop-up windows from butting in. Alerts include a flashing icon in the System
Tray or a sound. The software stops all pop-up windows by default. You
can make exceptions and permit pop-up windows by pressing and holding SHIFT
or CTRL. This lets you work with Web sites that use pop-up windows for
legitimate reasons. Pop-Up Stopper is free to download and use, but they
happily accept donations. It requires Windows 9x or ME and Internet Explorer
5.0 or newer.
http://www.popupstopper.net/product_downloads.html
Broken Shortcuts
When you click on a shortcut
and see a "Not found" error, the shortcut is pointing to a program that
no longer exists, is looking for the program in the wrong spot, or is looking
for the wrong program.
Right-click the shortcut
and click Properties. Choose the Shortcut tab and look at the Target and
Start In boxes. Both should point to the folder where the program, which
the shortcut points to, is installed. The entry in the Target box should
end with the name of the EXE file. If the information doesn’t match, there
are two ways to fix things. You can type the real paths and targets into
the Target and Start In boxes. Navigate to the folder containing the EXE
file with which you want to associate the shortcut and look at the data
in the Address bar at the top of the folder. That is the path you will
need to type in the boxes in the Shortcut tab.
The easier option is to
delete the broken shortcut and create a replacement. Right-click the existing
shortcut and choose Delete to get rid of it. Now, navigate to the folder
containing the program for which you want to create a new shortcut. Right-click
the appropriate EXE file, select Create Shortcut and you are finished.
Drag the new shortcut to your Desktop or any other place you want to access
it from.
Volunteers Needed for AARP Income Tax
As you probably know, AARP does
income taxes for the elderly and lower income families. Volunteers are
asked to do 4 hours (or more) doing taxes.
Last year we started to
do e-file and this year we are hoping to expand this program.
We are looking for any people
who feel familiar with the computer that are willing to give up four hours
a week of their time to consider this program. Training will be in mid
January and taxes will begin in February. Tax sites will be the Deltona
Library and the DeLand Library.
If you are interested in
volunteering, please contact Helen Romph at either 386-736-2915 or ducklady@n-jcenter.com.
Lots of Good Information
Techtv – Here is a good web site that contains lots of good information
and ideas.
http://www.techtv.com
Terms
RAMDAC (RAM digital-to-analog converter)
– (Pronounced RAM dack). A video adapter chip that maintains the color
palette and changes digital data from memory into analog signals for display
on a computer monitor. A RAMDAC chip typically enhances overall video appearance
and performance.
kernel The main part of an operating
system. The kernel handles the most basic, but most important tasks, such
as managing the computer’s resources, starting programs, and keeping time.