Thursday, July 28, 2016

Hangouts Class Summary 7-28-2016

Tomorrow is the last day to get your free upgrade-Reserve Windows 10 without using it. To be sure you have activated your new OS, Win+I > Update & Security > Activation
http://tinyurl.com/ztastmb

Verizon new Yahoo owner. $4.83 billion [US Dollar] in cash.
http://tinyurl.com/glggelb

Disposable eMail – Good Defense Against eMail Abuse. And it is from Google. Create your own by just making one up...like yourname@maildrop.cc. No registering needed. Just give sites that address and their spam will not get sent to your primary email. You can go to maildrop.cc and see the mail that ends up in that mail box at anytime. Others could be using the same address, so you might see more than what you expect if you use a generic name. Perhaps yourname12345 might be better than just your name.
http://tinyurl.com/hq9h923

Windows 10 future = $7 per month! Only for business customers for now. I wonder when they will start to charge home users. Hope never or we may be looking at a version of Linux which is free.
http://tinyurl.com/jzf4ecy

When Windows 10 installs, IE does not show because they want us to use Edge. And they do not move your IE favorites to Edge. You can search for IE and add it the taskbar and you can open Edge and import your favorites to it. Your favorites were not lost.

Favorites is what they are called in IE. Chrome calls them Bookmarks. To turn on the Bookmark Bar (shows under the address bar), Ctrl+Shift+B. This will toggle it on and off.

When you are running Glary Utilities on your system, the default settings will cause a popup to the right of the taskbar when programs you have installed need updates. It is OK to click the popup and do the installs. Jesu be careful that you do not let the installs add additional programs to your PC. You can turn the notification off by opening Glary > Overview tab > uncheck the bottom box (Check for software updates automatically).


Thursday, July 14, 2016

Class Summary 7-14-2016


Lose your keys or your car in that huge parking lot? $29 Stick one of these tiny tracking devices on you car, wallet, keys, … and an app on your smartphone will let you know exactly where you left...
http://tinyurl.com/je7noza

This site contains a long list of Google voice commands you can use
http://tinyurl.com/jkoarye

Ever wish there was a way to hyphenate words in a document so you did not have all that extra space on the right side of a line of text? Well you can. This is an automatic feature of MS Word. All you need to do is turn it on!


Automatically hyphenate a Word document
On the Page Layout tab, in the Page Setup group, click Hyphenation, and then click Automatic.

Uninstall ALL of that program with Revo Uninstaller. Sometime the Windows uninstaller just does not work. You program is not uninstalled or not all if it goes. And the leftovers can be a program. Revo gets rid of all traces of the program. Works great.
http://tinyurl.com/n9m4bpw

We have talked a lot about lower cost alternatives to your home phone. Here is one that is totally free each month. GVMate lets you plug a “regular” house phone into your PC and use it with Google Voice eliminating all your phone charges for that house line.
http://tinyurl.com/z7q958a

Control over automatic downloads

Win+I > Network & Internet

Advance options



Set as metered connection ON


AntiVirus update
Avast purchasing AVG for 1.3b
Sophos Home is free and looks good
http://tinyurl.com/gux2npt

Ransomware recovery tools. I still think making regular image backups plus using OneDrive for your document is your best insurance. But these tools may get you out of the locked up system should you get caught by one of these Ransomware attacks.
https://decrypter.emsisoft.com/

Was asked about Free Telly and found a good youtube video about it. Cannot be added to FireStick, but works right on your PC or Mac. Simple video shows you how to install it. I think I will give it a try on my test machine first.
http://tinyurl.com/jmos4uk

Covered how to set your startup website for Google Chrome. Also works similarly in Firefox and IE.

Open Chrome

Locate the site you would like to have open when the browser starts
Click the menu tool in the upper right

Click Settings


Click the third radio button under On startup, then click Set pages

Click Use current pages and then click OK.

Sign out of Chrome, then go back into it. Your new startup page should be open


Friday, July 8, 2016

Class Notes 7-7-2016




Good class today using Google Hangouts. Thanks for joining in. I hope to see more of you in the seeks to come. The link is http://tinyurl.com/dickevans



This is the WiFi extender I purchased to have Internet at my house. My neighbor who is about the length of 3 football fields away gave me permission to sign on and use his WiFi while I will be here. The signal was too weak to connect and I had to resort to using my cell phone hot spot, but quickly ran out of data. I ordered this inexpensive extender and his signal jumped up to 2 solid bars. It needs a Windows PC to with a USB port to use it. It is a WiFi adaptor by itself so you do not use the WiFi adaptor in your notebook. It will also work on a desktop PC. It will not work on a tablet, cell phone, or chromebook. Here is the link to what I ordered:
http://tinyurl.com/jby3xzv

Just read an article explaining the Windows Scam phone calls many have been receiving. It is worth the read. The article begins with this “I am calling you from Windows.” Perhaps you have gotten one of these callers. I know I have.
http://tinyurl.com/zn3f48c

When you want to remember a website address for easy access later, save it as a bookmark.



With the page in view and therefore its address in the Address Bar, click the star to the right of the address line in Google Chrome. IE and Firefox also has the star and IE calls them favorites instead of bookmarks. You can change the name to something shorter or more descriptive and change the folder the shortcut is stored in. The bookmark bar is the bar that shows below the address bar. It is off by default but can be turned on for quick access to frequently used shortcuts.



Click the menu button (three bars) and then click Bookmarks



That pops up your complete list of saved bookmarks. Notice the checkmark next to Bookmark Bar? If yours is not checked, check it to display the bookmark bar on the browser window. You can scroll down through all your saved bookmarks to open the website you bookmarked.



Click Import bookmarks… to copy the bookmarks or favorites from another browser on your PC to this one.

Magicjack GO is one way to lower your phone bills. A couple of others are Ooma and Vonage. They are VOIP or voice over internet protocol devices. All you need is an internet connection that they can plug into. For the Magicjack one, you can buy the device for $39 one time and pay a $30 annual fee to have unlimited USA, Canada, and Virgin Islands calls plus all the additional features like call forwarding and caller ID. Easy to setup. All you need is a regular phone to plug into the device instead of into the phone jack in the wall. See the details at:



Quick Access is something you may have missed. When you click on the File Explorer icon in your taskbar it should open. If not, find it at the top of the left column. It shows your frequently used folders and lists your Recent files. How often do we save a file and forget where we put it? Well if it was recent find it in this list and to the right see where you saved it.




AdBlock is an extension added to Chrome or Firefox that prevents ads from popping up on a webpage. In chrome go to chrome://extensions/ then scroll to the bottom of the page and Get more extensions.



Search for AdBlock and click Add to chrome.

Google Phone is available for every Google member. Find it at the bottom of your Gmail page--the picture of the phone handset. You are assigned a real phone number and can call anywhere in the USA for free. And you can receive calls, too.


Gasbuddy.com is a website that shows the current prices of gas everywhere in the country. Enter your zip code and it lists the prices for the closest stations. Use it on your smartphone and it knows your location. Just tap the picture of the pump in the middle of the screen and it takes you to the stations near where you are located. Great while on the road to find the stations coming up soon on the highway and how much their gas is.

We looked at more keyboard shortcuts:

Win+S or Q opens the start menu with text input
Ctrl+Esc opens the start menu

Magnify
Win+ Increase
Win- Decrease
Win+Esc Reset

PDF-XChange Viewer is an alternative to Adobe Acrobat. It is said to work faster and includes free OCR which will convert the PDF format into an editable format. We were not successful in doing this. Perhaps one of you can try to make it work.
http://tinyurl.com/zelan2l

http://Myactivity.google.com allows you to access your history with Google showing you all the placed you visited and more. Check it out.

Windows 10 August 2nd update will bring many new things to the free version we have all been getting used to. This article outlines some of those additions.
http://tinyurl.com/zsue95b

Windows 10 decline option--finally. Now when you click on the button (Windows flag in the lower right) to tell Microsoft when to install the new OS, there is a decline option so you can say NO, I DO NOT WANT IT.
http://tinyurl.com/hkukm6w