Friday, March 28, 2014

How to Use Google Drive

A member of the class, George Buono passed along this great explanation of using Google Drive. If you have not ventured into Google Drive yet, you should. I use it for 99% of my word processing and spreadsheet work. I can use it on my computers, tablet, and cell phone. All the files are stored in the cloud and no programs have to be added to my PC.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/use-google-drive-capture-great-ideas-never-lose/

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Class Summary 3-27-2014

The notes on Kindle for today can be found on the Class Notes page. See the link above to access the notes.

One question today was about moving up to a new computer. I said you cannot move software from one computer to another. That is not totally true. There are application you can purchase that allow you to move your old software to your new computer. Here is a deal on one such program called PC Mover bundled with EaseUS Todo Backup: http://tinyurl.com/luuhbgv

Answered a lot of questions on the Kindle today showing the there versions I happen to own. I used an HDMI cable to hook my Kindle Fire HD directly to the TV so everyone could see my Kindle screen.

If I remember some other specifics from today I will add them to this post. Anything you can remember you would like added?

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Legal Docments

Came across a site to use to print free legal documents like Bill of Sale, Power of Attorney, Living Will and much much more. http://www.rocketlawyer.com/

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Charmed

In W8.x you drag to the far right to bring up the Charm Bar. Did you know Win+C brings it up as well?

Getting to the Settings Window

A quick way into Settings on W8 is by pressing Win+I. Try it.

 

From there you can locate many of the settings windows easily.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Your Contact List

When was the last time you backed up your email contact list? I just did mine so all my Yahoo contacts are in a CSV file on my hard drive. Should the improbable happen and they get lost on Yahoo, I have a backup of them locally. A CSV file can be opened in a spreadsheet program like Excel or OpenOffice.



In Yahoo I went to Contacts and pulled down the Actions arrow. Then I selected Export... and chose the CSV format.

Friday, March 21, 2014

How do we keep up?

I get a lot of remarks about recent changes in email and Facebook. And they are always changing something. I believe the secret is to roll with it. They made the change for a reason. We just do not know what it is. And change is something we just do not like, especially as we get older. So think about the next change you have to adapt to. How does it make things different? Does it really matter that you have to get used to a new way of doing something? Through every change we adapt to we grow in our knowledge of using that application. Change is not fun, but the growth we get may be worth it.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Class Summary 3-20-2014

Thanks go out to our club president, Ron for taking over the class last week. And thanks for your concern about my wife, Dianne. I was able to make it to today's class and these are the few things I recall we touched on. If you can think of anything else, let me know.

I had added a new user to my laptop so I could demonstrate personalizing the desktop. Things like back background picture, screen savers, size of icons, screen size, and more.



Right-click on the desktop and you are given a series of options to choose from.
View allows you to select the size of the icons on the screen
Screen resolution lets you choose the size of the screen like 800 x 600, 1024 x 768
Personalize is where you go to set the background colors or images to display, and set the screen saver options. In the screen saver window you can set the timeout options like after how many minutes of inactivity the screen will shut off, or the hard drive, etc.

We saw how you can use a picture or image as your password in Windows 8. I looked into this and what happens is your picture displays and you click on three specific points on the picture to be allowed in. To set it up open Settings and under Sign-in options click the Create a picture password Add button. This will give you the option to choose any picture, and then define three gestures anywhere on the image.

Want to place a shortcut on your desktop to access a particular webpage? Open the page in your browser, then drag the address in the address bar to the desktop. A shortcut will be created for you. You can then click once on the shortcut and press F2 to rename it. Or you can right-click and select Rename.



Right-click on the desktop start button to set the defaults for Classic Shell. That is the 3rd party software that gives us the familiar desktop start menu and lets Windows 8.x boot to the desktop. Find it at http://classicshell.net. Click Settings.



I like the Classic with two columns style. I do not check the Replace Start Button box so the button remains the Windows 8 design. Under Windows 8.1 Settings you can choose to bypass the the Start Screen on boot and instead open the desktop view. Note: to get from the desktop to the Start Screen (the square blocks) just press Shift+Windows.

We touched on how to use the Paint program to add words to an existing picture or even to add a caption under the picture. Then we uploaded that picture to Facebook. Adding the picture to Facebook at the Status box lets you include a description of the image.

We also talked about printing a portion of a page, like just the recipe on a webpage. Select the portion you want to print and choose Print. Then on the Print dialog box select the Selection box. Only the selected portion will print. You do not see a preview of the results in IE, but you do in Chrome. Did not try it with FF.

You asked for a list of Keyboard Shortcuts. Here is a detail source at the Microsoft site:
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/products/keyboard.aspx

Some discussion on the Amazon Kindle at the end of class resulted in a decision to talk about Kindles and tablets next time.

Monday, March 10, 2014

Class 3-13-2014

This week will be an open forum. Come with your questions and concerns.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

No Class Today 3-6-2014

I have been playing around with Joli OS and will be talking about it in class soon. Also have been comparing the various cloud backups and will have a paper on that for you as well. Also found some apps to make slide shows of Facebook pictures.

Spending days here at Hospice House with Dianne. You can see details at http://theevans.org/update. Your prayers are appreciated.

There will be a class next week. If I cannot be here, John Palmer has volunteered to be there to answer your questions. He is a good one to ask about LibreOffice as he has been teaching on it for the past few months. John runs the Basic class at 5:00 PM every club meeting night.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Class Summary 2-27-2014

We uploaded images from our computer to Facebook and from FB to our computer. Saw how to tag photos and rotate pictures. Created groups and saw how to control who we let see our posts and pictures. Talked about what the  “cloud” is and looked at DropBox for storing anything. Also at Windows Live and saw that we could access Word, Excel, and PowerPoint cloud apps for free.

More on the white paper at http://rwevans.com/cccgc/FacebookandMore2272014.pdf

Computer Maintenance

I have updated the paper I wrote a while ago on how I maintain my computers. I have added a few new tools to my toolbox and this explains them all.

http://rwevans.com/pclibrary/ComputerMaintenance.pdf