Sunday, January 25, 2015

Class Summary 1-22-2015

The primary talk today was on the word processing specifically Microsoft Word and I used office 2007 as an example. We went through a number of basics including some shortcut keys. I have a handout that I worked from and it's available under the class notes. Also talked about a alternatives to MS Word that work very well. One of them is Abiword which we talked about last week and a link is in those notes.

Had a question about how to print from an iPad. It seems that it's easy to print from any iOS device to any Airprint-enabled printer otherwise they're is software that you can download that will help you print to other printers. We googled it in class and found a couple of possible solutions. Here is one possible solution: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-print-from-your-ipad.html


Someone was asking about running a program in compatibility mode so I showed how you can right-click on an executable program (a.exe) choose Properties > Compatibility, check the Run this program… box and then pull down the arrow to choose the OS you want to run it in even going back as far as Windows 95. This is a function in Windows. It doesn't work with all old old programs but it does with some.

Turned out this wasn't really the question. She wanted to know about running something in a virtual machine. A virtual machine, which you can get for free from VMware and other places, sets up a portion of your hard disk drive like it was another computer. You have to actually install an operating system in the virtual machine and then you can boot the virtual machine and it runs like an independent computer. You do need to have the appropriate license keys for that operating system or you'll only be able to use it for the trial period. But doing it that way means that you can install any and all of your old programs and run them within a newer version of Windows.

Here is a good tutorial on VM’s. http://www.howtogeek.com/196060/beginner-geek-how-to-create-and-use-virtual-machines/

Was asked about being able to sign into somebody else's computer and work on it or even sign in remotely to your computer up north if you're a Snowbird and actually work on it. The program I suggest is logmein and works very well. I have used it many times personally when I was a Snowbird and also continue to use it to help other people work through problems on their computer when their miles away from me.

They download and install a free program from logmein set up an account and then let me know what the username and password is to get into their computer with that account. Then at any time as long as they have their computer turned on and hooked up to the Internet I can go into logmein.com, sign into their account, log onto their computer and on my screen I see their screen and I can do anything remotely that I could do sitting right there at their computer.

Here is a good article on logmein and other remote access possibilities:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2014/01/21/free-alternatives-to-logmein

Then we took a look at gas buddy to find the current prices of gas. I have it installed on my smartphone but you can also run it right on your PC from gasbuddy.com. When people get gas they login to GasBuddy and report the price that they paid at the gas station that they filled up at.

So before you leave home you can go to gasbuddy and check to see where the cheapest gas is. Although I usually use Sam's there are times when closer gas stations are the same or less. Really neat when you're on a trip and you can check the price of gas before you get off at the exit because sometimes two exits down it's a bit cheaper.

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