Friday, May 24, 2019

Computer Club Notes 5-21-2019

Ease Of AccessWIn+U opens the Ease of Access window at the Display window. Here you can adjust the settings for your display. Many options to personalize including making text larger and animation and hiding scrollbars and more

Paint is backAfter announcing MS Paint’s “deprecation” back in 2017, Microsoft has gone in the other direction. Not only is Microsoft Paint sticking around in Windows 10—Microsoft just updated it with new keyboard controls. All those plans have been canceled. MS Paint will stay in Windows 10 and won’t move to the Store. Most shockingly, Microsoft has started updating it with new accessibility features.
http://tinyurl.com/y59qsddb

Airplane mode--why?We understand the Airplane mode when flying, but why if we are on the ground? If you leave your device constantly looking for a viable WiFi connection it affects your performance and drains your battery. Also, if you need a quicker than normal charge, turn airplane mode on your phone. Just remember to turn it off when done or you will not get phone calls.

Importance of backupsBacking up is your computer's life insurance policy. We live in Florida so we know the importance of having an insurance policy on our homes. We remember Charlie. What got damaged or destroyed was rebuilt.

What happens when our computer crashes? Could be a worn out hard drive. Could be a virus. Could be a dropped laptop. Could be a stolen laptop. Whatever causes you not to be able to access your system the result is the same and you are not a happy camper.

What if you could get everything back just the way it was in a matter of hours? Isn’t that the kind of insurance you want to have?

Facebook remindersWhenever an action occurs in Facebook, an email is sent to your registered email address. This is by default and can be an annoyance. To stop that from happening choose settings and then notifications then email. Select what you want to be sent to you in an email. I only get important notifications.

PostingOn your profile, you choose who sees the post: Public, Friends… Only Me
On someone else's profile, if they allow you to do so
Tagging pictures will put pictures on someone else’s profile if they have not blocked that feature
Go into Settings > Timeline and Tagging Settings to limit who can post or tag to your timeline

RemindersIf you only want one person to see your post, send it on messenger
If you do not want to see someone’s posts in your newsfeed, unfollow them
If you do not want the world to see your posts, do not post them as public

Tag or not tag your photos?
Tagging will place the photo on your friend's page

Allow games to see your friends?
Only if you want the game to know all your friends names

Where is My Email?IMAP allows you to view the same email inbox on multiple devices because the messages stay on the server. This is how your gmail, yahoo. Hotmail, etc are accessed. Therefore you can access mail from any device by signing in to your account.

POP downloads email messages to your computer and remove them from the server. This is how MS Office Outlook handles your email. You can only access your mail on the device you have installed Outlook -- not the Outlook Mail that comes with Windows 10.

Uninstalling ProgramsYou can uninstall programs right in Windows or using the maintenance program CCleaner. In CCleaner goto Tools > Uninstall. I suggest sorting by date to view what has been recently installed or by name to locate a specific program easily. 


To use Windows press Win+I and choose Apps. A list of all programs will appear. Click on the one you wish to remove and choose Uninstall. 


Then confirm by click Uninstall. Esc to back out.

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Computer Club Notes 5-14-2019

Faststone image resizer
FastStone Photo Resizer is an image converter and renaming tool that intends to enable users to convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text and watermarks to images in a quick and easy batch mode. Drag and Drop mouse operation is well supported. FastStone Photo Resizer makes quick work of batches of digital snapshot!
http://tinyurl.com/yxaj2u75

F8 Revived
Ever since Windows 95 we have been able to press F8 while the computer was starting and boot into Safe Mode. We could elect to boot with or without networking and even to boot to a DOS-like command prompt--C:\. Enter Windows 10 and the old F8 went away.
http://tinyurl.com/y48mfrbz

Irfanview
IrfanView is an image viewer, editor, organizer and converter program for Microsoft Windows. It can also play video and audio files and has some image creation and painting capabilities.
Get it on Ninite

Multiple Desktops
You see people with two or three or more monitors on their computer. Well, maybe on a TV show. With Windows 10 we can get the same effect with one screen using the new virtual desktop feature. You can have two or three or ten screens all on one computer monitor. Using Task View you can see the virtual desktops available to you and even create additional ones; as many as you need. In that same view, you can drag open windows between desktops and easily switch back and forth.

Also reminded all about using Alt+Tab to switch between active windows on any of the desktops. And just mousing over the taskbar browser icon to see miniature pop-ups of the active windows.

Linux
Demonstrated Linux Mint working on my laptop. It is on it with Windows 10. When I boot, I am offered to start with either Mint or Windows 10. The default on mine is Mint so I have to be quick to take the Windows option.

Linux is one of many possible operating systems. Just to name the popular ones, we have Windows, Chromebook, LinuxMint, Lubuntu, and Ubuntu. The last three are variations of Linux. An older version of Lubuntu I was installing today only need 512mb of RAM and a 20gb hard drive. The newer versions of all of them need 2gb or RAM and 20gb of hard disk space.

Thave a look and feel of Windows run many of the programs we use in Windows, like LibreOffice, Firefox, Chrome, and more. But Windows programs can only run on a Windows computer and Linux programs on a Linux computer. There is, however, a Linux program called WINE that will allow a number of Windows programs to run in Linux.

Did I mention that Linux is FREE? And you do not have run an antivirus program or maintenance programs. This is like the Apple products and the Chromebooks--no need for the “fixit” programs.

1903
One of our members was telling us about his experiences with 1903. He has been using it for a couple of months and really likes it. He says it is much faster and filled with some great new features.

It is a large update and will require at least 32gb of free space on the hard drive to install. This will pose a problem for those having one of the “surface” computers that only have 32gb of flash memory.

Regardless, I think I will wait a while before doing the update when it is actually released to the public.

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Computer Club Notes 5-7-2019

Free Phone Service
Talkatone is the best option for replacing your native phone to call and text for free without using cell minutes. By contrast, Skype, Viber and Facetime are only free if the recipient has also already installed the app.
  • Stop paying for cell minutes, texts & landlines
  • Turn your iPad or iPod touch into a phone
  • Call/Text even in areas with bad cell coverage
  • Call/Text when traveling without paying for expensive international minutes
https://www.talkatone.com/

TinyPNG
TinyPNG uses smart lossy compression techniques to reduce the file size of your PNG files. By selectively decreasing the number of colors in the image, fewer bytes are required to store the data. The effect is nearly invisible but it makes a very large difference in file size!
https://tinypng.com/

JSPaint is a web-based Microsoft Paint remake
JSPaint is a free web-based remake of Microsoft Paint, a basic but popular image editor for the Windows operating system. Microsoft announced some time ago that it would deprecate Microsoft Paint in favor of the new Paint 3D UWP application that it introduced in the Windows 10
http://jspaint.app

Dick’s Articles on Dave’s Computer Tips
https://davescomputertips.com/author/dick-evans

Thursday, May 2, 2019

Computer Class Notes 4-30-2019

Taskbar
Where did it go? The normal location is at the bottom of the screen. If it has moved. Point your mouse at a blank space in the taskbar and left drag it back to the bottom. Right click on it and select lock to keep it there.



The start button is in the left and will bring up the Start Menu.



To the right of the start button is the Type here box to ask Cortana a question. If missing, Win+Q to open it.




The Task View button opens history of what you have been doing.

Then you will see icons for quick one click access to applications you have recently used and even websites you have been in.

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To the far right is the Notification button, the date and time, the internet indication, the sound control, and a up arrow to open a window of other applications running.

Lockscreen is a way to leave your computer when not using it. It leaves everything open and opens the startup screen requiring your entry password to continue. Use Win+L to lock it.



Resizing a window is possible if you are in the restore size of an open window. The upper right corner of a window has three button--minimize, size, and exit. If the size button is a single square representing a window you are at the restore size and can change the size of the window by dragging any corner or edge to the size you desire. You can even drag all the way left or right to make the window half screen, or to any corner to make it one quarter size. Drag to the top or double click the title bar and you will switch to full screen. If at full screen, double click the title bar to go back to restore size or drag the title bar down.

When does upper/lower case matter?

Email addresses can be mixed upper and. Case does not matter.
Password must be upper and lower case, exactly as you created them.

Website URLs can be upper or lower, but not the word after the extension (,com, etc). www.mysite.com amd www.MySite.com are the same. Whatever follows that will have a / and additional words that must be whatever necessary to get into a specific page on the site. /ABOUT is not the same as /about or /About.

Left click vs right click
Left click selects an item. Right click pops up a menu of selections.

One click or two?
Generally speaking, what is on the desktop is double-click. Or click once and press the Enter key. The taskbar items are all single click as are options within programs and websites.

Edge, IE, Chrome, Firefox, or what?
The browser you use is a personal choice. I like Chrome and the availability of extensions. Brave is similar to Chrome and allows the use of the Chrome extensions as well. IE or Internet Explorer has been a favorite for many over the year but is been fazed out by Microsoft. You have to hunt for it in Windows 10. Edge is not desirable for me and is even being rewritten by Microsoft to use a Chromium back end just like Google Chrome. Firefox has been a favorite for many over the years and works similar to Chrome. It was the non-Microsoft favorite for years until Google came out with Chrome.


Finding things on a webpage. Ctrl+F open the find box. Type what you are looking for on the page. In this case it found 19 times “Evans” is used.

Increase or decrease size of the content in a browser window
Ctrl+Plus to increase
Ctrl+Minus to decrease
Ctrl+Zero to bring back to normal
This is not the same as Win+Plus which activates the magnifier

Printing a web page or things on it. Use Ctrl+P to open the print dialog box. It will print the entire page.



Instead, select the portions of the page you want to print, then Ctrl+P. On the print window, select Advanced Options and then check Selection only.

Simple Speed Up solutions
Use www.crucial.com to analyze your computer. It will tell you how much RAM you have installed and what your computer is capable of using. Then it will show you the memory you should use to increase it.

Get a faster Hard Drive, maybe a Solid State (SSD). See article at https://davescomputertips.com/how-to-simple-upgrade-to-an-ssd/

Reduce the number of items found on your desktop. This will not slow down your processing, but will slow down the startup of your computer. Try to only have shortcuts on the desktop. Folders and files should be in your Document area.



Review what is in your startup folder. Open Task Manager and on the Details screen select the Startup tab. Disable all that you do not need. I disable most of them as you can see above.

Close programs not being used. The less open the less memory being used. Close the browser when not in use and reopen when needed.

Run the maintenance program on a regular basis to clean things up and remove malware you do not realize has been added.



Forcing a program to end.
Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open the Task Manager. In the lower left click Less details. Click on the program to force and ending, then in the lower right, click End task.



Forcing a web page to end
Press Alt+F4 to exit the page. Or mouse over the taskbar icon and click the X on the popup.

Where is the Control Panel?
Win+Q then type control and press Enter

The Clipboard has changed in 1809. It now stores all entries instead of just the last one. Use Win+V to view them and use them.

The Magnifier is activated using Win+Plus. Turn it off with Win+Esc

Opening File Manager more than once is easy with Win+E

A keyboard shortcut is a set of one or more keys that invoke a command in software or an operating system. They are typically an alternate means for invoking commands that would otherwise be accessible only through a menu, a mouse, or an aspect of the user interface. These shortcuts can expedite common operations by reducing input sequences to a few keystrokes.
For a list of Shortcuts see www.tinyurl.com/class-shortcuts