Computers and Technology

Protect Your Laptop from Theft – LoJack for Laptops

Posted on January 11, 2011 by David Rier

Laptop computers are a great invention. Their portability makes them especially popular to traveling business people and students. As well, people in general like to be able to use their personal computer without being tied down to a particular location in their house or office.

However, portability is a two-edged sword. A portable computer is convenient for its user, but it is also much more subject to being stolen.

If your laptop got stolen, how would you recover it? One very good option is a piece of software called LoJack for Laptops (http://www.absolute.com/en/lojackforlaptops/home.aspx). Once it is installed, this software can help to locate and recover a stolen laptop, whether it is a PC or a Mac. It is relatively inexpensive (a one-year cost of $39.99 to $59.99 depending on the options chosen).

Is LoJack for Laptops for you? Ask yourself some questions like “Am I in a high-crime or student environment?” or “Do I go on business trips and sometimes lose things?” If your answer is “Yes”, you should at least look at their web site and may want to buy it as insurance for your peace of mind.

Posted in Computer Advice, PCs, Personal computing, Technology | Tagged laptop, laptop theft, lojack, lojack for laptops, protect your laptop | Leave a comment

Free Office Software

Posted on January 4, 2011 by David Rier

Microsoft Office is the premier applications suite for personal computers. It is the current standard in the industry. The “professional” version includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, database, email front end applications and more.

However, not all people can pay or want to pay the $499 list price cost for the package. That may be almost as much as the cost of a basic laptop or desktop PC.

So what are you to do? One option is to look at Open Office (www.openoffice.org.) Open Office is an open source software package that is free to download and use. It contains applications to do word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics and database. It can read and write files that are in the Microsoft Office document “standards”.

Does this sound too good to be true? It depends. My own experience with Open Office says that it is fine for simple documents (I.e. simple reports, letters, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.) Once you start to get “fancy”, the programs can quickly reach their limits and/or possibly break down.

The database application is the weakest part of the package. It is still buggy, has trouble working with existing Microsoft databases, and does not have DBA support.

In summary: If you only infrequently need to use an office applications suite or if you are really strapped for cash, the free Open Office package might be a good choice. As your frequency of use or your level of document sophistication increases, you are probably better served to bite the bullet and migrate to Microsoft Office.

Posted in Computer Advice, IT Manager 101, Personal computing | Tagged free office software, office, office software, open office | Leave a comment

Google Alerts

Posted on December 28, 2010 by David Rier

Do you like to keep up on things (customers, competitors, interesting topics, etc.) by searching for information on the Internet? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a service that could automatically monitor the world of the Internet for you?

Well, there is such a service and it is called Google Alerts. The service is free and it is simple to set up and to use. By setting up an alert, Google will monitor the Internet, blogs, newspaper articles, videos, etc. for new instances of related to your chosen search terms. When it finds something, it will send a notice to the email address that you specify, along with the link to what it found.

To simply use Google Alerts, set up a gmail (Google email) account. If you do not have such an email, go to www.gmail.com and choose the “Create an account now” link.

Once you have signed into gmail, enter the URL www.google.com/alerts. This will allow you to set up and/or manage the alerts you have. Alerts can be set up to run on in real time or on a scheduled basis. They can be sent to any email address you choose. (Note: Alerts do not have to go to your gmail box, but your gmail box makes it easy to add/change/delete alerts).

Alerts can be a great tool for saving you time and effort in your business and real life.

Posted in Computer Advice, Personal computing | Tagged Google, Google Alerts, Internet monitoring, monitor the Internet | Leave a comment

Mass-Installing Free Software – Freenew.net

Posted on December 7, 2010 by David Rier

Setting up or re-building a PC can take lots of steps. The basic steps are pretty routine – I.e. format the drive, install the OS, apply all the updates, and install your business software. All of those steps give you a basically functioning machine.

If you are like me, you want to add a number of software programs and utilities to safeguard your PC and to make it work better. I can easily think of a dozen programs I would like on a new PC. Each program has to located, downloaded and installed and that can take a lot of time.

About a month ago, I read a posting from Kim Komando (www.komando.com) about a web site called FreeNew (www.freenew.net). The site lists 17 different areas of free PC programs and utilities (over 110 programs in all). You put a check mark next to each of the programs that you want to install. When you are done selecting your programs, you start the process and all of the programs are downloaded and installed in sequence. It’s a great time-saver!!

Posted in Computer Advice, PCs, Personal computing | Tagged free software; software installation; mass install software; Kim Komando | Leave a comment

Xobni

Posted on November 9, 2010 by David Rier

Email is the life blood of a lot of peoples’ jobs. Many of them use Outlook as their email manager. As such, any new tool that makes Outlook more useful is very valuable.

I very recently heard of a free add-on piece of software that works with the email function of Outlook. It is called Xobni (www.xobni.com). (Note that Xobni is just “inbox” spelled backwards – it’s not some foreign-language or nonsense word.)

Xobni offers some neat abilities that help you to work more efficiently with your many emails. It adds an area on your screen (dark column below) that gives you a great amount of information about and control over the email in your inbox.

Xobni can search for emails by names, words in the subject or body, etc. It seems to operate much faster than Outlook! Information about the sender of the current email helps you to put the email in context. The person’s contact information (email and phones) is displayed. Their “ranking” in your email contacts (#1 has sent the most to you, etc.) is shown. A graph shows when the person sends you emails (I.e. do they start at 9:00 AM, take lunch off, work after 5:00 PM, etc.?) There are sections that display the emails just from the current sender, attachments from the sender, the network of people their emails to you also touched, etc.

I’m still getting used to Xobni, but I find that it’s a great tool.

Posted in Computer Advice, Personal computing | Tagged Xobni; outlook; email; add-in; | Leave a comment

Convert PDF to Word

Posted on November 4, 2010 by David Rier

Lots of documents are saved in PDF format. They open smoothly and print well.

However, there is one problem with PDF documents. Unless you have specialized software, you cannot modify and/or edit the PDF document.

What’s the solution? Convert the PDF document to a Word document. You can then modify and/or edit the Word document to your heart’s content.

How do you convert a PDF to Word without special software? One option that we have used with great success is available (for free!) from pdfonline.com (at http://www.pdfonline.com/pdf2word/index.asp). The conversion takes a little while (especially for large files or ones involving lots of graphics) and involves a couple up steps (uploading, downloading and extracting the result). However, the conversion is very exacting and has saved us a lot of work. Give it a try!

Posted in Computer Advice, Personal computing | Tagged PDF; PDF to Word; PDF file conversion; Edit PDF file; pdfonline | Leave a comment

Many-to-Many Videoconferencing

Posted on October 26, 2010 by David Rier

One-to-one videoconferencing is extremely simple and inexpensive to set up and use. Videoconferencing with multiple people at each end is more complicated to set up. Within certain limits, it is still relatively inexpensive.

There are two ranges of videoconferences that we should discuss. Medium-sized conferences involve 5 or fewer people at each end. Large videoconferences have more than 6 or more participants at one or more locations.

Large videoconferences are best served by dedicated videoconference systems, special communications links, etc. Some of the manufacturers of such units are Polycom, Tandberg, Cisco, etc.) The units can cost many $1,000s per node. For companies that generate lots of large meetings, they are probably the way to go. Just be aware that initial purchase and setup costs plus ongoing communications costs can be significant.

If you want multi-person videoconferences for 5 or less people at each location, you can still set up and operate such calls for very little money. You will need a better video cam with a wider field of view. You will need speakers (as a headset is only useful for one person at a time). As well, a small microphone (even if the cam has one) helps to capture conversations better. The total cost of such a setup is about $150-$200 per node.

As for software, you can still use Skype (see http://www.davidrier.com/?p=99) for your medium-sized videoconferences. Both the software and Skype-to-Skype video costs are free.

Posted in Computer Advice, IT Manager 101, PCs, Personal computing, Technology | Tagged videoconference; videoconferencing; | Leave a comment

Simple Videoconferencing (One-to-One)

Posted on October 19, 2010 by David Rier

The simplest videoconference involves one person having a video conversation with one other person. It’s simple and very inexpensive to set up and use.

For hardware, all you need is a camera, speakers and a microphone. A simple setup can involve a web cam (E.g like a USB-connected one from Logitech) and a headset with microphone. Total price of the hardware is $40-$50 per node.)

For software, just use Skype (see http://www.davidrier.com/?p=99). The software is free and it supports free video calls.

What do you get? Once the hardware and software is in place, videoconferences are available to and from anywhere in the world where the Internet is available. As an example, I had a one hour videoconference with my IT contact in our division in the Czech Republic. We resolved a couple of troublesome issues and set up a new project. Our communications cost for the call? $0.00!

Posted in Computer Advice, IT Manager 101, PCs, Personal computing, Technology | Tagged set up videoconference, Skype, videoconference, videoconference hardware, videoconferencing, videoconferencing; videoconference; set up videoconference; Skype; videoconference hardware | Leave a comment