The Computer Club Newsletter

August  2002

By Ron Uncapher

I hope you attended the last TVCUC meeting. It was educational and informative. Victor de Groote gave a demonstration of the changes to the club Website. The biggest change was the addition of a FORUM section. Users can ask a question on any subject or make a comment and get a response from anyone who might have a good answer, or not. Check it out. The Forum already has a couple of good discussion threads. After Victor’s presentation, Howard Jones, our prez, did an excellent job of sitting in for Handspring. He used their Power Point slides and described some of the new and interesting personal handheld products coming out of Handspring. The meeting concluded with a drawing for several items supplied by Handspring, including a Handspring VISOR NEO PDA.

Be sure to attend the next meeting, Tuesday, September 3^rd, at the Yacht Club. George Groom will be presenting a scaled down version of the course he teaches at ORICL. He will discuss the birth of Digital Photography and what it is. He will cover "how to" for a number of subjects such as getting pictures into your computer, emailing pictures, installing pictures on a Web Page, scanning photos, storage media for photos, and buying a digital camera. He will discuss and demonstrate using computer software to load, rotate, size, and improve photo quality, repair photos, special effects and printing your photos. He will also discuss valuable resources on the Web.

I am an inveterate down loader. I am referring to program downloads, not data files. Whenever I see a free program that looks good, I download it. Sometimes I even install it. Therein lies the problem. Once you click on the downloaded file it installs itself along with heaven-only-knows what extra dll’s and other files. If you find you don’t want or need the program, you can uninstall it… sometimes. But, what if you can’t?

If you are going to download, there are a few things you can do to protect yourself and your PC. First, make sure you know where in your PC the download is going. When the pop up that appears when you click on DOWNLOAD, make sure you select SAVE not RUN. Also insure that you specify where it is to be saved. I have a folder named DOWNLOADS. Everything I download goes into it. Second, note where the program originated. Is there an author? Does he have an email address or phone number? If you need help operating the program, or things go wrong, you might be able to get help. Next, make sure that if something goes wrong, you can restore your system. Windows ME and XP have a Restore utility that allows you to set a restore point. Use it whenever you install any program, download or not. Otherwise, back up your data files and your Registry. These steps will insure that if the new program crashes and does something destructive, you can restore your settings and your data.

Make sure it is virus free. Use your anti-virus software and scan it. Some downloads contain "spy ware" or "ad ware". Spy ware is a program that can come attached to your download. It looks at keystrokes, data files, and Internet activity and reports back to a Website when you are online. Some is harmless, some isn’t. PC World magazine sent me to a small program called Ad-ware. This program scans a file and locates unwanted riders. You can download it at www.find.pcworld.com/26561 .

Finally, you decide that the program doesn’t work the way you thought, or doesn’t work at all, or you just don’t want it. Some programs come with an uninstall feature. Use it. If not, check Windows’ Add Remove. It can be found in Control Panel. If that doesn’t work, it helps to have an Uninstall program. There are several commercially available programs from big name companies, but I use an inexpensive ($13) program that I downloaded, Add/Remove 4Good, again from PC World. Find it at www.find.pcworld.com/25562

There are a multitude of good games and utilities on the web. Use them, but be prepared.

Bonus tip: If you have multiple Word documents open and you have a premonition that lightning is going to strike before the next AutoRecover, hold down the Shift key and click the File menu. The Save command changes to Save All, which will save all open Word documents in one fell swoop.

Check out the Computer Club Website at www.TVCUC.org