Category Archives: Computers

A Dual Monitor Desktop



Do you need two monitors on your desktop or office setup? With the price of LCD monitors dropping to $100.00 or below, there really isn’t any reason not to consider adding a second (or third) monitor. Here are some considerations:

1. Real Estate – Do you have room for a second monitor? Most office desks, and I’m speaking about SOHO here, are large enough for a printer and a monitor. Maybe it’s time to move the printer off the desk and into another room. It’s networked, right? If it is, it doesn’t have to be right beside you. You would use a second monitor much more than you use your printer.

2. Video Card – In order to hook up a second monitor, you need a video card that supports two displays. For around $100.00 you can get a decent card that will sport two video outs, hopefully digital (DVI or HDMI). Sure, you can use one or two VGA outs but the picture will suffer. Even if your monitors don’t sport an HDMI input, you can get a HDMI to DVI monitor cable for $5.00 or less.

3. Portrait or Landscape – Depending on what you do on your computer, you can get a second display that will enable you to turn the screen 90 degrees. This portrait setting is great for graphics or desktop publishing. A full screen image is easier to work on without scrolling. Another plus here is that a wide-screen monitor turned upright takes up less desktop space.

4. Full Screen Video – Adding a second monitor will allow you to watch full-screen video while you’re using a browser or working on your websites on your other screen. Working on my WordPress sites is a lot easier for me because I can keep the site open on one monitor while adjusting things on my main screen. I don’t have to keep clicking on tabs to see what I’m creating. It’s only a second or two saved but there is no interruption in the workflow.  It’s much smoother with two screens.

5. Size Matters – Don’t scrimp with a 17 or 19 inch monitor. These days you can get a 22 or 23 inch monitor for just a bit more money. The percentage of screen increases tremendously. Moving from a 17 inch to a 20 inch monitor will give you 40% more viewing area. You won’t regret springing for something larger than you’ve got now.

6. Name Brands Please – When you’re out shopping for an extra monitor, keep an eye on the brand name as well as the price. I have four Dell monitors that I use on my set up. While I don’t recommend Dell as a company (because of a couple of problems I’ve had recently), they sell decent monitors. Their Ultra-Sharp models are probably not worth the additional money unless you are working in video or photography and need the better color representation and resolution. I have one Ultra-Sharp and it’s nice but for my work, websites and writing, I don’t think I can justify having more than one. Acer, Asus, HP and others make good monitors, too, so keep an eye out for a deal on something with a name you know. Don’t jump for a cheap no-name screen or you’ll regret it. As well, read some reviews of the unit you’re considering.

7. Speakers – Personally, I don’t require speakers on my monitors. Sure, they might save you some room but I picked up a good  5.1 speaker set and I’m quite sure it’s better than any speaker that might come with a monitor. Adding speakers seems to be the new thing for monitor manufacturers and I’m pretty sure that this is an attempt to cash in on the huge home theater market. Built-in speakers are fine for the bedroom or kitchen TV but not for a monitor that you’ll be using every day. A decent 5.1 speaker system can be had for $75 to $100. With a separate speaker set, you can arrange them around you while keeping the centre speaker hooked onto the monitor directly in front. Catching your favorite rock video on a coffee break will be a better experience than ever.

If you have questions or comments, feel free to add them at the bottom. As always, thanks for reading.

 

 

Enable Your Microphone



If you have disabled your internal microphone on on your netbook or notebook, here’s how you can get it back. This post also shows the value of  Window’s right click menu system. Sometimes we forget how powerful it is.

I was making a video today and tried to use an external microphone instead of the internal one on my netbook. Well, the external one didn’t work but I had disabled the internal one, thinking it was causing some interference. Once I decided to use the internal one again, I had to search for a way to enable it again. Here’s how you do it:

1. Right click the little speaker icon on the lower right of your taskbar. Choose ‘Recording devices’ as you see here:

Choose Recording Devices
Right click the speaker and choose Recording devices.

2. Once the recording device dialogue is up, right click anywhere in the blank space to get this menu:

Right click dialogue showing disconnected devices.
Right click in the open space and you'll see how to enable disconnected devices.

3. Once you get to this point, click ‘Show Disabled Devices’ and you will see a list of things that you may have disabled. Simply click ‘enable’ to get them back again.

 

This is a simple solution but it’s also something to keep in mind when you get lost in Windows. If what you want to see isn’t there in front of you or if you can’t seem to find something, try the right click menu to see what comes up. In this case, a simple right click solved what seemed to be a difficult problem.

Thanks for reading!



Undo Mistakes



We all make mistakes. We all wish we could turn back time. Here’s a quick, two-fingered way to do just that.

If you’ve used Photoshop or G.I.M.P. or just about any other photo editing program, you’ll know that you can undo any action that you’re performed  by clicking edit/undo. Those of you who use macros or keyboard shortcuts know that you can do the same thing by hitting the Control key and the Z key at the same time. Did you know that the Ctl/z combination works just as well in Windows and virtually every program, including browsers, that you use? Well it does.

Even if you delete a file and send it to the Recycle Bin, hitting Ctl/z will bring that file back again. If you accidentally hit the wrong keys in Word and your document disappears for some reason, make sure you hit Ctl/Z before you do anything else.

Tip: If you delete a file while holding down the Shift key, the file is gone forever. That’s a good thing and a bad thing sometimes. Unless you are sure that you won’t need the file again, send it to the Recycle Bin and think about it for a while.

Try getting used to this key combination using different programs in Windows. Once you get used to it, you’ll find it a life saver, I think. It’s saved my bacon a few times, I can tell you that!

Thanks for reading.



Computer Repair



There’s nothing like the feeling you get when your computer crashes or when something doesn’t work that used to work just fine. Frustration, stress, panic all add up to confuse what is usually a pretty simple issue. There is no quick and foolproof way to figure these problems out but here are some suggestions.

1. Don’t panic. Computer problems are often quite simple to resolve. Ask yourself some questions before you call for help:

a. What were you doing just before this happened?

b. Was there a recent power outage or storm?

c. Did you click on a link in an email?

d. Has anyone else but you used the computer lately?

e. Have you downloaded or installed new software?

f. Is your malware/anti-virus up to date and have you done a scan recently?

2. Troubleshooting a computer problem is a step-by-step process. You have to figure out what’s working and what isn’t. If the computer itself isn’t working, work through a process that includes your power supply, monitor (maybe your computer is on but you just can’t see it!), hard drive, DVD drive and so on. If you can’t power up, it could be a power cord, a power supply, a blown fuse or something as simple as a stick of RAM that has been jiggled out of place. Don’t assume that it’s a motherboard problem. When HP or BestBuy can’t figure out your problem in two easy steps, they will often say, “It’s your motherboard.” I’ve been around computers enough to know that this is rarely the case.

3. Rebooting your computer often gets rid of problems. Shut it down and wait for a few minutes before starting it up again. Assuming that your computer boots (starts), you can boot into safe mode for repairs if it doesn’t run properly in a normal environment. Safe mode is easy to start, check out how in this post.  It also helps to run your anti-virus or malware protection from Safe Mode.

4. If your computer was working well yesterday but isn’t today, consider using System Recovery to set everything back to yesterday’s settings. This is available in every Windows computer.

5. I know it sounds expensive and a waste of money but I think it’s a great idea to have at least two computers in your home, even if you are single. Why? Because you can use one computer to fix the other. Using Google to search for solutions has always helped me solve problems. Don’t underestimate the power of a $100 computer when you need to repair your $1000 laptop or desktop.

6. People are very helpful and you’ll find all kinds of assistance online. There are manufacturer’s forums, open forums, even Twitter to look for help.

7. Don’t assume that it’s user error. Sure, you may not know anything about computers but you’re not a complete idiot, either. Many tech people talk down to callers who seek help. Most of the time you can find the problem yourself without help and most of the time it’s not your fault. I learned about computers by breaking them, then fixing them. Let me tell you that you learn more when something doesn’t work than when everything runs smoothly. Life long learning, right?

Check out my brand new Facebook page. Feel free to like it and ask questions. I’ll do my best to answer you quickly.

Thanks for reading!



Computer Terms – 10 you should know



Computers Made Simple tries to demystify and explain the wonderful world of computers. Very often, the wall between adopting new technology and simply dreaming about it, is based on semantics. Just as communication with someone from another country is often hampered by language, such is the case with technology. Early adopters communicate using buzzwords, while late-comers are left out of the conversation. We’re here to get you up to speed on the ‘lingo’.

1. CPU – Nothing too complicated here. The CPU or Central Processing Unit is the brain in your computer. Think Intel or AMD, silicone and transistors. The CPU, for the most part, decides the speed with which you accomplish your work. It is the thinking unit that controls everything that happens in a computer. Old CPUs had one brain or core while the new ones have at least two, sometimes four and, infrequently, even more. Two heads, or more, are better than one, right?

2. Memory vs. Storage – Memory or RAM (Random Access Memory) is what you are thinking about right now. Your brain can sort of stuff, think about many things at once and interact with everything that goes on in your life. When you go to sleep, your thinking process stops. When you shut your computer off, the RAM is deactivated. Everything that was in RAM, such as that Word document for school, is lost UNLESS you have saved it to your hard drive or flash drive. Storage is your memories. Things you did when you were a child are stored in your memories, just as things you wrote last week are stored on a hard drive. Memory is right now, storage is back then. Once you put something into storage, you can retrieve it even after you shut your computer down. If something is in RAM and you haven’t saved it, you will never get it back.

3. Megabyte/gigabyte/terabyte  etc. –  How big is your closet? Usually, closets are measured in square feet or square meters. Computers tend to measure things in bytes. Without getting into bytes, suffice it to say that a byte is a way of measuring information. The more bytes you have for RAM or for storage makes a huge difference in the computing world. My first real computer had a 250 megabyte hard drive and 2 megabytes of RAM. Since it had a single core CPU and used Windows 3.1, it was slow as molasses. But, it did just about everything that one could do on a computer at that time. These days, storage is measured in gigabytes (something like a billion bytes) or terabytes (a trillion bytes). Even RAM these days is measured in gigabytes. These terms are simply the size of something. An MP3, for instance, could be 5 megabytes in size while a DVD movie might be 4, 8 or more gigabytes in size.

4. Hz or Hertz – You’ll see Hz in many computer ads. If you think of Hz in terms of speed or cycles per second, it might make sense. The higher the Hz, the faster the computer. Hz is also measured in mega and giga terms. A laptop might chug along at 1.6 GHz and be perfectly fine for email and Internet work. A new desktop might race along at 3 or 4 GHz. A GHz is a billion cycles per second. Gamers and other hi-tech know-it-alls will go for the highest GHz they can. The average user will be fine with any computer that hovers around 2GHz. You can pretty much ignore this figure but this explains what it means.

5. Hard drives/SSDs – The older hard drives were similar to a record player from days gone by. They had arms and platters and all of the information was stored on whirling disks of magnetic material. These are still in use today, virtually every computer made has one or more of these. This style of hard drive is relatively cheap to make but they are susceptible to knocks and drops. Laptops that are dropped are usually OK except for their hard drives. Once the arm hits the platter, the drive is useless. Enter the SSD. An SSD, or Solid State Drive, has no moving parts. Theoretically they are impervious to physical damage. Flash drives, which use the same technology, have been frozen, hammered and heated and continue to function after all of that. SSDs are faster, too. They don’t use mechanical devices to write or retrieve information. There are no spinning disks, either, so they use much less power. Faster, quieter and lower power consumption make them very attractive. The price, however, is high at this point. As time goes by, the price will drop, I’m sure.

6. Optical Drives – anything that isn’t a hard drive or an SSD is usually a DVD/Blu Ray or CD drive. These are named optical drives because they use a laser to read and write to the plastic disks. The laser is an optical process, hence the name. Ignore the speed ratings when you are looking at these drives. All optical products work better when written at slower speeds. 8X is perfect for these, despite the fact that some drives advertise much higher speeds.

7. SATA – SATA is simply a way that a computer connects to a drive. Drive connectors have gone from ATA (or PATA) through SCSI to SATA, each one being faster than the last, in most cases. SATA has gone through a few upgrades so you might see SATA 1 or SATA 2 but that doesn’t really matter to most users. SATA means Serial ATA while ATA defines a standard. A standard is a generally agreed upon way of making something work. Remember Sony Beta vs. VHS? That was a war of standards. SATA can be safely ignored but now you know what it means, at least.

8. LCD/LED – LCD or Liquid Crystal displays are now being replaced by LED or Light Emitting Diode displays. LCDs use more power and create heat, although they are more efficient than the old-style CRT displays from years ago. CRT means Cathode Ray Tube, something that hadn’t changed since the early days of television. Look for an LED display these days for low power consumption AND long life. LEDs last for a very long time. Remember your old stereo with the little red lights on it? Those were LEDs. Do they still work? Now you know what I mean.

9. Cooling/liquid cooling – The new CPUs run very, very hot. You can cook on any modern CPU. Without air or liquid cooling, a CPU will burn up in a matter of seconds. The problem with air cooling is that it’s loud. In order to cool a monster CPU while it crunches numbers, you’d need a fan the size of a dinner plate, more or less. That would make a lot of noise, right? Liquid cooling is quiet and extremely efficient…as long as it doesn’t leak. Hard core gamers and power users tend to use pipes and radiators filled with liquid to cool their CPUs. You and I can continue with our air cooling for now, thank you very much.

10. Overclocking – Think of overclocking the same way you think of an athlete on steroids. A CPU that is overclocked has more power sent to it than normal and it is asked to work at a faster speed. More power and faster speed creates heat which must be cooled with a liquid. Once a CPU is overclocked, two things can happen. First, the warranty is shot and, second, the computer may become unstable. On the other hand, if you remember what I said about GHz and CPUs, anyone who buys a 2GHz CPU and overclocks it to 2.5/3 GHz (or more) is getting something faster for less money. You can see how this would be attractive to someone, even if it risks ruining the warranty.

There you have ten terms that you will be more comfortable with in the future. I hope you could figure all this out. Comments and questions are welcome.

Thanks for reading!