Crash! You never think it can happen to you...

This past weekend I have some strange things occur with my system that I attributed to some Microsoft updates that had come down from on high, but as it turns out it probably was my hard drive failing.  On Tuesday it finally gave up the ghost, and totally crapped out.  Over the last few days I have let the guys try to resurrect my drive but to no avail.  So I've been working with my desktop from home running completely within terminal server and it really hasn't been a bad experience except that I'm down to one monitor now instead of two.  Using terminal server, I don't see how I can have two monitors up and running to show me two sessions at once.

Once again the new drive installed an up and running it will be hard to run might primary applications for research in communicating with my customers on the machine and still run terminal server for all my legacy applications.  That really seemed to work very well and I kept the speed up the cause I had fewer applications running locally and within the terminal server window I was using the memory from the server rather than on my local machine.  It's just like having two computers on my desk which helps me to expand my capabilities and increase the responsiveness of both systems.  So next week I'll run it through that scenario and I'll report back on how well it works.

So you want to Recycle your computer equipment responsibly? Here's How...

We all want to act as responsibly as possible when it comes to disposal of hazardous materials that can be found in a lot of computer components.  Goodwill Industries of Pittsburgh is accepting your computer equipment to be recycled. They have two locations in the Pittsburgh area, one and Banksville and the other in Belle Vernon. The addresses are listed below:

BANKSVILLE
2866 Banksville Road
Pittsburgh, PA 15216
[get a map]

BELLE VERNON
140 Finley Road
Belle Vernon, PA 15012
[get a map]

Here is a short blurb from their site: "Goodwill will consolidate and sort equipment for shipment to a Dell product recovery partner for reuse or recycling. Equipment that meets minimum standards will be refurbished and resold and all proceeds will support its non-profit job training and community programs. Equipment that cannot be refurbished will be responsibly recycled. Donors will be responsible for removing data from hard drives and other storage media before donating to Goodwill."

Nuance PDF Convertor - Legal Office Demo

 

I converted the video from QuickTime to Flash so you can easily view it.

Great little alternative program to Adobe Acrobat Writer for doing PDF Conversion and Document Management.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Handy Product for Active Road Warriors

 

The Belkin Mini Surge Protector with (2) USB Charging Ports.

I admit, I am a gadget freak! I can't begin to tell you how many different Electronic Devices I carry with me even on a short road trip.  I always have my camera, battery charger for the batteries that go into different devices, my GPS, my Zune, my laptop, my phone and portable speakers.  You know I can't go for a minute without being entertained by something!  For just $24.95 this little device turns one outlet into three plus gives you two charging USB ports.  USB connections are for charging only and cannot be used as a USB hub.  What a great little product that doesn't take up much room in your bag.

Upgrading to Office 2007 on a Windows XP Machine…

When I first install Office 2007 on my home XP machine was my inability to search in my outlook and OneNote programs. Microsoft every move the search functions from within office and require that you install Windows Desktop Search utility. Even though this utility was free it was a surprise when I tried my first search in my mail folder and nothing showed up. After I installed the search utility could well for it to index everything that was on my system. However, once everything was installed I was very impressed with its speed and accuracy. Not only was everything indexed and crossed index by application type, I was able to choose under which I wanted to search and limit the results for. Very nice! For more information visit:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/choose/windowsdesktopsearch.mspx

Even if you don't upgrade to Office 2007 and are still using an earlier version, having a full text search function in your system is a great help. Here's where you can download your free copy of WDS 3.01:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/b/d/9bd9c91f-7a74-4084-9198-49d2cfab7947/WindowsDesktopSearch-KB917013-V301-XP-x86-ENU.MSI

New product line-Scanshell

Ken has found a son of a product that we are looking forward to adding to our solutions store. If any if you have gone to the doctor's office recently unit knows that the office personnel ask you for your Medical Insurance card so that they can scan it for the records. This new product works with many different applications as well as its own database application for collecting the insurance information off of your Medical Insurance card. This helps to more accurately collect information may need to properly bill your insurance company as well as speed up the process in which to document this information. The unit that we are most interested in is the Scanshell 800N/800NR/800DXN. These products are perfect for driver licenses, corporate or medical ID card scanning. It interfaces to any standard USB Port, takes only a few seconds to scan, has an auto detect function and is TWAIN compliant. As I complete our final negotiations with this distributor I will post this product under our solutions center with greater detail as well as our product cart listings. Download the brochure on the Scanshell 800n

Making the Most of Your Time

Any one who knows me, knows that I am so in love with using my time as effectively as possible. Time is the one commodity that once it is used is definitely lost. I love to fill this time with things that either entertain or educate me. There are many ways to get, view and distribute all the information that is available both on the Internet and other sources.

If some of the information that you are looking for is available through the Internet it has probably been made available through either a RSS feed and/or through podcasts indication sources (which is a fancy way of saying iTunes). I subscribe to many podcasts using the Zune Marketplace. This is a free alternative to iTunes that works well whether or not you own a Zune Media Player or not. Several of us at the store recently picked up the new Zune 80 GB media player. I am currently running Vista Ultimate on both my work machine as well as my best of the home that I'm using as a media center system. This in works especially well on the desktops system because it is capable of importing TV shows that are recorded from the media center system. Takes about 20 minutes to upload a show but it comes across very well. I've also taking some of the home movies that I have created and uploaded them to the media player as well.

With podcasts, choose which ones you are interested and subscribe to them, and then mark them to the synced with the Zune. From that point on every time you connect your Zune to that computer it will check for updates from the market place download the new episodes in automatically upload them to your media player. It's that easy!

If you are interested in joining the Zune Social, as it is called, go to www.zune.net/setup to install the application on your machine that will allow you to connect to the Microsoft Zune Marketplace.  Enjoy!

Using Microsoft Outlook 2007 as your RSS Agregator

RSS stands for really simple syndication, and when you step back and really has a very simple way to gather information that you are interested and without having to search to search for all the new publications that are published daily by literally millions of different individuals add a new companies onto the Internet. Here is Microsoft's explanation of RSS feeds in Outlook:

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a way for content publishers to make news, blogs, and other content available to subscribers. You can view RSS content in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. Using RSS, publishers can make content and updates available for download by subscribers automatically. The content on all Web sites is not available as an RSS Feed, but the list is growing daily.

How does RSS work in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007? - RSS readers, such as the one built into Office Outlook 2007, allow you to subscribe to RSS Feeds and then read content or follow links for additional information. Whenever you see a link to a feed, or an RSS icon such as the one at the top of this page, just click. Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 will automatically subscribe you to that RSS Feed.

Get started - Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to subscribe to an RSS Feed is quick and easy and does not involve a registration process or fee. After you subscribe to an RSS Feed, headlines will appear in your RSS folders. RSS items appear similar to mail messages. When you see a headline that interests you, just click or open the item. For more information, read how to add an RSS feed to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and how to read your subscribed RSS feeds. Below is a sample of the many feeds you can subscribe to from around the world. Click on the links that interest you and Outlook will subscribe to them.

To take advantage of capability all you need to do is add a new News Source to your RSS Feed List. Right click on the RSS feeds folder and choose add a new RSS feed. The dialog box will appear on screen that you need to enter the address of the RSS feed that you want to subscribe to. The easy way to get this information is to browse to the hosting site that has the information that you are interested in and click on the subscribe to RSS feed hyperlink that will be located on that page is there it is and RSS feed subscriptions option available.

When you press this choice and new page will appear in your browser. Copy the URL to the clipboard and jump back to your open outlook dialog that is requesting the URL of your RSS feed. Paste it into the field and then press the add button to add it to your list. The next time outlook downloads new mail it will also download any new RSS feeds as well.

Microsoft Windows® SteadyState™.(for XP)

 

For a long time, we have been supporting several packages that allows schools and libraries Computer Equipment to run applications that lock down the computer so that they can be managed and protected from abusive users.  These products and set-ups have been hard to use, expensive, or both.  Microsoft has come out with a free software download that allows you to manage computers in a school computer lab or Internet cafe, a library or even in your home with a program called Windows® SteadyState™.

Here is a brief description: Windows® SteadyState™ is now available. (Windows SteadyState was formerly known as Microsoft® Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows XP.) Whether you manage computers in a school computer lab or an Internet café, a library, or even in your home, Windows SteadyState helps make it easy for you to keep your computers running the way you want them to, no matter who uses them. Windows SteadyState is easier to download, set up, use, and maintain than Shared Computer Toolkit.

Windows SteadyState runs on genuine copies of Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Home Edition, and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. And, Windows SteadyState is offered at no charge to Windows Genuine Advantage customers!

Here's a link to download it from Microsoft's site: DOWNLOAD

One of the podcasts that I enjoy listening to the provides many hours of tech tips for securing your PC to Security Now.  Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte discuss any issues surrounding PC Security and is worth listening to when you can.  In their January 31 episode 129, they devote the entire podcasts to Microsoft Windows SteadyState.  If you have the time and inclination I would suggest a quick listen. LISTEN HERE

A transcript of the episode can be found here...

Creating a Blog Entry using Microsoft Word

By clicking on the office toolbar icon, and then choosing publish and then blog, you'll be given a toolbar look:

Notice the manage accounts toolbar button. This allows you to add new managed blog accounts to Microsoft Word. Once you follow the setup procedure because extremely easy to publish and any time new entries to your blog list. Now one of the reasons I like Vista is the ability to use the incorporated voice to text mechanism in the operating system. It makes it very simple for me to sit and dictate into Word and push my article right to my blog list. If you need more help on setting up your live spaces account follow this link. http://home.live.com/?mkt=en-us

Have fun!