Brought to you each week by the PC Gurus, a loose collection of volunteers from around the Kentuckiana region.
You can interact with the team via chat room or BBS at www.thepcgurus.com. There are usually members present in the chat room after 8:00 PM every evening and you can post computer questions, comments, rants etc. on the bulletin board 24/7.
If you’re new to the Newsletter you can read back issues at Team member JP Durbin’s website at http://www.jpdurbin.net. There are links to all the old 84 Online issues as well as the new GuruNews missives.
The WHAS Crusade for Children provides year round support for needy children throughout the Kentuckiana region. Visit http://www.whascrusade.org to make donations online.
12-16-04
There are only eight shopping days left before Christmas. I guess maybe I should start shopping ;) But before I start the panic buying for my tech-savvy (and not so savvy) friends and relatives I’m going to arm myself with some important information. Namely, the age of their computers, what version of Windows they’re running and the amount of RAM and hard drive space they have. If I can sneak a look at device manager I’ll also try to find out what kind of video card they have and how much memory is on-board.
Why, I hear you asking, would I possibly want to sneak around getting the specs on my peep’s PCs? To make certain whatever I buy for them will work, of course. Every single piece of hardware or software will list some minimum system requirements on the box and knowing that information upfront will save me and my compadres a lot of headaches come the 26th.
The week after Christmas is the same every year at work. PC after PC is brought in for $300 worth of upgrades so little Johnny can play the $30 game he got as a gift. Son of Christmas present, so to speak.
Digital cameras as an example have some pretty hefty system requirements. Since the video files tend to be quite large, and since many users will want to convert them to something that can be burned to a DVD or VCD, they need a lot of free hard drive space and system RAM. They also generally require a USB 2.0 or Firewire port to transfer the images into the PC. A six-month-old PC with lots 512 MB or RAM will probably be fine. An old Pentium PC from 1997 won’t cut it.
DVD burners are more forgiving, and with prices now below $100 for really good full-featured units they are very attractive as gifts. Even system built three or four years ago probably has the video and processor to run one, but they require a TON of hard drive space if you’ll be doing any DVD copying.
Even printers and scanners can be problematic. Many models now use USB ports exclusively so really old PCs are out of the question, as are PCs that still run Windows 95 since it generally won’t support those ports.
Games though are by far the worst culprits of seasonal sticker shock. The hot ones this year seem to be Half-Life 2 and Doom 3. The video card preferred by these games requires 256 MB of on-board RAM and DirectX 9 compatibility. That alone will set you back a couple of bills at a minimum, at least if you get a good one.
Now for the good news. Regardless of what kind of PC the target of your gift giving may have, there are gifts out there that almost anyone can use.
Windows 95 users are a difficult buy but card, casino or board game titles will play on almost anything. Many other types of programs, like simple checkbook, mailing label and educational games like JumpStart or Magic School Bus titles will also work. Heck, if they’re using a PC that old just buy them a new PC. Low-end units can be had for $400 or so and, while not top of the line by any means they would be a definite step up.
For users with 98 machines or newer the sky is almost the limit. Lower-end digital cameras, web-cams, USB thumb drives, CD burners, PDAs and video capture cards are just a few of the items that will work on most anything built in the last five years.
Books are also a nice gift for your favorite semi-technophile. The excellent Dummies series is written in plain English and are great for people who are new to PCs or maybe need some help understanding exactly what they do and how they work. For the more advanced user books on digital photography, scanners, music sampling or even titles on specific programs they may be trying to master like Office 2003 or PhotoShop would be welcome.
The most important thing is to read the box. If you’re armed with the information about the system you’ll see immediately if the game or device will work. Otherwise, you can’t go wrong with a book J
Ho, Ho, Ho and all that…
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Google, the
operator of the world's most popular Internet search
service, announced an
agreement yesterday with Oxford University and
some of the leading U.S.
research libraries to begin converting their
holdings into digital files that
would be freely searchable over the
Web:
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/news/38996.html
A
new virus strain masquerading as an electronic Christmas card is
accounting
for one in every 10 e-mails hitting in-boxes, security
experts warned
Wednesday:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1742085,00.asp
Ask
Jeeves, the most courteous search engine on the Web, has entered
the desktop
search competition with a beta version of its own service
that scours users'
computers:
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3448511
You
know that hard disk manufacturers have worked miracles to increase
the areal
density or storage capacity of any given size platter, but
Toshiba Corp.
still manages to turn the industry on its ear -- or
rather, to turn
microscopic, magnetic bits on end, with the first
commercial use of
perpendicular recording on a hard drive:
http://www.enterpriseitplanet.com/storage/news/article.php/3448461
Copy
us on the good stuff ;-)
Matt Dattilo
Over the last few days I’ve been playing with a nifty little program called tinySpell. It’s a spell checker that sits in the System Tray and dings when you misspell something regardless of what program you may be using at the time. It works for things like AIM and MSN Messenger, IRC chat rooms and even Notepad and offers up spelling suggestions when you click the icon.
To give props I first read about it at Sarah Lane’s blog at http://sarahlane.typepad.com/ and the program itself is available from http://www.megspace.com/computers/tinyspell/. Oh, and of course it’s free ;)
Kevin Mefford
Ed Engelking II is the driving force behind the PC Gurus team and website. When 84 Online was canceled the team members met, decided on a new name and direction for the group and Ed had our new website, message board and chatroom up within mere days. A truly dedicated team member.
From Ed’s bio at http://www.thepcgurus.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1#ed:
"Ed is the team's Linux enthusiast, and loves to spread the word of open source. He has been using Linux as his desktop OS for almost 3 years, and has never looked back. He is currently running Novell's SuSE Professional 9.1. For fun, Ed likes to tell Windows users that he doesn't have the need to run any anti-virus or spyware software.
Even though he's a dedicated Linux user, Ed is quite fond of Windows 2003 Server, specifically with Active Directory. He's also a big fan of Dell desktops, laptops and servers. However, his computer of choice would be a G5 Mac with OS X. ... if he could afford it.
Ed began his trek into the business side of computing beginning in 1996 as a chat host on the fledgling Microsoft Network. He eventually became an administrator for MSN, creating content and even developing forum Web sites. During the Dot Com boom, Ed explored his creative side by writing for CNET's TechRepublic, first as a freelancer and eventually becoming a full time employee.
These days, Ed stays busy as the IT Administrator of a Louisville TV station, doing helpdesk support, server administration, networking, phone administration, and management. In addition, he co-owns UCANweb with fellow team member, Kyle Harmon, operating as the Web designer and server administrator."
Ed’s personal website is http://www.edengelking.com/.
Q: I have an Olympus 3.2 mega pixel digital
camera. I cannot figure how
to set my camera to get decent indoor pictures
without the use of a
flash. For example pictures in a basketball gym are
blurry and or
grainy. Got any tips?
A: You didn't mention what model of Olympus
camera you have – D series,
Stylus or C series – but I think my answer to
your question will cover
any of these.
The point-and-shoot
cameras are programmed to use the flash
automatically unless you have
disabled that feature in one of the user
menus, which some of these models
have an option to do. The image
sensors in these cameras are limited to the
amount of light they can
capture. When the light falls below a certain
amount, the flash is
automatically charged for use.
In a large
open area, the flash cannot supply sufficient light
because it is rather
limited. So the camera allows for a longer
exposure, which is why your images
are fuzzy/blurry. The shutter was
open long enough it caught the image
"moving" while it was open.
If you disable the flash, you will get
an even darker and more blurry picture.
These series of cameras are
capable of shutter speeds from 1/800th to
1/2000th of a second, depending on
the model. Given enough light
(i.e., outdoors) that is more than fast enough
to capture even the
fastest action sport. However, indoors, the
point-and-shoot cameras
are very limited in their capability to capture
sports shots.
Hope this helps.
Best
regards,
Rich
Heite
rich@ucanweb.com
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