JUL 2012 issue of TOE - Channel Islands PC Users Group

Transcription

July 2012
|
The Outer Edge
Page 1
The Outer E
d
g
e
July 2012
Vol. 25, No. 12
Whole No. 302
ISSN 1055-4399
The Friendly Computer Club Helping Make Computers Friendly. On the Web at www.cipcug.org
C O M M A N D. C O M
Attendance at the
June general meeting:
56 members and guests.
To Contact CIPCUG
The Outer Edge......................805-485-7121
General Information………...805-289-3960
Mailing Address...P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, CA
93031-1354
On the Web: cipcug.org
On Facebook: Facebook.com/groups/cipcug
Officers re-elected
Not surprisingly because there was no
opposition, the officers who were up for
election in June were re-elected.
They are:
Vice president: Craig Ladd
Secretary: Diane Mortensen
Treasurer: Art Lewis
President Jim Brown starts the second
year of his two-year term.
Other board members hold appointed
positions, including the webmaster, editor
of TOE, membership chairman and technical adviser.
Volunteers are always welcome, however, and if you’re interested in doing so,
contact any member of the board.
By Jim Brown, President
“Promoting the Harmony of Computer Education, and Camaraderie”
Y
our board has been busy dealing with a variety of
topics that have been keeping us on our toes.
We have been dealing with an offsite storage issue which has caused us some concern, but with extra energy we have been resolving that concern.
Suggestions have been considered on various ways to increase membership.
We are looking to furnish new flash drives and
load them with new information.
And we are planning a 25th anniversary event
tentatively scheduled for our Sept. 22, 2012, meeting. There are many possibilities on how and what
Brown
we will do, but we are determined to make this an
event to remember. Mark your calendars and come for a fun
time.
Please read the minutes submitted by our secretary, Diane
Mortensen, as all the above will be mentioned in further detail.
During these warm (hot) summer days, keep cool, and we
hope you had a BLAST on the Fourth of July.
I hope to see all of you on July 28.
Page 2
The Outer Edge
Root Directory
Channel Islands
PC Users Group
CIPCUG NEWS
Benefits ......................................... 23
Board minutes ................................. 9
Coming CIPCUG events ................. 3
Contributors to TOE...................... 14
Command.com ................................ 1
Computer conference reports ........ 10
Editor’s corner ................................ 3
Election results ................................ 1
F1: Your Help Key........................ 22
Map, schedule ............................... 24
Membership report ........................ 14
Program: Deep Web ........................ 8
Q&A session ................................... 4
GENERAL
Penguin’s Lair: grep ...................... 18
Review: FileLocater Pro ............... 16
Review: DoNotTrack .................... 21
Review: TechTracker .................... 20
Review: Total Recorder ................ 13
Rick’s rant: Windows 8................. 19
ADVERTISEMENTS
Creative Technology ..................... 16
Members’ classified ads ................ 16
O’Reilly ........................................ 16
Ventura County Computers........... 15
CIPCUG mailing address:
P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard, CA
93031-1354
Executive Committee
(Elected members of Board of Directors)
President……..………………...Jim Brown
.………….…………[email protected]
Vice President/Program Chairman
………………..………………..Craig Ladd
………………[email protected]
Secretary……….………..Diane Mortensen
……………………[email protected]
Treasurer…………..….……....…Art Lewis
…………………...…[email protected]
Immediate Past President
…………………………......…..Rick Curry
……...……………[email protected]
(Appointed members
of Board of Directors)
Technical Adviser…………..Toby Scott
Web Page Editor….………..Andy Toth
TOE editor.…….………….John Weigle
……………………[email protected]
Membership Chairman.…...Ken Church
Ex-officio members of Board of Directors
CIPCUG ISP Signups………..Art Lewis
Sound Equipment Technicians
………..David Minkin and Curt Davison
Program Chairman………..…Craig Ladd
Publicity Chairman...……...…Rick Curry
SIG coordinator…..……....Larry Hudson
2006 Southwest User Group
Conference: second place in both the
newsletter and Web site contests.
July 2012
Past Presidents
Walt Yates………………………1987-1989
Lois Evans de Violini…………...1989-1991
Terry Lee………………………..1991-1993
Jerry McLoud…………………...1993-1995
Robert Provart…………………..1995-1997
Toby Scott………………………1997-1999
George Lakes …………………...1999-2001
Andy Toth……………………….2001-2003
David Harris…………………….2003-2005
Lois Evans de Violini ........ ........ 2005-2007
Paul Westefer…………………….2007-2009
Rick Curry………………….…….2009-2011
(With the exception of the immediate past
president, past presidents are not board members.)
Life members
Frank Segesman*
Toby Scott
Lois Evans de Violini
Art Lewis
Helen Long
*Deceased
CIPCUG is a member of APCUG,
The Association of PC Users Groups
The Outer Edge
Editor……………………..John Weigle
P.O. Box 6536, Ventura CA 93006
485-7121………[email protected]
The Outer Edge is published monthly by Channel
Islands PC Users Group (CIPCUG), P.O. Box 51354,
Oxnard, Calif. 93031-1354. an independent, nonprofit
corporation. Contents of The Outer Edge copyright
2001  by Channel Islands PC Users Group.
Permission for reproduction in whole or in part is
granted to other computer user groups for internal
nonprofit use provided credit is given to The Outer
Edge and the authors of the reproduced material. All
other reproduction is prohibited without prior written
consent of Channel Islands PC Users Group.
Opinions expressed in this journal are solely those of
the authors or contributors, and do not necessarily
represent those of Channel Islands PC Users Group,
its officers or membership as a whole. The
information provided is believed to be correct and
useful; however, no warranty, express or implied, is
made by Channel Islands PC Users Group, its officers,
editorial staff or contributors. This disclaimer extends
to all losses, incidental or consequential, resulting from
the use or application of the information provided.
Channel Islands PC Users Group does not endorse or
recommend any specific hardware or software products,
dealers, distributors or manufacturers. All trademarked
or registered trademarked names are acknowledged to
be the property of their respective owners, and are used
for editorial purposes only.
Advertising in The Outer Edge
Advertising is accepted for computer-related
materials, businesses and services only. Rates are
for Camera-Ready copy (clear, clean black and
white masters). Typesetting and graphics are
available at an additional fee.
SIZE
Cost/Issue
FULL-PAGE (9½”H x 7¼”W)................$50.00
HALF-PAGE (4½”H x 7¼”W)
or (9½”H x 3½”W )....….........................$30.00
THIRD-PAGE (3”H x 7¼” W)………….$25.00
QUARTER-PAGE (4½”H x 3½W)..........$20.00
BUSINESS CARD ad...............................$15.00
Discounts for multiple issues (3, 6, 9 and 12
months)
Ad copy deadline is the 5th of the month of
publication.
Make all checks payable to CIPCUG.
Members’ classified ads are free but are limited to
105 characters, including spaces.
July 2012
The Outer Edge
Page 3
CIPCUG news and events
Conference reports
expand this issue
W
elcome to another 24-page issue, enlarged
this month to provide coverage of this year’s
Southwest Technology & Computer Conference, which was going on the same weekend
as our June meeting. Vice President Craig Ladd and member and regular TOE contributor Bob de Violini attended the
conference and report on what they learned
Editor’s
starting on page 10. Next year’s conference is
corner
expected to be in the San Fernando Valley
instead of San Diego, so more members
might be able to attend on their own. We’ll
report the details as they become available.
Helen Long’s column is missing this issue,
but not because it’s been dropped. She didn’t
have time to write it. I expect it back next
Weigle
month and also expect to be back to a 20page issue.
One advantage of increasing the number of pages in
TOE periodically is that it gives me a chance to use some of
the articles from other newsletters that are selected and provided by Judy Taylour of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups, a national organization. This issue, the
article is a review of DoNotTrack Pro. .
As most of you know, I try to concentrate on coverage
of CIPCUG and its activities and on articles submitted by
our members, but it’s interesting to see what other groups
are doing and learn from their newsletters, too. Enjoy.
***
KVTA radio (1520 on the AM dial) has lost another
local computer show. Ken May announced last month that
he was ending his Saturday morning show because it has
helped his business grow so much that he no longer has time
to do the show. He is maintaining his show-related Web site
at KenMay.net.
G.J. Goldwyn, who had the earlier A Computer Pro
show, maintains his site at http://www.acomputerpro.com.
KVTA still carries the nationally syndicated Kim Komando Show on Saturday afternoons unless she’s preempted by sports.
***
As always, you’re welcome to submit letters, articles or
short tips to help other members use their computers.
Send them to me at [email protected] or give them to
me at any meeting. The email version is easier for me because it means I don’t have to retype your work, which increases the chance for mistakes from my typing. I’ll clean
up any typos or grammatical errors in your copy. That’s part
of the job.
— John Weigle, editor
Coming events
Topic of July’s program
will be announced
Programs
The speaker for our July 28 meeting was not available by the
deadline for this issue. The meeting starts at 8:45 a.m. in the Camarillo Boys & Girls Club, 1500 Temple Ave. (Ponderosa Drive
and Temple Avenue), Camarillo (see the map on the last page.)
The doors open at 8 a.m. The pre-meeting SIG starts at 8:45
a.m. At the moment, we can’t divide the meeting room.
Other meeting dates for this year:
Aug. 25
Sept. 22
Oct. 27
Nov. 17 (third Saturday)
Dec. 15 (third Saturday)
SIGs
The Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are sponsored by CIPCUG
and led by volunteer club members. They are free to CIPCUG
members.
Other than those presented during or just after the regular
meeting, the SIGs run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Ventura County
(Continued on page 4)
Door prizes
We have two types of raffle tickets: one for prizes offered by
the presenter and one for club-provided prizes. The tickets for the
presenter’s prizes are free and limited to one per member.
The tickets for the club-provided prizes are $1 each, $5 for six
tickets, $10 for 13 tickets, $15 for 20 tickets and $20 for 27 tickets
and are available to anyone. Those who can’t stay until the
drawing may sign their tickets and give the person selling the
tickets a list of the prizes they would like in the order they’d pick
them. Winners’ prizes will be held until the next meeting.
Consignment table
A consignment table is set up at every meeting. Anyone can
buy, but only members can sell.
The club gets 10 percent of the sales price. Sold items must
be picked up at the end of the day’s meeting.
Any items not picked up will become the property of CIPCUG
and will be subject to disposal at the club’s discretion.
CIPCUG is not responsible in any way for items bought or
sold at the table. Each item is sold as-is unless otherwise stated.
Meeting, SIG notices
If you would like e-mail notices of regular meetings and SIGs,
go to www.cipcug.org, where you’ll find a link on the home page
to sign up. The URL is cipcug.org/listserv.cfm.
You will need your membership number, which is on the
back cover of TOE, to complete the sign-up.
Page 4
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July 2012
Q&A
Wireless mice, scanner images and more
Extended Q&A
Because of remodeling at the Boys &
Girls Club, the meeting area can’t be
divided into smaller meeting rooms, so
we decided not to have a SIG and started
the Q&A early. Michael Shalkey was
celebrating his 30th wedding anniversary,
so Jessica Scott ran the computer for part
of the session. Michael’s absence meant
we didn’t have the club’s projector.
Thanks to Tony Pizza, who, in response to
a question, said, “I confess, it was me
[who brougnt the projector]. The projector belongs to the Mac club. I had borrowed it for another presentation. I usually don't have it.”
Wireless mouse
Q: I got a wireless mouse, but it’s
frustrating me because I have to move the
mouse a great distance to make the cursor
move a small distance on the screen.
A: You can adjust that setting by going to Control Panel > Mouse > Pointer
Options and adjusting the slider on Motion (enhance pointer precision). A lot of
wireless mice are designed for laptops,
where the screen is much smaller. On big
screens, it’s definitely a problem.
Q: I do some CAD work and could
never fine tune the mouse properly for
This month’s Q&A topics:
Wireless mouse
Scanners and images
Storage media
OneNote as printer
High CPU usage
Email on smartphone
Ports
Losing Internet connection
Others are logged on
that kind of work, so I switched to a USB
mouse.
A: Use a tablet like a Wacom tablet,
which you can write on with a stylus. It’s
much more accurate for that kind of
work. The mouse pointer is actually a
cross-hair. A lot of engineers and architects use them.
Scanners and images
Q: I had an HP printer/scanner that
stopped working with Vista. I got a Canon, but it lacks a feature the HP had. With
the HP, I could put four or five pictures
on the scanner and select one of them
with a cropping tool to scan one at a time.
I have some 5,000 pictures to scan, and
that feature is time-saver. Is there some
software that I can buy that will let me do
Vista support
Routers
DSL Extreme routers
Netflix and speed
Ethernet over power lines
Router speeds on mixed equipment
Recommended routers
Printer problem with draft mode
that?
A: I don’t know. I use Paint Shop Pro,
version 7, to crop after the scanning.
IrfanView and most other photo editing
software will let you do that.
Q: I can do the screen shots, but do I
lose quality when I crop them?
A: When you scan something, you get
whatever resolution the scanner allows.
There are two types of graphic image
saving formats: bitmap accurate picture
takers and what are called lossy, which
shrink the picture in a manner that you
keep most of the quality of the picture but
the size of the file goes down. Lossy formats are JPEG, GIF, PNG and some others. Many cameras save pictures as
More on coming events ...
(Continued from page 3)
Computers, 2175 Goodyear Ave., Unit
117, Ventura; phone 289-3960. From the
101 Freeway, exit at Telephone, take
Telephone south to McGrath, turn left
and go one block. Turn right on
Goodyear and right again into the second
driveway. Unit 117 is the back, right
corner of the building. The pre-meeting
SIGs are at 8:45 a.m. at the Boys & Girls
Club. The after-meeting SIG is at locations to be announced on the meeting
day.
The general schedule:
Fourth Tuesday: Linux.
Fourth Saturday (or the regular
meeting day): Social Media SIG (Jessica
Scott and Mark Maidel) or Internet and
connectivity SIG (Toby Scott), 8:45 a.m.
The location of Michael Shalkey’s aftermeeting SIG, on days there is one, is announced at the meeting.
The July and August schedules:
July
Tuesday, July 24: Linux SIG. Topic:
Our June upgrade of the CIPCUG PC
was proceeding fairly nicely until the PC
lost power. That is an event few operating
system upgrades would survive. So we
will install Ubuntu 12.04 from scratch at
the July SIG meeting, and ask and answer
questions about grep and anything else
during the installation.
Saturday, July 28: Regular meeting,
pre-meeting Social Media or Internet
SIG.
August
Saturday, Aug. 25: Pre-meeting Social Media or Internet, connectivity SIG.
Tuesday, Aug. 28: Linux SIG. Topic:
TBA.
Be sure to check the calendar on
cipcug.org for updates on event programs, dates and times.
July 2012
The Outer Edge
Page 5
JPEGs because of limited space on the
memory cards, so lots of scanners automatically save pictures as JPEGs, too. In
almost all scanners you can override that
setting and save the pictures in whatever
format you want to, such as TIFF or in
vector graphics, such as EPS, which is
used by most Adobe products.
If you’re concerned about quality,
save graphics in the highest possible resolution as a TIFF or BMP, which gives
you the maximum quality the scanner can
provide. If you crop and save the picture
in the same format, you won’t lose quality. But if you edit a JPEG and save it as a
JPEG, you’ll lose some quality because
the idea is to create a smaller file. Each
time you save a JPEG, you lose a bit
more quality. You can adjust the amount
of compression in most cases.
From audience: I have used PaperPort
to scan pictures, but I’m not sure it works
in Windows 7.
Toby: That’s one of the small scanners you can use for letters, etc.
From audience: If you’re doing lots of
photos, it’s probably better to spend the
money for a new photo scanner to do it.
Toby: The PaperPort might be what
you want, although it isn’t the best of the
scanners, but it takes many paper sizes.
Storage media
Q: After you scan the photos, what’s
the best storage media?
A: Whatever I tell you today will be
wrong tomorrow because the market
keeps changing, but I’ll make suggestions
anyway.
If you got the 25 Gig SkyDrive from
Microsoft, that will hold lots of pictures
and works real well.
Jessica: And they can be accessed
from any computer connected to the Internet.
Toby: Microsoft does backups of SkyDrive, and you can back up the SkyDrive
to a flash drive. The 32 Gig ones will
hold lots of pictures. Other good cloud
resources are Google’s G Drive and
Dropbox. If you can afford it and your
load is not huge, cloud storage is what I’d
use for the primary backup.
Remember that the definition of a
backup is having a copy of your data in
two or more locations. Users of
MegaUpload, a popular cloud storage
site, lost all their data when it was shut
down because its controls on music were
weak and it encouraged file sharing.
Now, owners of all material, even if it’s
personal photos, are out of luck, at least at
this time. Some cloud companies go
broke and some don’t always play nice,
so you should have copies of your data on
the ground someplace, too. These copies
can be on DVDs, flash drives or external
hard drives.
Q: If you burn to a DVD or Blue-Ray,
can you get to them like any other files?
A: Yes. Just don’t think of DVDs as
being perfectly safe and indestructible
because they can be scratched easily or
melted in a fire.
(Break to set up projector and conduct the election.)
Audience: You can have pictures
scanned at places like Costco, and they
might offer to make a slide show for you.
These are low-quality images and a few
pictures will fill a DVD. It’s almost like
they make a movie of the pictures, so you
can’t take individual pictures to make a
collage, for instance. Don’t do it. Most
DVD players will create the slide show.
OneNote as printer
Q: I have a newer version of Microsoft Office. You discussed OneNote a
couple of months ago, and it has made
itself my default printer. How can I
change that?
A: Go to Start > Devices and Printers,
and right-click on the printer you want to
be the default one and then select “Set As
Default Printer.” The default printer will
have a check mark on it. That setting
should hold. In XP, I think it’s just Printers rather than Devices and Printers.
High CPU usage
Q: Norton keeps giving me a popup
about high CPU usage. What does that
mean?
A: It means you’re using a lot of the
computer’s processing power. That’s often a result of lots of things running in the
background. Many programs think
they’re the most important thing on the
computer and add themselves or part of
themselves to the list of things that start
when you boot the computer. You can fix
that by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del and selecting Task Manager (or Ctrl+Shift+Esc to
eliminate one step). You can look at Processes and Services to see what’s using
the most resources.
Jessica: You have to be careful what
you stop because you can shut down your
computer by shutting down the wrong
items.
Q: Years ago, I used Stop Cop, which
let me determine what programs would
start when the computer is booted. I’d
like to go back to something like that
because it seems to me that Google
doesn’t close after a search and keeps
stacking up.
A: I think Stop Cop stopped working
with XP. [Startup Cop, which might be
the program mentioned, is still being updated by PC Magazine and is available at
http://preview.tinyurl.com/7xgw3gk —
Editor.] MSconfig will do the job. To get
there, go to Start > Search programs and
files and type in msconfig. When you go
to the Services tab in it, check the box to
Hide all Microsoft services, and examine
the remaining items. Be careful what you
turn off because you can turn your computer into a brick by turning off essential
services. The Google Update Service and
Adobe Flash Player Update keep turning
themselves back on when you turn them
off here or in Startup. Then go to the
Startup tab and uncheck items you’re sure
you don’t need. Don’t turn off Office
2010; if you do you won’t be able to open
the individual programs. When you’ve
finished, click on Apply and OK. The
changes will take effect when you reboot
the computer, which MSconfig will suggest you do.
Audience: Smartphones also have
programs running in the background. On
an iPhone, double click on the Access
button at the bottom and touch the red
minus signs on the one you don’t want to
keep running. (Several suggestions to
lengthen smartphone battery life can be
found
here:
http://
preview.tinyurl.com/84xfwfk — Editor)
Email on smartphone
Q: I got a smartphone. How do I put
the CIPCUG Outlook email on it?
Page 6
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July 2012
A: You’ll find the settings for the
@cipcug.org
mail
at
http://
www.vccomputers.com/email.cfm. They
are as follows:
Incoming
mail
(POP3):
mail.vcmail.net
Outgoing
mail
(SMTP):
mail.vcmail.net
Your
account
name:
[email protected]
Your password: (Type it in)
Click on “Remember password”
Check the box that says “My server
requires authentication.”
Do not check “Logon Using Secure
Password Authentication.”
Change the SMTP (Outgoing) port
from 25 to 2525. Otherwise you won’t be
able to send mail from many locations.
Audience: If you’re leaving the country and taking your smartphone, turn off
everything that connects with the outside
world, such as your GPS.
Toby: You don’t want anything being
on all the time that has roaming charges
because the charges will be tremendous
by the time you return home. A ZDNet
writer didn’t do that, and when he got
home he had a $1,200 bill for roaming
charges.
Audience: I added a hot spot VPM to
encrypt my smartphone. It can’t be
hacked.
Toby: Everything can be hacked.
Whenever someone says something can’t
be hacked, they’re selling, not analyzing.
Everything somehow, some way, can be
hacked, but it’s a lot more difficult with
VPM.
Ports
Q: Can you describe ports for me?
A: There are some 65,000 ports that
can be used to send information to a server. Servers ask what you want and determine that by looking at the port being
used. There are standard ports to display
Web pages, get or send email, use FTP
and so on. Port 25 is commonly used to
send email, but many Internet service
providers block it to limit spam. If port 25
is blocked, the companies sending email
must use another port; CIPCUG uses port
2525. ISPs can allow their own clients to
use port 25 because they’re inside the
ISP’s port-blocking firewall, but they
often block it from external mail servers,
such as Gmail and CIPCUG. Hackers can
turn your computer into a zombie and
spew spam from it. That’s another possible reason for high CPU usage.
Q: When would I need to know what
port is being used and when would I have
to change one?
A: The only one I can think of is the
mail port we just discussed. Gibson Research at GRC.com has ShieldsUp, which
will show the ports that can be seen from
the Internet, but that has become much
less of a concern in recent years.
Losing Internet connection
Q: A few times a day, I’m getting a
message that my computer is no longer
connected to the Internet. As far as I
know, I have not done anything to end the
connection. I have to sign in to my wireless router, and I’m connected wirelessly.
A: I suspect that the router is slowly
going into senility.
Others are logged on
Q: I’m getting a message that other
people are logged on when I shut down
my computer. I have three computers
connected. I’ve received the message on
all three, I think.
A: I think you have some kind of file
sharing or file communication program
running on your network. Check to see if
this message occurs on the last machine
you turn off. If it does — and be sure the
others are turned off — it really does
mean someone else is logged on, and it
isn’t you. That could be someone in the
house who was logged on when you
logged on or it could mean that something has been installed on your computer
to turn it into a zombie. If the message
occurs on the last machine that’s on,
download, install, update and run the free
version
of
Malwarebytes
(http://
www.malwarebytes.org). Also be sure
that your anti-virus program is running
and updating because malware will often
disable anti-virus programs from running
or updating.
Vista support
Q: When is the last day of support for
Vista?
A: XP is April 2014; Vista will be in
April 2017. Mainstream support means if
you have a problem with Vista you can
call Microsoft and pay them to fix it. XP
is out of mainstream support. Patch updates for Vista will stop in 2017, and
mainstream support will end in 2014.
Routers
Q: B and G routers have had trouble
going through walls. Might an upgrade to
N help?
A: Yes. Three factors can affect if a
router can get signals through obstacles:
the location of the router, the number of
broadcast units and the router speed.
For home use, putting the router on a
higher location often helps because the
router does not have to broadcast through
bookcases, cabinets and other barriers
that are about desktop level. Placing the
router so the signal is aimed straight
through a wall rather than at an angle
through the wall also helps because it cuts
down the amount of material the signal
must pass through.
Routers can have one, two or three
broadcast units. More units are better
because even a small difference in location can help a signal breach barriers. The
N standard is newer and better and has
more ability to bounce around places.
Often a single N will outperform a double
B or G unit. The three-antenna routers are
generally for businesses and cost $125 to
$200. Also buy a router with at least two
sending units if you’re getting a new one.
DSL Extreme routers
Q: I’m using DSL Extreme. It’s
PPPoE (point to point protocol over
Ethernet). Can you configure a router to
stay logged in?
A: All routers should stay logged in as
long as the router is on. The router should
log in automatically if there’s a power
failure. If you’re regularly losing connection, you could be having power line
problems, a bad wire or a failing router.
You might have to restart a router once a
month or so to resynchronize with the
modem. A manual reset usually clears
static electricity problems.
Q: I feared that replacing the router
Verizon provided could affect my service,
so because my grandkids have a
PlayStation downstairs, I ran hot wires
down to it.
July 2012
The Outer Edge
Page 7
A: Switching could create service
problems. Today’s routers serve two
functions, which used to be provided by
separate pieces of hardware. In earlier
days, everyone had a separate modem
and, if needed, a separate router that provided IP addresses to the other hardware.
Most ISPs now provide a single box with
both a modem and a router. If you replace
the ISP’s box with a plain router, you’ll
end up with no Internet connection. Modem protocols on the Internet side are
tricky. Some will work with some vendors but not others. If you already have
wires run to the other machines, stick
with them. Wireless networks will never
be as reliable as wired networks. Wireless
networks are also more difficult to troubleshoot.
Q: A friend ran wire 50 feet to hook
up one computer. Now he wants to connect others that are not wireless.
A: You have to have a unique wire for
each computer. You can buy a four- or
eight-port switch to plug others into and
then plug the switch into the router. I
have some business clients with that configuration, but I try to get them away
from it. We want one wire to each computer. Putting switches in the middle of
your network makes it much less reliable
than home runs (direct connections).
Some routers can be configured as
switches, but switches are cheaper than
routers.
Q: My D-Link router has four ports in
the back. I’m using them all. Could I put
a switch on that for upgraded home security?
A: I’d run every device to the switch
and one wire from the switch to the router. All your computers will be at the same
level and if you have problems that layout
would make diagnosing them much easier.
Netflix and speed
Q: We had Netflix with just CDs because my picture quality was terrible on
wireless. I found with my company laptop I got a faster speed with wire than
wireless. Is that typical?
A: For most of the time this club has
existed, the standard wired connector was
100 megabits per second. Most new com-
puters and routers now have gigabyte
network cards or switches. Connectivity
speed has become a huge bottleneck because the amount of data moving on networks has grown tremendously. If you
have an old 100 megabit wired network,
and you get an N router, the N router will
be faster than your wire, assuming you
have an N to N connection.
Q: So is wire faster than wireless?
A: Here are the figures: 80211B wireless, 11 megabits per second; G wireless,
54 megabits per second; N wireless, 108
megabits per second; hard wired in almost everybody’s house, 100 megabits
per second. If you’re real close, a G router will give you nearly a full 108 megabits per second. If you have a new computer you probably have gigabit network
connection. You can get a gigabit switch
and plug all the devices into that and that
into the router. You’ll end up with 1,000
megabits per second.
Q: So I must have a G router? When I
plug a wire into it I got 100.
A: You could have a B router, which
could degrade your signal.
Q: It has three antennas, and I got it
from you a couple of years ago.
A: Then it’s not a B. It’s a G.
Q: It’s at 54 when I go wireless to my
company laptop and 100 when I plug a
cable into it.
A: Two years ago, N was a draft spec.
Some routers based on the draft could
accept a firmware upgrade, but many had
to be junked because the manufacturers
used draft specs that didn’t match the
final adopted specs.
Q: What do N routers cost?
A: They run $175 to $200.
Ethernet over power lines
Q: I’ve been experimenting with
Ethernet over power lines, which has given me some good results getting past obstacles.
A: I was doing that until we did some
remodeling and I ran wire. To do what
you’re doing you need to have only one
power box. Some homes have two — one
for upstairs and one for downstairs — and
that will make it impossible to connect
the devices on different floors with Ethernet over power lines.
It’s also possible to have power over
Ethernet, which can be a good way to
power a security camera over a door if a
power line is not convenient. Many power-over-Ethernet apps are coming out for
homes and businesses.
Router speeds on mixed equipment
Q: If you have an N wireless router
but the receiving computers are B, G or
N, how does that affect the speed?
A: You receive at the lowest negotiated speed. It will vary for each computer.
The N will give a better signal even if it’s
talking to a B device, given the caveats
on sending units, etc. If you’re buying a
router or wireless devices now, don’t buy
a G. Get one with the N standard. Even if
your current laptop has a G network card,
you’ll get a new laptop before the new
router fails, and the next laptop will have
an N network card.
Recommended routers
Q: A year ago, you recommended
TrendNet routers. Do you still?
A: They’re fine for homes. We’ve
started using Buffalos, which are infinitely configurable because they have a public source operating system, called DDWRT. I still like Cisco, NetGear, and DLink.
Printer problem with draft mode
Q: I have a Brother printer. I want to
change from the normal print mode to
fast normal (sometimes called draft) to
save ink, but I can’t make the change
stick.
A: This setting is often included in a
Word document, which overrides the
general setting. If you’re using the same
template or copy of a document, the problem will persist until you start from
scratch and change the setting in the document. Microsoft Publisher often overrides the setting because it expects to be
printing a final document. Try going to
printer settings in the program that created the document and changing printer
settings there.
Go to Start > Devices and Printers and
right click on the printer you’re working
with. Go to the Paper Quality tab and set
Print Quality to make changes. Different
printers will have different print options
on this tab.
Audience: In my printer it’s in the
Page 8
The Outer Edge
July 2012
Program: Deep Web
Lots of information available on ‘invisible Web’
By John Weigle
[email protected]
Thousands of pages of useful information are hidden in the deep Web on
sites that are not logged by the normal
search engines, the speaker at our June
meeting said.
Google sees less than 1 percent of the
Internet, said Craig Brainard, who completed his major in computer science in
1971 but didn’t work in the field until the
early 1990s after an accident, he said. He
does volunteer work at the Wilson Senior
Center and has a company, CB Technologies. He sets up computers for the legally
bind. His email address is or
[email protected].
The deep Web, also known as the
invisible Web, consists of more than 90
terabytes of information, much of it in the
form of databases rather than pictures and
straight text. Another portion of the Web
is the dark Web, the nefarious area frequented by hackers, terrorists and other
bad guys.
The Wikipedia article on the deep
Web
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Deep_web) offers this information on
searches of the surface Web and deep
Web: “Mike Bergman, founder of BrightPlanet, credited with coining the phrase,
has said that searching on the Internet
today can be compared to dragging a net
across the surface of the ocean: a great
deal may be caught in the net, but there is
a wealth of information that is deep and
therefore missed. Most of the Web’s information is buried far down on dynamically generated sites, and standard search
engines do not find it. Traditional search
engines cannot ‘see’ or retrieve content in
the deep Web—those pages do not exist
until they are created dynamically as the
result of a specific search. The deep Web
is several orders of magnitude larger than
the surface Web.”
Brainard said he was suffering from a
bad cold and apologized for his rather
disjointed presentation, so this report is
based on both information he presented
and other information found on sites he
recommended or found in a Google
search. Although Google does not see all
the deep Web sites, a search for “deep
Web” gets about 4.8 million results.
Deep Web pages contain lots of specialized information in such fields as
medicine and the law, among many other
categories. Searches can find successful
treatments for medical problems that are
accepted in other nations but that have
not been approved in the United States,
he said.
“If you dig in the deep Web you can
find out just about anything you want to
know,” Brainard said. The deep Web is
especially useful for finding genealogical
information, he said, but it also contains
much other information.
“When you’re searching for people or
your family, there are things you definitely do not want to know,” he added.
Deep Web pages are often updated
daily, but, just as on the surface Web —
the one we’re all familiar with — pages
often disappear quickly. Dog Pile
(DogPile.com) is the only search engine
on the surface Web that talks to the deep
Web, he said.
Many sites search for people,
Brainard said, but he recommends starting with pipl.com. “Use this one as your
starting page for any people search,” he
said. Pipl and many of the other search
sites show some information and offer
more information if you pay for more
detailed reports, but, Brainard explained,
“the rule is never pay for anything.” Just
gather as much data as you can from the
information provided at no cost.
The site 80legs.com is a paid search
engine for the deep Web, he noted. Another general search site for the deep Web
is Infomine at http://infomine.ucr.edu.
Although Brainard did not mention
this site, a Google search found Anka
search at http://www.ankasoftware.com/
ankasearch.html. The site describes AnkaSearch as “a Meta Search and Deep
Web Search Desktop tool. Apart from
searching for pages, AnkaSearch also
enables you to save selected downloaded
pages, organize and manage the saved
pages. … Many sites which are not
‘crawled’ by search engines are included
in AnkaSearch, giving you search results
which will never be revealed by conventional search engines.”
Brainard said adding the word
“databases” to searches — for example
“airplane crashes databases” — will limit
searches to databases, thus eliminating
news stories on recent crashes. Adding
“deep web” to searches also works, he
said.
Information about people
Sites that provide information about
people — ranging from addresses and
when I open a new document. It won’t
accept the change for more than one document.
A: You might try updating the printer
driver. A lot of the drivers for Vista work
in Windows 7, but some have glitches
like this.
If there’s a new driver on the manufacturer’s Web site, download it. Then
uninstall the current driver by right clicking on the printer and on Remove this
device. Then install the new driver.
More on Q&A ...
Options tab.
Q: The problem started when I went
from Vista to Windows 7. If I try to set it
this way, it’s only good for one document. It goes back to the original setting
July 2012
The Outer Edge
Page 9
Minutes of May and June board of directors meetings
By Diane Mortensen
May 26, 2012
CIPCUG Board of Directors held its
monthly meeting on May 26, 2012. Members in attendance were Jim Brown, Craig
Ladd, Rick Curry, John Weigle, Helen
Long, Diane Mortensen, Andy Toth and
Bob de Violini. Members not in attendance were Art Lewis and Toby Scott.
The meeting was called to order by
President Jim Brown.
In Art Lewis’s absence, Jim Brown
presented the April 2012 treasurer’s re-
port showing as of April
30, 2012, a bank balance
of $5,127.36. The treasurer’s report was read into
the minutes.
Jim brought to the
board’s attention that
plans were under way as Mortensen
to CIPCUG’s 25th anniversary event. He stated that the 25th anniversary event committee (Craig, Diane
and Jim) was looking into nearby places
to hold the event that would accommo-
date CIPCUG’s members. Possibly a
guest speaker for part of the meeting, a
Q&A session, awards, certificates for
various categories, and food whether refreshments or a full lunch. Sept. 22, 2012,
is a tentative date for the event. Jim will
e-mail board members the event’s planning progress. He would also appreciate
all suggestions.
Art suggested having 6GB or 8GB
flash drives loaded with freeware to be
sold to members and those in attendance
More on deep Web ...
phone numbers to criminal records —
include the following:
● 192.com, which searches for people
and businesses in England.
● Spokeo, a general people search. It
can show a picture of a person’s home
and often a map. A separate site, which
he did not name, shows a list of neighbors, which makes it easy to investigate a
person.
● ZoomInfo, a business and business
people search site.
● Jigsaw, another business and business person search engine.
● 411.com, a logical search engine
similar to a telephone book.
● InstantCheckmate.com. It searches
criminal records.
● Lullar.com, a general people search.
● Yasni.com, which offers three major searches: “I am looking for people
that match …,” “I offer … I can … I am
…” and “What does the net know about
…”
● Whitepages.com, a general people
search. “The more information you give,
the better the results,” Brainard commented. The advice is valid for all the people
search engines.
● Kgbpeople.com, a people search
engine that also lets people place their
own profiles on the Web in an attempt to
counter misinformation on other sites.
In an email to Vice President Craig
Ladd before the program, Brainard also
recommended
http://www.academicgenealogy.com; topsearchenginesdirectories.htm; and https://us2.ixquick.com (a
private search engine)
Deep Web search engines
Lists of deep Web search engines can
be found at these locations:
● Research Beyond Google: 119 Authoritative, Invisible, and Comprehensive
Resources: http://oedb.org/library/college
-basics/research-beyond-google.
● 25 Free People Search Engines to
Find
Anyone
at
http://
www.findermind.com/free-people-search
-engines.
● 10 Search Engines to Explore the
Invisible
Web
at
http://
www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-searchengines-explore-deep-invisible-web.
● Five Search Engines You Can Use
to Search the Deep Web at http://
websearch.about.com/od/invisibleweb/tp/
deep-web-search-engines.htm.
A location that appears useful is
http://www.ipl.org.
The site explains: “ipl2 is a public
service organization and a learning/
teaching environment. To date, thousands
of students and volunteer library and information science professionals have
been involved in answering reference
questions for our Ask an ipl2 Librarian
service and in designing, building, creating and maintaining the ipl2's collections.
It is through the efforts of these students
and volunteers that the ipl2 continues to
thrive to this day.”
General information on Deep Web
Sites with lots of general information
about the deep Web include the following:
● Deep Web Research 2012, a list of
recent books, articles, blogs and other
information on the deep Web. A PDF
version
is
available
at
www.deepwebresearch.info.
● The Invisible Web at http://
websearch.about.com/od/invisibleweb/tp/
deep-web-search-engines.htm&prmdo=1.
Genealogy sites
Useful genealogy sites include these:
● GeneaSearch.com.
● Ancestry.com, which requires payment.
Brainard also suggested that those
interested in cryptography and secure
passwords
should
visit
http://
www.away32.com/package.html. The site
sells Away RJN cryptography software
but also has a general discussion of what
to look for in cryptography software.
Brainard ended his presentation with
some glances at the dark Web, which
includes sites to order any drug and have
it delivered to your door; money laundering sites used by terrorists; and sites that
sell military grade weapons, including
surface-to-air missiles and IEDs.
Page 10
The Outer Edge
July 2012
Two members report on computer conference
CIPCUG members Craig Ladd and
Bob de Violini represented us at the
Southwest Technology & Computer Conference June 22-24 at the Town and
Country Resort & Convention Center in
San Diego. Their reports follow. — Edi-
Samsung tablet with Win 8 preview on it
— the mobile look will be the future obviously with Live Tiles. Microsoft wants
By Craig Ladd
to own our living rooms with Win phone,
Microsoft Store tour
This was a good tour, which included Xbox, Surface tablet, laptop and PC on
a Windows 8 preview. We got to see a
tor
More on board minutes ...
at the event. Bob de Violini would be
willing to help with downloading freeware for the flash drives. Another suggestion was putting in TOE and on CIPCUG’s website a request to members to
make recommendation of free computer
programs that could be placed on the
flash drives.
John reported that he sent out 200
TOEs for May and had only three left. It
was thought that getting more people to
pull up the TOE on CIPCUG’s website
would bring down the cost of mailing
TOE. An advantage to members would
be the ability to archive and copy articles,
Q&A sessions, etc. on personal computers for future reference.
Jim is interested in ways to market
CIPCUG to the public of every age
group. One idea is to make up a marketing piece that could be sent to high
schools in the area including the new
ACE charter high school at the airport.
Other places could be Oxnard, Ventura,
and Moorpark colleges and CSUCI, Camarillo, and Oxnard libraries, Camarillo
and Oxnard senior centers, vocational and
technical schools, even on Starbucks
stores’ community bulletin boards. In
addition, to make sure we have on hand
CIPCUG’s new brochure to send and
pass out for those interested in knowing
more about what the club has to offer and
membership.
Craig proposed having young adults
from high schools and vocational and
technical schools demonstrate a program
on robotics at one of CIPCUG’s meetings. Craig also mentioned several places
that will accept electronic equipment for
recycling. A reputable place he uses is
located on Dawson in Camarillo; another,
is at Wells Cargo near the Camarillo outlet center.
There being no further business the
meeting was adjourned at 1:07 p.m.
June 23, 2012
CIPCUG Board of Directors held its
monthly meeting on June 23, 2012. Members in attendance were Rick Curry, John
Weigle, Helen Long, Diane Mortensen,
Andy Toth, Toby Scott, and Ken Church.
The meeting was called to order by Immediate Past President Rick Curry.
Members not in attendance were Jim
Brown, Craig Ladd, Art Lewis and Bob
de Violini.
Art Lewis, treasurer, was absent from
the meeting and no May, 2012, treasure’s
report was available.
New flash drives: The topic of flash
drives was revisited and the consensus
was to go forward and order an amount
that would be at a lesser cost per flash
drive. Toby will order the flash drives
and review the old freeware programs
that are no longer applicable; i.e., XP
updates, etc. With help from other members, a decision will be made on what
new programs could be added. This project will begin as soon as possible.
CIPCUG’s 25th anniversary event:
Diane brought to the board’s attention an
update on the 25th anniversary event
plans. Referring to Jim Brown’s June 5
email to all board members, he visited
three local hotels in the area and favored
the Marriot Courtyard in Camarillo. It
offers a room to accommodate 60 people
and the hotel will provide whatever is
needed, Internet equipment, food, etc.
Toby offered his opinion that it would be
more convenient to remain at the Boys &
Girls Club for the monthly meeting and
afterward have members meet for lunch
at the nearby Texas Cattle Company for
lunch. We could also ask the Boys &
Girls Club for another room that could be
used to offer refreshments.
Additional suggestions were made for
recognizing and honoring people in a
variety of categories and the meeting
format at the event, possibly a guest
speaker. Other ideas were to have a collage made of CIPCUG’s photos, past and
present, and to make the freeware flash
drives available at the event.
Offsite storage space: Diane referred
to Jim’s June 7 e-mail to board members
on the storage space recently acquired to
store CIPCUG’s items. This was intended
to be on a temporary basis. Andy stated
that the club could store items in his garage until a decision was made on what to
do with them. It was agreed that the club
would pay for another rental month (July
2012) and give notice to vacate no later
than July 7 and a request will be made for
volunteers to transfer items.
Membership drive: New suggestions
were made on various ways the club
could increase its membership. Some of
these were: Designate a date (possibly in
October) to offer a Computer Tune-up.
Members as well as others would be able
to pay $15 for a 15-minute computer tune
-up. As an incentive, members who bring
guests who become members that day
would receive a free tune-up session. If a
member or others bring in three people
and all three sign up for memberships, all
three would be given a free tune-up and
the member would receive a free oneyear membership.
There being no further business, the
board adjourned at 1:17 p.m.
July 2012
The Outer Edge
Page 11
Win 8 syncing them all. Microsoft is still
saying October. There will be an announcement — launch of Surface? Who
knows — if they tell us , they have to kill
us!
Abby Stokes
“How to Navigate the Ever Changing
Landscape of Technology” was the topic
for Abby Stokes, the author of “Is This
Thing On?”
Abby has taken on the role of the
Johnny Appleseed of technology crisscrossing the country (to more than 18
states) to help digital immigrants conquer
their fear of technology. She’s visited
over 81 public libraries, 90 senior centers/computer clubs and hosted 13 webinars in the past 2½ years to take the digitally challenged by the hand and help
them across the digital divide. She has
single-handedly helped 180,000 people
online.
She suggests:
Email: Open once ... organize by who
(sender), what (subject), when (time sensitive) categories or any other category
that makes sense to you! Use folder system and subfolders etc.
Documents: Give them a good, accurate description that will tell you the contents of folders.
Privacy: Protect yours and others by
using BCC and stripping forwards of
email addresses. Use good netiquette.
Passwords: Use eight characters or
more and at least one capital letter. Precede or follow password with something
that gives a hint of web site or something
else easy to remember.
Web design: Some websites have
poor design with poor navigation and
confusing language. Use plain English in
design and navigation.
Some web sites that Abby suggested
visiting: nuride.com; volunteermatch.org;
give.org (better business bureau); kiva.org; ted.com (ideas worth spreading);
broadbandexpanded.com (information on
broadband).
Skype and iPhone: Use both for faceto-face contact. Showing off your tech
skills is especially helpful in job seeking.
Rick Edwards
Rick Edwards showed digital images
of three of his projects: Kenya Wildlife,
Old Cars (hot rods) and USS Midway.
He conducted a photo field trip to the
USS Midway from the conference. His
photos are amazing. He sold all his film
cameras two years ago and is totally digital. He uses AVI and Picturestoexe
(beechbrook.com ) software. His website
is http://preview.tinyurl.com/86knmlq.
Al & Ed’s Autosounds
Al & Ed’s Autosounds showed cool
digital gadgets for your auto. The website
is http://www.al-eds.com. Al & Ed’s Autosound has been selling and installing
mobile electronics longer than anyone
else. It was founded by Al Brotsky and
Ed Zionts in 1954 and helped start an
entire industry.
See it Now!
Roger Radcliffe presented a timeline
of graphics and monitors in a light review of the video options available today,
including video cards, standards, LCD
and LED panels, connections, video
mounts, Blu-ray, dual monitors, integrated browsers, etc., and how they can work
together for you. A special demonstration
showed how to set up and use a high definition TV screen to display your computer’s output.
Wolverine Converting
Wolverine Converting showed ways
to convert slides, photos and negatives to
digital. Three scanner models were
shown: F2D8 to convert slides to digital
in 2-3 seconds; SNAP14 to convert
slides, negatives, photos and small documents to digital, with 14 megapixel resolution; and Pass 200, a handheld scanner
for documents and photos that can scan
direct to iPod, iPad or iPhone. Output is
up to a maximum of 50 inches long in
one image. The maximum storage card is
32 gigs. The website is http://
www.wolverinedata.com/index.php.
SendOutCards
Arnie Kazdoy, senior distributor, and
Glenn Thornton, executive, said SendOutCards is an inexpensive, convenient,
exciting way to send greeting cards and
gifts through your computer. The website
is at www.threefreecards.com.
OneNote
Dick Lennon, president of Seniors
Computer Group, said OneNote is a
powerful program with which users can
organize everything to the Nth degree.
One hour is just not enough time to show
this program’s ton of features. Check its
website at http://office.microsoft.com/enus/onenote.
He discussed the basics of creating
and opening notebooks, sections, groups
and pages, and the advantages of OneNote over other methods and forms of
creating and using notebooks. It is a place
to gather notes, pictures, screen clippings,
websites, attach files, and audio and video notes. It also provides for side notes, a
form of sticky notes. It provides one location to gather everything you may wish to
view and gather on a project.
Brainstorming
Club representatives discussed diminishing membership and officer recruitment. Some of the suggestions made included:
Automatically move the vice president to president.
Use and take advantage of Skype
presentations.
Have social events at least once a
year.
Poll members about what they want to
see or hear. Update SIGS like we have.
Take a good look at the club’s website. Does it tell who you are in one
click ? I think we have a great web site.
Use Google Voice for easy contact.
Have a Google Phone number.
Ask members to do talks about favorite programs, tips and tricks.
Update club brochures; some clubs
don’t even have one.
Have the president create an agenda
for each board meeting. We do that.
Judy Taylour said she could name six
clubs that have disbanded off the top of
her head. Unless clubs can be more relevant, it’s just a matter of time until they
all disband.
I suggested clubs start doing SIGS on
tablets and smartphones.
Judy also announced that next year’s
conference will be in the San Fernando
Valley. Apparently the Arizona clubs
now have their own conference in Airzona and won’t be attending ours in any
Page 12
The Outer Edge
July 2012
numbers in future.
I recommend that all members go to
the conference website at http://
www.theswcc.org and look at the presentations that were made. There are many
others I would have like to have attended.
Photos and some videos will be posted.
Discounts
Several discounts were announced at
the conference. This list includes ones
that did not have expiration dates before
the expected arrival date of this issue.
[This item deleted on Web version
at the request of the company.]
O’Reilly: A 35 percent discount on
books to user group members whose
group belongs to the O’Reilly UG program. Coupon Code DSUG. It also offers
a discount on O’Reilly conferences. Discounts are ongoing. www.oreilly.com
PeachPit: A 30 percent discount on
all of its books (providing your group is a
member of its UG program). Coupon
code is UE-23AA-PEUF (case sensitive).
Discount is ongoing. www.peachpit.com.
SendOutCards: Send a free card by
watching a 3-minute video, then clicking
the Send a free card button.
www.threefreecards.com
Klassic Specialties: Save 40 to 60
percent on major-brand, quality imaging
products. www.klassicspecialties.com or
562-865-2988.
No Starch Press: 30 percent off everything. Use code SWTECH12. Expires
July 15. www.nostarch.com
***
By Bob de Violini
I, along with the club’s vice president
and program chairman, Craig Ladd, recently had the marvelous opportunity to
attend the 19th annual Southwest Technology and Computer Conference at the
Town & Country Hotel and Resort in San
Diego on the same weekend as our
monthly meeting. Events actually started
as early as Thursday evening the 21st,
with a wonderful tour of the local Microsoft store and an enticing preview of
both Windows 8 and Microsoft’s new
tablet computer, called Slate, which is
due to hit shelves around the same time
as Windows 8.
Events continued on Friday afternoon
after registration and socializing time
Friday morning. The first presentation
was by none other than Abby Stokes,
whom you probably remember from the
May meeting. She presented much of the
same material we saw in May and some
extra items as well; for example using the
site www.broadbandexpanded.com to
keep up with the latest developments in
the ever-expanding world of broadband
Internet access. It’s a free site, so there
are no gotchas of any kind in accessing or
using any of the information provided.
Their goal is to extend broadband’s reach
in the country.
After a short break, the next presentation was from Rick Edwards, a highly
regarded nature photographer who honed
his skills following wildlife on the game
preserves of Kenya and other African
countries. His presentation included three
collections, one about the military aircraft
on exhibit aboard the USS Midway Museum in San Diego, one about the antique
roadsters at a show he attended, and one
about the wildlife he followed (some for a
decade!) in East Africa.
Dinner on Friday evening was accompanied by a presentation by John Haynes
from Al & Ed’s Autosounds. Al & Ed’s
helped launch an entire market segment
of the electronics industry with their first
shop in the 1950s. Back then, they just
installed car radios after the car maker
had included spots for them without actually installing any. That has since evolved
to what we have now, things such as incar navigation and a car system that will
interface with your cell phone to make a
hands-free phone call. Who knows what
will be next?
Saturday was a full day, with so many
events that Craig and I split up in order to
cover them all. Craig’s report on the
events he attended is included in this issue.
As far as the ones I attended go,
things started with a great, fast-paced,
presentation by Judy Taylour, who is the
president of the Santa Clarita Valley
Computer Club. Her presentation covered
the future of computing, called the Cloud.
Like it or not, it’s here, and Judy covered
just how to deal with it, including how to
help protect yourself and your computer
with common free tools available on the
Internet. Judy also covered some of the
myriad things that happen in one minute
on the Internet and covered storage options in the Cloud such as Microsoft’s
SkyDrive and Google’s Google Docs;
online backup options such as Carbonite;
online communication options such as
Skype, Vonage and Google Voice and
their differences.
The next presentation I attended was
by Jim Evans, program coordinator for
the Greater Cleveland PC Users Group,
whose presentation was about a brand
new feature in Facebook called Timeline.
This is slowly replacing the current Profile application that exists for most users
and has some changes in store. He covered the fact that Timeline is an application that will show your individual chronology on Facebook, like an animated
scrapbook or photo album. This behavior
can have some very negative consequences for users if they aren’t careful. That is
why you can control exactly what is
shown on the Timeline and to whom. He
covered various settings for users to control their privacy with this new app.
The next two presentations I attended
were very similar in nature, one by Comodo about its Desktop Security application and the other by GFI Software for its
products called VIPRE Antivirus and
VIPRE Internet Security. Both Comodo’s
presentation by David Perry and GFI
Software’s presentation by Dodi Glenn
covered each company’s take on the current state of security issues on the Internet
such as viruses, worms and other malware, and hackers trying to get into your
system. They showed how their individual software packages help protect you
against these threats. Both David and
Dodi were available during the vendor
expo on Saturday evening for questions
from attendees who may not have had the
chance to ask them during the presentations.
Terry Currier, from the Windows Users group here in California, gave a
presentation covering the various programs out there for file recovery. If
July 2012
The Outer Edge
Page 13
CIPCUG news and events, General news, commentary
Review: Total Recorder
Program records, converts and plays files
By Jim Thornton
[email protected]
otal Recorder is a good computer program for recording,
processing, converting, and
playing sounds. With Total
Recorder, you can record sounds from
many other computer programs, such as
Musicmatch Jukebox, QuickTime Player,
ReadPlayer, WinAmp, Windows Media
Player, and even Internet telephony programs. The sounds may be recorded from
local files being played, from Internet
connections, from a microphone, or from
an input line from your computer’s sound
card. Another nice feature is Total Recorder’s ability to restore sounds, refine
T
speech recordings, enhance the quality of
the recordings, refine speed recording,
and control the automatic gain control.
In addition, you can schedule recording
or playbacks using the Total Recorder’s
built-in scheduler or an external scheduler. Another unusual feature is that Total
Recorder can manually or automatically
send your messages to iTunes/iPods.
Total Recorder is an audio and video
recording software program with a wide
variety of editing and sound processing
capabilities. Total Recorder is available
in four editions: Standard, Professional,
VideoPro, and Developer. VideoPro and
Developer editions are powerful tools for
recording, editing, converting, and playing sound and video files, while the
Standard and Professional editions are allin-one audio solutions designed to meet
your needs when working with audio.
Professional edition includes all the features provided by the Standard edition.
The VideoPro edition includes all of the
features for working with audio provided
by the Professional edition. Here are the
features of each edition:
Standard edition records streaming
audio, microphone, and line-in input, and
performs audio file conversions. Standard
may be used to record from LPs, cassettes, or any stereo output onto your PC
and you can record onto CDs or DVDs or
record from CDs, DVDs, and cassette
tapes. Recordings can be saved to the
More on convention ...
you’ve ever accidentally deleted a file
from the recycle bin on your desktop, you
need one of these programs. Terry covered 20 programs and showed exactly
how each one did in a controlled recovery
attempt of various types of files on three
types of storage media: a flash drive, an
SD memory card, and an external hard
drive. He also handed out a CD with his
testing methods and the subsequent results in a spreadsheet.
Dinner on Saturday evening was accompanied by a vendor expo which, as I
mentioned before, gave folks an opportunity to ask vendors about products they
hadn’t had the chance to see in the
presentations earlier in the day. There
was also the opportunity to purchase
some products that were for sale at greatly reduced rates just for the convention.
Craig and I took the opportunity for a
little additional networking and to consult
with a couple of vendors about making a
possible future presentation to us at our
regular meetings. We also cast our votes
in the photo contest that ran until Saturday evening.
Sunday was a short day, ending at
noon, in order to let many of the attendees get a start on the trip home.
The first of two presentations I attended on Sunday was Facebook Annoyances
by Jim Evans. This presentation focused
on the many quirks in the way Facebook
works and how you can be caught unaware by some innocuous sounding things
on the site, such as being tagged in a photo by someone. Jim covered in great detail how to correct such an occurrence
and how to change your settings in your
profile (or settings within Timeline if
you’ve been shifted over to it) to help
defend yourself against such things. He
also mentioned an application that helps
users deal with a lot of the annoyances on
Facebook, making it easier to use on a
daily basis. That application is called
Social Fixer.
The final presentation of the convention I attended was one on Having Fun
with Digital Photography by Helaine
Cummins of TUGNET. The presentation
was standing room only. Helaine covered
how she got into digital photography and
how she started really having fun with it
and the many programs she’s used over
the years. Her exhibits included some of
the many creative “doctored up” shots
she’s produced over the many years and
her favorite programs she’s used in doing
so. Her main favorites have been PrintShop from Broderbund, Photoshop from
Adobe and Gimp for those not too inclined to plunk down $80-$100 or more
for photo editing software.
The convention concluded with the
results of the photo contest held during
Friday and Saturday. All the photos were
shown, culminating with the top three
award winners in each category. At the
conclusion of the contest, all attendees
were thanked by the sponsors. The organizers and many volunteers were also congratulated for their tireless effort that
resulted in a fine show the entire weekend. Finally an announcement was made
regarding next year’s convention and its
location, which is supposed to be in the
San Fernando Valley. Details aren’t officially firm as yet but should be by the end
of July.
Page 14
The Outer Edge
July 2012
Membership report:
Is it time to renew?
By Ken Church
email address: [email protected]
CHURCH
Welcome –
New members: Wanted — bring a friend.
Attendance at the June 2012 general meeting:
56 members and guests
Total membership: 179
MEMBER RENEWAL INFORMATION
$30 for single membership,
$35 for two or more family membership.
NEW MEMBER INFORMATION
$40 first year for single membership,
$55 first year for two or more family membership in same household.
Please send your payment to:
CIPCUG MEMBERSHIP
P.O. BOX 51354
OXNARD, CA 93031-1354
Or bring your payment to the sign-in table for
the July 28, 2012, meeting.
May 2012 renewals payment due:
First
Mbr# Last Name
Name
1228 Hynes
Bob
0943 Kiess
Jerry
0692 Maidel
Mark
0692
Maidel
Norma
A
0454 Provenza
Richard
1234 Saal
Fred
June 2012 renewals payment due:
First
Mbr# Last Name
Pd to Dt
Name
1239 Gaberson
Howard
201206
1118 Haggard
Roy
201206
1221 Harris
Jack
201206
0593 Shalkey
Mike
201206
July 2012 renewals payment due:
First
Mbr# Last Name
Pd to Dt
Name
1122 Brody
Richard
201207
1028 Burke
Jim
201207
0350 Colter
Don
201207
0354 Ferro
Joe
201207
1029 Gelso
Sandy
201207
0624 Lambert
Ted
201207
1149 Little
Robert
201207
0331 Livingstone
Robert
201207
1144 Mortensen
Diane
201207
1206 Ohrt
Juergen
201207
1157 Sifuentes
Octavio
201207
0358 Tanner
Henry
201207
0020 Van Slyke
Kathy
201207
0019 Van Slyke
Noel
201207
1158 Woodruff
Ayn
201207
0601 Wymore
Bob
201207
Pd to Dt
201205
201205
201205
201205
201205
201205
2012 contributors to The Outer Edge
Your name can appear here,
too. Share your knowledge with
other members by sending an article,
letters or computer tips to
[email protected].
CIPCUG MEMBERS
Ken Church
Rick Curry
Bob de Violini
Craig Ladd
Art Lewis
Helen Long
Diane Mortensen
Toby Scott
Michael Shalkey
Rick Smith
Andy Toth
Jim Thornton
Bill Wayson
John Weigle
OTHERS
Nancy DeMarte (APCUG)
Rick Eblaw (APCUG)
Larry Mobbs (APCUG)
Leo Notenboom (APCUG)
John Somers (APCUG)
Judy Taylour (APCUG)
July 2012
The Outer Edge
Page 15
General news, commentary
More on Total Recorder ...
hard drive in various compressed and
uncompressed formats. It can also perform conversion between different supported sound formats. Your recorded files
can be saved in FLAC, MP3, OGG Vorbis, WAV format (plain or compressed),
or WMA (Windows Media Audio) formats. Another nice feature is that you can
make one file from both sides of a record
or a cassette. This version requires a
sound card, and a 32-bit or 64-bit version
of Microsoft Windows XP (SP2 or later),
Windows Vista, or Windows 7.
Professional edition includes all features of the Standard edition, including
recording computer audio from almost
any source, including streamed audio
from programs like Windows Media
Player. It can also record conventional
audio from a CD, a microphone, and other input lines on a sound card. This edition also incorporates extensive features
for editing audio files and enhanced
scheduling features. This version requires
a sound card, and a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows XP (SP2 or
later), Windows Vista, or Windows 7.
VideoPro edition is designed to play,
record, and edit video files in AVI (Audio
Video Interleaved), FLV (Flash Video),
or WMV (Windows Media Audio) format. You can capture video from your
screen, record from a video device
plugged into your computer, such as digital video camera, Web camera, TV tuner,
or DVD player, or background record
Internet video streams in WMV format.
The VideoPro edition is an available addon feature for the Professional and Developer editions. With the new Video Addon, you can record from any combination
of video and audio sources. The VideoPro add-on allows you to play, record,
and edit video files in AVI format. You
can record from a video device plugged
into your computer, such as a camera, or
you can capture video directly from your
screen. The version requires a sound card,
DirectX V9.0 or later, and a 32-bit or 64bit version of Microsoft Windows XP
(SP2 or later), Windows Vista, or Windows 7. The graphic card must meet the
VMR (Volume Mixing Radio) system
requirements.
Developer edition has all of the features of the VideoPro edition and also
allows software developers to access Total Recorder controls and functions
through OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) automation and to integrate audio and video recording within your own
applications. The version requires a
sound card, DirectX V9.0 or later, 32-bit
or 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows
XP (SP2 or later), Windows Vista, or
Windows 7. The graphic card must meet
the VMR system requirements.
The current version of Total Recorder
is 8.3, which was released on July 15,
2011, and all of the editions may be
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The New Intel 330 Series
Solid-State Drives are In.
New Lower Pricing
UPGRADE TODAY!
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Page 16
The Outer Edge
July 2012
Review: FileLocator Pro
Program provides
powerful searches
By John Weigle
[email protected]
hile most computer users don’t need a heavy duty
search program every day, it’s nice to have one
when you do. And the chances you will need one
sometime increase as you add more and more
files to your hard drive, especially if you don’t have a logical
filing system and throw everything into My Documents or its
equivalent in your version of Windows.
I agreed to review FileLocator Pro when the company
made the offer to Vice President Craig Ladd, but instead of
jumping right into a review decided to use it when I needed it
rather than coming up with
random searches that might
or might not represent real
FileLocator Pro seems use. Unfortunately, I didn’t
use it often enough to write
to offer every option a review before the license
expired, but I had already
I will ever need, along been impressed enough to
buy a copy to keep on my
with many that I
computer and write the
review with. It costs $39 on
might never use.
the Mythicsoft website; I
don’t know if it’s available
elsewhere but have not seen
at the Oxnard Fry’s store.
While Windows’ own search feature (Start > Search
programs and files) is useful, sometimes a more powerful program with many more options is necessary. FileLocator Pro
seems to offer every option I will ever need, along with many
that I might never use. It can search for files by name or part of a
name and files containing specified text. It offers search modes
for experienced computer users and new users, and the modes
are toggled on the opening screen. Boolean terms can be used in
searches, as can some DOS symbols (such as * and |). The program searches PDF and Zip files, graphics files and the usual
W
More on Total Recorder ...
downloaded from http://www.totalrecorder.com/downloads.htm.
The cost of the Standard edition is $17.95, for the Professional
edition is $35.95, for the Developer edition is $99.95, and for the
VideoPro edition is $53.95.
Members’
classified ads
Classified ads are free to
members. Each ad is limited
to 105 characters, including
spaces and to one ad per
member per month. Copy has
to be to John Weigle, editor of
TOE
([email protected]),
within the week after the
regular meeting. Otherwise,
the ad is held to the following
month.
Free
Manual
(.pdf)
http://
pdf.textfiles.com/manuals/
FAXMACHINES/Sharp%
20UX300%20Plain%
20Paper%20Fax%
20Machine.pdf — David Minkin
I have the following For Sale
(contribution to CIPCUG):
2 each Microsoft Mouse, $2
each
Internet
Scrollin
Mouse
(COMP USA), $2
Video Selector Switch (5 inputs/2 outputs), $5 — David
Minkin
For sale
I have the following Free/For Wanted
Sale (contribution to CIPOther categories
CUG):
One SHARP UX-300 FAX as needed
machine with Handset
The Outer Edge is printed and prepared for mailing by:
July 2012
The Outer Edge
Page 17
formats for text, spreadsheet and database files. It
can also use the same IFilters that Microsoft uses
when indexing hard drives even if the indexing service is not turned on.
Searches can be set up so a certain amount of the
text surrounding the search term will also be shown
to make it easier to determine what file is the one
you’re seeking.
The right hand pane offers four tabs: Summary,
Hits, Text and Thumbnails. As you might guess,
Summary offers statistics on the search (Found, with
the number of times and total size of the files; the
number of searched and checked items; and the status of the search), Hits (portions of file containing
the text searched for), Text (the text being sought
and some surrounding material) and Thmbnails (a
generic icon for text files and thumbnails in searches
for graphics).
Search results can, according to the program’s
help file, be “saved in a variety of formats including
Text, Comma Separated (CSV), Tab separated,
HTML and XML. For advanced formatting there is
also the option of applying an XSL transform to
custom format the results (sample transforms are
included in the Sample Transform subfolder).”
Frequent searches can be saved to eliminate the
need to regularly establish all the parameters.
One problem I had with the program was in
email searches. While the program quickly found Figures 1 (top) and 2: Figure 1 shows the opening screen of Filetext I was searching for and gave me a line number, I Locator Pro in expert mode before a search is started. The search
couldn’t figure out which message the text was in. will find files in My Documents that contain the word “vermin.” FigThis might be the fault of my email program, Thun- ure 2 shows part of a search for CIPCUG, also in My Documents.
derbird, which seems to store all messages in a long The pane on the left shows the files’ names and locations. The
text file. It obviously has an internal way to add new pane on the right offers some information about whatever file is
messages or messages moved from a different mail- highlighted in the left hand pane.
box and to delete messages, but as far as I could see,
64MB RAM; 25 MB of available hard-disk space; mouse or
FileLocator did not distinguish individual messages.
Answering a question on this issue, a company representa- compatible pointing device; and VGA (640x480) or higher restive said in an email: “FLPro doesn't have any specific Thun- olution monitor with 256 colors.
The latest version was released on March 29, 2010, but I
derbird interpreters so it’s just searching through the raw text
and therefore any line numbers are probably irrelevant. We’re don’t see that as an issue because FileLocator Pro is the type of
working on email handlers, we’ve just finished some PST and program that wouldn’t seem to need frequent updates unless
MSG enhancements, and hopefully we’ll have a chance to do file formats were drastically changed or Microsoft so dramatically changed Windows code that it somehow blocked the prosomething with Thunderbird in the future.”
FileLocator Pro also allows command line searches, which I gram from working.
The initial release was on April 10, 2000.
did not attempt.
Mythicsoft offers a stripped down free version of FileLocaEven when a FileLocator Pro search did not produce any
results in one of my searches, it helped me find a problem. I tor Pro called Agent Ransack or FileLocator Lite, which can
discovered that some of my sent email was being stored on also be downloaded at the company website.
A separate program, FileLocator Network is also available
Gmail’s servers rather than on my hard drive. I have reconfigured Thunderbird to store copies on my hard drive; I was al- for $295.
ready downloading all Gmail received mail to my computer.
On the Net:
The program requires Windows (32/64 bit) XP/SP2/2003/
Mythicsoft: www.mythicsoft.com
Vista/2008/7 or higher; at least a 486 66Mhz processor and
Page 18
The Outer Edge
July 2012
Grep: Some command line goodness
By Bill By By Wayson
[email protected]
will here take leave of the desktop
GUI wars and talk about grep, a
command line utility that makes
searching through files a breeze.
Windows users can follow along, too. An
installation package of grep for Windows
is available (as are many other Unix-like
utilities) from the GnuWin32 project at
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html.
Don’t let the commandPenguin’s
line nature of grep inLair
timidate you. If you
learn just a few options,
grep can help you in
many situations where
you need to search for
something within one or
more files.
Grep, or Global Regular Expression Print,
Wayson
searches the contents of
files for specific text or
text patterns and prints the results. Its
range of options makes it extremely flexible in how it searches and in how results
are presented. The examples I show will
assume we have a file text.txt that contains these lines:
Somewhat Normal capitalization
ALL CAPITAL LETTERS
all lower case
I
Two empty lines above
The final sentence
The most basic invocation of grep is
“grep <some_text> filename” (without
the quotes). Grep will print out each line
in filename that contains <some_text>.
So, “grep capital text.txt” would print
“Somewhat Normal capitalization.” Note
that grep is case sensitive by default. If
you prefer a case-insensitive search, use
the “-I” ignore option: “grep -i capital
text.txt” prints (on separate lines)
“Somewhat Normal capitalization” and
“ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.”
Suppose you want a bit of context
around what is found, such as the lines
near the found text. The “-A” after option
(note that options are also case-sensitive)
will print a number of lines after a found
string, the “-B” before option prints a
number of lines before it. Cleverly, the
“-C” context option prints a number of
lines before and after the found text. So,
“grep -C 3 lower text.txt” will print
“Somewhat
Normal
capitalization,”
“ALL CAPITAL LETTERS,” “all lower
case,” two empty lines, and finally, “Two
empty lines above.”
You may want to see all the lines that
do not contain your search text. The “-v”
invert option will do this for you. “grep iv capital text.txt” will print “all lower
case” followed by two blank lines, then
“Two empty lines above,” followed by
“The final sentence,” or all the lines that
do not contain “capital,” regardless of the
capitalization.
What if you want to see where your
text is found? The “-n” number option
will add the line number for each line
meeting your criteria. So, “grep -in capital text.txt” will print “1:Somewhat Normal capitalization” and “2:ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.” Or you may be interested only in the number of times your
criteria are met. Use the “-c” count option
to do this for you: “grep -ci capital
text.txt” will print “2.” You may want
nothing more than a list of the files that
contain text matching your criteria.
Grep's “-l” list option will give you what
you want: “grep -l capital text.txt” will
print “text.txt.”
So far, grep has searched for the text
anywhere within the file, even within
longer lines. If you want to search only
for exact line matches, use the “-x” option. Running “grep -xn ‘all lower case’
text.txt” will print “3:all lower case.”
These examples illustrate some of the
simple options of grep to give you an idea
of how to use grep. But the utility starts to
really get revved up when you use a regular expression as a search criterion. Regular expressions can be used to create extremely powerful searches and are useful
in many situations other than grep search
criteria. Regular expression syntax appears to be unfathomable to the novice,
scaring many off from learning it. We
will barely nick the surface of regular
expressions, a topic unto itself, but there
are some situations where they are very
useful. The first regular expression character, “$,” matches the end of a line. If
you wanted to find all the lines that end in
“e,” you could use “grep e$ text.txt,”
which will print “all lower case,” “Two
empty lines above,” and “The final sentence.” Similarly, the “^” caret character
matches the beginning of a line. So, “grep
-i ^A text.txt” will print “ALL CAPITAL
LETTERS” and “all lower case.” The
next regular expression character may
confuse people since it is a common wildcard character used elsewhere, but it
means something significantly different.
The “*” character matches zero or more
of the immediately preceding character in
the search string. Thus, “grep -i ET*E
text.txt” prints “ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.” And the “.” character matches
any single character except for a line
break. Running “grep in. text.txt” prints
“Two empty lines above” followed by
“The final sentence.” So, to get the behavior you may expect of the “*” character — to match zero or more of any character — use “.*” in your search expression, like in “grep -i al.*c text.txt.” This
will print “Somewhat Normal capitalization,” “ALL CAPITAL LETTERS,” “all
lower case,” and “The final sentence.”
Lastly, as elsewhere, the filename
parameter of grep can itself, and often
does, contain wildcard characters. The
invocation “grep -ni al.*c *.txt” will conduct a case-insensitive search all of the
files that end on “.txt” in the current directory for lines containing “al” followed
by zero or more of any characters followed by a “c,” showing the line numbers
where this pattern is found. If the directory also contained a suitable file,
demo_file.txt, the output could be
“demo_file.txt:3:This Line Has All Its
First Character Of The Word With Upper
Case,” “text.txt:1:Somewhat Normal capitalization,” “text.txt:2:ALL CAPITAL
LETTERS,” “text.txt:3:all lower case,”
and “text.txt:7:The final sentence.”
July 2012
The Outer Edge
Page 19
Always on call, PC doctor checks Windows 8
By Rick Smith
[email protected]
t’s the Fourth of July and I’m getting my copy out quite late this
month. My apologies to the editor. I
went to the Fourth of July parade
this morning and enjoyed the spirit of a
hometown local parade. Ojai has lots of
spirit. I stood at attention
Rick’s
and applauded our veterrant
ans as they walked by in
their uniforms carrying the
flag I so love. It’s what
that flag represents that is
what I love.
Life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness — I
was wondering just what
Smith
that meant. The happiness
part, I mean. I think what
it means is having the freedom to pursue
your dreams and enjoy the fruits of your
labors. I’m pursuing my dream today. I
am sitting in my office fixing a laptop
and a broken network. As I was driving to
the shop, I thought about the parallels to
the ol’ country doctor who would go to
his office at all types of inconvenient
times to perform an emergency procedure
to rescue an injured person or animal. In
much the same way, I opened up the surgery today and performed the tasks necessary to save a patient’s life; in much the
same way that medicine and spiritual
ministry are callings as well as jobs or
careers, so is my work. I’m not saying
what I do is as important as saving
I
someone’s life and dedicating years to
become knowledgeable enough to call the
right shots when the need arises. What
I’m saying is they can improve the quality of people’s lives with good practice,
and that’s what I do. I practice computer
repair and offer counseling to help improve people’s lives with technology. So
I opened the shop today to do an afterhours emergency procedure. Maybe I
sacrificed a few hours socializing at the
barbecue, but I made a difference today
in someone’s life. And that made me feel
good about what I do. It helps make up
for the times I took advantage of people
to further my own needs. It’s nice when
you get to a place in life where you can
give a little more than you get. I guess
that’s what growing up is all about.
Anyway, let’s talk about computers.
Windows 8 is scheduled to be released this year. We have the beta in our
office, and it has some neat things. We
have it hooked up to a planar 24-inch
multi-touchscreen monitor. The large
touchscreen LCD is quite interesting. It
resizes with two fingers like nice
touchscreens do, and when you touch the
Internet Explorer address bar it opens an
onscreen keyboard. I found it quite interesting to be typing on the screen instead
of a keyboard. I guess it’s because I’m a
passable typist. I guess if you use one
finger to type you’ll feel right at home
with it, but I won’t be getting rid of my
keyboard anytime soon.
The first thing you notice about Windows 8 is the new interface. If you like
the way phones and tablets work, you’ll
be very comfortable with the new setup.
Let’s discuss it a bit shall we?
Windows 7 has been very successful,
and Microsoft was been busy improving
its operating system. As I said, the most
noticeable feature is the new user interface. Microsoft has also opened up an app
store to compete with Apple. Users can
browse and purchase apps, and developers can show off their “Metro Style”
apps.
Windows To Go is a new feature
found only in Windows 8 Enterprise. Yes, that’s right, we are going to
have another version of Windows with a
select feature set. When will Microsoft
ever learn? If they’d just listen to me and
have two OS’s, client and server, things
would be better for all of us.
Anyway, Windows to Go enables you
to create USB drives containing complete, managed Windows images that you
can use to boot and run Windows on almost any computer. Windows To Go
makes it possible for you to use a device
whether your work from home, a client
office or in a free seating environment.
This is similar to “Bart PE,” which we
use in the office to fix computers. It’s
basically a way to run windows from a
CD or USB device independent of the
operating system installed on the PC
you’re using. We use it to fix nasty Rootkit viruses and such. But for Windows 8
Enterprise users now you really can “take
your work home with you.”
quired to use your computer, saving you
time and frustration in the long run. Don’t
be afraid of the command line; rather,
make it your friend.
If you have questions or would like to
learn more about Linux and FOSS, come
to the Linux SIG meeting on Tuesday,
July 24, at 6:30 p.m., at Ventura County
Computers in Ventura. Our June upgrade
of the CIPCUG PC was proceeding fairly
nicely until the PC lost power. That is an
event few operating system upgrades
would survive. So we will install Ubuntu
12.04 from scratch at the July SIG meeting, and ask and answer questions about
grep and anything else during the installation. See the CIPCUG website for more
information. If you have a question or
topic you would like the Lair or Linux
SIG to cover, drop me a line at [email protected]. Until next month, happy
computing.
More on grep ...
Knowing a few of its options and a
few regular expression characters can be
all it takes to turn grep into a powerful
search tool for you, which can be useful
in this era of terabyte hard drives. And it
can give you results much, much more
quickly than similar GUI-based utilities.
With just a minor investment of time
learning the command line, you can make
easier some of the mundane tasks re-
Page 20
The Outer Edge
July 2012
Review: TechTracker
Free program alerts you to outdated software
By Jim Thornton
[email protected]
NET TechTracker is an interesting free program that frequently reviews all of the software programs on your computer and identifies the programs when
they are no longer the current version.
TechTracker lists all the programs that it
has checked and identifies each program
as either current or outdated. All of the
program updates are available from TechTracker, and TechTracker always tests
the software updates for any spyware.
TechTracker can be loaded every time
Windows starts up or you can have it
scan every four hours, daily, weekly,
monthly, or manually. After the scan, a
status form will appear with a listing of
each program first with its icon, name,
latest version number, whether the update
is free or free to try (which means that the
program’s company charges a fee for the
upgrade), its status as either out of date or
up to date, and the option to either download now the update or to visit site of the
C
program. The status form also provides
the quantity of software applications and
updates available.
TechTracker is designed to scan more
than 80,000 programs. Accuracy of TechTracker is interesting, as I have been using the program for several years and
found it interesting and really a nice way
to learn when updates to my programs are
available. My most recent TechTracker
status form reported that it has scanned
21 of my software applications and that
10 updates were available. But I have
always found some interesting facts in the
TechTracker status form. For example, I
agree with the 21 programs list, that 11 of
the programs I have are the original and/
or the updated copies of, that six of the
programs I don’t have copies of (because
they are part of my Windows program),
that four programs I don’t have copies of
nor do I use them, and that 16 of the 21
programs appear in my Control Panel.
The five programs that need upgrades are
Eudora, IrfanView, Power2Go, RoboForm, and ZTreeWin. The four pro-
grams that I don’t use are: Adobe AIR,
Google Chrome, Microsoft Live Writer,
and Microsoft Silverlight, and I will delete these unused programs. Another interesting fact is that I still use Microsoft
Office 2000, and TechTracker continues
to list these three programs (Access, Excel, and Word) as out of date.
TechTracker lists all your programs
and identifies which ones have updates
available. On the TechTracker page, you
can click on the update to be installed, but
there are a very few programs that require
that the old version must be uninstalled
before the new version can be installed. I
prefer to download the upgrade directly
from the program’s website so that I can
view any special instructions that the
website provides before I install the upgrade.
CNET TechTracker works with various operating systems: Windows XP or
later, Mac OS X 10.5 (Intel or PPC) or
later, etc. Again CNET TechTracker is
free and is downloadable from http://
preview.tinyurl.com/7kbffk6.
More on Rick’s rant ...
The Windows logon screen is different. Unlike the traditional way of entering
a password to unlock the screen, Windows 8 can be unlocked by tapping on the
right areas of the screen.
Windows 8 Start Screen basically
groups all your applications together, but
you can easily drag and drop icons or add
new things.
The Control Panel will be different
too, so you’ll have to learn yet again
where everything is.
Video playback and pictures will have
a new look and features.
Look for support with Microsoft’s
Sky Drive. Get ready to soar into the
cloud with this OS. And you didn’t think
it was coming. Scheesh!
It’s rumored that Kinect sensors will
be built into laptops. The sensors would
be placed on top of the LCD, and an IR
LED might be at the bottom of the screen.
If the price of sensors comes down, it
might become a new standard feature.
Microsoft has reversed the trend of
requiring more and more hardware to
support its OS. It was good for me because when Windows 95, Windows XP
and Vista came out — “Hasta la vista.
baby” — I got to sell all of you hardware
upgrades. Windows 8 will run basically
on the same system requirements as Windows 7, which was greatly reduced from
Vista: 1 GB RAM for 32-bit versions and
2 GB of RAM for 64-bit. Yes, 32-bit is
still around, for a while at least. Check
with Toby for the latest 64-bit propaganda.
When will this be at a theatre near
you? It depends on how fast the gremlins
at Microsoft can cram all this stuff in and
not have it freeze up during a demo.
What I am waiting to see is if this will
change the tide in the battle with Apple
Corp. So far, Microsoft has been beaten
back, but it seems to be rallying and
bringing up reinforcements. Microsoft is
mounting a counterattack without its
longtime allies, the PC manufacturers,
and sending in to battle its new tablet.
This is shaping up to be an interesting
year in the PC business.
Be sure to keep your anti-malware programs up to date and run regular scans.
July 2012
The Outer Edge
Page 21
Figures 1 (left) and 2: Figure
1 shows the screen that
keeps track of what Do Not
Track Plus has blocked. Figure 2 shows results for a specific site.
Review: Do Not Track Plus
Free program blocks sites from following you
By Larry Mobbs
President, Computer Operators of
Marysville and Port Huron, MI
March 2012 issue, COMP Communicator
www.bwcomp.org
Lmobbs (at) comcast.net
new program offered free
from Abine software allows
you to block Web sites you
visit from tracking where you
browse. Many sites, and Facebook.com is
one of the worst, want to track every site
you visit so they can match up your preferences to the items they want to display
on you wall for advertisers.
In the software industry there is a
movement to have the browsers include a
plugin that prevents this action, but as of
yet it is not ordered and may never be.
A
Browser
publishers
they have made. In the
may take this on from
One must remember first few days of my
their own volition, but
use on one machine
they will be pressured that many sites depend they blocked 1,600
attempts (see Figure 1
by advertisers not to.
One must remember on you or others vsiting for a sample).
that many sites depend
following
the links they place on Installation
on you or others visitthe quick download is
ing the links they place their pages in order to painless, and there is
virtually no setup.
on their pages in order
pay for the Web site. While writing this artito pay for the Web site.
cle I loaded Firefox,
When
you
run
Abine, it puts a small icon
in downloaded the software and ran it as a
your browser and it displays
a plugin.
This is required for each browser you
number with each site you visit, telling
you how many attempts are made to track use. After restarting Firefox, I visited
your visit and what type of tracking com- cnn.com and Donottrack Plus reported
pany is making the effort. They also keep blocking 13 attempts to track my browsa running grand total of how many blocks ing on their site.
Page 22
The Outer Edge
July 2012
CIPCUG news and events / General news, commentary
Initials
BDV
Name
Bob de Violini
(805)
[email protected]
BR
Bill Robinson
389-2997 (b)
[email protected]
DM
David Minkin
469-6970 (cell);
484-2974 (home);
[email protected]
MS
Michael Shalkey [email protected]
RP
Robert Provart
498-8477 (b)
Phone: (d) = days; (e) = evenings; (b) = both
F1—Your Help Key
(Revised Sept. 7, 2008)
COMMUNICATIONS/INTERNET (GENERAL)
World Wide Web
DM
DATABASES
Access
BR
DOS
RP
E-MAIL
Outlook
Outlook Express
Thunderbird
MS
BR, DM
MS
GRAHICS PROGRAMS
IrfanView
Paint Shop Pro
Photo Shop Elements
Print Shop
MS
DM
BR
BR
SPREADSHEETS
Microsoft Excel
DM
WORD PROCESSING
Microsoft Word
WordPerfect
DM
DM
WINDOWS
Windows 98, 95
Windows 2000
Windows XP
DM, MS (98)
BDV
DM
If you would like to volunteer to help others, please send
your contact information and programs you’re willing to
help on to [email protected].
........................
WEB HELP SITES (Updated 2-7-12)
Steve Bass TechBite Newsletter registration page:
www.techbite.com
DSL reports: www.dslreports.com
Steve Gibson: www.grc.com
Kim Komando: www.komando.com
Leo Laporte: www.leoville.com
Jeff Levy: www.jefflevy.com
Linux distributions: www.DistroWatch.com
Microsoft: www.microsoft.com
OnGuard Online: http://www.onguardonline.gov
PCMag: www.pcmag.com
PC Pitstop: www.pcpitstop.com
PC World: www.pcworld.com
Recalled products: www.recalls.gov
SANS Institute — Computer Security Education and
Information Security Training: www.sans.org
Smart Computing: www.smartcomputing.com
Spyware Warrior: www.spywarewarrior.com
User Group Relations (Gene Barlow): www.ugr.com
Ventura County Computers (Rick and Toby’s shop):
www.vccomputers.com
Virus Bulletin: www.virusbtn.com/index
Windows Secrets: www.windowssecrets.com
Windows
The
Official
Magazine
(UK):
www.officialwindowsmagazine.com/
If you have a favorite help site on the Web, please forward
it, so we can expand the section. If you find a link that
doesn’t work, please tell us that, too.
July 2012
The Outer Edge
Page 23
Why join Channel Islands PC Users
Group (CIPCUG)?
Every month, members of the Channel
Islands PC Users Group have access to:
♦ The Outer Edge newsletter, which
includes a list of members willing to help
other members.
♦ The general meeting, featuring a
question-and-answer session and program
on new software or hardware.
♦ Special Interest Groups — special
meetings held several times a month.
♦ Door prizes at the regular meeting.
Other benefits include:
♦ Special user group discounts on
books and software.
Dues for new members
♦ A flash drive containing many
Individual member, $40.
useful freeware programs.
Family membership (same address),
♦ A chance to make friends with
$55.
people who have similar interests.
Renewals are $30 and $35 per year
♦ The ability to put your knowledge
respectively.
to good use by helping other members.
TOE subscription only (in the U.S.),
The whole concept of user groups is
$20.
members helping members.
Please clip the coupon below and
send with payment to CIPCUGMembership, P.O. Box 51354, Oxnard,
CA 93031-1354.
Please make checks payable to
CIPCUG.
CIPCUG MEMBERSHIP
APPLICATION
CIPCUG E-MAIL ADDRESS
Members who would like to have an
email address through CIPCUG in the
form of [email protected] may obtain one for $20 per year.
User level: Novice ____; Intermediate _____;
Advanced _____
Amount enclosed: ____________________________
Please Print the following information:
Can you help the club as a volunteer? If so, what would you
be interested in working on?
Name: _______________________________________
Address: ______________________________________
City: ___________________________, State:________
Date __________________ Member # ____________
ZIP Code: _______________________________
Phone (Home): ______________(Work): ______________
E-mail address: ________________________________
The Outer Edge
Channel Islands PC Users
Group Inc.
Page 24
P.O.Box 51354
Oxnard, CA: 93031
NON-PROFIT
July 2012
U.S. POSTAGE
PAID
OXNARD. CA
PERMIT NO. 1785
DATED MATERIAL
Please Do Not Delay
DUES REMINDER
If the number above your
name is 2012 JUNE, your
membership dues are
payable in JUNE 2012.
July 2012 meeting
Of the Channel Islands PC Users Group
The map shows
the easiest route
to the Boys &
Girls Club, but if
you prefer, you
can take the
Carmen Drive
offramp to
Ponderosa Drive,
which leads to
Temple Avenue.
Saturday morning, July 28, at the Boys &
Girls Club, 1500 Temple Ave. (Ponderosa
Drive and Temple Avenue), Camarillo.
Meeting Schedule:
8:00 a.m.
Doors open
8:45-9:30
Internet and networking SIG,
Social Media SIG
9:30-10:30
Business meeting, Q&A
10:30-11:00
Break — Please contribute requested
amounts for coffee and doughnuts
11:00-12:00
Program — To be announced
Drawing

JUL 2012 issue of TOE - Channel Islands PC Users Group

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