Views from the Coop On-the-Air March 21, 2007

March 21, 2007

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Mom is at her weekly computer class for beginners as I update you on the show yesterday. I brought her an easel so she doesn’t have to stand and hold the dry erase board that she and Dottye use to post tips and how-to info for the newbies.

Yesterday, Lee and I talked about a couple of items in the news this past week: Bandwidth Hogs and Best Buy’s Flextime.

It looks like Comcast has been cracking down on some folks who have been downloading “TOO MUCH” across their hi-speed cable connections. How much is too much? Well, that’s the problem. Comcast won’t tell their customers how much too much is because there isn’t any bandwidth limit unless it degrades the online experiences of other customers. Hmmmmmm…..even the customer service reps are confused. Check out the article from The International Herald Tribune and see if you can make any sense out of it.

It looks like Best Buy is rethinking the time clock. For the last five years, 60 percent of Best Buy’s employees at their corporate headquarters have been working under a flextime program called ROWE (Results Only Work Environment). Under the plan, the boss stays out of scheduling altogether and can only judge employees by their successfully completed tasks, no matter where they are when they get those results! Sounds like a novel approach to increasing productivity, doesn’t it? Employees have to work together to make sure the company’s needs are met. It’s been such a success (an average 35% increase in productivity) that Best Buy is ready to pilot the program in selected retail outlets. Wait a minute, wouldn’t you say retail is a lot different from an office environment? After all, what about the customers’ needs? Check out John Brandon’s article for Business 2.o Magazine and decide for yourself.

I’ve mentioned a free tool from Javacools called Spyware Blaster before but never really went into any detail about how it works. I first heard about it from a recommendation by Patrick Kolla, the maker of Spybot Search and Destroy. It looks like Steve Bass of PC World shares Patrick’s opinion of Spyware Blaster. Unlike traditional anti-spyware programs, Spyware Blaster doesn’t scan your system for malware and then delete it. What it does is “adds the URLs of risky sites to your browser’s Restricted Sites List…” so that those sites can’t install malware on your PC. Sounds like a good idea to me. If it sounds good to you, too, check it out at Javacools. BTW: There’s another nifty little tool on Javacools that scans and analyzes the EULA for you to see if there’s anything “interesting” you need to know about the software you’re about to download before you download it. I know I preach about how important it is to read the EULA but let’s face it, some of them are almost incomprehensible and ALL of them are long! Check out EULAlyzer!

It’s that time of the year again: TAX TIME! I’ve told you about Free File from the IRS before. It’s a great way to get your taxes done by a professional tax preparer without having to pay a fee. The IRS has partnered with several pros to provide free tax preparation to individuals who make less than $52,000/year. You can find out more about the IRS criteria and the individual criteria of the preparers by visiting the IRS website. Speaking of the IRS website, make sure you always go to www.irs.gov and NOT to www.irs.com, .org or .net. Although those are legitimate websites, they ARE NOT AFFILIATED WITH THE IRS. I’m also not so sure that they’re not scammers, either. You can read more about what to watch for on InfoWorld. BTW: Thanks, Fred, for sharing your favorite online tax preparers. Fred has been filing for family members online and recommends H&R Block and TurboTax. Both are partners with the IRS for the Free File program. NOTE: In order to take advantage of free online tax preparation, you must go to the IRS site and start the process from there. If you go to the tax preparer’s site, you will have to pay their usual fees. You also need to check the partner’s criteria since it may differ from the IRS general criteria.

In response to Millie who wants to save photos that are on her computer’s hard drive to a USB thumb drive:

• Open My Computer
• Click “Folders” on the menu. When you click a folder in the left pane, the contents of that folder will appear in the pane on the right.
• Navigate to the folder on the left that holds the photos you want to move or copy to the USB thumb drive.
• When you see the photos you want to move/copy appear in the right hand pane, hold the Ctrl key down and click each photo you want to move/copy until you’ve selected all the photos you want.
• To copy photos: Press the Ctrl + C keys to copy the photos you have selected to the clipboard (a temporary storage place for them)
• To move photos: Press the Ctrl + X keys to cut the photos you have selected and move them to the clipboard
• Navigate to the USB thumb drive in the left pane and click in the right pane.
• To paste the copied or cut photos that are on the clipboard to the USB thumb drive: Press Ctrl + V.
• If you’re a mouser, you can actually drag the photos to the USB thumb drive in the left pane once you’ve selected them in the right pane. It’s up to you which method you use. Both work.

If you have a dial-up connection, you will find out that any updated virus definitions will not be able to download to your computer automatically unless you are online. For this reason, you may get a message that your virus definitions are out of date if you haven’t been online. The caller we had yesterday was getting this message from AVG. The best way to make sure you get regular updates on your dial up connection is by changing the Update Manager Settings in AVG’s Control Center.

• Double click the AVG icon in the bottom right of your taskbar (it will be gray instead of colored if your definitions are out of date) to open the Control Center.
• In the Control Center, single click Update Manager in the right pane.
• Click Settings at the bottom of the AVG window.
• Click the Dialup tab
• Click the box next to Use Dialup Connections to select it and click OK. (Ask before Connection is automatically selected).
• The next time your virus definitions need updating, AVG will automatically ask you if you want to open your dialup connection so that it can download the latest virus definition updates.

I am assuming that you are using AVG 7.5. If you haven’t upgraded from 7.1 to 7.5, you will need to do so immediately since Grisoft no longer supports 7.1. You can get upgrade instructions by reading the first comment on the post I did in February about AVG 7.5.

Don’t forget, you still have time to enter the drawing for Diskeeper 2007 by leaving a comment on this (or any other) post on the blog!

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