Paige’s Continuing Adventures in VistaLand…and other stuff

March 7, 2007

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I just don’t understand it. Who wouldn’t want their very own 2 Smart Chix coffee mug? They’re really cute and hold plenty of your hot beverage of choice (or not hot, it’s your choice, remember?) I actually offered a FREE coffee mug to the first person who could call me on the air and tell me (and the listeners) who our special guest will be this month and what he’s going to be giving away. I even gave out the URL to this blog SEVERAL TIMES and nobody called….nobody…..what’s up with that? I guess I’ll try again next week. My thanks to the people who have taken the time to leave their comments so far. If you don’t want to actually LOOK (hint, see the links to the right of this post under Recent Posts) for the information, CLICK THIS LINK to read the post.

Now that I’ve actually set up my new PC, I’m treading softly down Vista Road. So far, I haven’t had any really serious problems but I’ve encountered some frustrating occasions and so far, I’ve been able to “fix” almost all of the problems I’ve had. Here’s a brief summary of what I’ve done:

• VERY IMPORTANT: As soon as Vista appeared on my PC for the first time, I created Recovery Disks. Create Recovery Disks for your own system. Manufacturers used to include those with a new PC but that’s not always the case anymore. No matter what kind of PC you buy, make it a priority to find out how to create those disks!
• VIRUS DETECTION/PREVENTION: Make sure you have it before you go online. Your new PC will most likely come with a fully functional trial version from Norton or McAfee preinstalled. If you want to give the preinstalled version a try, take advantage of the trial period. If you prefer to use something else (which I do), make sure you completely uninstall the program that comes with your PC (which I did) before you install something else. NOTE* For you AVG users, AVG 7.5 Anti-Virus was the first anti-virus software to be awarded the Checkmark Certification from West Coast Labs for use on Windows Vista Business Edition, so you know it’s going to work!
• DOES YOUR PRINTER WORK? If, like me, you didn’t have the luxury of using the Vista Upgrade Advisor, at least make sure you visit the website of your printer’s manufacturer to make sure it will work with Vista. There may even be new drivers that you need to install. In my case, my Minolta Magicolor 2300W installed just fine with XP drivers. I knew that because I visited the Konica-Minolta site first and did a search on my model number. It’s acted a little flaky a couple of times but I’ve learned to be patient. It seems that Vista stops recognizing a connection when my printer “goes to sleep” but continues to allow me to print anyway. I guess I need to find out how to disable the power saving feature that causes it to go to sleep.
• CHECK THE ADOBE WEBSITE! I use a couple of different Adobe programs and was not very happy to discover that Adobe isn’t providing support for any of their programs that were available for purchase prior to Vista’s release date of January 30, 2007. Their reasoning is that there are commercial updates for most of those products coming out soon so you can just purchase an upgrade to the latest version. Do yourself a favor and visit Adobe’s site to find out how Adobe products support Vista.
• ASK DEREK! I was very disappointed to find out that my Diskeeper 2007 Pro Premier won’t even install on Vista. Luckily, I have a registered copy of the program so I can get an update from Diskeeper. It’s a little bit of a pain to have to send them an e-mail and request a link to get the update but it’s worth my time since the program is really good and I don’t want to do without it!

My friend and colleague, Peter Yanke of BX Media and BX Internet, really made me feel foolish when I sent him an e-mail to let him know about the cool “NEW” feature in Vista that zips and unzips files. I really didn’ t know that the same feature is available in XP! That’s good news for all you XP users out there (and I know there will be many for some time to come). You don’t need to download a third-party program to compress photos and e-mail them and if your recipient also has XP, he or she can unzip them simply by double-clicking! For more info on using the compression feature in XP, check out this article from Penn State.

We had a couple of calls from people looking for information, or giving us information, (Thanks Mark!) about the upcoming change in the date(s) Daylight Savings Time starts/ends. No matter what flavor of Windows you’re using, you can find out what your update options are on the Microsoft website. (Mac users, you can find the same info on the Apple site!)

We also had in inquiry about backing up Internet Explorer Favorites. Sometimes, you just need to clean them out. Whatever your reason for wanting to back up your Favorites, you can do it by using the Export/Import feature of IE. Just Ask Dave…or if you’re an aural person (that means you like to hear somebody say it) , I recorded a One Minute How To for George Smyth on how to make a printed copy.

Speaking of George, he’ll be joining us in the Virtual Coop this coming Saturday, March 10, at 9am CST. He’s a man of many talents and will no doubt be both informative AND entertaining! If you can’t make it live, I’ll have the podcast posted next week.

Posted in Views From The Coop