JULY - August 2008 Vol 19 No 7- 8
Here is some good advice I received from a friend!
In case you're not aware of the problems that exist now days with
forwarding emails, it's worth reading & makes sense. I'm sharing this with
all my friends, to remind them the facts of forwarding emails, and maybe you
can share with your friends.
Words To Live By. Please respect everyone's privacy by following
the advice below!
A friend who is a computer expert received the following directly
from a administrator for a corporate system. It is an
excellent message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send e-mails.
Please read the short letter below, even if you're sure you already follow
proper procedures.
Do you really know < / SPAN>how to forward e-mails? 50% of us do; 50% DO
NOT.
Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Do you hate it?
Every time you forward an e-mail there is information left over from the
people who got the message before you, namely their e-mail addresses and
names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds,
and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a
virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every E-mail address
that has come across his computer. Or, someone can take all of those
addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will
go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit. That's right, all
of that inconvenience over a nickel! How do you stop it? Well, there are
several easy steps.
Try the following if you haven't done it before:
(1) When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that
appear in the body of the message (at the top). That's right, DELETE them.
Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you
know how to do. It only takes a second. You MUST click the "Forward"
button first and then you will(Continue on Pg 5)
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The HOTLINE is published monthly by and for members of the County Older Residents Computer Club (St. Louis County, MO). C.O.R.C.C. is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to provide an exchange of information about personal computers among its members. Information concerning C.O.R.C.C. may be obtained from Dale Montonye, 314-8376560, dale.montonye@gmail.com. Articles for the HOTLINE should be sent to Arthur Hollman, 6709 Flowervale Dr., Hazelwood, Mo. 63042, or as an attachment to arthurhollman@yahoo.com. Please put “Article for HOTLINE” in the subject line.
2008 C.O.R.C.C.
Officers and Committees
President: Dale Montonye 314-837-6560
Vice-President: Jim Cromer 314-837-6102
Speaker’s Committee: Tom Kimber, Gloria Stephens
Treasurer: Gloria Stephens 314-921-1493
Secretary: Anne Kohlman 314-837-0415
Editor: Arthur Hollman 314-895-1854
Copy Editor: Jeanette Hollman 314-895-1854
Web Master: Jim Cromer 314-837-6102
Book Library: Barbara Surratt esurratt@prodigy.net
CD Library: Dan Zanitsch 314-921-5760
Equipment: Jerry Burnett 314-839-9958
Equipment Setup: Jerry Burnett, Sam Buzzetta
Equipment Selection & Repair: Tom Kimber Club Disk: Barney Field
HOTLINE Helper: Tom Kimber
Public Relations: Jim Cromer
Recycled Ink Cartridges: Tom Kimber
Sergeant-At-Arms: Don Crowther
MEETING SCHEDULE
All meetings scheduled the 1st and 3rd
Fridays from 1-3 PM
(except holidays)
at Prairie Commons Library,
915 Utz Lane, Hazelwood
***************
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CORCC MEETING DATES PLEASE CUT AND MARK YOUR CALANDAR !!
July 18 Aug. 1, 15
Sept. 5, 19 Oct. 3, 17
Nov. 7, 21 Dec. 5, 19
Planning meetings will take place on the 1st Fridays starting at 12:30pm. followed
by regular meetings from 1 to 3:00pm. Business meetings will take place at 1:00
pm on the 3rd Fridays with regular meetigs immediately following the business
meeting until 3:00pm.
MINUTES OF BUSINESS MEETING 5-16-08
By Anne Kohlman
Following the Pledge of Allegiance and membership approval of the Treasurer’s and Secretary’s reports, a discussion
was held about Vista and the Club’s computer.
Gloria: AVG (AntiVirusGrisoft) has been updated to vs. 8.0. This is a free program, highly approved by much of
Club membership. Be sure to remove “old” antivirus just before installing a new one.
Jim: We need to put new memory and Vista on one of the Club’s computers so we can better assist Club members using
Vista.
Art: Reminded that Vista is on “hold” awaiting a new OS in 2010.
Dale: The cutoff date for Windows XP is being extended. Business is not “buying” it. A Vista service pack is available
for download.
Art: Service packs 1 and 2 are ok for use, but some people have trouble with service pack 3…
Gloria: Has used Vista 18 months without any real problems.
Dale: Ditto. It depends on “what else” is on your computer! Vista requires much more RAM
BUSINESS MEETING MINUTES 6/20/08
By Jeanette Hollman
Dale Montonye opened the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance. He made an announcement he would not be able to
attend the meetings for the next 3 months because he was being called back to work at Boeing.
Art Hollman volunteered to chair the meetings if Jim Cromer or Jackie Oughton were not available.
Gloria Stephens read the treasurer’s report. There were no corrections noted in the treasurer’s report, or in the
secretary’s report as printed in the HOTLINE, so both were approved.
It was noted that there would be no meeting on Friday, July 4th. Gloria stated that Larry Nahlen was scheduled
to do a presentation on July 18th.
After the meeting, Jeanette Hollman gave a presentation on Microsoft Word.
*******************************
By Art Hollman
SPEED UP FILE BROWSING
I'm always on the lookout for ways to make using my XP computer faster and easier. One of the bottlenecks I see often is based on a known "bug in Windows XP, and rears its ugly head when you are trying to view shared files across a network. Without going into all the detail, suffice it to say that this tip should speed up both Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer. Here's what to do. Click on Start, then on Run, and then type REGEDIT. Now click OK or press the Enter key. Next, locate the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE folder and double-click on it. Now you'll "drill down" by opening, one after the other, Software, Microsoft, Windows, CurrentVersion, Explorer, RemoteComputer, and finally NameSpace. Under NameSpace, locate the key {D62YY990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF} Right-click on it and then click on Delete.
MORE SPEED FROM WINDOWS XP
As good as Windows XP is in terms of speed when compared to previous Windows versions like 98 and ME, I still want even more speed. Here's a way to make XP even faster, by making sure that Operating System functions stay in memory (RAM), because memory is much faster than your hard disk. Try this: Click on Start, on Run, and then type REGEDIT and click OK or press the Enter. The word REGEDIT is not case-sensitive. Now double-click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Drill down by opening System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management. Right-click on the DisablePagingExecutive entry located in the right pane (side) of your screen and select Modify. In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, type the number "1" (without the quotes) in the Value data field. Click OK and then close the Registry Editor. Finally, make sure you don't have any open programs, and restart your computer so that the change you made can take effect. A really fast restart can be performed by pressing and releasing the Windows key (lower-left side of your key board) and then tapping the letters U and then R. Your computer will restart and you'll see a Windows performance increase.
ENABLE BOOT DEFRAG
A very important feature in Microsoft Windows XP is the ability to do a boot defragment. This basically means that all boot files are placed next to each other on the disk drive to allow for faster booting. By default this option is enabled, but some upgrade users report that it isn't on their setup. It's easy to check. Here's how. Click on Start, Run, and then type REGEDIT. Click OK or press the Enter key. Double-click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Now open Software, Microsoft, Dfrg, and BootOptimizerFunction. Look at the line on the right side of your screen that starts with the word Enable. Look in the Data column. If you see the letter Y, the feature is turned on. If not, right-click on Enable and select Modify. Enter a Y in the Value Data box and click OK. Now you can close the Registry Editor.
Send Ques. To:
arthurhollman@yahoo.com
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(Continue from Pg 1)
have full editing capabilities against the body and
headers of the message. If you don't click on "Forward" first, you won't be
able to edit the message at all.
(2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the To:
or Cc: fields for adding e-mail addresses. Always use the BCC:(blind carbon
copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses. This is the way the people you
send to will only see their own e-mail address. If you don't see your BCC:
option click on where it says To: and your address list will appear.
Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that's it, it's that easy. When
you send to BCC: your message will automatically say "Undisclosed Recipients
in the "TO:" field of the people who receive it.
(3) Remove any "FW :" in the subject line. You can re-name the subject if
you wish or even fix spelling.
(4) ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual e-mail you are reading
.. Ever get those e-mails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one
page e with the inform ation on it? By Forwarding from the actual page you
wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many e-mails just to
see what you sent.
(5) Have you ever gotten an email that is a petition? It states a
position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10
or 15 people or your entire address book. The email can be forwarded on and
on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses. A FACT: The
completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional
spammer because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained
therein. DO NOT put your email address on any petition. If you want to
support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended
recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a
laundry list of names and email address on a petition. (And don't believe
the ones that say that the email is being traced, it just ain't so!)
Some of the other emails to delete and not forward are:
1. The one that says something like, "Send this email to 10 people and
you'll see something great run across your screen." Or sometimes they'll
just tease you by saying 'something really cute will happen.' IT AIN'T
GONNA HAPPEN!!!!! (We are still seeing some of the same emails that we
waited on 10 years ago!)
2. I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed.
3. Before you forward an 'Amber Alert' , or a 'Virus Alert', or some of
the other emails floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward
them. Most of them are junk mail that's been circling the net for YEARS!
Just about everything
Page 5
you receive in an email that is in question can be
checked out a Snopes. Just go to www.snopes.com <http://www.snopes. com/>
. or www.truthorfiction. com <http://www.truthorf iction.com/> It's
really easy to find out if it's real or not. If it's not, please don't pass
it on.
So please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses.
Finally, here's an idea!!! Let's send this to everyone we know (but strip my
address off first, please). This is something that SHOULD be forwarded, so
do it.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
TURN OFF FILE INDEXING IN VISTA
While you are buy surfing the Internet or shopping on line, Windows Vista is busy working in the background to automatically index all the files in your Start Menu, user profile folders and files setup for offline access by default. The idea here is to make your searches faster in Vista, but often indexing may kick in at odd times and really slow
down whatever you are working on. You can do one of two things here - you can trim down the number of files that are to be indexed, or you can disable the indexing altogether. The bottom line here is that if you don't regularly scan through files on your hard drive, you don't really need the indexing feature. To trim the number of files being indexed, click on Start, type "Indexing Options" (without the quotes) and now press the Enter key to load your Indexing Options. Now click on the Modify button, and then click on Show all locations. Now you can click on your C: drive to open the "tree" view, where you will remove every checkmark except for the Start Menu, and Outlook if you are using it. Now click OK to finish. To disable indexing altogether, click on Start, type SERVICES.MSC and then press the Enter key. Scroll down to and then click on Windows Search. Now on the General tab, click the down arrow on the right side of the Startup type: box and select Disabled. Click OK and you're done.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Converter Box Fiasco
By Jeanette Hollman
We have an older RCA TV with a roof antenna, and do not have cable, so we purchased a Zenith converter box. Zenith was the only one available at the retailer. Instructions for the converter box was to set the tuner to Channel 3. We also have a separate VCR player/recorder with remote, and a separate DVD player/recorder with a remote. Before the converter box, in order to use the VCR we had to put the TV remote to channel 3, and in order to use the DVD, we have to put the TV remote on input.
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After setting up everything for the converter box, we couldn't get ABC (our channel 30) that we always had before, so we had to buy a 5-foot pole to lengthen our roof antenna to 10 feet in order to be able to view ABC.
When we went to set the timer on the VCR recorder to record a program, it only recorded gobble-de-gook. It recorded from the channel that we had chosen (channel 5) on the VCR menu. We could only record if we were watching the program, or had not changed the channel on the converter remote.
Which means: only 1 timed program can be set to record at a time, and we must leave it on the channel we selected to record from. Which means we cannot record a channel while watching another channel, or set the time-record to record different channels while we are gone. This was not the case before. When we called the toll-free # from the instruction manual, we were told we would have to purchase some kind of receiver to hook up to in order to be able to set numerous timed programs to record. This is ridiculous! Now we have 3 remotes and probably will have to buy another contraption with another remote that will probably get lost and/or confused with the others.
Why did they not explain how all this would work together, or NOT WORK TOGETHER, before they told us we will have no choice and must do as we are told, or we will be out of luck television-wise?
When I went to the website http://www.dtv.gov/consumercorner.html for questions and answers, this is what I found.
Can I continue using my existing VCR with a DTV converter box for timed recordings?
Yes. However, after the digital transition, the tuner in the VCR won't be able to pick up over-the-air programs for recording. Instead, the input to the VCR must be connected to the output of the DTV converter box. You must set the tuner in the DTV converter box to the channel you want to record prior to the start of each recording period programmed in the VCR.
What about my VCR, DVD player, camcorder, and gaming console? Will I be able to use them with a digital television set?
Yes. Digital television sets are “backward compatible,” meaning existing analog equipment (VCRs, DVD players, camcorders, video games, etc.) will work on digital TV sets. However, their video will only be displayed in the maximum resolution that is available with each analog product. Manufacturers are producing a number of different connectors to hook equipment together and improve picture and sound quality when DTVs are used with existing analog equipment. Check with your retailer to determine the types of connectors.
