Useful Computer Information

Disclaimer - The following information was provided by Shed members and whilst most is generic and available from Microsoft and others, comments on any products are neither endorsed nor recommended by Melba Shed

Not able to access the web links in the Newsletter? (pdf version)

It’s almost certainly due to configuration issues with Adobe Reader. Here’s how to fix the problem:

1. Remove (this step is essential) all existing copies of Adobe Reader (you may have multiple versions installed). [for Windows 7 go to Control Panel > Programs and Features and then select Adobe Reader and uninstall]
2. Download and install the latest version of Adobe Reader (currently 10.1.2) from http://get.adobe.com/reader/ (make sure you deselect the McAfee Security Scan option before hitting the ‘Download now’ button)
3. Need help? Call Phil on 6258 1935

Mac users – sorry – you are on your own. (Ed: however on the same download site there are versions for Mac OS and alternate languages. You can see all the Mac Adobe Reader versions here. This is the Adobe for Mac software from the Macupdate site)

ATM Computers Shop, 6/75 Oatley Court Belconnen 6253 0537. This local shop got a good report by several people on RIOTAct for repairing computers and giving good advice as well as not charging too much

Cool free video-format-conversion software Want free software to convert video to different formats. You might like to try this one

Free Sound Effects Files to Download

Hoax emails There are a lot around purporting to get your to believe something and forward it on. You can check for hoaxes at Snopes or Hoax-Slayer. Terry has become a big fan!

Ink Station Phil uses this site to buy discount quality ink cartridges for his Canon ink jet and Brother laser printers with huge savings over the genuine article. He can’t notice any difference in performance. The Canon cartridges have the necessary chip and it all works just the same as the original. He has been paying less than $4 a cartridge for non-chipped cartridges (BCI-3 and BCI-6) and about $7 for chipped cartridges (PGI-5 and CLI-8) (or just over $5 if you buy 20 assorted cartridges). They are freight free if order exceeds $50 and they are delivered to his door the day after he places the order. Unfortunately they don’t as yet sell the Photo Cyan and Photo Magenta cartridges but they do have genuine Canon ones for sale at best prices

The Future of Google Docs An article from Information Week on its status

Get Wordpress This site defines the differences between Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org. Worth understanding

Computer Items Cheap at the local Computer Markets. If you want more RAM (memory), a new HDD (Hard drive) or DVD disks then this is the place. You can get new systems, notebooks or monitors. Probably EPIC is the best for us northerners with good parking. Note its $3 entry fee

Interested in the Internet Then look at the Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures and Geoff Huston's Blog

101 Free Alternatives to Commonly Used Paid Software

Might be some useful feee software here thatcould be useful.

Windows Live Essentials 2011 Review

Look at Lifehackers review of this software with a link to Microsofts download page

Exploit Discovered on Most Microsoft Windows versions

The impact of this is largely on those windows users who use Internet Explorer. Microsoft Security Advisory (2501696) explains the problems and offers some Mitigating Factors and Suggested Actions. As a minimum you should read the bulletin and implement Internet Security Zones to High and configure IE to prompt before running Active Scripting on the Internet and Local security zones. When setting Active Sripting to "prompt" it makes accessing some sites very slow and painful, and it might be best to delay this step but be careful where you visit. Of course an upgrade to Firefox or Chrome would solve the issue as suggested below. Also make sure you run the latest security updates from Microsoft. Another article from Information Week

Microsoft Fix It patch Go to the Fix It section and click on the Fix It icon. It will download a Microsoft Installer package which you then let run

As an alternative, I copied data from the MS advisory and created two reg files for 32 bit windows. To use simply right click on the link, then download to Desktop and double click on the Lockdown file

Browsers - Time to Update

Firefox 6 was released Wed 17th Aug 2011. Firefox 7 is planned for release at the end of Sept. You should update to IE9, Firefox 6.0 or Google's Chrome 13. Its preferable you do not instal Flash. However Flash comes pre installed on Windows 7, so that may be a tough ask. It's also desirable that you consider Windows 7 as a base operating system rather than Windows XP or Vista. Windows 7 is much more secure and stable.

Many find Firefox excellent with most geeks liking it. I have tried Chrome versions 5-17 and find it is nice and fast. Some state it is the best and safest browser as it uses sandboxing for security. However this will change as IE and Firefox develop further.

It is time to review what browser your using and either update or change. Why? There has been much change in recent years with Firefox, Google's Chrome, Opera and Apple's Safari developing very powerful and usable browsers. Microsoft Internet Explorer has also developed and improved into version 9. The general consensus is that no browser is 100% foolproof. However recent tests have shown that the latest breed are more secure.

A recent competition at Pwn2Own, a CansecWest Conference, a contest that gives contestants rewards for successfully exploiting OS vulnerabilities, came out with the result that Chrome was the hardest browser to exploit. Charlie Miller, one of the renowned hackers involved stated the safer combination of OS and browser is “Chrome or IE8 on Windows 7 with no Flash installed. There probably isn't enough difference between the browsers to get worked up about”

Others, i.e. NSS Labs have rated Microsoft IE8 the current best browser at that time. However they were not rating IE against Firefox 3.6+ nor Chrome 5+. Template Monster Blog outlines the future of IE as well as showing recent stats on which browser is in use.

Some experts believes that the future of security relies on “sandboxing,” the practice of separating application processes from other applications, the operating system and user data. Interestingly Chrome uses sandboxing now. This may explain its high security rating. The protected mode of IE8 is not really a sand boxed arrangement, and does not offer the same amount of protection that Chrome does.

IE9 has been released and introduced HTML5 and newer security features including sandboxing through a better protected mode. However it will only run on Vista and Windows 7. Google is also further developing Chrome and Mozilla Firefox 10. Firefox 6.0 also runs on Windows XP

Firefox 4-11 and Pinch/Zoom Functions

Firefox 4-11 is now available and worth getting if you like Firefox. To an extent one needs to get it all adjusted for new things, fix some things, find add-ons, set up add-ons, etc. Firefox 4 disables Pinch/Zoom functions used by many on Macs, Laptops and handheld devices by default. This is quite unfriendly to those whose vision now requires the zoom feature - though the keyboard commands still work. You can simply type about:config in your address bar and hit enter to fix it so the pinch/zoom function will work. For Windows and Mac see Enable Laptop Pinch to Zoom gesture in Firefox 4 from Lifehacker

This is maybe some what messy If your using Windows. I found a better way as in the solution below. This works a charm with keypad or scroll bar on the mouse. It offers a series of Zoom buttons and you can choose and drag which ones you want to your Firefox Navigation Toolbar

For Firefox 4 using Windows on a Desktop or Laptop, Pinch/Zoom config issues can be avoided by installing an extension called Page Zoom Buttons from Access Firefox

A view on Firefox 4 from Lifehacker

Gizmodo

Gizmodo Australia has some great technical advice and tips

Lifehackers' List of Essential Windows Downloads

This is their 2010 pack of essential free downloads for Windows and worth looking at.

How-To Geek

Great site offering many technical tips. enables you to store files online and access from anywhere. As and example it offers Add My Dropbox to Windows 7 Menu

KompoZer

KompoZer is a complete Web Authoring System that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing capabilities found in Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe DreamWeaver and other high end programs. KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding. Its open source and thus free. KompoZer is based on Gecko, the layout engine inside Mozilla; it's a super-fast, very reliable, standards conformant engine maintained on a daily basis by a wide community of developers. Here is the KompoZer user Guide

Open Office Org

If you can't afford Microsofts Office 2010 package and just want software that does simple but adequate word processing, spreadsheeting and overhead presentations, then Open Office from Oracle may be satisfactory. Its free and can read most Microsoft Office files

Online Storage and Sharing

Dropbox enables you to store files online and access from anywhere. It offers 2GB of storage in a cloud computing secure environment.

This has similar functionality to Google Docs. You can setup Google Docs with a Gmail account logon.

Dropbox looks like a better product as it creates a folder on the desktop that you can drop files into, just like another hard drive or folder. This can be available on more than one computer. Dropbox can be used with products such as Keepass and Password Safe to provide synchronised access to password managers in a secure environment

Free OCR Software

Have used this and it worked. Its called Free OCR 3.0. Its a bit hard to work out where to click to download just keep persevering

PDF Reader (Foxit Viewer) and Reading Newsletters With No PDF Reader (Through Google Docs)

In the Newsletter of 16th April 2010 (No 28) it was advised that Adobe Reader was required to open the Newsletter and pointed out that for someone not on broadband this was a large download. Ted has advised of a free download and free software called Foxit Reader that is about one quarter the size and works just as well. It can be obtained from foxit corporation. Make sure you download the free windows viewer version currently 3.2.x

You can also read the newsletter online from Google Docs using no pdf reader

When you access the newsletters through the Newsletters Page and then click on the Link to all Melba Shed Newsletters (which is a link to a Google docs folder) it then shows all the Shed newsletters in a list. To read simply scroll down to the latest one or which one is required and click on the link. It will open the newsletter within the browser window. You do not need any pdf reader for this. The view is a bit constrained but can be improved by then clicking on the Open link option under the file name. You can then use the zoom button to enlarge as well as moving forward to the next page. There is also a download option, but of course you then need a pdf reader. Note the print function doesn't work within Google docs unless you have a pdf reader installed

PDF to Word or Similar

A couple of free programs to help

Try out Free Word to PDF Converter Note the download is at the bottom of the page, not the adds at the top.

Something very special. Visit Calibre and you get access to their E-book management software which can convert various formats including PDF to RTF/MOBI/EPUB/LIT. And its free!

PDF Creation Programs

PDF Creator This is a free open source piece of software that enables you to turn your web page, your email or word document into a pdf file. Works well. You simply choose it as your print option and then print to it. It then saves as a pdf file - Bullzip PDF Printer Another excellent program that runs in a similar fashion to PDF Creator

DjVu

An open source alternative to Adobe's PDF program. DjVu (pronounced "déjà vu") a set of compression technologies, a file format, and a software platform for the delivery over the Web of digital documents, scanned documents, and high resolution images. Typically DjVU files are at least 5 times smaller than PDF files for the same document, DjVU viewer is a Add-on that installs itself and you can convert wherever you want to DjVU for free

Primo PDF

A free PDF creator. Can also convert pdf documents to smaller versions. This can reduce a pdf file's size created by Office/Word by 40%

Optimizing PDF Files for Web Use and Design

Nice article that offers tips and tools to optimize PDFs for minimum file size while still maintaining accessibility and search engine visibility

Dual Monitor Tools Manages Your Multiple Monitors with Open-Source Tools

Lifehacker article. There are some great multi-monitor management tools available but if you're trying to keep things free and open-source the pickings get a little slimmer. Dual Monitor Tools is a collection of open-source applications for managing your multi-monitor setup.

FTP Program

If your looking for a nice free FTP program you might want to try this one, FileZilla I am using it in Windows 7 Ultimate and its great. I had trouble with Core FTP Lite which didn't work well in Vista or Windows 7

Xplorer2 Lite

This is a free file management tool that makes it very easy to manage files on any Windows based computer. This is a great productivity tool that solves many of the usability issues with Windows Explorer. It can be freely downloaded

Exporting and Backing Up Bookmarks In Firefox

Two ways. Can do both just to be sure. Very painless

Select: Bookmarks > Organise Bookmarks > Goes into Library > select Import and Backup > Backup > browse to where you want to store it its a .json file. Maybe on USB drive

Then reselect Imports and Backups > Export HTML > browse to same place and export as HTML file as well

In new PC after installing Firefox do the reverse and Import. For the Restore function you get various days to restore (check your current Firefox) or from a file which is the option your need for a new instal. If this works then you don't need the html option

Net Usage Project

This is a unique piece of software that works in the Firefox toolbar as an add-on. It displays various items of data about your usage of your ISP's data allowances. This works with numerous ISPs but only in Firefox's browser

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