Personal Computing Demystified.
Archive for November, 2009
The best things in (computing) life can be free.. sort of.
Nov 28th
Over the past few weeks a few friends of mine have asked for my advice about different types of software. Each of them have a need and the software industry has the solution.. but that solution is horribly expensive. The good news is that there are tools for these needs that don’t have a retail price tag attached to them – the software we’re talking about is open-source. Open source software is generally written by individuals or small groups and is intended to be free to use – but donations are gladly accepted by the authors to help fund continued development. I’ll stand up for the open-source community right now and tell you straight up – if you use open-source software you should by all means donate! The quality of software that is out there is often far superior to its retail competition – support is done by the user community and the release/upgrade cycle is usually much shorter than retail products, which means that new features show up much more quickly.
Here’s a few selected OSS selections that are quite appropriate for the holiday season:
GNU Image Manipulation Program (The GIMP)
Image by Al Brown
If you need to do serious photo editing – say, for instance you decide that picture you have of your friend Eric wearing his full-face MTB helmet just needs some creative editing to make it pop. Just fire up your favorite photo-editing software and, voila! Eric now has Darth Vader’s body! Hilarity ensues – especially if you post the picture where all of Eric’s friends can see it. Everyone has heard of Adobe Photoshop.. that brand name has become synonymous with photo editing and it is indeed a powerful program.. but it is almost prohibitively expensive for the home computer user. A great alternative that is equally powerful is the GNU Image Manipulation Program, or The GIMP for short. I haven’t found anything that I can do with Photoshop that I can’t do with The Gimp. You can get The GIMP from here.. and if you like it, please donate.
I’m greatly annoyed by the fact that until recently you had to use a third-party program to perform what I consider to be basic operations with your CD/DVD burner – for instance, creating an .ISO image of a CD/DVD. If you still use Windows XP you’re still stuck in that spot without third-party software. You could go buy Nero or Roxio to perform those tasks.. or you could go download a copy of InfraRecorder. From InfraRecorder’s site, here’s some of what you can do with it:
Features
- Create custom data, audio and mixed-mode projects and record them to physical discs as well as disc images.
- Supports recording to dual-layer DVDs.
- Blank (erase) rewritable discs using four different methods.
- Record disc images (ISO and BIN/CUE).
- Fixate discs (write lead-out information to prevent further data from being added to the disc).
- Scan the SCSI/IDE bus for devices and collect information about their capabilities.
- Create disc copies, on the fly and using a temporary disc image.
- Import session data from multi-session discs and add more sessions to them.
- Display disc information.
- Save audio and data tracks to files (.wav, .wma, .ogg, .mp3 and .iso).
If you need these functions, go here to download InfraRecorder. If you like it, please donate!
Have any OSS suggestions you’d like to share? Leave a comment!
From @ComcastBonnie: ComcastBonnie Happy Fun-Time Learning Series GO!
Nov 18th
From time to time I’ll post content here authored by other bloggers. @ComcastBonnie is a member of the Comcast Cares! team at your favorite giant content provider and has provided great help to me in the past. Below is a great post on self-troubleshooting Internet access issues with your cable connection.
ComcastBonnie Happy Fun-Time Learning Series GO!
By: @ComcastBonnie
(I was originally going to post this back in September. Oops!)
Since the new school year has begun, let’s learn some fun stuff about your internet connection and how to fix it! Prepare to amaze and awe your neighbors, family, and friends who will suddenly deem you as their tech support person 
OK, class! Let’s begin…
Today, we’ll start off our fun learning series with the simple stuff. When I see problems, the very first thing I’ll ask is: Have you reset your modem? If the answer is yes, then I’ll ask: Do you have a router? This isn’t because I’m trying to blame any particular piece of equipment. You’d be amazed at how many times a router will get “out of sync” with a modem, and vice versa. To fix this…
- · pull the power from both the modem and the router
- · Next, plug the power into the modem ONLY.
- · Wait for the lights on the front to calm down. On Motorola modems, you need four SOLID green lights. (Scientific Atlanta/Webstar needs a SOLID cable light. RCA modems need the Cable Link and Internet light SOLID. If you have a modem not listed here, chances are you bought it or it’s an end of life modem and should be replaced)
- · Once this is done, go ahead and plug the power back into your router and wait for it to finish up it’s startup sequence.
Easy enough, right? If you’re still unable to connect, try moving on to the slightly more complicated steps below.
For a direct connection to the modem:
- · PC’s: Go to “Network Connections” in your Control Panel. Right mouse click on “Local Area Connection” and click Status. Click the Support tab in this window, and check the IP address.
- · Macs: Finder>Applications>System Utilities>Network Utility This will display your current IP address.
- · Does the IP start with 169.254? If so, your computer is not getting a connection from the modem and you should probably give us a call. If you see 192.168, you’re connected to a router, have your IP set static, or something else is going on with the modem. Again, something you might want to call us up about.
For connections using a router:
- · Make sure your router is obtaining an IP address by going to its home page at http://192.168.1.1 (login required in most cases). You should be able to check on the router’s status page and see if you are getting an IP. If you see a 169.254.xxx.xxx address, your router is not connecting to the modem. This could mean that it was not powered on in the right order OR the modem is not assigning IP’s.
- · Make sure your computer is receiving an IP address from the router by following the steps above. A 192.168.x.x of 10.x.x.x address should show. If not, your router has a problem!
- · Make sure you’re connected to your own wireless network. I get more of this than most people think. Be sure to put your wireless network as top priority over others in your network preferences.
For the super geeks out there:
Speaking of modem’s not handing out IP’s… I see this little problem all the time. The geeks out there seem to notice this the most, and take extraordinary measures to correct the problem. I’ll see folks spoofing their MAC Addresses to get the modem to talk to the equipment on the other end. Guess what? You don’t need to do that ANY TIME you connect something in to your modem, you will need to reset the modem. Otherwise, it will still consider the original device connected, and hence refuse to work with the new device. Easy fix, right? Make sure you’re not overlooking the basics above, since it’s easy to forget the most obvious things sometimes. I once troubleshot a modem for well over an hour, and then discovered it was in standby. The lights on the modem will tell you a lot about what’s going on.
I hope this gives you a little insight into the basics of troubleshooting. Next week, we’ll move on to checking out your internet signal from the comfort of your own home
Got a topic I should cover? Let me know in the comments! Got a question about any of the stuff above? Ask away! Let’s keep comments about the lessons on-topic, so we can all chirp in about each thing
About @ComcastBonnie:
Your friendly neighborhood Comcast Ninja here to answer questions, fix problems, and make the world a better place for our Customers. Got a question? Ask me!
@ComcastBonnie’s blog can be found at http://comcastbonnie.blogspot.com
What is a Netbook, and why would I want one?
Nov 17th
My first hands-on experience with a netbook was just this past summer. Our babysitter was headed off to college and had just won this little thing – she needed my help to make sure the software she needed was loaded up and it was generally ready to go. I agreed, so I got to test-drive her netbook for a week.
If you haven’t looked into a netbook yet – you really should, especially if you think you’re in the market for a laptop. First and foremost, netbooks are small.. screen sizes on netbooks are usually in the 10.1″ widescreen range which is similar to some of the nicer portable DVD players out there. Most netbooks are built on the Intel Atom processor which was purpose-built for mobile computing devices. As far as other specs you might be more familiar with – netbooks usually come configured with a few gigs of memory, a sizable hard drive (sometimes substituted for a SSD), wired/wireless networking, a few USB 2 ports and a webcam. Before the general release of Windows 7 most netbooks came with the Windows XP home operating system we’re all familiar with though now the newer versions of these devices come bundled with Windows 7. I wouldn’t be concerned by that last bit.. the hardware spec of the older models seem to be the same as the newer versions with Win7. What they don’t come with.. a CD/DVD drive – though they work fine with external drives. This is by design.. USB memory sticks are so ubiquitous now that I prefer them over CD/DVD.
Netbooks are designed for mobile connectivity, pure and simple. They are perfect devices for students because of their low cost, battery life and portability. For example.. the netbook that our babysitter is toting around has a battery life of about five hours so she can leave the power brick in her dorm, and the outside case is ruggedized with rubber so that she can lug it around in her backpack without worrying about scratching it up.
But, Mr. Blogger.. are they slow? Not at all. These things are perfect for web surfing, skype, email, and office-type programs and it does those jobs happily. Don’t try cpu-intense operations like gaming on one.. that will never work. Feel free to sync your music player to it or download photos from your digi-cam.. that works just fine. Linux folks.. Fedora 12 just dropped and it has specific enhancements for netbooks!
At around $300 for a decent netbook these things are going to be hot for Christmas. One word of warning though.. don’t fall for the ads that some wireless companies are touting where they’ll give you a netbook in exchange for a contract on a mobile data plan. You’ll do much better getting your own netbook and having the free will to choose who you might want to use for mobile connectivity assuming you need that.
Got a netbook? I’d love to hear from you, so post a comment!
Want a netbook? Check out the Gateway LT2022u NightSky Black 10.1″ WSVGA Netbook over at Newegg.com.
