The Value of Separate User Accounts

The social networking site Facebook has recently been hit with a pretty vicious virus, called “Koobface”. It gets on your computer when you click on a link to a video that has supposedly been recommended by one of your friends.  This link is to an explanation of how it operates: Koobface

I recently was asked to help a friend whose computer suddenly started behaving strangely, and the bottom line to the story is that her computer had been infected with Koobface.  She was able to remove it by running the very good, and free, program Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware.

So now the question becomes, how did it get there in the first place – as I am sure has happened to many of us, she had recently been visited by grandkids, and they had been playing on the computer. Folks, that’ll do it to you almost every time. Question number two then becomes, what’s the solution to not repeating this again?

The answer is to set up separate user accounts on the computer, with only one account having Administrator privileges, and all others having only limited accounts.  A limited account is not able to download and add unwanted things to the computer.  Only the administrator can download and install things.  I’d suggest anyone who has a computer with multiple users set up separate accounts for each user or group of users depending on the needs of the individuals.

This link will take you to a very good article explaining the value of user accounts, and how to set them up.  If this is something that you need to do, I’d suggest just doing it right now while you’re thinking about it.

How to Use Open Office

If you don’t know what Open Office is, it’s a free productivity suite that can take the place of Microsoft’s Office program. It includes a program for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations (these replace Office’s Word, Excel and PowerPoint).

If you are in need of a good set of productivity tools, you can’t beat the price of this one – Microsoft Office will cost you anywhere from $80 on up, depending on which version you buy. My suggestion would be to give Open Office a try, you can always spend your money if it doesn’t suit you. I can tell you that I know of many people who are very happy using it.

There are several sites with tutorials on how to use Open Office; here is a link to a good site, complete with screen shots. Here is a link to download the program; be aware, it is a very large download, and if you do not have a high speed connection you’re going to be waiting a while.

Eliminate Unnecessary Startup Programs in Vista

We were having a discussion yesterday on how to speed up your computer – one of the things that can cause a slow running computer is having too many programs load at startup that don’t need to.

If you are using the Vista operating system, here is a very good resource I found to explain how to stop unnecessary programs.

Another Good Site with Tutorials

I’m always on the lookout for sites that have good explanations of various computer issues, and here’s one I came upon recently.

It’s coolnerds.com, and there is a lot of very basic, yet very good, information here.  Take a look around and see if there might be something of interest to you.

While we’re on the subject of tutorials, a site that I’ve mentioned before continues to add more and more to their offering. It’s top-windows-tutorials.com.  I see he’s even now added tutorials for Windows 7, which will be showing up in October. The tutorials here are videos, and very easy to use.

How To View Documents from Office 2007

The latest version of Office is 2007 – more people have now moved up to this version. That’s fine, but this new version of Office defaults to a different file type. For instance, documents created in Word will have the extension of .docx rather the extension we’re used to seeing, .doc

The issue this can bring up is if you are not running Office 2007, and someone sends you a document created in it with the .docx extension. Earlier versions of Office are not able to open this new file extension.

Never fear, a solution is nearby. Microsoft has available a free download called the Microsoft Office Compatability Pack – this will allow you to open and view Word, Excel, and Power Point documents prepared in Office 2007.   Here is a link that will take you to the page with instructions on how to download and use.

My Newest Techno-Toy

I’ve been lusting after Amazon’s e-reader, called the Kindle, ever since I read the first blurb about it before it was even offered for sale. The first ones went on sale in November, 2007, and I don’t know how many have been sold so far, but would venture to say it’s a lot!

That first version, now known as Kindle 1, was replaced by Kindle 2, which made improvements on the first, then Amazon added yet another version, Kindle DX which was a larger version (Kindle 2 is about the size of a paperbook, the DX is about the size of a sheet of copy paper).

Recently Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle 2 to $299, and after much researching about how happy people who had these were, I went for it. I’ve had it now 4 days, and boy do I love this thing. When you think about the wonder of being able to hold a little piece of technology in your hand that contains up to 1500 books (yes, that’s the storage capacity – now of course that’s not a hard and fast number; it wouldn’t hold 1500 copies of ginormous books like Atlas Shrugged, but still – it will hold way more books than you could possibly go through on a 2 week vacation, for instance.

I am still in the early “finding out all about it” stage, but it took me no time at all to become a huge fan. Gotta go read now.

Get More Value From Coinstar Machines

Maybe you’ve used one of these machines; I never have. However, I will be starting soon.

If you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about, the Coinstar machines can be found in several locations, usually grocery stores. You can take all that spare change you’ve been emptying out of your pockets and put it in the machine (you don’t have to count it beforehand, the machine does the counting for you).  You then trade your coins for dollars.

Here’s the kicker: when you put your change in and trade for dollars, there is a service charge of 8.9%. In other words, for every dollar in change you get back roughly 91 cents.

Here’s the anti-kicker – if instead of taking dollars for your change you elect to take a gift certificate, there is no deduction – you get the full value of your change! I was recently made aware of this by some discussion on a message board. My interest lies in the fact that one of the gift cards offered is from Amazon, but there are many different places from which to choose (just a few include Lowe’s, J C Penney, Starbucks, Borders).

If you go to the website coinstar.com, you can put in your zip code and find a list of all the locations in your area where there is a machine. Note that not all locations offer the gift cards, so be aware of that.  When the locations are listed, there will be symbols under the address that tells what’s available at that location.

So gather up all those coins that have been piling up and get some use out of them!

Draw Plans and Diagrams Online

I just got a newsletter with information about a free online drawing program – from the description:

Project Draw can create diagrams, floor plans (home and office), diagram furniture placement – just about anything that you would need a sketch or layout for.
Using Project Draw is fairly easy, with a drag and drop interface, a basic shapes feature, and uncluttered toolbars that can insert images, add text, and add color. You can download and save your creations to your computer, and if you work offline, it has an offline mode.

Here’s a link to the full description, and where you can get the program, with more details about how it can be used.

Great Find for Photo Fun

I just found this free program this morning; I’ve downloaded and installed and played with it a little. I’ve got more playing to do, but I’ve seen enough to believe this is a good one!

I subscribe to the RSS feed of Gizmo’s Freeware, and today this program was featured. It’s a free utility that creates mosaics from other photos – you’ve surely seen these on various television shows – a picture that when it’s zoomed in upon, turns out to be made of thousands of other pictures.

Since it’s not nice to totally paste content from another site, I’m going to link to the site here - go take a look and see if this is something you might want to try. Unless you are just completely uninterested in playing with your digital photos, I think you’ll be pleased with this one.

A Useful Form For You

I recently had a request for how to create a document with instructions to be left for family members about where important information could be found.  Coincidentally I stumbled across this form online (isn’t it funny how sometimes things we need just kind of drop into our lives?)

The form is provided from the Merrill Lynch website; you can fill it out on your computer and then save it or print it out. If you don’t want anything stored on your computer, you can print out the document and fill it out later to keep. Since it’s designed to be all-inclusive, there will be things on the form that won’t even pertain to you, but there are lots of things that will come in handy.

This link will take you to the form:

https://www.fs.ml.com/publish/weekly_pdfs/79406_321732PM_OrganizingYourLife.pdf