Driving Miss Daisy (or at least all her pictures)

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Mark

“Digital Content”… it’s a phrase that’s used a lot these days.  What does it mean?  Pictures, songs, movies, books… you name it.  Remember the good old days when you would go to your bookshelf to grab a book to read it?  Or when you pulled an album out and played it on your record player?  Or when you kept all your pictures in various shoeboxes all over the house? Those days are gone.  Now days, all those things have been “digitized” and are stored on our computers.  The convenience of having last years vacation available in a few clicks is wonderful. But, it comes at a price.  Namely… storage.

So as our digital shoe boxes start to get bigger, most of us find that the hard drives in our computers are getting fuller and fuller and we need a place to put all these things.  Too bad you can’t just buy another pair of shoes and have immediate storage space with the old box.  Besides, we don’t want to just file these treasures away to gather dust.  We want to be able to access these files quickly.  So here are my solutions.  I start with the simplest and as usual will take it to the geek extreme (where I usually land).  It’s your choice to find the happy medium.

Note: I refer to pictures a lot in this post since the original question that was posed to me concerned storing photos. But, extra storage space applies to all your digital media.

Burn it, Baby

The quickest solution is to burn all your pictures and files to CD or DVD. It’s a fast familiar way to clear them off your hard drive.  Of course this works fine if you have a great filing method and label your discs and know exactly where you put them.  But, this doesn’t satisfy our requirement for immediate access.  Besides, what happens if they get scratched or lost?  The memories are gone.

Another draw-back is it’s not really feasible to store your music or digital movies to CD’s. Most movies are bigger than one CD.  And you want to have your music more easily available.

Expand the drive

The most feasible solution is to purchase an external hard drive.  With this, you can just plug it into your computer and toss all your stuff on it.  But, of course there are several options:

Standard External Drive: By this, I’m talking about the larger ones that use a power adapter and typically connect using USB.  The upside to this is you can get the most bang for your buck when it come to external drives.  The downside is it’s a pain to lug around with you if you use a laptop. If you have a desktop computer at home, this is likely your best choice.

Portable External Drive: These are quickly becoming quite popular.  These are small form factor drives that use a portable (2.5”) drive instead of a standard desktop (3.5”) drive inside.  The upside of these is it can actually power itself over the USB connection and it’s easy to toss it into your bag with your laptop.  The downside is you pay more for that convenience.  If you do a direct comparison with the larger drives, you pay a lot more per byte. If you use a laptop, this is likely your best choice.

Hold the Bus

On a side note, I feel obligated to give a quick overview of the different bus connections currently available.

USB 2.0: This is the most popular connection method and is available on most external drives.  One cool aspect of this is USB supplies a small amount of power to a device if it needs it.  In the case of the portable drives, it’s enough to power it, so you don’t need to lug a wall-wart (power supply) with you.  Keep in mind you should be careful with this.  If you plug too many devices that need power from the same USB port, power will start to drop out.  In the case of hard drives, it’s best to plug it directly into it’s own port and not use a splitter.

eSATA: This the same thing as plugging an internal drive to your computer SATA ports except it’s external (hence the “e”).  This option allows for higher transfer speeds (usually about double what you get with USB 2.0).  But, your drive will need to use a wall-wart since power isn’t supplied over the eSATA connection.  Some laptops have an eSATA port.  Mine does and the speeds that come from it are pretty good.  You can even “hot plug” a drive, meaning you don’t have to turn your computer off to plug it in.

USB 3.0: This is a BRAND NEW standard coming out and is starting to show up on new computers.  This is supposed to be 10 times faster than USB 2.0. But in real world testing, 2 to 3 times speed increases are normal.  The problem isn’t the bus speed, but the hard drive supplying the data.  They can only go so fast.  For the next couple of years, this is going to be the most expensive option and will only be used by the true techies.

Ethernet: An external drive that connects directly to your network can also be called a network drive.  These don’t come cheap.  But, in the case of a home network where several people have computers in different rooms, they can be a good answer.  Setting one up isn’t very hard as long as you follow the instructions and software that come bundled with it. Surprisingly enough, performance on these are usually pretty good.

Take that Drive for a Spin

The other aspect to hard drives is the spindle speed.  This is a measurement of how fast the discs are spinning inside the drive.  It stands to reason that the faster you spin the disc, the faster the data is read and written to it.

Most low cost drives have a spindle speed of 5,400 RPM (rotations per minute). That might sound fast, but in the hard drive world it’s glacial.  So it makes since that when you are looking at hard drives on the shelf and you see that REALLY good deal that’s way cheaper than all the rest of the same size, take a closer look at the box.  Most likely it’s rated to 5,400 RMP.  If what you’re looking for is the most bytes for your buck and you don’t mind waiting, this is your best answer. Also, if you are using a USB 2.0 connection, you’ll likely never even notice the difference.

A higher spindle rate of 7,200 RPM is standard for better performing hard drives.  This is practically a “must have” for any decent system drive.  If what you’re looking for in an external drive is performance, you’ll only see this improvement if you use the eSATA connection.  When I’m working with large chunks of data (movies and music), I can see a performance speed difference on my external drive. And as is to be expected, there is an increase in cost for this.

Now, if you’re wanting to go all out geek, look for 10,000 RPM drives.  Oh my goodness.  These are typically only found online and you have to look hard for it.  To truly enjoy the speeds that come from these drives, you would HAVE to have an eSATA connection.  This is the most expensive option and should only be considered by professionals or people with more money then sense (pun intended).

What about that thing called RAID?

The last main topic I want to address is redundancy.  Hard drives fail.  It’s not a matter of “if” but a matter of “when”.  In most cases, we trust our data onto a single drive in the hopes that it will be around forever.  As drive sizes have increased, we’re likely to buy a new bigger drive and move all our stuff over before the old drive fails. But that’s not always the case.  So how do we deal with backing up our backup?  Simple, use more than one drive.

There are several models of external drives that actually use two hard drives inside the case.  These are easy to spot since the case is usually huge.  I’ve used a Western Digital drive that had this feature.  When I first plugged it in, I was given the choice of having a 500GB drive or a 1,000GB drive.  Not thinking for the long term, I chose the bigger size.  This configured the two drives in series together.  If I had chosen the smaller size, it would have made them both identical so that if one went bad, all the information was still on the other one.  They also would go faster since it could have their choice of two drives to read from instead of one.  But in my haste and greed, I went for the BIG option.  You can guess where this landed me.  One of the drives went bad and left the other one completely inaccessible since it required both for the drive to work.

Take my little anecdote with a grain of salt.  If you want the peace of mind of having your files safely stored across two discs, then be prepared to pay twice as much for the same amount of storage.

But what about…

There are a couple other aspects I didn’t address that really aren’t things to worry about.  Hard drives use a little bit of memory in their controller cards called cache.  This holds data temporarily while the drive is busy.  Typically, the more cache, the better the performance.  In the case of external drives, it’s not nearly as important since the cases typically have additional caches to help buffer for the bus.

Another kind of hard drive on the market is called a SSD (Solid State Drive).  These don’t use platters or anything mechanical.  They use the same kind of flash memory chips you find in your thumb drives, just a lot more.  They aren’t very common in external drives since the benefit to using one really only comes if you use it as you’re primary internal system drive.  Besides, they cost a fortune and aren’t very big.

There was a day when I used to swear by Seagate.  It seems any drive I got from another manufacturer would die too soon.  I still use my 160GB Seagate drive I bought 4 years ago.  But those days are past.  Because companies try to cut cost, they sub out all the manufacturing to no-name companies. So, quality has now become the same across the board.

Lastly, there are a lot of companies that will sell just the case kits so you can make your own external drive with your own hard drive.  Typically, by the time you buy the kit and drive and put it all together, you can get it just as cheap by buying a complete system off the shelf.

Time to Drive it Home

So now you’re armed with the knowledge you need to go out and get the external drive of your dreams.  For the record, I have a portable 500GB, a standard external 500GB and even an older 160GB. And I use them all for different reasons.  But the real geek solution is to build a Home Server.  With that, I have access to all my files from any computer in the world.  All my computers are backed up every night.  And all the critical personal files are stored across multiple hard drives in case one fails.  Overall, I have 3 terabytes of hard drive space on it (a little more than 4,000 CD’s) But, that’s a story for another day…

Posted in Hardware | Leave a comment

It’s after midnight… Go to sleep!!!

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Mark

This is a very common question I get… How do I set time limits on the computer so my child isn’t on the internet all night?

The key to this is setting up individual accounts and using the Parental Control feature.  This was started in Vista and continues in Windows 7.

But I get ahead of myself.  The first item I mentioned is setting up accounts.  When most people buy a computer and bring it home, they just want to turn it on and GO.  In most cases, that annoying little intro where you put in your name and set up a password is just skipped and the password is left blank.  It makes it easy for anyone to just sit down at the computer and do what they want.  But on the flipside, it makes it easy for anyone to make changes or install software that might not be a good idea.  The worst of this is the proliferation of kid-oriented websites that want to install “extras” that end up being malware and slow down your computer.

Laying Down the LAW

As the parent, it’s your job to be the boss on the computer.  If you child is used to having free reign, this can be a bit of an issue.  Don’t worry about it. You paid for the computer and the monthly internet cost.  It’s your right to set limits.

The first step is to go into the Control Panel and open up User Accounts.  If you haven’t done this before, you will likely just have a single Administrator account with a blank password.  The first step is to assign a password that ONLY the parents know to this account.  Then click the links that let you make new accounts.  Make one for each member of the family that uses the computer.  You’ll be given a choice whether this will be a Standard account or an Administrator.  Make sure the kids are only Standard.  This forces them to ask permission to install anything new.

Another benefit to having separate accounts is what shows up on your desktop isn’t what shows up on theirs.  It also lets you rest easy that the kiddos don’t have access to your My Documents folder.  And as Administrator, you have full access to ALL the files, so it lets you check up on their stuff on occasion.  Also, when you make the kids profiles, you can leave their password blank and let them know they can put their own in that can be their own secret.  Even though you won’t be able to log directly onto their accounts, you will still have full logging of all their activity and files.  It will help soften the blow a bit of the new limits.

We all need boundaries

Once the accounts are set up, then you can open Parental Contols in the Control Panel.  The interface is fairly intuitive.  There is a magic setting in there that lets you set time limits for each day of the week.  This way, the kids can have access a little later during the weekend.

Now, if you’re running Vista, you can also setup an internet log and limit the level of adult websites that can be opened.  The limits generally turn into a pain in the butt.  The software checks advertisements as well as the page content.  In several cases, this blocked YouTube, which was not acceptable.  So for this, I accept the standard settings.

In Windows 7, Microsoft wanted to maintain their level of confusion, so they removed the logging and filtering capability.  It’s still available through a download though.  For this, you’ll need to install the Windows Live Family Safety.  This is available with Windows Update on the Optional tab.  Of course, it’s going to come with LOTS of other things.  Some of them such as the Movie Maker and Photo Gallery are nice to have (and used to be standard too).  Other things can depend on what you do with your computer (Mail, Messenger and a Blog Writer).  You’ll also need to have a Windows Live account to set up the Family Safety.  Most people already have this if they use Hotmail.  If you don’t already have a Live account, just follow the prompts to create one.  This will be your UNIVERSAL access to Microsoft, so it’s important to remember your logon and password.

One advantage to having the Windows Live account and using the new Family Safety is you can check on you’re kids internet activity from any computer with internet access.

Across the Board

If you have more than one computer in the house, it’s important to do the same set up on ALL of them.  Even/especially if it’s a computer in your child’s room.  Even if you rarely if ever use that computer, you should always establish an Administrator account.

What about Windows XP?

This is the only kink in this plan.  Currently the only way to monitor or limit a user’s activity in WinXP is by using a third party application.  There are likely several open source programs available for free, but I can only endorse Net Nanny from experience.  Back when I used it, it ran about $35, but was well worth the investment.  All the securities of user accounts can still be put in place, but as far as limiting internet time, there isn’t a native solution.

Wrap Up

So, that’s my solution in a nutshell.  As always, if you have any questions or more explanation, please leave a comment and I’ll gladly get back to you as soon as I can.

Posted in Windows | Leave a comment

How can I print over my WiFi?

Posted on December 8, 2009 by Mark

Get connected

Here’s the picture… you’re lounging in your bed doodling on your laptop, browsing the internet and come across a GREAT article (like this one) and want to print it out.  Of course it’s freezing outside this time of the year and your all warm and comfy under your covers.  The prospect of getting out of bed and carrying the laptop to your living room, just to print the article doesn’t seem very likely.  So you decide to just forgo the effort and a wonderful piece of prose will disappear into the murky depths of memory to be lost forever.  What a tragedy.

Well here are some suggestions to help you prevent that from happening in the future.  The gist of this problem is basic… the printer only has a USB connection and will only communicate with the computer its connected to.  Of course, once it’s connected to a computer, it can be shared. But, that doesn’t do you a lick of good if your only computer is a laptop and not in the same room as the printer.  As with almost all computer related questions, the answer depends on how much money you are prepared to spend.  There is usually a free option when the problem is software related, but this is not the case when hardware is concerned. The only free option you have is your current solution of schlepping the laptop to the printer.

Important concept

An important thing to understand is the connection scheme.  You are likely used to connecting your printer directly to your computer.  This is possible using a USB cable.  When you connect using WiFi, your computer isn’t directly connected, it goes through your network.

The best way to understand this is to think of your router as Grand Central Station for the network.

“What is my router?” you ask.  You most likely get your internet connection through your cable or phone connection.  There is a special cable that goes to a box with antennae on top. That’s your router.  All the information that comes and goes on the internet and on your network goes through it.  Your router does lots of complicated stuff like figuring out addresses and stuff.  It also makes sure all the computers in the house communicate to each other.  So, if you have two wireless devices in your house, they don’t talk directly to each other.  Instead, everything goes through the router.

The quickest and cheapest solution

The cheapest solution is to buy a small box called a print server.  This has a USB connector on one side and a network connector on the other.  Most WiFi routers have a handful of hard-wire connections available for a dedicated connection.  (These look like wide phone jacks with a few blinky lights on top) This option will cost you anywhere from $45 to $50 and is relatively easy to setup.

After you make all the hardware connections, just follow the Add Printer Wizard for which ever version of Windows you have.  You will likely already have the drivers for the printer installed if you’ve used it from your laptop already.  It’s not a bad idea to go to your manufacturers web site and download the latest drivers.  You can usually find this on a Support page.  Here is a quick link for a Netgear and D-Link printer server I was able to find through a simple Google search.

If you are really a WiFi purist and insist on having your printer where you want it without cables attaching it (besides power), you can always purchase a Linksys Wireless printer server, but be warned… you are entering a geek speak zone for me to talk you through connecting it, especially if you’re WiFi is secured (which it should be). The Linksys runs about $80.

I didn’t like the printer anyway

Your next option is to buy a new printer.  There are several models that have LAN (local area connection) or WiFi connections already inside the printer.  On a quick search, I found an HP OfficeJet from TigerDirect that runs $180.  Again, this starts to get a bit complicated, but if you follow the installation instructions that come with the printer, you should be able to print even from your warm comfy bed.

OMG!!!! I’m becoming a geek

I wouldn’t be doing you justice if I didn’t include the over-the-top geek solution. The option I use at home is connecting the printer to a dedicated computer and sharing it on the network.  I love laptops and have one, but there are some things that can just get done better on a full size computer.  In my case, I like to have the printer available and have someplace where I can store lots of large files so it won’t bog down my laptop.  I do this by having a big hard drive and the printer shared from an HP desktop in my front living room. I keep images of my DVD movies on the hard drive which I can watch over the network so I don’t have to juggle discs all over my bed or loose cases.

For this case, shop around your local computer stores on their refurbished shelves.  I’ve found some really good deals on older computers that work great as dedicated printer and storage servers.

Don’t be afraid of the word “server”.  Basically, it is a computer that does anything specific and “serves” that up when necessary.  It doesn’t even have to be running any special software or operating system.  An old computer running Windows XP is perfectly capable to work as a storage and printer server.  I’ll address this in another article on how to fully set up a home server, but I still wanted to address it in this article as a viable option.

Stay in bed and make Guttenberg jealous

So, now equipped with the knowledge, go forth and recline while printing. But remember, technology is a slippery beast.  Just when you get a handle on how to use what you’ve got, they come out with a whole new set of standards or connections.  Don’t be afraid to play.  Worst case, just come back and ask me “What in the world is this connector?”  It’s my job to answer all your questions.

Posted in Hardware | 3 Comments

Can I install more than one copy of Office?

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Mark

A common question I get is “do I have to buy a copy of MS Office for every computer I own?”  I’m very cautious with my answer to this because Microsoft doesn’t like my answer.  But the short and sweet is… NO.

In my business of engineering, there are several packages I use that are very expensive, so this question becomes much more relevant.  The standard practice is you can install a legal copy of one license on more than one machine as long as only one copy is being used at a time.  This can apply to your copy of Office also.

The tricky part is that pesky Activation.  When you submit your activation online, it’s a nerve wracking experience if you know you’ve already activated it on another machine.  Well, you can relax. Microsoft isn’t going to call the police on you and they aren’t going to shut down your computer.  In most cases, if you’ve already installed and activated a copy on one computer, then wait a few weeks, a second activation usually goes through fine.  The whole purpose of activation is to make sure you don’t install it LOTS of times.

How about a free alternative?

But before you start to sweat out that activation button, why not consider some free alternatives.  If you’re a fan of Office and insist on sticking to it, consider trying out the latest Beta copy.  It’s free to download and you stay clear on any legal worries.  The draw backs include a limited lifetime (I think its about 6 months) and the possibility of getting frustrated with all the new features and some that are buggy. You can sign up at Microsoft Connect.

A better way to go is consider using the Open Source alternative from Sun, OpenOffice.  It can work with all your Office files and for the most part looks just like all the Office applications.  You’ll only start to have problems if you are a power user.  Some of the more advanced stuff (macros) aren’t the same and you might run into a hickup.  You can learn more and download your free copy from http://open.office-pro.org

Posted in Office | Leave a comment

How do I use this Blog?

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Mark

How do I ask questions?

Just under my name at the top, there is a little house (Home), About (what am I doing?) and Ask Your Question Here.  Just click on the last one and it will open a page with a short explanation (like this one).  Just enter a comment below the entry.  As soon as I get the question, I’ll write an article explaining the answer in Non-Geek terms (if possible).

Wow… this is a busy page.  Where do I find anything?

The easiest thing is to just explore.  The side bar to the right is a good start.  My articles are listed as I enter them.  You can also select a category to filter out the articles listed.

Remember… the only stupid question is the one that wasn’t asked.
Posted in General | Leave a comment

How to make your digital music library

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Mark

First things first… legality

The first issue to address is the legality of ripping your own CD’s.  If you own the CD, you are free to place copies on your computer, MP3 player or whatever device you own so you can listen to it.  What you can’t do legally is distribute it to others freely.  Or even trade it for others. This rule also applies to DVD movies.  You are completely within your rights to make a digital copy and watch it on your own computer. (That post will come later)

Time for a history lesson

The next issue has to deal with copying your CD’s to computer.  A bit of history first so you can better understand the topic. You might have heard the term “ripping”.  This refers back to the old days when you had to be a bit creative to bypass the copy protection bit that’s present on most audio CD’s and it was considered ripping off the music.  This has pretty much become ignored over the years, but the term ripping is still used.

Warning: Geek-Speak ahead…

The original format for music on CD’s is considered RAW format.  In this format, the music is sampled at 44kHz (44,000 samples per second) and defined as two 16-bit numbers (0 to 56,356) for stereo.  If you do the math, 80 minutes of music adds up to about 700MB, the size of one audio CD.  Back in the day, a 1GB hard drive was luxurious and there was little room to store that much information, so a compression technique was invented called MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (aka MP3).  Here’s the full article explaining how it works on Wikipedia.  The end result is the same music with nearly the same quality now only takes up 1/10th of the space as before.  You can only hear the difference if you are seriously into music and have a real good sound system.

Safe now… Geek-Speak finished.

After MP3’s started to get popular, people started to come up with ways to share their libraries of digital music with other people.  It started with Napster which became popular extremely fast.  The music industry started pitching a big fit about lost revenues and Napster got clamped down on pretty fast.  Around this time Microsoft got into the game with their own proprietary version called Windows Media Audio (WMA).  It used a better compression technique that was able to preserve the same quality but with half the size of an MP3 (or so they claim).  But what made the WMA popular with the music industry was the ability to embed media rights directly into the file.  As a result, the record companies could sell their music online with a license that would only be valid on the computer with the correct “key” on it.  If you tried playing the same file on another computer, you would be informed you don’t have the correct key and offer you a chance to purchase the song legally.

As you can guess, WMA’s were welcomed slowly on the scene.  In the absence of Napster, new sharing techniques popped up using the Gnutella backbone.  Limewire is likely the most popular.  I strongly recommend against using that now.  There are so many traps and virus’ it’s like a minefield just trying to find a legitimate song.  Nowadays, the most popular way of sharing and pirating music is using Torrents.  Due to issues of legallity, I will refrain from any tutorials on that subject.

That’s all nice, but where do I get my music?

So enough background information and on to your question… How do I build a music library?  The best way to do it is to purchase the music legally in the form of CD and create your own MP3’s from the original.  That way, you control the quality and the tag information.  I’ll get to that later. “But that can get costly.”  Not really.  I was able to purchase a LOT of CD’s with Amazon.com by exploiting the Used option.  Most CD’s allow you the option to purchase new or used.  In a lot of cases I was able to purchase the complete CD in good condition for just a few dollars.  In most cases I paid more for the shipping ($2.49 at the time) than I did the actual CD.

Your next option is to purchase the music online and download it.  This gets tricky since almost all sites that support this will embed copy protection into your download which prevents you from using the files on other computers.  If you don’t properly back up everything regularly you could lose everything in the event of a hard drive crash.  Even if you had the music somewhere else, the “key” dies with the operating system and you aren’t the recognized owner anymore.  As you can tell, I’m not a fan of this method.  That’s not to say there is a VERY large membership to iTunes.  You can download a song for $1 easily.  However, if you end up wanting the whole CD, it’s cheaper to just order it used and have the original. Also, iTunes uses its own proprietary format called an OGG.  It gets real confusing keeping all the different formats straight.  As a result, I stick to the tried and true old fashioned MP3.

Time to start RIPPIN’!!!

Now to the next part… How do I rip the CD’s?  The best and easiest option is to use Windows Media Player that already comes with Windows.  The default setting is to save files as WMA’s, but this can be changed to MP3 on the Options Dialog on the Rip Music tab. (older versions of WMP don’t have the mp3 unless you install the codec)  This tab also displays where the files are stored.  The default location is in the users Music directory.  Depending on which version of Windows you are running, this can be in several locations.  In XP it would be “C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Documents\My Music”.  USER is whatever name you are logged on as.  If there is more than one person that has an account on the computer and you want to share it with everyone, you can redirect the location to the Public\Music directory.  In my case, I direct files to be stored directly to my server (\\Samwise\Music).  Handy… huh?

Once you have all those settings established, it’s time to get started ripping.  With Windows Media Player running, insert a CD and wait for it to load.  WMP will start playing it by default, but then it does something really cool.  It uses the track lengths like a thumb print and looks it up on a big database (CDDB) online and downloads all the CD information. This includes track names, artist, album name, year recorded, and even a small picture of the CD cover.  This is all called tag information.  Somewhere around the top of the window, there should be a Rip tab.  Click on it and go to the Rip portion of the software.  Since all the settings are in place, and all the tags are downloaded, WMP will automatically place the music in a subdirectory of the artist and album and label the songs by the track number and name.  All the tag information is embedded into each file. It’s really gotten so much easier over the years.  I can’t tell you how many times I used to have to hand enter all that.  Ugh…  Once the album is done, the CD is ejected since it is no longer necessary to listen to the music on the computer.  The songs are already in your library and can be played at your leisure.

Two MP3’s to go, please. Hold the pickles.

Last question… How do I get them onto an MP3 player?  Typical simple MP3 players will show up automatically in Windows Media Player also.  You can create a sync list that will automatically transfer the songs you add to that list over to your player.  A small bar that shows capacity should show up to let you how much space you have.  You should also be able to do it old school by just opening “My Computer” and opening the MP3 player.  Different players use different filing styles, but it should be obvious.  You should just be able to drag and drop the songs you want from you’re My Music directory into your device.  But, all devices are slightly different, so this is best handled on a case by case basis.

If you are using an iPhone, it’s a bit simpler.  Just put your CD in the computer with iTunes running.  It will ask you if you want it added to your library and handle everything for you.  I still prefer making my own MP3’s and importing them into iTunes.  I have better control over the file structure.

That’s not what it looked like on my computer!

So… here’s my disclaimer.  Depending on which version of Windows and Windows Media Player, these options can be in different places.   The instructions I’ve provided here are fairly generic in nature and I tried to stay away from specifics where possible. If you have questions about any particulars, make sure you include which version of Windows and Windows Media Player you are using.

Posted in Multimedia | Leave a comment

Watch your movies on your iPhone

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Mark

I stumbled across this really good app recently.  It allows you to convert your existing AVI files to a format that is happy on your iPhone or iPod as well as many other formats.  You can also convert your DVD’s if they aren’t copy protected (which almost all are).  The program’s name is Handbrake and can be downloaded for free from Handbrake.fr

Posted in Multimedia | Leave a comment

Welcome to my Geek-Free blog

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Mark

As I’ve already posted on Facebook, I’m starting this blog for technical computer related questions anyone might have.  Just ping me at markus.randel@gmail.com with your question, and I’ll jaunt up an answer for you and post it here.  I’ll try to add links in FB for friends too.

I’ll make every attempt to use language and approaches that speak to the average user.  If I need to get technical, I’ll give a Warning: Geek Speak before going into it.

Thanks to everyone that participates in this and I hope I can help some folks with the experience I’ve gained over the years.

Addendum: if Joseph Allen Randel (Joseph Randel) or Mary Lucia Randel (Lucia Randel) stumble across this site, PLEASE post a comment or question.  I’ll be notified immediately.  I’ll respond as soon as possible.

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