Texter

We all have those certain sayings that we type in over and over again, such as your email, or the link to your blog. All this typing takes up productivity time. Even if you are a fast typist it will still take longer to enter 20 characters then it will take to do 5 key strokes. Well, thanks to texter that is now a possibility to only type those five key strokes. Once you download the software just use the command string Ctrl+Shift+H and you get a nice popup with two textboxes, one for the hotstring (or the text to be replaced) and the text to be inserted. It's simple and it also provides a approximate time saved statistic in the preferences menu. It's cool but say that you have multiple signatures that you have programmed and always forget what they are? Don't fret there is a "print cheetsheet" button in the preference too. As I said this program is cool. Once you start working in this software you won't have problems and it will become a real time saver. Below is a video from the texter website:

 

-- Jerry Smith

BitStrips Comic Creator

Bit Strips is a completely online comic strip creator where you make your own avatar and the put him through what ever you want. You can do as many strips as you want, with as many frames as you want. Its pretty easy, but I would recommend using a mouse to create the strip because it was kind of hard for me to move and resize items in the editor with the touch pad that I have on my laptop. Overall I would say that this was pretty good, but it was nice that I didn't need to download any software to run this. The future of software is heading to be completely online and this is a step in the right direction. On a ten scale this would get a 7.

Here is a .png image of the strip.

 

--Jerry Smith

My Computer

I though I'd post my computer specs so you could know what I run and what runs it.

• Brand: HP
• Model: Pavilion a1250n
• Screen: 17in HP vs17
  
• RAM: 2GB
• Processor: AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ 2.00 GHz
• Video Card: Radeon Express 200 Series
  
• Audio: Realtek AC'97 Speakers (Built in to monitor)
  
• Standard HP Keyboard and Mouse
• DVD/CD Drive: (2) HP VD Writer 740r ATA w/ LightScribe and IDE-DVD DROM9216 ATA
  
• Printer: HP Photosmart 8250
• External Hard Drive: Elements 500GB (via usb)
• Web Camera: Creative Live! Cam IM Pro (VF0410)
• Network Adapters: (2) Netgear WG311v3 54mbps Wireless PCI Adapter and Realtek RTL8139/810x Family Fast Ethernet NIC
• 16 in 1 Card Reader
• 7 USB 2.0 Ports, 2 Firewire 400 Ports
  
• Thumb Drive: PNY Optima Pro Attache 4GB
• Primary OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit (had for almost 10 months now and no BSOD yet, knock on wood)
• Primary browser: Firefox 2.0.0.12
  
• Antivirus: Grisoft AVG Free Edition
  
• Anti Spyware: Spybot Search and Destroy
• Instant Messing: AIM
• Blog Post Editor: Scribe Fire (FireFox Add-in)

If you have any other questions about my computer feel free to contact me at nj.jerrysmith@gmail.com.

--Jerry Smith

Specification

Windows Vista

I upgraded to Windows Vista about 8 months ago and have been somewhat pleased. I found that the overall UI has been changed very much, specifically the start bar. It took me a while to get used to, but the transition ran somewhat smoothly. Around Thanksgiving I found that the computer was starting to run slightly slower and decided to check out the RAM on my HP Pavilion a1250n and found that Vista Areo had taken around 300mb of my ram and dedicated it directly to video. I was more than slightly pissed at this and found that the only way to fix the problem was to disable Areo but i didn't want to because I think that it made the UI much nicer. So I decided to ask for another GB of ram for Christmas and that did the trick. My computer has been running fine since the upgrade. Here my top 5 tips that I have for new Vista customers.

• Disable the sidebar, it's nice if you want you computer to slow down so much that it takes forever to start up. I found that there was really no use for it and that it had really pointless gadgets, I mean...come on..a cpu speed test, is it really that hard to do the regular way, it also takes up room on your desktop that can be used for better things.
  
• Upgrade to at least 2GB of ram...if you can't afford that or you don't want to disable Areo and set the display theme to Vista Basic...it will speed up your computer so much.
  
• Customize the size of the desktop icon text. To do this right click on the desktop and go to personalize. Click the Adjust font size (DPI) at the left. Click Custom and drag the ruler to change the size. This makes reading the icon text easier.
  
• Group the icons. This way you can put the most used icons in the middle of the screen or anywhere else you want them. I have my desktop organized into three sections. Two across the top and one down the right side. The first group is hard drive links, and my recycle bin, and anti-spy ware/firewall. The second group is basically all my most used programs; Word, Excel, PowerPoint, yadda, yadda, yadda. My third group is links to file folders that contain documents. There is a link for My Doucments, Pictures, and Music, and also my Website, Projects, and School Work.
  
• Disable pointless start up programs. Do this by either going into the startup folder in the all programs folder or run "msconfig". This opens the System Configuration Utility. Go to the startup tab and disable anything that isn't absolutely necessary. Especially do this after installing a HP software on you computer, they typically come with a lot of bloat ware.
  

Have fun with you new OS. Explore, poke around, have fun with it. If you really mess anything up just roll back the computer using System Restore. Have Fun

-- Jerry Smith