Traveling with electronics

Most of us like to travel. But when travel time comes so does the electronics packing. I have made a set of top five tips for traveling with electronics.

1. If you have a good laptop, get a good laptop case. You don't want a crappy case where you have the posibility of the case breaking and then breaking your laptop. Thank would be a trip killer. When buying your case make sure that your laptop will fit in the chase too :).
2. Make sure that you bring all power chords for any electronic device that you bring. Even if you fully charged the device before you left, bring the cord anyway. You never know when a device could die.
3. If your traveling with a family, get a good backpack for all your electronic devices. This keeps it simple and easy to know where everything is. Have your travel partner give any cords or electronic devices to you the day before the trip so that you can pack them the night before. It's easier to keep all the electronics in one place because its harder to loose them.
4. Label any and all cords with what they are and who they belong to. Just get a roll of masking tape, or a label maker, and just write a simple identification like jerry/cellphone and attach to the proper cord. It makes finding the proper cord easier. (For my full tips on cable management, refer to this post.)
5. Make a list of everything that you are bringing with you so that when it comes time to leave you can just look over the list and make sure that you have everything. It will re-packing much easier.

Bonus: These two tips go for anyone traveling.

• Just obey the law. They are there to protect you. If the speed limit it 35 then going 40 is ok, but going 45 is just plain stupid, and very dangerous.
• If your going to be driving, and like to talk on your cellphone, get a headset. Most states now have laws saying that you can't hold your phone and drive at the same time. And it makes the road safer for the people traveling.

Here is the Chris Pirillo video of this list.

Helping old people with technology

Hey all....here are my top five tips for helping seniors or the technological illiterate people with technology. Don't forget seniors can get very antsy and mad when it comes to stuff they don't know how to do so with that said here are my top five tips.

1. Be calm and talk slow. Seniors and the technological illiterate will NOT know all the shortcuts that we geeks know and live by. Most likely it will take them 3 or more times as long to do the simple tasks that we can do in five seconds. Talking slow and loudly (for seniors) will make this process much easer for them and less stressful for you.


2. Be prepared to explain the same thing multiple times. This will mostly apply to seniors because they often have problems hearing. So always tale VERY slow. Also be prepared to
   


3. Having a preprepared list of steps to read from, will make the process of teaching easier. Just type them or even write them up. It will make the speed of the session go so much faster because you won't have to sit there and stare at the screen with that blank stare that we get when we forget stuff.


4. When you are done showing the "student" what they asked you to teach them, ask them to use their computer to make a step-by-step instruction manual. Use the print screen button to take a screen capture of each page as you show them again how to do whatever they asked. Keep a word document (hopefully Microsoft Word) running in the background and then just copy down each screen capture into the document. After you have finished the task, use the simple drawing tools to circle the icons, drop down lists, or whatever they have to click on for that step. Put each picture on its own page and include text (use at least 20 size font).
   
1. Don't forget to save the file in a folder in their desktop and print out a hard copy for them to have.
   
2. Also, if you have a usb key (which most of us have) save a copy there to in case their computer crashes and they loose the file.
5. Show them how to open and print the file in case they loose it. Most likely they will and it will save a second trip to the house if you showed them how to print out another copy.

Bonus Tip!! Now with new technology there is the ability to screen record. Simply install a simple screen recording software
(such as CamStuido) and record the steps to a video file and embed you voice over it. To view an example of that watch this youtube video.

I hope these tips help you with your technological endeavors and make the process of teaching those new to the technological world how easy it is to use these quite simple machines.

Here Chris Pirillo's video of these tips.


--Jerry Smith

Cable Managment

USB, Power, FireWire....There are many types of cables out in the world that do many different things. Bring things to life, carry data, output sound. But the more cable you get the harder it is to keep track of them. They start showing up in different locations around your room or home office. Here are my top five tips for cable management

• Keep one draw or box for all of your cables. This may be hard but when you go looking for that special usb cable for your iPod it cuts down the look time drastically.
  
• LABEL, LABEL, LABEL...after a while you might get two or three black power cords that have different ends but say the same thing or nothing on the adapter. Use a silver sharpie (4 for $5.19 at staples) or buy a pack of file folder labels and write on them in PEN. Nothing's worse than having the lettering fade of a label in a draw full of identical cables
• When storing fold them up and put a rubber band around them...It makes it easy to store in a draw and if you have them on a desk it keeps the desk clean.
• Put heavily used USB cables into the plugs in the back of the computer...this makes it easier to connect those "quick use" cables in the front.
• If you don't have USB connections on the front of the computer or have more usb cords than your computer has connections...buy a USB hub (Chris Pirillo reviewed one here). It makes access to ports better and you can put it right under your screen. When buying a hub always thing about future expansion.
• BONUS!!! Try and keep cords going to the same area rubber banded or twisty tied together. This makes it easier to control the mess of cords behind the computer and makes it look more sightly if your computer isn't in a case.

I hope these help you clear up the clutter on your desk and by your computer.

Chris Pirillo's video of my top 5 list.


--Jerry Smith

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