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This Isn’t Really Related To Computers, But Please Read It Anyway

An article a few months ago in Business 2.0 Magazine talked about how Wal-Mart was really pushing compact fluorescent (CF) light bulbs as a way to save energy.

If you’re not familiar with CF bulbs, you’ve probably seen them – they’re  funny looking, spiraled light bulbs.

Now, we’re automatically dubious of anything Wal-Mart might be promoting, but we went ahead and tried a few of these bulbs.

They take a little getting used to. For example, there’s sometimes a slight (1-2 second) delay when you flick the switch, as compared to regular bulbs, which start instantly.

If CF bulbs are cold, they may initially be dimmer than normal, and brighten up over 60 to 90 seconds.

The bulbs cost as much as five times the cost of a regular bulb. But, the electrical cost savings are pretty dramatic – they use about 80% less electricity than regular bulbs. Plus, they last almost 10 times as long as regular bulb. In the long run, they’re quite a money saver.

At home, we’ve replaced most of our regular light bulbs with CF bulbs, and have a notable, demonstrated drop of almost $25 per month on our electric bill.

Take a few minutes to Google “compact fluorescent” and check them out for yourself. You’ll be happy with the cost savings.

Speed Up Your PC By Limiting Startup Programs

Most versions of Windows use a utility called msconfig, which gives you the ability to control what programs automatically startup each time you boot your machine.

Some programs, like your software firewall and your antivirus, are essential startup programs because they protect your PC.  However, there are other programs that do not need to load, and preventing them from loading will speed up your boot time and save memory.

Aside from the msconfig utility, there are a couple of other ways to remove these startup programs.

If you look down by your system clock, you will likely see several  icons belonging to auto-run programs.

Try right-clicking some of them, and in their preferences menu you may find a way to disable them from loading at startup.  You can also check the startup folder, which is located by navigating through your Start menu, then Programs, then Startup.  Some of the programs here can simply be removed by deleting them. Deleting them will not delete the program itself.

You will need to make the decision what to remove using the techniques above.  If you are unsure, then leave it.  But minimizing the programs that hog system resources at boot  is a quick way to improve system performance.

How To Send or Share Very Large Files

Here’s a question we receive quite often in our service department: “How can I send a 50-megabyte file to a customer, since it’s way too big for an e-mail attachment? Are there ways to do it other than burning a CD and using postal mail?”

For server space and bandwidth reasons, many e-mail providers limit file attachments on a message to no more that 5 or 10 megabytes in size.

This often makes it difficult to send things like high-resolution photographs or digital video files as e-mail attachments.

If burning the files to a CD and mailing them isn’t a workable option, there are other methods of electronically transferring your large files.

People or companies with their own Websites often upload large files or folders to the Web server with a file-transfer program — and send the intended recipient a user name and password to use for retrieving the files. But this may not be an option for a lot of people.

Instead, several companies offer to transfer huge files over the Internet. Instructions for using each service vary, so be sure to read the information on the site.

Pando, for example, has free and paid versions of its software for transferring files at www.pando.com, and it works with both Windows and Macintosh systems.

You can send files up to a gigabyte in size free through Pando, and the company has paid plans starting at $5 a month to send even larger files from machine to machine.

YouSendIt (www.yousendit.com) is another service that promises to transfer your big files. You can send files of up to 100 megabytes free with its YouSendIt Lite service — or files up to two gigabytes in size with the company’s $5-a-month service.

Some free or inexpensive online file-storage services like Xdrive (www.xdrive.com), iBackup (www.ibackup.com) and FilesAnywhere (www.filesanywhere.com) also let you mark certain files for sharing. This means customers can download a large file themselves from your online storage drive, rather than dealing with e-mail attachments that are too big to fly.

Outdated Operating Systems Combined With Daylight Savings Change May Cause Problems

First of all we have to ask… Do you know about the upcoming change to Daylight Saving Time this year?  Most folks we asked said “What change?”

For those of you that don’t know there is a change in the start and end dates for Daylight Saving Time this year.  It will start on Sunday, March 11th, 2007 at 2:00am and will end on Sunday, November 4th, 2007.  So, for 2007, DST starts 3 weeks earlier on the second Sunday of March and ends a week later on the first Sunday of November.  This change was made as an attempt to reduce energy consumption.

So what needs to happen this year to facilitate the change in DST on your computer systems, and what will the impact be?

The change is about five weeks away, so the time to start making plans is now. Most every device in your company that keeps time will be affected. We’ll address what you need to do to your PC’s, servers and other IT equipment.

However, keep in mind that things like VCR’s, DVD’s, and DVR’s may have some problems.  They won’t realize that the time change takes place three weeks earlier so that show that you thought you were recording may not record at all.

Also, PDA’s, fax machines, time clocks, switches, routers, and telephone systems that have programming embedded to change to DST on the first Sunday of April and the last Sunday in October are going to have problems. This is just the tip of the iceberg.  Each company will have to look at the impact that this change will have on you.

According to Microsoft, these are their products that will be affected by the change:

  • Windows Client
  • Windows Server
  • Windows Mobile
  • Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services
  • Microsoft Exchange Server
  • Microsoft Office Outlook
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM
  • Microsoft SQL Server Notification Services
  • Microsoft Biztalk Server
  • Microsoft Entourage

Outdated and Legacy Operating Systems/Windows 2000 Server and Professional

The news is not good for those companies who are still running Windows 2000, either server or workstation.  Windows 2000 is going to require a manual process be done to update the timezone database and the registry keys for the current control set.

Manually editing your registry can potentially cause problems, or even cause your computer or server  to stop functioning. It is best to call your technology expert (Tech Experts, perhaps?) to make these changes and updates.

The entire process may take between 15 minutes and a half hour to complete, per machine, so the cost is reasonable compared with updating equipment to a new operating system.

Windows 95/98/ME/NT Server and Workstation

If you’re still using Windows 95, 98, ME, NT 4 server or workstation, it is time to upgrade.  Upgrading may mean buying a new computer.  Sorry about that, but that is the price of progress.  Technology continues to change and we just have to change with it. Don’t fret – you’ve definitely gotten your money’s worth out of your old 95 or 98 system.

Windows XP (SP1)/XP Home Edition (SP1)

Here is the information/clarification on these two items.  Installing service pack 2 appears to be the answer.  Then you fall into the patch available category.  When Microsoft talks about XP SP2 it includes Home and Professional.

Windows XP Pro and Home Edition(SP2)/Windows 2003

There is a patch available on the Microsoft download site and will be in the Update Patch cycle sometime in early March.

Windows Vista

No updates are needed. It is shipping with the new Timezone Database installed.

Microsoft Exchange, Outlook, Biztalk Server, SQL Server or any of the other items listed in the table above would be advised to check the Microsoft article about what the requirements for them will be.

Now for those of you that say… Ok this is it. We get our Tech Experts in to do our updates, and I’m done with it.  Well, maybe not.

Part of the government edict changing DST specifically states that “The Secretary of Energy will report the impact of this change to Congress. Congress retains the right to resume the 2005 Daylight Saving Time schedule once the Department of Energy study is complete.”

So, this is a test year. If they don’t like it they can change it back.  Fortunately, the updates and changes made this year will incorporate an easier mechanism to change back, should Congress decide the change wasn’t effective.

An important note for the Daylight Saving Time changes for this year: A lot of software needs updating, not just operating systems. Anything that uses its own prepackaged Java Virtual Machine needs an update, as well as most software that calculates dates (many will read the system time/date, but use internal code for calculating dates after that).

The best bet is to list out any 3rd party software and double check with the vendors. To make matters worse, not all vendors have released patches for their software yet.

This Website Can “Name That Tune”

Do you ever find yourself humming a song whose title, to your frustration, you don’t know or can’t remember? New search website Midomi (www.midomi.com) is designed to actually identify that song for you in as little as 10 seconds.

Midomi allows people to search for a song by singing, humming or whistling a bit of the tune. The site then offers search results that include commercially recorded tracks or versions of the song recorded by others who have used the site. The technology also lets people listen to the exact section of each of the results that matched their voice sample.

People also can type in a song title or artist to get results. The system recognizes misspelled words.

Melodis, the company behind the site, has licensed 2 million digital tracks that can be purchased and has accumulated about 12,000 more from users. Users, who range from aspiring American Idol contestants to professionals, can create profiles and rate one other’s performances on the ad-supported site.

The underlying speech- and sound-recognition technology, dubbed Multimodal Adaptive Recognition System, or MARS, differs from similar technologies in that it looks at a variety of factors for recognizing samples, including pitch, tempo variation, speech content and location of pauses, said Chief Executive Keyvan Mohajer, who has a Ph.D. in sound- and speech-recognition from Stanford University.

Sneakers Answer the Question: “Where Am I?”

Isaac Daniel calls the tiny Global Positioning System chip he’s embedded into a line of sneakers “peace of mind.”

The engineer started working on a prototype of Quantum Satellite Technology, a line of $325 to $350 sneakers that should hit shelves in March, after his son was reported missing from school. It turned out it was a misunderstanding, and his son was fine. But, an idea was born.

The shoe maker promises to locate the wearer anywhere in the world with the press of a button. A children’s line will be out this summer.

It’s the latest implementation of satellite-based navigation into everyday life — technology that can be found in everything from cell phones that help keep kids away from sexual predators to fitness watches that track heart rate and distance. Shoes aren’t as easy to lose, unlike phones and watches.

The sneakers work when the wearer presses a button on the shoe to activate the GPS. A wireless alert detailing the location is sent to a 24-hour monitoring service that costs an additional $19.95 a month.

In some emergencies — such as lost child or Alzheimer’s patient — a parent, spouse or guardian can call the monitoring service, and operators can activate the GPS remotely and alert authorities if the caller can provide the correct password.

Once the button is pressed, the shoe will transmit information until the battery runs out.

While other GPS gadgets often yield spotty results, Daniel says his company has spent millions of dollars and nearly two years of research to guarantee accuracy. The shoe’s 2-inch-by-3-inch chip is tucked into the bottom of the shoe.

Experts say GPS accuracy often depends on how many satellites the system can tap into. Daniel’s shoe and most GPS devices on the market rely on four.

“The technology is improving regularly. It’s to the point where you can get fairly good reflection even in areas with a lot of tree coverage and skyscrapers,” said Jessica Myers, a spokeswoman for Garmin International Inc., a leader in GPS technology based in Kansas. “You still need a pretty clear view of the sky to work effectively.”

The company also has put the technology into military boots and is in talks with Colombia and Ecuador, he said.

More information at: www.isaacdaniel.com

Experimental Xerox Paper Erases Itself

Xerox Corporation scientists have invented a way to make prints whose images last only a day, so that the paper can be used again and again. The technology, which is still in a preliminary state, blurs the line between paper documents and digital displays and could ultimately lead to a significant reduction in paper use.

The experimental printing technology, a collaboration between the Xerox Research Centre of Canada and PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Inc.), could someday replace printed pages that are used for just a brief time before being discarded. Xerox estimates that as many as two out of every five pages printed in the office are for what it calls “daily” use, like e-mails, Web pages and reference materials that have been printed for a single viewing.

Alphabetizing your Start Menu

If you’re like most Windows users, you’ve probably installed many programs…. So many, in fact, that you can have trouble finding the program you’re trying to use in the Start Menu list. New programs are loaded at the end of the list. Here’s how to alphabetize your Start Menu list of programs:

  1. First click on the Start button.
  2. Move your mouse to “All Programs.”
  3. Move your mouse to any of the folders there.
  4. Right click.
  5. A box will open up. Scroll to “Sort By Names” and click.

All of the folders and programs will be alphabetized. This is one of those simple but useful tips that will help you organize your computer.

Windows XP On Screen Keyboard

This might seem like a silly tip or even a silly function, but we’ve already found a use for it once. Windows XP comes with a built in on screen keyboard. Basically a graphic of a keyboard comes up and acts like your keyboard, you can use your mouse to hunt and peck around.

What uses does this have? Well, it’s good for people with disabilities, where it would be easier to use a mouse than trying to type or it’s great to use if your keyboard goes crazy.

Here is how you launch it:

  1. Go to start
  2. Go to run and type OSK, then press ENTER

Then the keyboard comes on. It’s just that simple! It’s best to make a desktop icon for it or a shortcut, because if your keyboard should malfunction, it would be handy to have it.

All you do to create the shortcut is to:

  1. Right click on the desktop
  2. Click the new shortcut button
  3. Type osk, click next twice

Chrysler Expands IPod Integration

Mopar, DaimlerChrysler’s original equipment manufacturer, announced it has expanded availability of its factory engineered IPod integration kits for most Chrysler Group vehicles.

The kit provides direct connectivity between the customer’s IPod and the vehicle’s audio sound system, attaching to a cable port in the vehicle glove box.

The adaptor module is concealed under the vehicle dash, translating and then sending the signal to the vehicle’s radio receiver.

Once attached, all IPod control functions are available through the vehicle’s audio sound system. The kits range from $139 to $215. More at www.mopar.com.