Subscriber Ray Lenz wrote after my articles recently Terry, I enjoyed your Q & A with Alice. I’m 76 myself and slowing down a little with my computer savvy even though I have been working with computers since 1966. I was a programmer on an IBM 1401 with 8K of memory using SPS (Symbolic Programming [...]

One of the easiest ways to document web pages and other printable content is to “print” them into a PDF file. Adobe’s Acrobat program provides a printer driver to create such files from anything that you can print. Of course, Acrobat is out of reach for many people, or at least, we don’t have any [...]

If you don’t already have a home computer network and want to set up one, it’s easy. In fact, it’s so easy that I recommend that ANYONE using a high-speed Internet connection should use a router for the added security that it gives their computer. A wired or wireless router (wireless routers normally have 4 [...]

Once we have our home network set up, often, our next desires are to be able to copy files from one computer to another and to be able to share a printer among multiple computers. Sharing files is usually an easy step, except that Windows likes to protect us. The first step is to open [...]

EJ wrote to ask about backing up his computer: Terry, what program do you use to back up your files I use two programs routinely. First, every evening, I use Karen’s Replicator (www.karenware.com, free for personal, non-business use) to copy my data files to another computer across my home network. Not only does this give [...]

Subscriber Fran wrote recently about a problem she was having: When i go to control panel. Then i click on network internet connections. It just flickers. I can’t change any of the settings,or my home page. Also when i click on tools then i click internet option. It just flickers. what can i do to [...]

One of my newsletter readers wrote to ask about antivirus recommendations: I have been using Norton antivirus programs for 10 years. In May I purchased Norton 360 which has been giving me fits. When I shut down Windows, everything goes off but the tower. I have done all their troubleshooting to see which program I [...]

Google Desktop is Google’s free search system for your own hard drive. Google Desktop is designed to run all the time, but to do its real work — indexing your hard drive to get the information for its search results — while your computer is idle. Tech Tip Since Google Desktop only does its indexing [...]

With your first computer (or even your fifth!), don’t be too quick to buy Microsoft Office — there’s a great, free alternative called OpenOffice. First, let me say it this way: “If you can use Excel, you can use Calc.” It’s really that simple. Learning to use a spreadsheet — learning the concepts of putting [...]

A lot of people choose one of the big-name security software packages from Norton, McAfee and such to protect their computers. I’m not one of them. I tried them in the past, but I learned that I didn’t like relying on a “it will do everything” security package — sure they were cheaper, but I [...]