Author Archives: koppg

Top 10 mistakes people make when purchasing a new computer – Part 1

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Screen Shot 2014-05-12 at 1.24.18 PMTop 10 lists are very popular today   I thought it might be interesting if I provided a top 10 list of mistakes people make when they’re considering a computer purchase   Since this list is kind along, I’ve split it into two separate posts. So here’s the first five.

10. Listening to a big box store sales person

Many big box stores hire salesmen based upon quotas. Often times the sales people get paid based upon which computers or devices they sell. As a result, it’s often hard to believe what they tell you. Many times you hear exactly what you want when you talk to one of the sales people. Even if you go in looking for one device, you many times get steered to another device that they are going to make more money off of. Be aware of this in your shopping.

Always know what you’re looking for and do research on the product you’re interested in before walking into a big box store to purchase. And since many computer items are commodities, purchasing online is never a bad idea. Many times you’ll save money that way.

9. Being the first person to try something new

We all love the new products. Sometimes the new thing looks to be absolutely perfect for you. Vendors in the computer industry spend lots of money making you believe that. They provide free hardware to people who will write good reviews for them. They rush products out the door before they’re ready to meet a particular seasons demand. Try not to get caught up in having to have the newest product on the block. In general, you’ll always pay more, but it’s common to see new products today that are three months old tomorrow cost much less. If you purchase a new device when it’s first delivered you also run the risk of buying something that has bugs in it. I always recommend people wait a few weeks for things to sort out our new hardware devices before making their purchase.   Wait for the real people reviews to show up on the web.

Believe me, I’ve often wished I could take my own advice on this one.

8.  Not getting enough Ram memory

RAM memory, the memory the computer uses to actually run programs, is fairly inexpensive today. Most machines come with a minimum of 4 GB of RAM. Upgrading that ram is often times not very expensive. A good recommendation for a computer today is to look for a machine with 6 GB to 8 GB of RAM. This much memory, will future-proof you for new operating systems and new programs that require more space to run. Purchasing a computer with 8 GB of RAM over a computer with 4 GB of RAM will often cost between $50 and $100 at today’s prices. That additional cost is well worth it.

But keep in mind, RAM is often the thing that can be added to a computer these days. But if you purchase a laptop, that has soldered RAM in it, you can’t often  more RAM at a later date so get what you need today.

7.  Underestimating your storage needs

It used to be, that every new computer had more storage than the last. What were seen today with the advent of solid-state storage, many computers, particularly laptops, are coming with solid-state hard drives. Solid-state hard drives are much more expensive than they’re spending counterparts. As a result, vendors provide less storage when solid-state is used than they did when spending disks were used. It would be hard to find a computer today with a spinning disk smaller than 500 GB. But it’s common today to find computers with solid-state hard drives of 128 GB. If you have lots of pictures, music, or video stored on your computer, be sure to determine how much space that will take on your new machine before you make your purchase. It’s always bad to end up with less storage on a new machine then you have on the old one unless you put a plan in place of what you’re going to do with those files when you move to the new computer.

6.  Shopping only based on price

The old idea that you get what you pay for is true in computers. If you always look for the cheapest price you’ll always end up with the cheapest device. Most computers are today commodities. You can buy parts and build your own or you can buy one already assembled. But like many things, there are many grades of hardware and parts that could be put into a computer. If you buy the cheapest computer you can fine you can depend upon the fact that it has the cheapest parts in it that are available. That doesn’t necessarily mean these are poor parts, but it does mean they’re probably less tested and often more likely to fail.

Some people complain about the cost of the Macintosh. But one thing about the Macintosh you can depend upon is that the parts it’s made of our high-quality. If you look at PC vendors, they often have home lines of machines and business lines of machines. The business machines often costs more and that makes perfect sense, because these machines are made from better components. People replacing computers for their business often consider the long-term cost and value of the computer. Unfortunately people who buy a computer for home are often only looking for the cheapest price.

I certainly recommend you do shop for price. But I don’t recommend picking the cheapest thing you can find. These cheaper machines often have lesser levels of support, and I’m not just talking about support for a hardware failure, I’m talking about support for updated drivers and configuration parameters.

If you’re looking for a PC, choosing a machine from a company’s business line will often times get you a higher quality computer.

So there are the first five reasons. Later in the week, I’ll show you the top five. Feel free to provide comments on any of my posts. I appreciate your input.

When I try to eject my USB drive, why does my Mac think files are in use?

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Screen Shot 2014-05-01 at 1.42.26 PMHere’s one that I bet has happened to most of us. You insert a USB thumb drive in your Mac to copy some files off. You copy those files off to the Mac and then immediately try to eject your USB drive.  Your Mac tries to reject the drive but finally comes back and tells you that the drive and use or some files on the drive are in use.

The situation has driven me crazy for years. But the reasoning behind what’s happening perfect sense. One of the great features of a Mac is that all your data is indexed to give you the ability to find things quickly. The software on the Mac that does this index is called Spotlight. Spotlight, being very efficient, immediately begins to index any new drive it finds plugged into your computer. USB drives, particularly solid-state drives like thumb drives are often very slow.  It takes a while to read and write files to these drives. What often happens is that Spotlight has begun indexing that drive and when you try to eject it the Mac sees files on the drive in use and refuses to eject the USB drive.

The solution to this is actually fairly simple particularly on a machine that you often Screen Shot 2014-05-01 at 1.42.12 PMplug the same drive into. All you need to do is go to system preferences and select spotlight. At the top of the Spotlight dialog is a privacy tab. Click on the privacy tab. Now you can press the plus icon near the bottom of the dialog and add your USB drive to the list of drives you don’t want spotlight to index. Even easier, you can simply drag the drive over-the-top of the Spotlight privacy tab and drop it. This adds your drive to the do not index list.

Now when you insert the USB drive, you can just drive copy files and then eject it.  Spotlight will not have started trying to index it and the drive will eject quickly and easily.

Control tour DSLR from your Phone with TriggerTrap

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Screen Shot 2014-04-22 at 11.30.36 AMMost people that have a DSL our camera Love to take creative photographs. Today’s cameras have so many built-in features it makes them difficult to learn to use and even harder to take those special creative shots. But what if you could use your iPhone or android phone to set up the photographic shot that you want to take?

TrigerTrap is an application for the iPhone or Android Phone that lets you setup specialized shots from your DSLR.  The app lets you do shots like:

 

  • Timelapse Mode
  • TimeWarp™ Mode
  • Sound sensor Mode
  • Shock & Vibration sensor Mode
  • LE HDR Mode
  • LE HDR Timelapse Mode
  • DistanceLapse™ Mode
  • Cable Release Mode
  • Star trail Mode
  • Bulb Ramping Timelapse
  • Wi-Fi Slave Mode
  • Wi-Fi Master Mode (trigger other devices running Triggertrap Mobile

It gives you the ability to compose to you want to take on the phone and then execute them on the camera. It can use sensors on the phone to set the camera off. For instance, you can set the phone to take a photograph every 200 feet that you have moved. If you’re driving in the car, the camera will go off using the GPS from the phone to determine in his move those 200 feet. You can also set up things like forcing the camera just go off whenever here’s a sound. You might want to set the camera to take a shot whenever he hears thunder but delay that shot A period of time to ensure it sees the lightning in the sky.  There are many different options you can do.

Screen Shot 2014-04-22 at 11.20.17 AMTo make this happen you download the free app from the app store or the Google play store.  But you need a specialized cable to connect from the headphone jack on the phone to the cameras remote-control. These cables are available from the company’s website for about $30.

If you’re looking for ways to set up interesting photographs with your DSLR, Take a look at TriggerTrap.  Since the app is free you can download it and look at the possibilities before ordering the cable for your particular camera.

 

iTunes won’t let me Authorize my computer to Play my Music.

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This often occurs after you have installed a new machine.  If you failed to reauthorize your old computer, iTunes believes it is still using your music library.  Many times, if you have authorized less than 5 machines, you just let it use another authorization.  But once your 5 authorizations are used up from PCs or Macs, it no longer allows authorizations.

The solution requires you to reauthorize all your machines and reauthorize the ones you still use.

After you authorize more than one computer, you’ll have the option to deauthorize all computers for your Apple ID. You can deauthorize all computers once a year.

You won’t delete anything if you choose to deauthorize all computers. You just won’t be able to play content that you bought from iTunes on those computers.

Here’s when you should deauthorize all your computers:

  • If a computer doesn’t work anymore
  • If you don’t have one of your computers
  • If you used 5 authorizations and want to authorize a new computer

To deauthorize all your computers, follow these steps using one of your authorized computers:

Open iTunes and click iTunes Store

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Click Sign In and enter your Apple ID

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Click your Apple ID and select Account

Click Deauthorize All

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After you deauthorize all, you can easily authorize computers again one by one. Just follow the steps to authorize a Mac or PC.

 

 

Mac Mail: Removing people from the TO: Menu

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Screen Shot 2014-04-22 at 10.59.20 AMHave you ever been sending an e-mail message on the Macintosh from mail and noticed that to: selection listed many e-mail addresses and people that you no longer send to? Mac mail remembers a list of people that you have received mail from or sent mail to and populates them in the to: List to assist you in sending Mail without having to type in the full e-mail address. But over time, this list gets very large and ends up showing more people to send to that you ever would want.  Removing names from that list is simple if you know how.

Screen Shot 2014-04-22 at 10.59.01 AM

With mail loaded, go to the window menu and select previous recipients. This will bring up a list of all the e-mail addresses that mail has automatically retained for you. From this list you will see the name, E-mail address, and the last time you’ve use that address. You can select any one of these and click remove from list button. Some of these names Will have a small index card icon in front of them. The significance of this icon is that this e-mail address and person is listed in your address book or contact list. If you choose to remove one of these from the list, keep in mind that address will still be retained in your address book unless you remove it there too.

Using the previous recipients dialog, you can easily clean up the list of addresses that mail uses to assist you in sending mail.

Belkin Wi-Fi enabled WeMo Switch

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Screen Shot 2014-03-28 at 3.39.21 PM The Belkin Wi-Fi enabled WeMo Switch lets you turn electronic devices on or off from anywhere. The WeMo Switch uses your existing home Wi-Fi network to provide wireless control of TVs, lamps, stereos, heaters, fans and more. Simply download the free WeMo App from the Google Play Store or the Apple App store, plug the switch into an outlet in your home, and plug any device into the switch. You’ll be able to turn that device on or off using your smartphone or tablet (running Android 4.0 and later or iOS 5 or higher). You can set schedules for your devices and control them remotely using a mobile internet connection. You can also add additional switches to your home to control more devices.

The Belkin WeMo Switch works with the free WeMo App to give you wireless control of your home appliances and electronics. Whether you want to turn on a light from your kitchen, front yard, or office, WeMo Switch has you covered.

Screen Shot 2014-03-28 at 3.40.17 PMTo get started, simply download the free WeMo App from the Google Play store or the Apple App store to your smartphone or tablet Next, plug the WeMo Switch into an outlet in your home and plug any device or appliance into the switch. Connect the WeMo Switch to your home Wi-Fi network and follow the onscreen instructions to complete the installation. Now you can turn your home electronics/appliances on or off from anywhere.

The Switch also operates over mobile Internet, which means you can control home devices from anywhere you have an Internet, 3G or 4G connection.

  • Turn electronics on or off — from anywhere.Screen Shot 2014-03-28 at 3.39.48 PM
  • Operates over Wi-Fi and mobile internet, at home and away.
  • You’ve already got everything you need: WeMo works with your existing Wi-Fi router and any iPod touch, iPhone, iPad – iOS 5 or higher.
  • Put your electronic devices on a schedule.
  • Modular system. You can add additional WeMo Switches easily, any time.
  • Control as much or as little of your home as you want to.
  • Plugs into any regular 120v wall outlet.
  • Intuitive, easy set up. Easy to use.
  • Free WeMo app.

These units are very easy to use.  I’ll bet you can think of a number of uses for modules like these.