This week's column answers readers' questions: Can I print from my wireless PC? Can I scan old slides? Can I trust anyone over 30?

Printing from a wireless PC

Recently I helped a client set up her laptop so that she can use the wireless connection. When she's at her desk, she can plug in the cable and connect "normally." When she wants to use the computer in another room, she turns on the wireless connection, unplugs the cable, and she's good to go. She can do anything in all the other rooms of her home that she can do at her desk...except print.

Yes, you do have to have a printer connected to something in order to print to it. Usually, we have a printer connected directly to our computer with a cable. When you take your PC to another room, remember to unplug the printer! That prevents loud crashes and broken toes, but it also prevents printing. How can we print from a wireless computer?

There are plenty of complicated solutions, but I am going to talk about the easier ones here. The first three suggestions work if you have a home network.

If you have another computer, connect the printer to that computer, establish a home network, and share the printer. The printer and the computer it's connected to have to be on in order to print.

Some printers can connect directly to a network. If you have a printer that will do that, and you have a home network, you can connect the printer, share it, and print to it from any computer on the network.

You can also buy a "print server" and connect it to your home network. Then you connect your printer(s) to the print server, and you can print from any computer on your network.

If you don't have a home network and don't want to be bothered with one, try these workarounds:

Printers are cheap. Buy an extra printer and plug it into the laptop when you need it.

Finally, there is the "sneaker net" solution. Take the laptop back to the printer and print to your heart's content! Don't forget to check GreenPrint! (http://www.printgreener.com/)


Help with scanning old slides

A reader has hundreds of slides accumulated over many years and is looking for a way to digitize them and store them.

I can help with the storage: Forget about CD's and DVD's. Get the biggest external hard drive you can afford, connect it up to a USB or 1394 port, and save the digitized slides there. Hard drives will be around for years to come. DVD's and CD's will deteriorate.

What I can't help with is recommendations for a good way to scan them. What about you folks? Do you have a recommendation for a scanner? For a method? How do you organize the slides after you've scanned them? Any lessons learned?

Send your suggestions/comments/dire warnings to cate@rlis.com, and I will pass them along in future columns.

Oh, drat. I forgot to send a card.

What else could be in my In Box but spam? Happy 30th birthday, spam. I'm afraid I can't wish you many happy returns. Read about it here:

Birthday spam

The original spam is here:

Original spam

As always, thank you to everyone who emailed comments, questions and suggestions. I appreciate all of that please keep them coming! Remember, you can browse the column archives at

Cate's archives

Happy Mother's Day!

Need some paper? Need some electronics? Need to fix a munged up Word document? I've got just the thing. What I haven't got, is XP Service Pack 3...but no one does!

Print Your Own Paper

I know you're asking yourself, "Why would I want to print my own paper?" Well, if you need graph paper, lined paper, financial paper, music paper, or another specialty paper, and the store is closed, this is the site for you. Check out Printable Paper at

Printable Paper

I grant you this is not going to be the least expensive paper you will ever get, but it's there right when you need it.

Fans of the Cornell note taking system will want to have a look at the PDF Cornell notes generator, here:

Cornell notes

or the template for MS Word here:

Word Templates

Get All The Reviews From One Site

Recently we had to shop for a digital TV, and I thought my head was going to explode. I wish I'd known about ReviewGist. They say, "ReviewGist is an easy-to-use tool that makes it much easier for you to decide what to buy when it comes to consumer electronics." No kidding. They gather up the online reviews and specs for electronic products from camcorders to wireless routers, and present that information in a way that is easy to search and digest. If you're shopping for something electronic, give it a try. The website is here:

ReviewGist

Repair Damaged Word Files

If you have a MS Word file that won't open, Repair My Word will probably allow you to rescue it. It will repair Microsoft Word 6.0, Word 95, 97, 2000, XP, and 2003 for Windows. (Sorry, not Office 2007 versions of Word.)

You just have to open the corrupt file in Repair My Word, preview the recoverable text, and save this text to a new Word file. This handy utility is free, and available here:

Repair My Word

Microsoft Puts The Brakes on XP Service Pack 3

The announced release date for the long-awaited XP SP3 was April 29. It didn't show up in MY Windows Updates either! It turns out that at the last minute, Microsoft pulled it back because of an incompatibility with another Microsoft program. They'll make some adjustments, and release it...er...soon. Yeah, soon. That's the ticket.

Now is a good time to visit the Secunia Software Inspector (http://secunia.com/software_inspector/) and make sure everything else is up to date. Recently there have been security updates to Flash, QuickTime, Java, and Adobe Reader. Be sure to uninstall the older versions of Flash and Java after you install the updates.

Thank you everyone who emailed with questions, comments and words of encouragement. You can reach me at cate@rlis.com if you have anything to ask or tell about your computer. Don't forget, you can browse the column archives at any time, at

Cate's Archives

This week, a little more on managing digital photos XP SP3 is almost here --- they really mean it this time one less annoyance in Vista, and what's not to like about that?

Find duplicate photos

Last week's column about managing digital photos

Managing digital photos

really got people's attention. Several readers and clients wanted to know if there was an easy way to find and eliminate duplicate photos.

There are lots of ways to do this, and some are easier than others. I know of two free programs that are good at finding duplicates. Dup Detector is specifically for the purpose of finding and allowing you to delete photos. It is thorough, and works happily in the background while you do something else. If you take the time to look through the help file, it is reasonably easy to use. If you don't, the interface is just plain confusing. Dup Detector will work on anything from Windows 95 to XP. Sorry, no Vista. Once you figure it out, Dup Detector works great. You can read more about it and grab it here:

Dup Detector

Another tool is Duplicate Cleaner, available here:

Duplicate Cleaner

Also free, it found everything Dup Detector did on my hard drive, and took less time. Duplicate Cleaner can also find duplicates of other kinds of files, not just photos. I had a go at my mp3's and it found a ton of duplicates there, too. I thought the interface was more helpful than Dup Detector, but either tool is worth a look.

Whatever method you use to find and eliminate your duplicate files, please be careful that they are, in fact, duplicates and that you kill off the correct one. If you're not sure what you're doing, get some help before you proceed.

XP SP3 is almost here

Microsoft announced that Service Pack 3 for Windows XP will be available to the public on April 29. It will be part of Windows Update by early June.

By all accounts, XP3 is not heavy on enhancements. Instead it is described as being chiefly a roll up of all the patches and security updates that have come before. There are apparently no major improvements from SP2 which was released three years ago.

Nonetheless, it's a big download! And you can expect it to take some time to install. Check out the slide show here:



to see what you can expect. For more information about what is and is not included, see Paul Thurrott's excellent article here:

Paul Thurrott's article

Vista's "Blocked Programs" message annoys

Faithful reader Gord wrote in to ask how to turn off that annoying "reminder in Vista telling me that I have blocked programs in my start up, after all I did it on purpose so I don't need to be reminded!!"

Here are the steps:

Right-click on the annoying icon in the system tray

Select "Run blocked program"

Select "System Configuration utility"

Select "Continue" at the User Account Control prompt

Check the box that says "Don't show this message or start System

Configuration when Windows starts"

OK your way out

That should do it. (Thanks and a tip of the hat to The How-To Geek.)

Thank you everyone who emailed with questions, comments, and words of encouragement. You can reach me at cate@rlis.com if you have anything to ask or tell about your computer. Don't forget, you can browse the column archives at any time. Point your browser here:

Cate's Archives

How do you organize your digital photos? How do you even get them from the camera to the computer? I have a couple of ideas.

So long, XP it's been good to know ya!

Managing Digital Photos

Digital cameras now outsell regular cameras. Sometimes I think that just means that instead of having shoe boxes full of negatives, prints, and slides in a closet, we have a bazillion files named can12054873240.jpg in "My Pictures." Yikes! Where IS that picture of Uncle John's band?

There are plenty of programs that you can use to organize your pictures into albums, make slide shows, screen savers, CD's and so on. Picasa is a good, free one, available here:

picasa

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a good one, but on the expensive side. You can read about that here:

Adobe Photoshop

But before you even worry about that, how about naming those photos something informative, like "unclejohn1.jpg" and "unclejohn2.jpg" so you can find the ones you want?

"That's a good idea," I hear you say, "but I already have about a bazillion pictures. Renaming each one is going to be pretty tedious."

Absolutely true. It's a good thing the weather is crummy, eh? Okay, seriously. You can easily rename a batch of pictures without any extra programs. This article will show you how:

rename photos

But even before you start on that, take just a moment and think about how you get the pictures from the camera to the computer in the first place. I have been to clients and seen two or sometimes three different programs, all starting up with Windows, for transferring images. If you have a digital camera, you probably got some software with it that wants to be the boss of your photos. If you have an HP printer, scanner, computer, or all-in-one device, you probably have an HP program that wants to take charge.

You don't need all that. Pick one program. Picasa will do it. So will Photoshop Elements. Stay with the HP version if you like that one better. But just pick one. Plug your camera in, and Windows will ask what program you want to use. Tell it to use that one all the time. Next time you plug in, your program will open and start managing the pictures.

If you are taking pictures while you're travelling, it's not a bad idea to take a few minutes at the end of each day, review the pictures while they are still in the camera, and delete the ones you don't want. If you don't get around to that, you can simply elect not to transfer them to the PC when you come home. And if you space THAT out, delete them from the PC right away so you don't confuse yourself or make a lot of extra work for yourself.

And because we all sometimes delete a photo by accident, here is a link to "Smart Recovery", a good, free program that will recover pictures from your hard drive or your media card:

Smart Recovery

I've had to use it more than once!

So long, XP

Microsoft made it official. Despite much speculation to the contrary, Microsoft says there will be no more sales of shrink-wrapped Windows XP or computers with XP preinstalled after June 30. The only new sales will be on the so-called "Ultra Low Cost PCs". Microsoft will continue to provide "mainstream support" for XP until 2009, and that might be extended again.

You can still find new computers with XP installed if you look hard. Dell.ca has several laptop and several desktop models. Local shops may be able to build an XP system for you. If you don't want to, or can't, upgrade to Vista right now and if you need a computer, you'll want to get that done before June 30.

Meanwhile, we are all still waiting for Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. The latest rumour has it being released April 29. Fasten your seat belts.

Thank you everyone who wrote in with questions, comments, suggestions, and requests for the Dropbox beta invitation(http://rlis.com/columns/column141.htm). I appreciate all your efforts.

You can browse the column archives or email me at cate@rlis.com with anything you'd like to ask or tell.

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