David Leonard

I really do not like receiving emails with so-called jokes, chain letters, interesting pictures or anything like that. Life’s too short and they are always rubbish – except…….. the next time you are losing the will to live as a well-meaning support-person in India repeats your last question back to you yet again, remember that the scene outside their office may be something like this:

Microsoft will soon end support for some versions of Windows. When support ends, security updates will no longer be provided. This means that computers running these unsupported versions will become more vulnerable to malicious attack.

The versions and cut-off dates are:

Windows Vista without any Service Packs – 13th April 2010
Windows XP Service Pack 2 – 13th July 2010

For further information, see http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/help/end-support-windows-xp-sp2-windows-vista-without-service-packs?os=other

If you double-click on a data file in Windows Explorer (eg a picture file or document), then Windows will open the program that it thinks “controls” that type of file, and then open the data file (document) in the newly opened program.

Sometimes, you may prefer a different program to open a particular type of file. For instance, the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer may open “jpg” files whereas you would like these to be opened with Photoshop.

To change the program that opens files (known in Windows terms as changing the file association) take the following steps (these instructions are for Windows XP):

1) In Windows Explorer, open any folder
2) Click on “Tools” in the top menu
3) Click on “Folder Options”
4) Click on the “File Types” tab
5) Scroll down the list to find the type of file you wish to change (for instance, JPG, JPEG, and JPE are all picture files that could be produced by a digital camera)
6) Click on the file type you wish to change
7) Click the “Change” button. This will produce a list of the programs that Windows suggests may be suitable to open this type of file.
8) If you see the program you want, double-click on it and then close any open boxes.
9) If you don’t see the program you want, you can browse for it by clicking on the “Browse” button. You will then need to identify the program you want, double-click on it and then close any open boxes.

In this example there are 3 different file names associated with jpg files (see (5) above), so repeat the exercise for all three types if you want Photoshop to open any type of jpg file.

 

Microsoft have released a free antivirus and antispyware program called Windows Security Essentials. I have long since thought that programs like Norton and McAfee have got too big for their boots in terms of their size and the way they can interefere with the smooth-running of a system. Partly for that reason, I have been using AVG free for a long time, but this needed the addition of SpyBot (also free) to cover the spyware/malware angle. Microsoft have produced a program that does all of this, aiming to do so simply and unobtrusively.

I installed WSE on one of my computers earlier this week (remembering, of course, to uninstall AVG and the realtime scanner of Spybot first). The installation and configuration was easy and painless, but upon re-booting the machine, the reassuring little green icon in the system tray (bottom righthand side of the screen) had disappeared. Not good.

After a bit of research I found that this is a “known issue” when used with Windows XP and that there is a solution – download a “Microsoft Fix it”, doubleclick on the downloaded file and then re-boot the machine.
 

I’ve never claimed to be the most technically savvie person working in IT, but doesn’t this beg the question “why don’t Microsoft integrate the fix into the program?”. What’s the point of trying to reassure punters that you’ve got a simple. trustworthy, antivirus program if it’s already patched up in this way, adding a layer of complexity to the installation that it could well do without? You don’t actually need the patch. I found that the scanner was actually working before I installed the patch and, no doubt, Windows Security would have flagged it up if the scanner had not been working. Nevertheless, when it comes to a vital security progrma I feel better if I can see a reassuring little icon telling me that it’s doing its job.

A few months ago I looked into the possibility of providing telephone support via a premium rate phone number. “Thank you” to all of my clients who expressed a view on this. It seems everyone acknowledges that it is valid for me to charge for technical phone support (that’s a relief) but clients are divided as to whether a premium rate phone line is the way to do it.

Anyway, I dropped the idea like a hot brick after I took the time to read the small print. I was amazed that the company providing the service “retained the right” to store and use the numbers dialling in (ie your number) and “retained the right” to listen in to any conversation connected via the premium rate number. No doubt this explains why every time you phone a premium rate number they tell you that the call “may be monitored for training purposes”. It’s because the telco providing the number may be listening in.

Once again I am showing my age. I’m old enough to think that privacy is important. I would not pay a telco a fair amount of money for the right to invade my clients’ privacy.

So, it’s back to the muddle of sorting out on a case-by-case basis whether a support call should be free, party chargeable or wholly chargeable. All suggestions welcome.

A client phoned me recently to say that she wanted to attach a picture (a jpg file) to an email. She wanted to be quite sure that she was attaching the right picture so before sending it she opened the attachment by double-clicking on it.

The picture correctly opened, but all sorts of controls appeared at the bottom of the screen, including “backward” and “forward” buttons, that displayed pictures other than the one she wanted to attach.

Her question was “am I sending loads more pictures with the email message than I am intending to?”

The answer is that everything was ok. Her Windows was configured to open jpg files by using the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. This correctly showed the right picture but then got a bit too helpful by offering all the other picture files that it could find in the same folder. Providing that there is a single file listed against the “attachment” field in the email, and provided that it ends in .jpg (eg IMG_0765.jpg) then only a single picture will be sent. It was a perfectly reasonable question, though, as it’s possible to send lots of pictures together in a single file as a self-contained “slideshow”. In that case, the file attachment would not have ended in .jpg.

This blog is for my clients, my potential clients, and myself.

Issues covered will be those typically encountered by this hoped-for readership. Not deeply technical – just useful. So, the average person I have in mind is probably self-employed and quite probably working from home. He/she certainly doesn’t have an IT team around, but needs his computer system to work well enough to be a help rather than a frustration in his/her business.

I’m also now seeing a growing number of my clients expanding their computer activities into leisure use – mainly music and photography – so these subjects will probably be included.

The other probable way in which this will develop is to store and keep references and articles that I think may be useful to clients and myself in the future.

I’m not trying to compete with any whizz-kids or nerds out there writing blogs. I’m too old now to be spending 16 hours a day glued to a computer screen learning all the latest bells and whistles. And I’m certainly old enough to have serious doubts about privacy issues and changing ideas of personal space that the social networking phenomenon introduces (you only need to see my “Linked-In” entry to pick up on that ambivalence). So, instead, I’m going to try and concentrate on that main potential readership and what it could realistically gain from spending a few minutes a week at this site.

I’m keeping open the possibility of adding advertising to this site. It’s a subject I’m very ambivalent about. Maybe I see it as a “necessary evil”. Certainly I myself have been seeking new clients by advertising with Google for a year now and I’m also interested in the possibility of using a blog for another “income stream”. On the other hand, advertising can be so very IRRITATING! We’ll see.

I’m learning about blogging as I’m going along. Don’t know anything yet about feeds or subscriptions or anything like that. Until I get all of this sorted, anyone wishing to contact me should just email me at email@davidleonard.net.

One final introductory comment: I referred to “he/she” above. Very cumbersome. Most of my clients are female. Hope they’ll forgive me if I revert to the old-fashioned inclusive “he” – the alternatives are just too much of a pain to use.

Thanks for reading this far. I hope you’ll come back again when there’s something to read.