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MEETING SCHEDULE Sunday, September 19, 2010

Official Newsletter of the Pittsburgh Area Computer Club

PACC TALK September 2010

What is inside.... Windows SIG PAGE # 1

Mastering HD Video with your DSLR by H. Kraus and U. Steinmueller …… book review by B. Kittle

PAGE # 2

huh …. Linux?, Part 1, 2 and 3. By Dave Bartlett

PAGE # 3 PAGE # 4

Safe Mode ….. by Bill Pryor PAGE # 5

End of an era arrives for XP, SP2 by B. de Violini PAGE # 6

From The Deals Guy .….. by Bob Click PAGE # 7

From the Editor’s desk PAGE # 8

11:00 -11:25 am ROOM # 311

Sign In, Pay Dues, Greet visitors, Purchase 50/50 tickets (Optional), Setup Computers, Connect to Internet , Prep for Meetings

11:00 - 11:25 pm ROOM # 301

PACC BOD Meeting

11:35 - 12:00 pm ROOM # 301

Windows New Users Can we help you? V. Agrawala

12:00 - 12:30 pm ROOM # 301

General Meeting, Raffle. (pg. 1)

12:35 - 2:00 pm ROOM # 301

CintaNotes, MT Partition Wizard Home Edition, MT Partition Wizard Bootable CD (pg. 1)

2:05 - 3:30 pm ROOM # 301

More programs and utilities ….. (pg. 1)

2:05 - 3:30 pm ROOM # 311

Hardware SIG Users Helping Users - guests included

1:00 - 3:30 pm ROOM # 311

Linux SIG, Members Helping Members, Computer troubleshooting, Info Exchange

3:30 - 4:00 pm Pack Up Equipment, Doors Close

From O’Reilly: “ Ubuntu for everyone! This popular Linux-based operating system is perfect for people with little tech-nical background. It's sim-ple to install, and easy to use -- with a strong focus on security. Ubuntu: Up and Running shows you the ins and outs of this system with a complete hands-on tour. You'll learn how Ubuntu works, how to quickly configure and

maintain Ubuntu 10.04, and how to use this unique operating system for networking, business, and home entertainment.” A perfect way to get away from any Windows…… :)

Windows SIG CintaNotes - Quoting the web site: “A free, lightweight and user-friendly personal notes manager, CintaNotes is your essential assistant in the daily task of organizing information, such as your own thoughts and ideas, article excerpts, blog postings, quotes from famous people, research data, curious facts, Wikipedia entries, you name it. Can clip text from anywhere. Just select it and press the hotkey! It lets you quickly jot down and tag any useful text that you come across. Unlike browser-based tools like Google Notebook, CintaNotes does not re-quire a web browser to work: the text-clipping "magic" works in any application that can copy text to clipboard!” Easy to download from http://cintanotes.com/ web page. Choose the

CintaNotes 1.2 (900 Kb) or Portable version (620 Kb)

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Mastering HD Video

with your DSLR by Helmut Kraus and Uwe Steinmueller

Book Review by Bud Kittle

Member of the Pittsburgh Area ComputerClub BOD

The book: Mastering HD Video with Your DSLR by Helmut Kraus and Uwe Steinmueller cov-ers Basics, Equipment, Shooting, Editing, and Presentation using a DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Re-flex) camera with HD (High Defi-nition) video. Most current DSLR cameras and even some compact cameras have the option of shoot-ing standard and high definition videos In Basics it gives a background in video technology, but the reader needs to have a fundamental un-derstanding of cameras and com-puters. In the Equipment section the book effectively takes a critical look at the various types of cameras and the related accessories and gadgets. The authors cover the Shooting section very well. It is obvious the authors have extensive actual experience in photography. They pro-vide great detail on how to set-up and use the DSLR camera and ac-cessories in most typical situations. The Editing section gives an overview of current computer video edit-ing software. It also gives a general discussion on what to look for and how to use them based on the authors limited personal experience. Finally, the presentation section gives a few options for where to show your video. Most of these are already well known by any computer user such as: showing them on your computer, burning a DVD, or YouTube. If you have experience with a DSLR camera and are thinking about using it for high definition videos, this book could provide useful in-formation. If you are now using a conventional video camera and are considering a DSLR for video work, this book would layout the ad-vantages and pitfalls. If you are a beginner in cameras and video, this book does provide some information, but you may need to read some more fundamental basics first. Bud Kittle bkktt@hotmail.com

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“Free Partition Software - MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition is a free partition manager software designed by MT Solution Ltd. Our partition manager sup-ports 32/64 bit Windows Operating System including Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Home users can perform complicated parti-tion operations by using this powerful yet free partition manager to manage their hard disk. Functions include: Resizing partitions, Copying partitions, Create partition, Delete partition, Format parti-tion, Convert partition, Explore partition, Hide partition, Change drive letter, Set active partition, Partition Recovery. MiniTool Parti-tion Wizard Home Edition is designated for home user only, to use MiniTool Partition Wizard in a business environment, MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional Edition is required.”

Only 7.52 MB download. Great program and free! Get it here: http://www.partitionwizard.com/download.html

Also from the MiniTool web site: “MiniTool Partition Wizard Bootable CD allows user to boot com-puter directly into MiniTool Partition Wizard to manage partitions without any limitations. Features including Rebuild MBR, Partition Recovery, Move/Resize Partition, Merge Partition, Change Cluster Size, Copy Partition, Create Partition, Delete Partition, Format Parti-tion, Convert File System, Hide/Unhide Partition, Explore Partition and much more.”

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From the MiniTool web site:

The MiniTool Partition Wizard Bootable CD can be downloaded in ISO format to burn to the disk, from the same location. The size of the file is 39 MB. Free Easy CD/DVD Burner is available at the following web site:

http://www.nch.com.au/burn/index.html

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This screenshot is the desktop of the PCLinuxOS distribution, or “distro.”

Here's another nice thing about installing Linux. If you already have Windows on your hard drive, Linux detects it, asks if you want to install Linux on a separate hard drive partition. Answer yes, and it leaves Windows untouched. Try installing Windows with Linux al-ready on the hard drive, and Windows wants to wipe the hard drive clean and be the only OS. You would have to manually partition the hard drive and install Windows on the new partition. Linux and Win-dows can exist quite nicely on the same hard drive. Turn on your com-puter and choose Linux or Windows. Tell me, and I might remember 10%. Show me, and I might remember 50%. Let me put my hands on, and I might remember 80-90%. A trial is worth a thousand pictures!

huh …. Linux?, Part 2 of 3 By Dave Bartlett, Linux SIG Leader,

Sarnia Computer User Group, Ontario, Canada SCUG Report, May 2010

www.scug.ca linux (at) scug.ca

In Part 1 of this series, I touched on the highlights of Linux. There is a lot that I don't know. I'm not a Linux guru; I'm a Linux user. I'm also adventurous enough to try things with Linux and, in the process, a lot of learning takes place. My main computer is an older Intel P4 machine - 1.5 Gigs of RAM, and a Radeon 9250 PCI video card. This is old by today's standards, but it's my XP main squeeze. It can also run almost any and every Linux distro I have tried. When Vista first came out, Microsoft pro-vided a small utility that would determine if your computer would run Vista. I ran it, and it told me I could not run Vista's “Aero,” the feature that shows the rotating desktop cube with multiple windows running multiple applications. I needed to upgrade my video card. Then I found that the Linux equivalent to Aero, CompizFusion, runs just fine on my old video card. I could also choose any number of sides to my rotating cube. I usually set it for six or eight. I have a second computer, one that had been put together from spare

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huh …. Linux?, Part 1 of 3 By Dave Bartlett, Linux SIG Leader,

Sarnia Computer User Group, Ontario, Canada SCUG Report, April 2010

www.scug.ca linux (at) scug.ca

About five years ago, I listened to a co-worker talking about Linux. I pretended to know what he was talking about, and I did, to a point. I knew it was an operating system, but not much more than that. I was interested, though. He suggested that a newbie might do well with Red Hat Fedora. But I was a Windows user, and I had no problem using it. It did everything I wanted it to, well, almost. I had a version of Nero, but it stopped working. Oh well, I didn't use it much any-how. And then I found CDBurnerXP Pro. It looked a little different than Nero, but it worked just fine. And it was freeware. This was my introduction to open source software — free to use, free to change, distribute, copy, free of restrictions, and free of cost. I liked that part. I also remember my son telling me of the things he was learning about computers. He also talked over my head, but as time went by, I read articles and realized, “that's what my son was telling me about. Now I under-stand!” That co-worker talked about learning OpenGL, and creating GUI's. That's nice. But wasn't Linux where you sat at a blank screen, typing instructions to make the computer do things? In the early days, it was. That was back when Windows 3.1 and DOS were the mainstream. Well, Linux matured, along with other operating sys-tems, most notably, Windows, and Mac OS X. But first of all, meet “Tux,” the penguin. He's the official mascot for all things Linux. If you feel adventurous enough to depart from the mainstream operat-ing systems, you might just grow to love this little guy. I did! So, what is Linux today? More accurately, GNU/Linux is the kernel or “engine” under the hood. Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, started the project just for himself, to do what he wanted it to. He was a student at Helsinki University at the time. His code base was an off-shoot from Unix. Friends were impressed with the kernel, and urged him to continue development. He did, and now, while he only wrote two percent of the modern day kernel, his team of developers continue to write code, improving the product to meet ever changing needs. The Linux kernel is really the heart of an operating system. But, add in the code libraries, some Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), a windowing client, a desktop environment and Graphic User Interfaces (GUIs), and “Voila!.” We have our Linux operating sys-tem. The code for all of this is different from Windows or Mac OS-X, and they are not interchangeable. Most Linux operating systems are released under the GNU General Public License - freeware. So, should you consider trying a Linux distro? Got a spare computer without an operating system? Linux is free. Linux doesn't get vi-ruses. Virus code doesn't execute in Linux. Linux never needs the hard drive defragmented. I've never seen a defragmentation program for Linux. Most desktops look sleek and elegant. Linux rarely crashes. Updates aren't thrust at you at inopportune times. You can leave your computer running for months at a time without it slowing down. You'll get a browser, an e-mail client, music player, movie player, a chat program, and office programs. Need a program? Go to the software download section. Pick and choose from the application list. It downloads, installs, and is ready to use without rebooting, legally, and at no cost. Listen to this radio promotion at http://www.heliosinitiative.org/sounds/linuxfinal.mp3

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huh …. Linux?, Part 3 of 3 By Dave Bartlett, Linux SIG Leader,

Sarnia Computer User Group, Ontario, Canada SCUG Report, June 2010

www.scug.ca linux (at) scug.ca I neglected to mention in previous articles, that this series on Linux was created on my Linux computer using OpenOffice Writer. Most Linux distros have OpenOffice included, or it is available to download from the repositories (add/remove software sources). You may wonder where Linux is already being used. If you follow the tech news, the cell phone industry introduced the Linux Android oper-ating system over a year ago, and it’s popularity has been gaining ever since. Critical computers onboard the International Space Station use Linux as the operating system. Why? Cheap, reliable, robust, and the systems run for months without crashes or problems. One man re-ported in the Linux Journal that his wife works in a dentist’s office. They didn’t want the staff to spend a lot of time maintaining com-puters. They installed a version of Linux that gives them all the tools the office needed—a word processor, bookings, accounting, printing receipts and records, everything they needed for the business. As the staff grew more accustomed to working with Linux, they installed Linux on their home computers, and loved it. There was no downtime with computer virus problems, corrupted files/applications, or slow-downs. The AVG antivirus company puts out a live CD with a Linux operat-ing system. You can download it free. It runs the AVG Free Edition of virus scanning and removal. Drop the live CD into your CD drive as you start the computer, and it boots from the disk, not the hard drive. It loads, gets the latest virus updates online, and scans the Windows hard drive for viruses when they are dormant, and can’t engage their concealment tactics. That’s right. Use Linux to fix Windows. If you tried installing Ubuntu using Wubi, as suggested last month, you tried a “hands on” Linux distro to take for a test drive. Ubuntu, or any of the derivatives, are good, but not my favourite distros. That said, I base my opinions on my experiences I’ve found that PCLinuxOS and Mint are very close to being the ideal desktop sys-tems for newcomers to Linux. Everything worked “out-of-the-box.” “It just worked” is a phrase I keep seeing, reading other peoples ex-periences. The Linux Journal ran a survey which asks, “Which Linux distro do you use…?” See http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/ which-linux-distribution-do-you-use-most-frequently-0#comment-349623 for some excellent replies from other people’s experiences. One of the very strong points that Linux can boast about is user sup-port. All the good distros have a “Forum” section on their web sites. Ask a question, and you’ll get a reply fairly quickly. People helping people works well. Some distros have good documentation, like User’s Guides and FAQ’s to help you get started. Most distros seem to have #IRC Chat channels for online support from other users, or ad-ministrators. I’ve used them all, and they’re a great help. I’m trying Überstudent right now. This is a fairly new distro that shows promise for newbies and students. It has a German origin, but one of the Mod-erators is in Florida. I’m active in the forums, learning, and helping others. I’ve only highlighted Linux as a desktop distro, so far. Linux is not limited to just the desktop. The normal desktop is a general purpose OS for surfing the net, using e-mail, creating text and spreadsheet documents, playing CD music, or

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parts. A younger son bought it cheaply online, and the person who assembled it pulled a fast one. Windows XP couldn't be updated and eventually, it crashed and wouldn't boot at all. I had old legitimate copies of Windows NT and 2000. If I installed either of them, some updates were available, but only up to a certain year. Support had been discontinued long ago. Wouldn't that leave him vulnerable to modern exploits? You know how kids are when they go surfing the net. When he abandoned it for a newer computer, it became my first dedicated Linux box. With Windows, you get planned obsolescence. Microsoft’s Windows XP support lifecycle ends April 8, 2014. Service Pack 2 support ends July 13, 2010. Service Pack 3 support continues until 2014. Then you have to buy a new OS, or run without support. This is their marketing strategy. It keeps you buying their products. You don't actually own the product. You only own a license to use the product. As we move toward 2014, it’s a great time to try Linux! Remember the television ads, “I am a PC...... and I am a Mac?” There was no third character saying, “I am Linux.” The Linux community doesn't make money selling the product. They don't have funding for mass marketing. Linux relies on word of mouth and User Groups, so they're not gaining media attention and popularity. I believe that Linux is a superior operating system, but the market share is under 5%. How-ever, it is growing, gaining support faster outside North America. There is a radio station in Arizona with a weekly Linux show, Gutsy Geeks, promoting Linux. Listen to some of their interesting podcasts.

Linux development is global. Developers may be large companies, small private groups who collaborate online, or individuals. There are four main Linux OS sources that go back to the 1990's. Red Hat is a commercial Linux distro, available to lease only, at $80 per year and up. Debian (started by Ian Murdoch and his girlfriend, Deb) is another longstanding branch which is now a large organization. Slackware is perhaps the oldest, and Gentoo is one of the newer branches. Each branch has its faithful followers; each branch has also spawned dozens, even hundreds, of newer distros. Linux distros don't compete with one another. They may actually help each other.

With more than 500 active Linux dis-tros, where should you start? Here's a great, safe way! Are you running Win-dows 98, 2000, XP or Vista? Try Ub-untu in a special way. Go to the Wubi website - http://wubi-installer.org/,

download and run the Wubi installer. Wubi installs like any other program to your hard drive. You'll need 13 Gigs of free space. On the installer window, click the down-arrow where it says, “Desktop Envi-ronment.” It shows Ubuntu by default, but you can choose Kubuntu, Xubuntu, or Mythbuntu. Wubi will download the distro, install it, and when you reboot your computer, you choose Windows or Ubuntu. It isn't my intent here to tell you all about Ubuntu. Go ahead, explore it. Check it out. See the Ubuntu web site for more information. http://www.ubuntu.com/ When you decide you no longer want Ubuntu on your computer, uninstall it like you would any program, and it's gone. Linux, — more than an operating system...... It’s an adventure! (--to be continued)

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These distros are available from links at DistroWatch http://distrowatch.com/ to download. Burn the downloaded ISO file to a CD or DVD. You must burn the file as an ISO image from the menu selection of your burning program, or it will not work. PCLOS and Mint offer live CD/DVD ISO’s that will boot into the operating sys-tem with the CD in the disk drive when you start your computer. This would make a good summer season computing adventure. Think about forming a Linux special interest group in the fall. I envi-sion people assembling with their computers for hands on demos and sharing their experiences. It’s the best way to learn. Dave…….

watching DVD’s. There are also specialized distros. There are home theatre distros that specialize in home entertainment. SOHO distros have the programs already included for Small Office/ Home Office work. There are Server distros that cater to home networks, or even web site storage and hosting. I’ve explored the home pages of distros that have very professional music studio applications such as multi-track recording and editing for music production. VideoLinux is a PCLinuxOS-based distribution with a focus on DVD backups, video encoding and transcoding, ups, video encoding and transcoding, DVD authoring, format conversion and pretty much anything else you want to do with video. Scientific Linux is aimed at global university com-munication, sharing research and reports for graduate students and faculty. Überstudent started out to provide high school students with an OS geared to their needs. My point? Linux is not just a toy, or some sideline entertainment option for geeks. It’s mainstream, and it’s now! It’s exciting, and it’s an adventure! I also believe that Linux is the way of the future for desktop and lap-top users. Linux can breathe new life into User Groups for years to come. Get started, try a live CD!

The PCLOS distro is a good one for dipping your toes into Linux wa-ters. It includes all the applications a beginner would want. It includes codecs and features you expect . It should work out-of-the-box for most motherboards, wireless cards, and graphics cards. The same thing applies to Mint. PCLOS is based on the Mandriva branch, while

Mint comes from the Debian people. The repositories may contain different applications, but they should both offer the mainstream selec-tions. You should have no problem finding what you want. If you are using an older computer with limited RAM and processor speed, you will likely get the best results from choosing the LXDE or XFCE versions from either distro. If you have newer, faster systems, choose Gnome or KDE versions. If you have a 64-bit machine, choose the 64-bit version, if available, and it will run even faster. Try both Gnome and KDE. Explore the differences. Most people learn they like one or the other better, and stick with it.

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Safe Mode By Bill Pryor, Internet SIG Leader,

Lehigh Valley Computer Group, Pennsylvania www.lvcg.org bpryor (at) ptd.net

Windows Safe Mode available in Win 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, Win 7 allows you oftentimes to boot up Windows when you can not normally run Windows at all. For example, if you can’t run Windows at all, upon boot up, press F8 to get Windows to boot in the Safe Mode. In Safe Mode just the essential programs and files are loaded; this allows you to remove some spyware, adware, and viruses that cannot be removed in Nor-mal Mode. For example one of our office networked computers last week picked up a virus type program that would not allow XP to run at all! Every time an .EXE file needed to run, nothing would happen. Click on any icon to run, nothing would happen. The system was com-pletely dysfunctional in the Normal Mode. Nothing would run at all! Not wasting time in Google, or the listed “miracle ways” of solving this “sneak attack” by all the “virus experts” and their companies which are often really tiresome to read in all their verbosity. I just booted up by pressing F8, went into the XP Safe Mode. In the Safe Mode the anticipated programs ran fine, and at that point, I ran my Malware Bytes program which did not respond or run in the Normal Mode, but in this Safe Mode, Malware Bytes ran fine and picked up the Hijack.exe virus and quarantined it! I then rebooted the com-puter normally and everything ran fine again! (Not sure of the Sys-tem Restore points in this instance, I elected not to use System Re-store to save current essential data, and only ran the current Malware Bytes). No special programs to download, no special techniques to use, no mystifying and complicated definitions to comprehend. Just use your computer and programs in Safe Mode. Pragmatically it is that simple! In another instance I had an old Sony VIAO laptop that would boot up, and you would see the Desktop, and the whole screen would be frozen making the laptop really unusable. In this instance, I booted up in Safe Mode as I explained above, and removed a corrupt startup program that was in the Start Up folder. And now the whole laptop runs like new! Problems, let’s not over complicate, or get excited, or look at the long faluten’ explanations that most people love to hear from the mouths of virus experts. Just PRESS F8 and get into the Safe Mode! Use this simple procedure in a simple way, and your computing life will be much easier!!

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3.5.11 and 3.6.8 and Thunderbird now sits at 3.1.1. However, Firefox went from 3.6.3 to 3.6.6 in a matter of four days, skipping version number 3.6.5 entirely. The thing that made folks most anticipate ver-sion 3.6.4 of Firefox is a new feature it has that allows a plug-in to crash but not take the browser down with it. This applies only to the Flash Player, QuickTime (from Apple) and Silverlight (from Micro-soft) plug-ins for now, but it might involve others in future versions of the browser. Mozilla has no plans to incorporate this feature into the 3.5 series of Firefox, however. As for the security updates, they plugged a variety of holes found in late May and early June in the browser. One in particular involved its JavaScript engine in both ver-sions 3.5 and 3.6. The only significant difference I could find between 3.6.4 and 3.6.6 of Firefox was a statement on the Release Notes page for Firefox 3.6.6 stating that 3.6.6 waits a longer period of time before ending a plug-in that has crashed. Firefox version 3.6.6 was released June 26, but at the end of July, Firefox was quickly updated twice in one week with the release of version 3.6.7 on July 20 and the release of version 3.6.8 on July 23. Version 3.6.7 was regularly scheduled and patched many privately reported bugs, but introduced another critical bug that garnered quite a bit of attention in the security community because the recent hackers’ convention during the last week of July. That bug was squashed in version 3.6.8, the current version. On the Thunderbird side of things, the release at the beginning of June, 3.0.5, had some usability improvements and four security bug fixes in it. Some of those bug fixes were in versions 3.5.10, 3.6.3 and 3.6.4 of Firefox. Thunderbird version 3.1 is focused on new features and usability improvements. It has a new toolbar that lets you sort your messages by search terms, tags, message age, by whether or not it has an attachment, and more. It also boasts faster searching and better handling of passwords, as well as having many preconfigured settings for the most popular e-mail providers, making setup that much easier. The latest version, 3.1.1, fixed the same variety of vulnerabili-ties that were patched in versions 3.6.7 and 3.5.11 of Firefox. Microsoft emergency patch On a final note, on Aug. 2, Microsoft was scheduled to release an out-of-band or emergency patch for a widely publicized vulnerability in the way Windows processes the little files that make up the shortcuts to programs and files that show up on your desktop and in the Start Menu in all versions of Windows currently in use, from Windows 2000 to Windows 7. A variety of attacks have already successfully been carried out, some aimed at computers that control industrial sys-tems in the manufacturing sector. Many infections have been against systems at small businesses and home users, simply carried out with the use of USB thumb drives left out in the open for folks to pick up and take home or back to their businesses. All that’s needed to get infected is to view the USB drive’s contents with Windows Explorer, the default for Windows. Microsoft developed a workaround, or temporary fix, but it left your desktop with a bunch of white spots where your icons were. Because of the number of folks affected by this bug, including high-profile clients, Microsoft decided to release this patch earlier than the regularly scheduled date for the month of August. If you have Automatic Updating enabled for Windows, you should have gotten it shortly after 10 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 2. However, this patch is not available to those running Windows 2000 nor to those running Windows XP Service Pack 2, both of which were retired from any and all support for security patches on July 14. That’s all for this time. Until next time, Safe and Happy Computing to all!

End of an era arrives for XP, Service Pack 2

By Bob de Violini, Member of the Channel Islands PCUG, California

August 2010 issue, The Outer Edge www.cipcug.org Rjddev (at) gmail.com

The end of an era has come for Windows XP, Service Pack 2, and it bears noting. One survey found that over one-third of the PCs in the firms surveyed were running Windows XP SP2. I’m sure that quite a few of you reading this are also running XP SP2 as well, and this warning is for you. As of July 14, the day after Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday, there will be no more security updates offered to anyone running XP SP2. However Microsoft will still offer phone, chat and e-mail support for those running obsolete Service Packs, but for a fee of $49 for chat and e-mail or $59 for phone support. These fees are on a per incident basis, unless you’ve already purchased another type of support contract. The latest Service Pack can be downloaded from the following Microsoft site for free: http://tinyurl.com/4qvth5. I short-ened the actual URL to save space. You will want a broadband con-nection, and a higher speed one at that. The file is the complete instal-lation (over 300 Megs in size), and by Microsoft’s estimation it would still take nearly an hour to download on a 768k DSL connection. As an alternative, you can go to the Windows Update site, which will download a much smaller file initially. That file will then scan your system and download and install only the updates you actually need in order to bring your installation up to the full XP SP3. Support for XP SP3 will go until April 2014. As a reminder to those running Windows Vista, if you don’t have any Service Pack installed, your support ran out back on April 13 of this year, so you need to grab a copy of SP1 for Vista and install it. There are a few updates (2 or 3 depending on your individual situation) that you must install before you can success-fully install SP1 on Vista. Send me an e-mail at the address at the top of this article for more info and a link to a page Microsoft has espe-cially for those trying to get Vista SP1. Lots of patches in June Although I haven’t seen it labeled as such anywhere yet, June could be informally called “Patch Month,” with Microsoft releasing myriad patches (I counted 21 on each of my XP SP3 machines with MS Of-fice 2003 on one and 2007 on the other, and a number well into the teens for my laptop, which has Vista SP2 and Office 2007) as well as Adobe and Mozilla releasing their own patches. Adobe patched its Flash plug-in, bringing the version number up to 10.1.53.64, and Acrobat and Acrobat Reader versions 8 and 9, bring-ing them up to versions 8.2.3 and 9.3.3 respectively. The bugs in Flash, Acrobat and Acrobat Reader have been well publicized, so an update is in order. The update for Flash was released June 10, and the update for Acrobat and Acrobat Reader was released June 29. They are available here for Flash: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/; for those who can’t run version 10 of the Flash player, Adobe developed a patch for version 9, bringing it up to version 9.0.277.0, and it can be found here: http://www.adobe.com/go/kb406791. The update for Ac-robat and Acrobat Reader can be found here: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=10&platform=Windows. The updates are available by scrolling down just below the “Full Download” listing to the appropriate area of the “Updates/Programs” listing. Once there, select the version from under its heading and click on the link. These patches for Flash, Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Reader take the place of the normally scheduled July patches. Mozilla finally released updates to versions 3.5 and 3.6 of Firefox, and it updated Thunderbird as well, but in early June as opposed to nearly the end of the month for Firefox. The latest Firefox versions are the end of the story

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Still No Information I have not heard from the guy about a special offer on learning courses so I think its time to give up on it, even though he sent a message say-ing he would get back with me. I have some other items you might like so let’s get on with it. Use Your Smartphone For A Good Cause Check around and you’ll find there are many apps for your smart-phone that can be capable of getting you just about any information you want. A guy mentioned some interesting apps at a user group meeting the other night. I wrote about some of these smartphone apps a year ago, including this most important one, where are the closest restroom facilities? There is an app called Sit or Squat that will obtain that information for you using an intersection, address, or zip code, and perhaps your GPS information. It gives you maps and sometimes even a rating or review, and the app is free. It’s available for iPhone, Android, iPod Touch, or Blackberry.

<http://www.sitorsquat.com/sitorsquat/home/map>

Where Can I Find Lots of Smartphone Apps? < h t t p : / / l i b g u i d e s . h u n t i n g d o n . e d u / c o n t e n t . p h p ?pid=114069&sid=1110744> has many smartphone apps on it. The apps are listed and the name is the link to get it, and there are plenty of them. I ran across it while looking for an app called Mo’s Nose and saw plenty of apps for many categories. Mo’s Nose was there, but no link to get it. It is a good app to help a person who travels with a pet. At any rate, that site will keep you busy checking things out.

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From The DealsGuy

by Bob (The Cheapskate) Click Greater Orlando Computer Users Group

October 2010

I finally posted my article about “Creating a Trade Show” on my Web site, but it is a bit lengthy for newsletters. You can read it there or download it. It’s in MS Word format. If you want it in another format, let me know. Lets Talk Drive Letters Last month I told you about the problem I had with a flash drive that kept coming up as E for its drive-letter, in spite of there being no D-drive at the time, but I finally ended up going to the Control Panel to change its drive-letter to the one I needed. I had simply retrieved a file from it the night before, but since D was in use at the time so, that flash drive was temporarily E while I retrieved the file. Was it just some type of coincidence? The drive letter assignment procedure I wrote about in my column was mentioned as a show-and-tell at the user group meeting here and I wondered about using that same procedure to get a flash drive to al-ways be a certain drive letter without other drive letters next to it be-ing in use. I’d like that when I’m backing up data. I tried using the drive letter assignment steps in the Control Panel to give a completely different flash drive the letter F to see what it would do. I don’t nor-mally have a D-drive because I set up my DVD/CD ROM drive as Z so it doesn’t interfere with other drive letter assignments for whatever I’m doing, such as installing software. After going through the drive-letter assignment with the new flash drive, I removed the flash drive from its USB plug, waited a minute, then plugged it back in to see. Even with no D, E, or G drive, that flash drive appeared as F, just what I had assigned it. However, the member who mentioned doing the show-and-tell also told me that when that same thing happened to him, the flash drive he was working with somehow adopted a drive letter out of sequence, but only on that certain computer, so I took the one I had just designated as F to an-other desktop machine and plugged it into the USB slot. It came up as D and not the F I had assigned it on the other computer. There is a thought for being creative with your flash drive. Rebooting the com-puter I assigned the drive-letter on had no affect and the flash drive still came up as F. Using a different USB plug also made no differ-ence, it still came up as F. My curiosity was satisfied by my proofreader who proceeded to ex-plain it better. He said that when the computer’s user inserts a flash drive, the machine tries to assign it the next available drive-letter. However, in my case, I deliberately assigned that drive a specific drive-letter. In this case, my machine will remember the drive and the assignment. It will try to give it that drive-letter and also try to reserve that letter for that drive in the event of other drive-letter assignments; in other words, it would skip that letter. He said many computer users prefer that method of flash drive-letter assignment. He also stated that the same scenario applies for other types of plug-in drives. When you plug a flash drive into the USB port without the drive-letter having been manually assigned, the machine might try to remember that drive letter automatically assigned when you use that flash drive again, thus the incidental drive-letter assignment.

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From the Editor’s desk Hi PACCsters!

Must Read List! “Mastering HD Video with your DSLR” by H. Kraus and U. Stein-mueller, a book review by B. Kittle. Thank you Bud ! “huh …. Linux?, Part 1, 2 and 3” by Dave Bartlett, tied all together for your convenience. There is enough “huh” for a light bulb! “Safe Mode” by Bill Pryor. Take his advice, do Save! “End of an era arrives for XP, SP2” by B. de Violini, you know THEY are trying to end the Win XP, right? “From The Deals Guy” by Bob Click. Take Bob’s hint and go read his Article “Creating a Trade Show” at http://www.dealsguy.com/ . Read everything. Keep your mind sharp! I’ll see all you at the September 19, 2010 meeting. PJK

Where’s The Wi-Fi? Many people want to check the Net for E-mail or something, so why not use Wi-Fi Finder’s online database to get connected? You can start checking the Web site to find out more information. It tells you whether they are free or paid services. This database by JiWire will in-clude maps with its listings. The app is free and runs on iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android.

<http://www.jiwire.com/iphone>.

What If You’re Sick? MPassport should be good for that. It will help you find the closest medical help in any category you might need. Want a doctor, MPass-port will find one. Got a toothache, it knows about dentists too. How about a hospital, or just a pharmacy, MPassport will help. It also gives you medical translations. It’s useful in over 20 cities worldwide, not exactly an impressive number, but its growing. It’s free and runs on the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. Find out more at:

<http://www.mpassport.com/>. I know there are tons of other Smartphone Apps for just about any-thing you need. I can’t vouch for any of them because I’m not smart enough to have a Smartphone. How smart is that? However, before I change to another topic, here is one that Mike Ungerman mentioned to the user group members here that might interest you if you like to tinker.

(Continued from page 7)

Please change your address of PACC Web site to the following URL: http://pacc.apcug.org

If you’re creative and tired of playing someone else’s creations on your phone, go to <http://makeownringtone.com/> where you can make your own ring-tone free. Thanks Mike, I think many of my readers would love to create their own personalized ring-tone, al-though I don’t recommend any cussing in your creation. Actually, I personalized my own cell phone with the use of its own voice recognition feature. Now when my wife calls me on my cell, my phone announces “It’s Joann.” I can’t see inside of my flip phone before I open it and take the call. However, I know who it is before I take if off my belt and you know I always answer with a “happy” voice when she calls. Don’t tell anybody, but I discovered how to do it accidentally. That item was not in the manual. Archive Your Computer Drivers To Be Sure You Have Them If you find it necessary to reformat your hard drive and reinstall eve-rything, you did well if you thought ahead to have a backup of your drivers. DriverMax is a free program that allows you to archive your currently installed drivers, and if you ever need to reinstall them, you can do the installations all at once. No need trying to find the version you “were” using before you wiped your drive. A friend said this is the program to have if you like to reinstall Windows occasionally, or tweak your installed drivers, however, that’s not my bag.

<http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/> is where to find it and they also have a pay version. That's it for this month. I’ll have some more new product announce-ments on my Web site that didn’t offer discounts. Meet me here again next month if your editor permits. This column is written to make user group members aware of special offers or freebies I have found or arranged, and my comments should not be interpreted to encourage, or discourage, the purchase of any products, no matter how enthused I might sound. Bob (The Cheapskate) Click <bobclick at bellsouth dot net>. Visit my Web site at <http://www.dealsguy.com>.

the end of the story

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If you would like to become PACC HELP LINE volunteer inform the editor by sending e-mail to: pacccomm@aol.com

NAME COMPUTER AREA PHONE TIME

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PITTSBURGH AREA COMPUTER CLUB P.O. BOX 6435 PITTSBURGH PA 15212-6435

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: September 19, 2010

The Pittsburgh Area Computer Club (PACC) holds its meetings the THIRD Sunday of each month. The next meeting will be in room 311 at Point Park University, W

ood St. and Blvd. of the Allies. The doors open at 11:00 am and close at 4:30 pm. Bring your PC! NOTICE THE EXPIRATION DATE ON THE MAILING LABEL OF YOUR NEW

SLETTER. You won’t get your newsletter if you let your membership expire. Renew your Memberships !!! Send a check or money order for $25 made out to ‘PACC’ and addressed to Treasurer, PACC, P.O. Box 6435, Pittsburgh, PA 15212-6435. Classified ads. Buy, Sell, Trade. Members may place free ads (up to 5 lines). Articles should be prepared in plain ASCII text. W

ITHOUT formatting. Deadline for articles is the 25th of the month. Send them to P.J. Konecny, P.O. Box 557, Monroeville, PA 15146. PACC hom

epage can be found at: http://pacc.apcug.org

PAC

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Hardware-Vishnu Agrawala 724-612-1443

MS Publisher - P. J. Konecny 795-075

Windows - P. J. Konecny

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NEXT PACC MEETING IS ON SEPTEMBER 19, 2010