Tame That Monster - WindowWalk Computer Education As we roll into our short but very sweet summer, we'd like to give you some AVG upgrade info and news for Eudora users. Enjoy the warm weather and summer fun!

AVG Anti-Virus Upgrade: If you use the free AVG anti-virus program to protect your computer, you were required to upgrade to the latest version by May 31, 2008. The upgrade gives you free AVG Anti-Spyware integrated with the Anti-Virus program so you will only have one update to keep your computer protected. If you haven't upgraded yet, please do so. The old version will no longer receive updates which means that you will be at risk for new threats. Call us if you have any questions or need some help with your upgrade.

Eudora Email: As we mentioned in previous issues, the Eudora email program is no longer supported by its developer, Qualcomm, but it lives on as a Mozilla open source project. If you are using classic Eudora you will find that the AVG upgrade causes strange error messages to appear periodically. These messages can be safely closed and do not seem to affect the functioning of the program. However, as the program gets older there will be more conflicts with new technologies which means more headaches for its users. As much as we hate to say it, it may be time to switch to another email program - at least until the new Eudora program is working better. Popular email programs that import your messages from Eudora are Thunderbird and Outlook Express.

Don't miss the 50+ Expo this weekend, June 13 and 14, at the Exhibition Park in Halifax. We invite you to stop by the Serving Seniors booth to meet some great people and learn how our group can help you. Serving Seniors is a group of professionals and businesses who are dedicated to being a trusted resource for people over 50.

WindowWalk Computer Education offers on-site courses and hourly training ranging from the basics to advanced "power user" features. We pride ourselves in making your computer training a fully personalized, comfortable, and convenient learning experience.

Visit on the web, send an email , or call 830-9336 to learn more about our effective computer training or to give us your comments and suggestions.

Small Business Owners: WindowWalk Computer Education specializes in QuickBooks and Simply Accounting training to help you make useful and timely business decisions. Take advantage of our QuickBooks ProAdvisor's 20+ years of small business accounting and teaching experience.

Beginners: Our Windows Foundation course gives you all the basics you need to use your computer. Learn about the internet and email with us and raise your comfort level quickly to get you out exploring cyberspace on your own.

We want everyone to have a more comfortable experience with their computer. Call us today for a free consultation or assessment .

WindowWalk Computer Education is proud to serve you as a QuickBooks ProAdvisor and as a member of:

Serving Seniors - Your Resource of Dedicated Professionals
Metro Business Association
Centre for Women in Business

TECH EXPERT

So You Think You Need To Upgrade Your Computer

IBM's Roadrunner breaks supercomputer record
Posted Monday, June 9, 2008
by Thomas Clayburn

The U.S. Department of Energy and IBM on Monday announced that the new Roadrunner supercomputer is the first such machine capable of executing more than 1 quadrillion (1,000 trillion) floating point operations per second, a computation rate otherwise known as 1 petaflop.

The $100 million machine is about twice as fast as the current supercomputing record holder, IBM's Blue Gene system at Lawrence Livermore National Lab.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman said that Roadrunner will provide calculations for nuclear security and scientific research.

The machine will be housed at the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Los Alamos National Laboratory. Occupying 6,000 square feet and weighing 500,000 pounds, it's not likely to be moved to satisfy redecorating whims.

IBM calls Roadrunner a hybrid supercomputer. It combines 12,960 IBM Cell chips, which power Sony's PlayStation3 video game machine, with 6,948 dual-core AMD Opteron chips, and 80 terabytes of memory. It runs Red Hat Linux.

IBM characterizes Roadrunner's thirst for energy (3.9 megawatts) as miserly, noting that at 376 million calculations per watt, it's likely to rank at the top of the Green 500 list of energy efficient supercomputers, when that list is updated later this month. IBM's Blue Gene holds first place on the February 2008 Green 500 list, with 357.23 million calculations per watt.

It would take 100,000 of today's fastest laptops -- which would reach 1.5 miles into the sky if you're the stacking sort -- to equal Roadrunner's computational power. Engineering difficulties, zoning issues, and insurance costs would probably preclude the creation of such a laptop tower, however.

According to IBM, supercomputing power has increased 1,000 fold in the past 10 years. In what can be seen either as a swipe at Detroit or as pride in Moore's Law, IBM observes that if the internal combustion engine improved at a similar rate, cars would be getting 200,000 miles to the gallon.

This article was submitted by Andy Butler of Compatible Computer Services; (902) 420-1212. CCS provides sales and service support for PCs and Restaurant & Retail Point of Sales systems and develops client-specific custom-built business software applications.

SURFIN' SAFARI

Some Useful and Interesting Web Sites

Picnik	Editing your photos just got easier, thanks to Picnik. Upload a photo or import online photos from flickr, Picasa, and others; then real-time online manipulation tools let you crop, sharpen, adjust exposure and color, and more. Add some effects, such as doodles or infrared (try the "gooify" feature for some true wackiness), and then share them with your friends. A new Firefox extension adds an "Edit in Picnik" option to the right-click menu and lets you take screen-captures and edit them in Picnik.
Top Secret Recipes	Bring the recipes of your favorite restaurants into your kitchen with Todd Wilbur's Top Secret Recipes. Wilbur clones the secret recipes of popular restaurants and makes them available to you, letting you work up your favorite menu items in the comfort of your own home. Also, check out "The Sleuth" for secrets and lore about food.
Zamzar	Before Zamzar, you had to download a utility-or two or three-to be able to convert file formats. But with Zamzar, you can convert anything-images, documents, and videos-and have it e-mailed to your inbox in four quick steps without downloading a thing. A new feature lets you convert files from URLs, which means you can save YouTube videos to your hard drive without breaking a sweat.

WHAT DOES IT DO?

SnagIt

Take a “snapshot” of anything on your PC screen. Send it, store it, turn it into a detailed graphic, find it later. SnagIt makes it easy.

SnagIt is a screen capture program that helps you create great-looking graphics while keeping things simple. A screen capture (sometimes called a screen shot) is a copy of the screen's contents that can be saved as a graphics file and copied into a document or graphics editor.

Capture your digital lifestyle. Capture anything you see on the screen. Edit and combine those captures. Share them via your favorite applications. Organize and find them again later. The more you use SnagIt, the more ways you'll find to use it. Want to get a laugh? Add a speech balloon to that photo of your cat and fire it off in an instant message. Need to make an impression at work. Capture that sales chart and point out important details with a sleek-looking arrow. SnagIt can turn a simple screen shot into a powerful information graphic. SnagIt is versatile, yet surprisingly simple.

Learn more and try SnagIt

SAY WHAT!?

Sound Like a Computer Wizard

Icon	Icons are a visual representation of something on your computer. For example, a blue "e" on your screen most likely represents the Internet Explorer program. The folders you see on your desktop or in open windows are icons. The files that you see in those folders are also icons, even the recycle bin is an icon. Click or double-click an icon to open the file or program which it represents.
Malware	Short for "malicious software," malware refers to software programs designed to damage or do other unwanted actions on a computer system. In Spanish, "mal" is a prefix that means "bad," making the term "badware," which is a good way to remember it (even if you're not Spanish). Common examples of malware include viruses, worms, trojan horses, and spyware. You can install anti-virus and anti-spyware utilities on your computer that will seek and destroy the malicious programs they find on your computer.
OCR	Stands for "Optical Character Recognition." This technology allows you to scan a document into your computer that can be edited later. When a page of text is scanned into a computer without OCR software, the file becomes a graphic or picture. However, an OCR program can convert the characters on the page into a text document that can be read by a word processing program.

HARDWARE HELPER

Top 5 Inkjet Printers

Epson Stylus Photo R1900

CNET Rating: 8.2 Excellent

13-inch-wide photo printer is great for scrapbookers who want to print with pigment ink, or advanced photographers who want to print large, but can't justify the expense of a pro-level printer.

Specs: Photo printer - Ink-jet - Color, Super B (13 in x 19 in), Wired, 1 min/page, 1.5 min/page, PC, Mac, USB, Direct print USB

Price: $496 - $576

Canon Pixma iP100

CNET Rating: 8.0 Excellent

It isn't cheap compared to standard printers, but the Canon Pixma iP100 has the highest resolution available in the mobile printer market and prints at an impressive speed to boot. If you simply must have a printer with you at all times, the iP100 should be the do-it-all at your side.

Specs: Photo printer - Ink-jet - Color, 4 in x 6 in, Wired, Wireless, 20 pages/min, 14 pages/min, PC, Mac, USB, Infrared

Price: $219 - $266

Canon Pixma iP3500

CNET Rating: 7.4 Very Good

The Canon Pixma iP3500 inkjet printer is a great choice for home users who have basic print needs but still want good-looking prints.

Specs: Photo printer - Ink-jet - Color, A4 (8.25 in x 11.7 in), Legal (8.5 in x 14 in), Wired, 25 pages/min, 17 pages/min, PC, Mac, USB, Direct print USB

Price: $61 - $109

Canon Pixma iP4500

CNET Rating: 7.1 Very Good

The Canon Pixma iP4500 is a bit too expensive for basic home users, but those who do a bit more printing than the occasional e-mail and map will be happy with its speed and quality.

Specs: Photo printer - Ink-jet - Color, Legal (8.5 in x 14 in), Wired, PC, Mac, USB

Price: $89 -$129

Canon Pixma iP2600 Photo

CNET Rating: 7.0 Very Good

The Canon Pixma iP2600 is an excellent option for buyers looking to print their personal photos and text documents. We wish it had external ports for direct image uploading (although we're not surprised it doesn't), but you'll be more than satisfied with this printer's ability to deliver quality photos at a low price.

Specs: Photo printer - Ink-jet - Color, Legal (8.5 in x 14 in), Letter A Size (8.5 in x 11 in), Wired, 22 pages/min, 17 pages/min, PC, Mac, USB

Price: $45 - $59

To read the full reviews at CNET, click here.

SOFTWARE SEARCH

Firefox 2

Mozilla Firefox 2 web browser builds on the strength and the security demonstrated in Firefox 1.5 by adding several new features. Like Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2 includes built-in antiphishing, but overall, Firefox 2 is much better than Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. Firefox 2 offers forward-looking features, such as Live Titles, as well as practical here-and-now tools, such as search engine suggestions, session restore, and inline spell-checking.

You can download Firefox 2 for free, and unlike Internet Explorer 7, Firefox is available on a variety of operating systems: Windows, Mac, and Linux. Again unlike IE 7, Firefox 2 does not require that you shut down antivirus protection nor does it perform a system reboot during installation.

Tabs have long been a part of Firefox. Now, with Firefox 2, you can open any number of tabs, rearrange them, and reopen a previously closed tab. With another feature carried over from Firefox 1.5, you can also save active tabs as a bookmark so that you can open the entire set of tabs at a later time. New in Firefox 2 is session restore; if Windows crashes and you have several tabs open in Firefox at the time, you can now relaunch Firefox with all the tabs intact.

Firefox 2 also gives you the ability to correct your spelling mistakes online, just like using a word processor. This is great for typing blogs or posting to a newsgroup. Once you have access to inline spell-checking, you won't want to surf the Web without it.

Possibly the coolest new feature is Live Titles, formerly Microsummaries, which allows Web sites to stream updated data to your bookmarks. You can add the Live Titles functionality to the Merriam-Webster dictionary site, for example, and once you have done so, when you bookmark a page, you can choose the Live Title option to display the word of the day in your bookmark. When you drop down the bookmark menu or open the bookmark side panel, you'll see the Merriam-Webster logo followed by the word of the day. For news sites such as the BBC's, you'll see the latest headline. Think of Live Titles as RSS-like feeds for your otherwise static bookmarks.

Security enhancements within Firefox 2 continue. And Mozilla remains very responsive to fixing its vulnerabilities, pushing out updates within a few days of public notice. Microsoft, on the other hand, parses out its vulnerability fixes a little at a time.

There are many enhancements within Firefox 2, making it a worthy upgrade for existing users and a fine introduction for new users. Firefox is truly innovative, yet it's also very practical for everyday use.

CNET Rating: 8.3 Excellent

The Good	Firefox 2 adds built-in antiphishing protection, search engine suggestions, session restore, inline spell-checking, and Live Titles; the browser is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux; localized versions available in many different languages.
The Bad	The Firefox 2 uninstall leaves behind a mess; some 1.5 version add-ons will break in 2.0; there are no thumbnail previews of open tabs; the browser doesn't yet pass the Web Standards Project Acid2 test.
The Bottom Line	Mozilla Firefox 2 is a winner, beating Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on security, features, and overall cool factor and deserving our Editors' Choice award.

Read the full CNET review

WEB WARY

Identity Theft

Identity Theft Often Begins the Same Place Charity Does -- at Home

Everyone also seems to be aware that electronic identity theft -- through email, online banking or using credit cards online -- costs consumers millions of dollars every year, and the numbers are escalating.

The consequences of becoming a victim of identity fraud include: having a scammer open up accounts in your name (and running up debts to those accounts), losing your job, being denied insurance, or even being arrested for crimes you didn't commit.

However, what you may NOT be aware of is that fully 50% of reported identity fraud is perpetrated by relatives, friends and neighbors, or acquaintances of the victim.

That's a truly amazing statistic. And whereas many people think that computer crimes account for most identity theft, computer crimes, in fact, only accounted for 11.6% of all identity theft where the cause was known in 2004.

According to a survey done by Javelin Strategy & Research, these 'close encounters' by friends and family are costing much more money -- and time to resolve -- than 'stranger' fraud would.

Here's an example: the median loss from phishing scams is $2,320. But when the identity theft is a result of fraud by family and friends, the median loss is $15,607!

Prevention Tips

1. Don't give ANYONE access to your PIN #s.

2. Don't leave financial mail or statements lying around your house or your car -- you'd be appalled at how much information can be gleaned from your checkbook, bank statements, credit card account statements and tax records.

3. When you are discarding things, shred any personal documents that may contain personal or financial information.

4. As much as possible, sign up for electronic banking and account monitoring, and then review your accounts regularly. Any fraud will be detected sooner -- and more easily -- than if you wait for monthly mail.

5. Review your credit report, bank accounts and credit card bills frequently. Self detection is the best way to find out about identity fraud early.

For more info on identity theft, visit Scambusters.

TIZZIE'S TIPS AND TRICKS

Adding Drop-Shadows to Text in Word

You already know that Word allows you to quickly and easily add borders to your paragraphs. You can take this one step further by adding drop shadows to your text. A drop shadow is a type of border that is wider on two sides than it is on the other two. The result, especially when printed, is that the bordered paragraph looks like it is raised above the rest of the document. To add a drop shadow to a paragraph, follow these steps:

1. Position the insertion point in the paragraph to which you want the drop shadow added.

2. Select the Borders and Shading command from the Format menu. Word displays the Borders tab of the Borders and Shading dialog box.

3. Select the Shadow option from the Preset area at the left side of the dialog box.

4. Select a line weight from the Width drop-down list.

5. Click on OK.

Send Tizzie YOUR Question!

Phone: (902) 830-9336
Email: learn@windowwalk.com
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