Techreluctant.com

Okay, it’s actually Saturday now but better late than never. Coldplay has decided to give their fans a thank you and is providing their live album, LeftRightLeftRightLeft, for free to download (or free CDs at their concerts). This offer is good until their last show of 2009. I’m downloading it as I type this. Enjoy!

When you get a new computer you often get a free trial of an office software suite such as Microsoft’s Office. That’s a suite of tools like a word processor, spreadsheet program, slideshow maker, and database program. Once your trial is up, though, or if you just decide you want to buy an office software suite, you have to cough up some money to buy the programs, and it’s not going to be cheap. I checked out a couple of my regular tech shopping spots today and at Staples.ca the price of Microsoft Office 2007, Standard edition is $496.95 (the Ultimate edition is $899.94). At Futureshop.ca, just the word processor Word is $309.99 Yikes! But here’s the good news. Here’s the amazing news. You can get a complete suite of such software, including a word processor, for absolutely free. It’s called OpenOffice.org.

Now, as with a lot of free things, there are certain limitations you must accept, like that the word processing program, Writer, can open Microsoft Office 2007 files but can’t save them in the Office 2007 format. So, if you do a lot of collaboration on files with others who use MS Office then it might  not be for you. But for most tech-reluctants, who just want to be able to type up a letter now and then, or maybe make a simple spreadsheet, OpenOffice.org is a fantastic, and free option.

Freecycle is one of those things that is not really a technological thing but would be impossible without technology. At its heart, it is people sharing and helping each other out. The Freecycle network is made up of 4,734 groups with 6,680,000 members all over the world. Its mission is clear, to keep stuff you don’t need anymore out of the landfill and into the hands of someone who’d like to have it. The old truism one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure is a truism for a reason. And so Freecycle was started.

It’s pretty simple. You sign up for a group in your area, you peruse the group for things people are giving away that you might be interested in and if you have something you’d like to part with and think someone else can use, you can post about that on the group. The one in my area, for instance, on one random day I chose, had a dinner table that sits 4-6 which was offered and picked up, a scanner and computer monitor offered and picked up, somoene who was looking for an office chair, and another person who was looking for an old crimping iron (as in 80s hairstyle crimping iron). It keeps these things out of the dump and someone gets to use the things you may just throw away. Or  it may be the perfect chance to get rid of the crimping iron down in that box in your basement. We’re all cleaning up around these days and getting out our summer stuff so maybe there are some things you’d like to offer up. If so, check out Freecycle.org.

Most of us who use the computer for anything from work to just emailing, tend to type certain phrases over and over. And if you like to do things the easy way, like I do, then Texter is a fantastic tool to help you with this. You can setup Texter to type out any phrase you want by basically setting up your own hotkeys. It stays in your Windows system tray to save you lots of trouble whenever you want.

Setting up a new “hotstring” is easy. Just press the little Plus Sign then put the string of characters you want to use as your shortcut in the hotstring area, then enter the text you want to use to replace that string and the trigger for that string. Now, the trigger part is very important. You have a choice of triggers: Enter, Space, Tab, or Instant. Instant means that that string will instantly be replaced with the text you’ve set up for it. This is where you have to be careful because unless you have some bizarre string of characters set up, you could accidentally replace a simple word with a big, long phrase (my friend Trudy has a funny story about doing just that, although, not with Texter, and I’ll ask her to drop by and fill you in on the details, so check the comments).

I have a hotstring set up to replace tr+Tab with “techreluctant.com”. There, I just did it and saved my poor fingers all that work. Texter also comes with a universal spelling auto-correct which is enabled by default (you can turn it off by going to Tools–>Preferences) and is even set up to make a sound when it replaces text or does a spelling auto-correct (which you can turn off the same way). I know it might be hard to understand all this as it’s written so check out the  short video of Texter above and for more details and ideas of what to do with it, the longer video below.

Okay, so I’ll be honest. I should call this one free for most. I’m telling you about a great dictionary and thesaurus that will reside in your system tray (that place in the lower right corner of your screen with all the icons in it) and can be accessed in one click or integrates with program like Microsoft Word. It’s called WordWeb and there is a pro version and a free version. The free version is available to you as long as you satisfy their licensing conditions. And they are a bit different from most licensing conditions. WordWeb is free to you as long as you take no more than two commercial flights per year. Any more than that and they ask you to use the free version as a 30 day trial which you should uninstall in 30 days and pony up the money for the Pro version.I have been using WordWeb for many years and many different versions and I love it. It is one of the most convenient programs I’ve ever used. Like I said, it is integrated with MS Word and can be used with many common programs. If you highlight a word in most programs and right-click on it while holding down the Ctrl button, it will give you the definition, synonyms, antoyms and a bunch of other stuff for that word. Couldn’t be easier. So check this one out, even if you’re a frequent flyer and it’s only free for 30 days.

Maybe nothing scares the tech-reluctant (or even the savviest of techies) than the thought of a virus on your computer. Antivirus software is a must-have on any windows computer and most new systems come with trial software, usually from McAfee or Symantec, installed. But what happens when that trial expires? You get messages popping up on your screen telling you that you are not protected and that your virus protection can no longer be updated. And maybe you let it slide because you figure you have most of the viruses covered and how many new viruses can they be coming up with anyway? Don’t kid yourself. New viruses are coming out daily. Just because they’re not all in the news, doesn’t mean they’re not out there. You have to stay updated and protected but luckily, there is a free and good antivirus program called AVG.

AVG comes in a free, basic version or if you feel you’d like more protection you can pay for the pro version. The free version comes with antivirus and antispam software and a few other perks. It’s easy to install, easy to use and checks for updates every 4 hours by default, so you’re always up to date. There’s no support from AVG Technologies with the free version but there is an AVG user forum where you can find help from fellow users for most problems.

There are other free antivirus softwares out there. I can’t tell you much about them. I can tell you that I’ve been using AVG free for a long time and that I often install it on the computers of friends and family who don’t have antivirus software. Of course, you could buy antivirus software too but, for me, AVG’s free antivirus software works just fine. You can download it here.

On Wednesday, I explained what a browser was and told you I’d be telling you about my favourite browser today. And here we are. My favourite browser is Firefox. I haven’t used Internet Explorer, except for work-related stuff, since I first found Firefox. The reasons  are many. For me, I like the tabbed sessions (where you can open multiple websites on tabs inside one browser window) and the fact that if Windows crashes for some reason, you can restart all those tabs just where you were; one-click bookmarks; built in search engine; and a built-in spell checker to mention a few. My two favourite reasons are safety and add-ons. Firefox comes with lots of safety features: anti-malware (to stop viruses, torjan horses, spyware and other Internet uglies); anti-phishing(which you know about because you read my post about phishing); popup blocker, and a download manager. But I think the top security feature might be that it’s not Internet Explorer. If you are someone who wants to make a virus and do maximum damage, you are going to target that virus for the most used browser around like, say, one that comes with Windows as Internet Explorer does. That doesn’t mean that Firefox is 100% safe and you’ll never get a virus, but I feel more secure when using Firefox.

Add-ons are probably the coolest thing about Firefox. There are thousands of them you can add to Firefox to do anything from opening all of your favourite websites in tabs within one browser with the click of one button to tracking how much time you spend surfing the net, to previewing web pages before you open them. Since add-ons can be developed by anyone (but they are tested as experimental first), you can find a huge variety of add-ons that will make your tech life much easier.

Now, some argue that Firefox is not as safe as Internet Explorer and Microsoft has adapted some of the great parts of Firefox for Internet Explorer (gasp, I know, hard to believe, hey?) and IE 8 was just released last week so it may even have more Firefox features on it, but I love the little fox. Maybe you will too, so if you’d like to try it click on the fox.

I am a note-taker. Blog ideas, to do lists, story ideas, website addresses, I open up Notepad on my computer and take notes about them all. At least I used to. I kept losing track of notes or having to leave my laptop and go to my desktop so I could email myself notes on that computer. Or, back when I worked at MUN as an IT Consultant, I would need notes I had on my computer at work when I was home or vice versa. I kept thinking there had to be a different way. I knew about Google Notebook but I didn’t really like it. Then I found Evernote. I am typing this in Evernote right now and then I’ll paste it in the blog. Evernote can be downloaded for either a PC or Mac so you can use it on your computer. But what I love about Evernote is that you can access it on the web and also on your mobile device (my iPod Touch for me). If you use the desktop version you can sync it to make sure you have access to all your notes, whether on your computer, the web or your mobile device. There’s also web clipping so you can save full web pages or just sections of them. I only use the web version because I can just pop open the web page and start writing my notes.

Evernote is free but there is a premium version too if you’d like more monthly storage and the ability to sync a number of different file types but I’m pretty sure tech-reluctants will be very happy with the free version. There are other free, similar programs out there like the previously mentioned Google Notebook, and UberNote, to name just two. But for me, Evernote has made my tech life simpler and more organized. I hope it does the same for you.

After I upgraded to Vista, I found that a lot of my software no longer worked on it. That inluded my very old version of photoshop. But I fiddle with photos a lot and need to resize them and stuff for webpages so, what’s a girl to do? On a complete shot in the dark I googled for a free photo editor, expecting lots of garbage programs full of spyware and God knows what else. To my happy surprise, I found a little gem called Paint.Net. It is completely free, although paypal donations are accepted if you find you really like it and use it a lot. Originally developed to be a replacement for Windows’ Microsoft Paint, the developers (as part of an undergraduate college senior design project) went on to create this “powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool”. I’ve loved using it. If you’re not sure about how to use it, there are great forums to help you with your questions and a web-based help section, both accessible from the Paint.Net’s Help section. I use it mostly for resizing and you can do that by going to Image–> Resize. But there is plenty more you can do with it. And best of all, it’s free. The one caveat is that you need to have the .Net framework installed on your computer. If you have Vista, don’t worry about it, it’s there already but if you have an earlier version of Windows, you can find the installation for most Windows version at Microsoft’s website. There is more about that at Paint.Net’s website and much more on their blog.

There are lots of fun things out there in the tech world. Sometimes they just tickle you and you’re glad you found them. They make life easier, more pleasant or just more fun. For me, one of these things is the Analogy screensaver by Jesson Yip. It’s clean, it’s simple, it’s free, and it’s just great to look at. Described as a digital, analog clock, the analogy screensaver will liven up your screen from the flying windows or the 3D text that you may have on there now. Yip says that the screensaver “…presents an everyday object with a fresh twist” and that is exactly what it does. What more could you want?