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Despite most ISP broadband setup instructions saying this there is still a misunderstanding somewhere when it comes to filters. So here is my Quick Tip attempt to help

When you are setting up broadband in your home of office you will be given some micro-filters, the amount depends on how generous your chosen ISP are feeling!

The reason you need these filters is because when you have broadband activated on your line you effectively have two signals coming down that one physical line. Therefore you need to separate (filter) them. The filter sends the analogue signal to the socket on the filter to which you plug in the phone or fax or old style dial-up modem. The other small socket has just the digital signal that is required by your broadband modem.

All that said there is still one important point to remember. You MUST have a filter on any phone in the house or office no matter if there is a modem connect to that socket or not! The reason for this is that otherwise the phone will interfere with the digital signal that your broadband modem requires to connect you to the internet and thus your internet will randomly drop out!

For some that seems obvious but for others hopefully that will help

This weeks quick tip is about how to work with files that have been emailed to you! Sounds simple to some but I am often asked “Where has my file gone? I definitely saved it…”. After a bit of digging I find that the user has just opened the file directly from the email and while the file has been saved, it is just not where they expect it to be!

If you open a file directly from an email and save it once open it will be saved in a Temp directory much like a Temporary Internet File.

So, here is the tip!

When you get sent a file through and you wish to open it to work with, please ensure that you save it to your documents folder or desktop first and then open it from there, rather than opening the file directly from your email client. Saving should be as easy as Right Clicking on the file and choosing Save As! But it will depend on your email client

We hope that helps!

This week..passwording your Outlook PST file. The best way to secure your computer, let alone your PST file is to have user accounts with passwords, particularly in XP and Vista. However, if you want to add another layer of protection to your emails, calendar and contact details then you can with the following steps

1. Right Click on PST folder name in outlook, unless you have changed it this will be called “Personal Folders”
2. Choose “Properties” from the menu
3. Choose “Advanced” at the bottom
4. Choose “Change Password”
5. Leave the old password blank and just enter the password you wish to use in the”New Password” and “Verify Password” boxes.
6. Done! Now when you open Outlook you will be asked for a password, just don’t forget what it is!

Hope that is useful.

My Quick Tip this week is related to Windows Vista users! With Vista being a new Operating System there is much many of us don’t know with the system, let alone new features and tools that are being made available for it!

So…My suggestion for this week is to check out the Windows Vista Magazine Blog! On the blog you will find news about recent Vista service pack releases, new tools that people have developed or come across, solutions to problems that people are having and much more.

Posts are made by three main groups The Magazine / Blog team, Partners and the Community. Filter out the ones you are not interested in to read just the good stuff!

This weeks quick tip is about problems connecting to wireless networks. There are so many possibilities here but the one I want to highlight this week becomes apparent when you are trying to connect to a wireless network that you know works!

Commonly a network SSID (name) does not get changed so if you buy a Netgear router chances are the SSID is NETGEAR. If you are like a number of people that connect to a number of different networks and already have a NETGEAR profile in your Wireless Access list and then go to connect to another one with the same SSID you will have problems connecting, it won’t ask for the WEP/encryption key and will just not connect! The reason being that it thinks it has the information to connect to that Network.

Answer: Remove the other profile from your list of Wireless Networks and then try to reconnect. If you regularly connect to 2 networks with the same SSID then try to get the SSID changed It is good practice to have a unique SSID anyway

Sat Nav is becoming a way of life and map reading a thing of the past, but for some (including myself) I have yet to cough up for a Sat Nav! Instead I tend to look up where I am going on Google Earth & Google Maps and then make my way Ok so you don’t have someone telling you that you have gone wrong and need to make a U-turn as soon as possible. But you do get a rough idea of what your destination looks like

Google Earth is a free download from earth.google.com and Google maps can be accessed from www.google.co.uk/maps, with Google maps you can also use it to calculate your route and print it off, much like the RAC and AA websites

So there we go…a poor mans Sat Nav! Not Ideal but it is good fun and a great time-waster using google earth to whizz around the tourist attractions of Singapore, Paris, NY, Rome….

This weeks Quick Tip is about resizing images, before uploading mass photos to my website or facebook I resize them. Yes I know facebook can do it for you but it is much quicker to resize them yourself and upload smaller files!

So, two quick ways:

1) VSO Image Resizer – using Windows 2000, XP & Vista

This one is as simple as select all the photos you want to resize, right click on the selection and choose VSO Image Resizer and then just select the size you want and the location of the files, then off it goes.

2) XP PowerToys Image Resizer – Windows XP Only

This one is just as simple, select the images, right click and choose Resize Images. Set your preferred options and off it goes.

One thing to note is that I would never overwrite the originals, always make copies!

Enjoy

Spam is a huge problem for everyone and while we will never get rid of all of it there are little things that help! So here are a few:

1. Never Respond to Spam, this tells the sender that your address is active.
2. Block Images: Spammers can tell if an image was displayed in an email so if possible turn off image display on your email client for suspect messages.
3. Don’t forward chain letters – it is just a way of collecting email addresses. For more information on this read here.
4. Don’t click links – much like the images, if you click the links it tells the spammer your address is active.
5. Never respond to an email requesting information – if a company like ebay or your bank requests for you to confirm your details then it is most probably a hoax. But if you want to be 100% sure then log-in to the respective site in your normal way (going direct to the site!) and then see if you have a message from them.

Well there we go, my top 5 quick tips on stopping or avoiding spam. I hope it helps

Our Quick Tip for this week: Multiple Homepages Open on Firefox Startup

To have multiple tabs open when you open firefox or when you press the Home button can be really useful and all you need to do is the following:

In Firefox go to Tools > Options
and in the ‘Homepage’ box enter the sites you want to open seperated by a bar | so you would have something like:

www.brandstar.co.uk | www.firefox.com | www.bbc.co.uk/sport

Then all 3 will open when you open Firefox