Newsletter: 24
Remember those passwords
It can be very frustrating trying to remember user names and passwords for all the different websites to which you have chosen to subscribe – never mind the time spent on filling in endless forms required by retail outlets and ticket agencies. There is an easy, and free, solution to this problem. It is called Roboform which can be found at www.roboform.com where you can get full details of the program, reviews, tutorials as well as downloading instructions. Not only will the program remember all your passwords but it will also fill in those endless forms for you. All you have to do is to remember one master password.
Economic photo prints
Printing off hard copies of your digital images is no problem for today’s colour printers but decent quality photographic paper is expensive and photo printing can run through ink like beer on a stag night. There is always the alternative of taking your memory card down to Tesco, Boots or WalMart but this costs petrol, parking and time, never mind the cost of the prints. Why not use one of the many photo printing services on the Web? The quality is good, the cost is considerably cheaper and you get your snaps delivered within 48 hours. You will usually get the first 20-40 prints free of charge. If you are already using the free Picasa program it is a very simple matter to select your images and then upload them to one of eight companies in the UK and many more abroad. Even without Picasa it is easy to find a company that will print your photos by Googling “photo print” (without the quotes).
Windows 7
Are you thinking of upgrading to the new Microsoft operating system Windows 7? I am using the new system largely because I needed it to write my book Windows7 for the Older & Wiser and I love it. However, both Windows Vista and XP are both perfectly capable systems and, unless you need to have the very latest version, I would suggest that you stick with your tried, trusted and familiar system at least for the next 12 months during which time some of the early glitches will have been sorted out. There is an update version of Windows 7 which will work on Vista but, if you are still using XP, you will have to perform a ‘clean’ installation of Windows 7 which means that you will have to back up all your files to an external hard disk and then re-install them. You will also have to re-install all your old programs from their original discs.
Social Networking for the Older and Wiser
There are several more books recently published in the Older and Wiser series and I have just read this particular title. I thought I was fairly familiar with the social networking scene but this book has increased my knowledge and pleasure of such sites as Facebook, Twitter,Sagazone and Friends Reunited among others. At my age I rather felt that social networking was for the young but this book has helped me renew friendships across the world and it costs less than £8 on Amazon! I am due to take delivery of three other books in the series – Genealogy, laptops and digital photography – within the next week and I will report back on these in the next newsletter.
Cheap flights
Some favourite relatives of ours living in Taiwan are hoping to visit Europe in June and they asked me about the best way to get from Paris to London. I began by searching the usual websites such as BA, EasyJet and RyanAir. It was all taking far too long when I remembered a very useful site for this sort of enquiry – www.kayak.com – which does a lot of the searching for you. Use of the site will be familiar to anyone who has previously booked on individual airline sites but this site trawls through all the available options and saves a lot of time. It does not find those ‘Sale’ offers of a flight from Stansted to Istanbul for £3 but it will find reasonable fares in a fraction of the time it takes to wade your way through the individual airline sites.
End Notes
One of my correspondents has pointed out that you may have to set the Options in Open Office to make full use of the program. There is now a tutorial on how to do this.
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Enjoy your week and remember that they say that experience comes with age – but sometimes age just turns up by itself.
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