Drying off a submerged mobile phone or camera.

Hi guys, well summer is just around the corner and we will be taking our phones & cameras to the beach, lakes or just out on the farm near water troughs & creeks.  Bugger, your phone or camera slides out of your pocket straight into the water & floats for a second then you see it gently sinking to the bottom, you reach in & grab it but too late, water is seeping from all gaps & the screen is off but the lights are still on.

We may have a solution to help you get it going again. If you drop your phone or camera in salt water, leave it in salt water until you get home by finding a plastic bag & filling with salt water & putting your phone in it. When you get home, put it in fresh water & rinse it really well. Once it’s in fresh water, try to do the following ASAP.

When you get home, take the battery, sim, memory card & anything else that will come off or out of your device. Now put two cups of rice, yep just normal uncooked rice in a zip top plastic bag & put all the bits into the bag & zip it closed. You will need to leave it for 24 – 72 hours to draw all the moisture from the phone or camera. Now remove all the bits from the rice, Give it a good shake & put it back together & switch it back on. I hope this is useful. Cheers & have a great week. Grant

Updated Mobile Phone Number

Gilcom News – eprint – cloud computing & Noklia N8

Gidday , I hope you are having a good weekend & not blown away ? Recently Gabi & I went to a seminar in Auckland regarding new computer products & technology. The two main things that stood out for us were firstly HP has a new printer model for around $180.00 which has this feature called (eprint). This allows you to connect this printer to your internet router & print to it from anywhere from any device with an email address like your cellphone or netbook. The way it works is during the setup of the printer, you assign it an email address so say you want to print a photo taken from your cellphone or netbook, simply email the photo to the printer email address & out it comes. You can email basically any document to it & it will print them. Cool As ! The other technology that is getting momentum is ( Cloud Computing ). Cloud computing basically allows you to create documents, spreadsheets & presentations on the web & are also stored on the web. Google has the option called “Google Docs”. If you want to try it out, click on this link http://docs.google.com . You will need to create a Google username & password or if you have a Gmail account, you can use that. If you would like to try the Microsoft flavor, click on this link http://office.live.com again, you will need a Hotmail username & password. If you don’t have one, you can create one. NOKIA are just about to release a beautiful new device called a NOKIA N8, in Q4 they will be also releasing two other new models called C6-1 which is an updated version of the C6 that Vodafone already do now & a C7 and E7. I have pre-ordered from overseas the N8 so I will let you know how it goes. Oh it’s sexy. It has a 12 mp camera which can record 720p HD video. It can play back Dolby Digital & HD movies into your TV through an HDMI cable plus heaps more cool features. Makes an iPhone look old technology J. Introducing the MSI U100 NETBOOK BUNDLE     ● Intel Atom N270 1.6Ghz ● 10 inch screen ● 1Gb Memory ● 160Gb HDD ● MS Windows 7 Starter ● Wireless 802.11 b/g ● Card reader ● 3 Cell battery ● 12 month warranty ● Black only   $535.00 + GST Add an external slim USB DVD writer (special price with netbook)   ● Samsung SE-S084C ● 8X Double Layer Slim DVD+/-RW USB External Drive Black $105.00 + GST Add a Carry Bag   ● NetbookCase briefcase fits up to a 10.2” netbook ● Full-sized shoulder strap. ● Separate zippered accessory compartment.   $35.00 + GST

· JDI DESKTOP & MSI LAPTOP COMPUTERS · BROTHER – PRINTERS – SCANNERS – FAXES · MICROSOFT WINDOWS NETWORKS · WIRELESS NETWORKS

CONTACT GRANT GILBERT Bus: or 07-5733947 Mob: 027-5528089

Gilcom News – June 2010

Hi Guys,

It’s another beautiful rainy Sunday & thought it about time I write you another newsletter. Not much good for fishing. In this newsletter, I thought I would share with you some simple tips for recovering overwritten files and the basics of caring for your hard drive especially in laptops.

CARE OF LAPTOP HARD DRIVES

 

In your laptop is a small metal device called a hard drive & this is what stores all your data such as photos, music, documents & everything else. This device is the MOST IMPORTANT piece in your computer as if the rest ever failed, It can be replaced but normally, the data you collect and store on your hard drive cannot be recollected. It is very important you treat your laptop with extreme care while it is on. When the laptop is on, the hard drive is like a record player (showing my age), Instead of a record it has a small disk spinning at 100 miles an hour and instead of a needle, it has a small read/write head. If you bump, knock or hit your laptop while it’s running, the head can scratch the small disk with your data on it & damage it permanently, in other words, it’s buggered so please be very careful with your laptop’s & desktop hard drives while they are on. When they are turned off, the read/write heads are parked & locked in a safe place.

 

PREVIOUS VERSION

In Windows 7, there is a cool feature called (Previous Version), What this does is allow you to restore a data file such as a Word, Excel, PowerPoint or even an accounting data file back to a previous state in time. Say you were writing a document & saved it a week ago then you opened it today to make changes or add stuff which took ages. You then saved it but not realising you pressed Ctrl A instead of Ctrl S to save & you lost the lot. Don’t panic, From your desktop, go to your My Documents folder (or where ever the file is stored) & find it, Then right click on it & in the menu you will see (Previous Version) Click on it & then you can choose to restore this file to a previous date in time. How cool is that. This restore feature only restores your data files. If you need to do a System Restore, read on….

SYSTEM RESTORE

Windows also has another cool feature called system restore which is used to restore the entire state of Windows back to a previous date in time. This does NOT effect your data files, only Windows. You would use this feature if your Windows had a mental fit as can do from time to time. This will normally NOT fix the effects of viruses unfortunately as this would be an easy fix. To access System Restore, Click on Start / All Programmes / Accessories / System Tools & there you can click on System Restore & follow the wizard.

 

Notebook update

 

MSI CX-620

(This replaces the very popular CX-600)

 

Full keyboard (integrated numeric keypad) and 
2-year warranty

 

MSI CX-620 with Radeon HD4330 1GB dedicated graphics

 

 

 

·  Intel® i3 330M 2.13GHz ·  15.6" wide screen, 16:9 ratio (1366×768) ·  4GB DDR3 RAM ·  640GB HDD ·  ATi Mobility Radeon HD5470, DDR3 1GB ·  DVD+/- RAM Supermulti Writer ·  Wireless 802.11 b/g/n + Bluetooth ·  Gbit LAN ·  Multimedia Card Slot 4 in 1 ·  Express Card Slot ·  WebCam 1.3mp ·  2x USB2 + 1x USB2 / eSATA combo Ports ·  VGA (D-Sub out) + HDMI ·  Windows 7 Home Premium ·  6 Cell Li-Ion Battery ·  Weight 2.48kg ·  2-year RTB warranty

Gilcom’s Introductory price including a nice carry bag (save $150)
 $1390.00 + GST
 MS Office 2007 SBE (with 2010 Pro upgrade offer)
$329.00 + GST

AVG FREE UPDATE – BROARDBAND USERS ONLY

 

A few of you seem to be having problems downloading the correct version. I have put the free version on http://www.gilcom.co.nz/avg8free.exe so click here to download the free version.

Note: This file is 45MB & too large for dialup users …….

Using Webmail

Mail Have you tried using Web mail instead of Outlook Express or the like. Using web mail has some great advantages over the normal pop client but it’s not for everyone. I have been trialing both GMAIL from Google, Yahoo Mail from Yahoo & Hotmail from Microsoft. These are the three main servers in the world at the moment & GMAIL & YAHOO Mail both provide excellent spam filtering while Hotmail is not so good, easy user interfaces & fast access to your mail from any computer connected to the internet.

With GMAIL you can setup it up to POP (go & get) your email from your internet service providers mail boxes like netsmart, EOL, Xtra & Clear and bring it to your GMAIL mailbox & in the process, it rips out all the SPAM. YAHOO mail or Hotmail can’t do this BUT you can forward mail from your internet service provider’s mail boxes to either Hotmail or Yahoo mail.

I have also had a few people ask me “can they get emails back when they are deleted from Outlook Express” The long answer is yes but it requires some surgery but with GMAIL, You can configure it to Archive your deleted emails which is fantastic because when you delete them, they are just hidden & will show up when you do a search of your mail in GMAIL. Both Yahoo & Hotmail seem to work on the same principal as Outlook Express, Once they are gone, they are gone. If you are like me & delete stuff then a few weeks later, want it back, GMAIL is the one for you.

To setup either a GMAIL, YAHOO or HOTMAIL account, just go to their websites (gamil.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com) & set yourself up with a username & password & you are ready to go. Another fantastic reason for this is so many people use more than one computer these days & it’s so nice to be able to get access to your emails from anywhere.

Most of the ISP’s in NZ already provide Web mail services so you could start there to try it as you probably are already setup on their server but I haven’t seen a local Webmail service as good as Google’s Gmail for features, ease of use & the logical way it works is just great. The next question you probably have is how do I get all my “Contact, Address book” from Outlook Express into GMAIL, YAHOO mail or Hotmail. You need to first EXPORT your addresses from Outlook Express to a file on your desktop then while in GMAIL, YAHOO MAIL or HOTMAIL, Go to the Contacts section & look for a link to IMPORT & choose the file on your desktop & suck them in.

Resizing Photos in Picasa 2 to export to Trademe

I have been asked by a few to explain how to resize your photos to a smaller size so you can upload them to Trade Me or to email. In this example, I will be using Picasa from Google which you should have installed.

We first need to make a new folder on our desktop called “Trade Me photos” so right click on your desktop & from the menu, choose New / Folder then type in the name Trade Me Photos.

Next we need to start Picasa. Now click on the first photo (once) to highlight it, then push and hold the “ctrl” on the keyboard. Now click on each of the other photos you want to resize. You should now have a few photos with blue outlines around them showing you they are highlighted.

Now click on FILE in the top left corner of the screen then click on “Export Picture to folder” or just click on the EXPORT button at the bottom of the screen.

Now click on browse then the new folder you made “Trade Me photos” then OK. Now make sure the dot in on the resize to. Now slide the slider so the number in the box says 640. Now click OK and that’s it.

You should now have your photos in the folder “Trade Me photos” on the desktop in 640 x 480 resolution with is perfect for emailing or uploading to Trade Me.

Windows Vista Service Pack (1) is here

The following is an exert from CNET. To read the full artical. click HereA little more than one year after its release, Windows Vista will receive its first service pack update in March. Microsoft says the pack will offer better compatibility with third-party hardware, increased reliability, tighter security, and better performance. But unlike the last Windows Service Pack release, Windows XP SP2–which offered users a new Windows Firewall, an improved Automatic Updates feature, and a pop-up ad blocker for Internet Explorer–Windows Vista SP1 is largely a code update, devoid of new eye candy, and very light on “must-have” features for home users. Most of the features touted by Microsoft are for the Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate editions of the operating system. Our advice: Be patient, and don’t download it once it becomes available. Wait until Windows Vista SP1 is offered to your PC via Microsoft’s Automatic Updates service.

If you would like to download it click here but be aware it is almost 1/2 a Gig in size.

Windows Vista Service Pack (1) is here

The following is an exert from CNET. To read the full artical. click Here

A little more than one year after its release, Windows Vista will receive its first service pack update in March. Microsoft says the pack will offer better compatibility with third-party hardware, increased reliability, tighter security, and better performance. But unlike the last Windows Service Pack release, Windows XP SP2–which offered users a new Windows Firewall, an improved Automatic Updates feature, and a pop-up ad blocker for Internet Explorer–Windows Vista SP1 is largely a code update, devoid of new eye candy, and very light on "must-have" features for home users. Most of the features touted by Microsoft are for the Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate editions of the operating system. Our advice: Be patient, and don’t download it once it becomes available. Wait until Windows Vista SP1 is offered to your PC via Microsoft’s Automatic Updates service.

If you would like to download it click here but be aware it is almost 1/2 a Gig in size.

RESIZING PHOTOS IN PICASA TO UPLOADT TO TRADEME

I have been asked by a few to explain how to resize your photos to a smaller size so you can upload them to Trade Me or to email. In this example, I will be using Picasa from Google which you should  have installed.

We first need to make a new folder on our desktop called “Trade Me photos” so right click on your desktop & from the menu, choose New / Folder then type in the name Trade Me Photos.

Next we need to start Picasa. Now click on the first photo (once) to highlight it, then push and hold the “ctrl” on the keyboard. Now click on each of the other photos you want to resize. You should now have a few photos with blue outlines around them showing you they are highlighted.

Now click on FILE in the top left corner of the screen then click on “Export Picture to folder” or just click on the EXPORT button at the bottom of the screen.

Now click on browse then the new folder you made “Trade Me photos” then  OK. Now make sure the dot in on the resize to. Now slide the slider so the number in the box says 640. Now click OK and that’s it.

You should now have your photos in the folder “Trade Me photos” on the desktop in 640 x 480 resolution with is perfect for emailing or uploading to Trade Me.