This month I thought I would talk about things you can do to prevent PC problems or at least minimise their impact.
My first tip is with Microsoft Word (or any other windows application). Try to get into the habit of saving your work regularly. When you open a new document the first thing you should do is save the empty document with the name of the document. This way, Word autosaves the document for you at regular intervals, and you’re never at real risk of losing a lot of information. Before you print a document save it first, the most common time for windows to have a “hissy fit” is when asked to print. That is when you are liable to get the dreaded “This program is not responding” message. So always save first.
My second tip is with emails, if you send an email and get an “unable to deliver” email back look closely at the message, who is it from? You are not interested in the first bit of the email just the bit after the @ symbol. If the bit after the @ symbol is the same as yours then the chances are that you got the bit after the @ wrong in the email you sent. If it is the same as the email address you sent the mail too then you probably got the bit before the @ wrong. In the first instance the email never went on the internet because your end could not find the delivery address. IE in the address joe@yaho.com yaho.com would not be found because there is an “o” missing (yahoo.com). Whereas in the second instance the email was sent to the server that looks after the emails but that server could not find the actual person. IE in the address joee@yahoo.com the server that looks after yahoo.com received the mail but could not find the person joee because his name was misspelled.
My third tip is about photos. If you want to make changes to your photos.
Obviously you need a graphics editing program but what you may not know is that if your photo is in jpeg format you should be very careful not to save over your original photo. The Jpeg (.jpg) format uses a type of compression to keep the size of the files created small. This is good as it means you get more photos on your camera. The issue is when you start working with the photos. Every time you save a jpeg the compression is re-applied, the practical result is that your photo loses quality and slowly degrades. The more often you save the faster this will happen. If you want to spend a lot of time on a photo you could “save as” a format that has no compression like .tif or a type of compression that does not lose quality like .png
Of course the downside of these file types is they are either very large (.tif) or not as small as jpeg (.jpg).
Personally I use .png for most things. The file sizes are reasonable, it has layers, can use transparency and you can use it on websites. From my point of view it combines the best of .jpeg and .gif
If you have a topic you would like me to cover, please let me know.
Mick Maidens is the Owner of Kent PCs for Computer Repairs in Challock (Nr Ashford).
Email: info@kentpcs.co.uk Phone: 01233 740306