Yesterday I had to work on a workstation that had just been set up with a fresh install of Windows XP professional, Microsoft Office 2000 and Outlook 2003.
After doing all of the updates we ended up passing on Internet Explorer v8 and were left with the “venerable” version 7.
After only two days of using the PC the user complained that she could not print e-mails. What she was getting was script error showing:
Wonderful, I thought. Well after Googling and checking out quite a number of these suspected solutions, some of which of course recommended uninstalling and reinstalling Internet Explorer, I was able to find the exact message and a fix that worked.
What I had to do was run this command (either from Start | Run or a command prompt):
regsrv32 ole32.dll
and then it worked fine.
Turns out this is a well known problem becomes along with Internet Explorer version 7 no real good explanation just here it is. And on Microsoft’s site they had a variety of suspected fixes but not this one away stuff that I saw.
Dragon Naturally Speaking has been turning speech to text for a long time now. It should be no secret that you can talk faster than you can type. With just a little bit of training, Dragon Naturally Speaking can be a very accurate typist for you.
I have been suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome for a long time. Years of programming making high use of arrow keys, mousing through Windows and a little game playing can make typing without Advil an excruciating experience.
I finally said enough is enough and bought Dragon Naturally Speaking.
The standard version is enough for most people, but they have special editions if you are away from the office and want to dictate or happen to be an attorney and want to make use of the special legal vocabulary they include in that version.
Is it cheap, no, especially the preferred and professional version. But some professionals will save huge bucks on transcriptionists and those clunky machines they use to listen to your mumbling while turning your words into documents.
With these coupon codes, you can save some money on Dragon Naturally Speaking speech to text products.
With the economy in the toilet, you need to learn to be efficient. Try it out today, I think you will be glad you did.
Recently I saw this question posted by a frantic user:
I was doing some hard drive maintenance and I accidentally deleted the partition on my external USB hard drive. How can I get my partition and data back?
Well, the first thing is do NOTHING to that drive!
While there are free tools available for such things, when it comes to important data I reach for a paid for professional program. There are just too many things that can go wrong.
My choice for recovering a deleted hard drive partition is Acronis Disk Director® Suite 10.0. At $49.95 it’s a bargain for what it does.
If you have upgraded Internet Explorer to version 7 you probably found that the Internet Explorer icon is no longer on the desktop. According to Microsoft, that is by design.
If, however, you want it there, here is how to get the internet explorer icon back on the desktop.
I have long recommended Mozilla Firefox as the web browser of choice. But for those foolish sites requiring Internet Explorer to work properly, you will want IEView to have Firefox automatically open IE for you so you can use bookmarks, etc in Firefox and not have to remember which sites need IE to work properly.
This short video shows how to install and use IEView:
Anyone who has done a lot of typing, especially in non-ergonomic environments, probably has some knowledge of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. What you feel in your forearms, wrists and hands can vary from slight annoyance to excruciating pain. Sometimes it feels like some kind of Chinese torture.
The way to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome can be to talk to your computer. Speech recognition software has been around for a long time, and has varied in accuracy. Heck, Windows Vista has a rudimentary software built in.
But if you really want to get serious about talking to your computer instead of typing and mousing on it, see the professionals. Dragon Naturally Speaking has been the industry leader for a long time, and they are now up to version 10.
Of course, you need a good headset to get it to work properly, so they include one in the box. Smart move. Why let bad hardware cause people to blame your software?
I use and highly recommend Dragon Naturally Speaking.
I buy almost everything online, here is a list of my favorite vendors.
Recently though, I have been very frustrated with all online vendors, big names, medium, whoever.
When they show a photo of the product, but it’s not the product specified, it can cause you to not buy the correct product or to buy the wrong one.
Recently I found this trying to buy a simple USB Keytronic keyboard. The picture was of a keyboard I did NOT want. But the part number was correct. Buy it anyway??
Today I saw pictures of video cards. I like fanless design, not only because they are quieter – both initially and over time, but because the fan is the first thing to fail. And forget warranty; if they ever ship you a new one, you will have more than paid for it in your time and shipping costs sending the old one back.
I saw several “fanless” video cards pictured with fans. I saw several video cards clearly pictured with a heat sink only, but in the technical specs it said “fan”. In one case, the description said “silent” – meaning no fan – yet the specs said fan.
Who to believe?
Note to vendors. Get with it. If you don’t have the right photo, don’t show any at all. And if the specs are wrong, you deserve all you get with regard to returns and unhappy customers.
NetBook’s are a hugely popular product for good reason, small package and packed with features. Unfortunately a DVD is not one of them.
If you want to install software, read a CD, DVD or watch a DVD on a NetBook, you need a USB external DVD drive; preferably one that is powered only by the USB bus. That means no extra power cords or bulky transformers.
