Longtime subscriber Peter wrote recently from the U.K. to ask about an Outlook Express problem he’s having:

Hi Terry, Many thanks for the latest issue of your newsletter, which always arrives here in the UK on a Sunday evening – a great time for reading it through.

My question is: Do you know a way of permanently stopping Outlook Express from compacting all its stored files? Every so often OE pops up a dialog asking if it can do this and if I let it go ahead it then makes a complete pigs mess of all my folders.

Very old deleted e-mails suddenly reappear in the Inbox folder bolded as unread, with dates months before the real latest message, although they drop in after it – so it has apparently also managed to mess up the date sort order, something I thought a computer couldn’t do.

Some other stored messages…

Continue reading Compacting Folders in Email Programs

I’ve been asked several times about Microsoft Silverlight — what is it and do I need it.

Silverlight is Microsoft’s competition for Adobe Flash Player. It’s designed to play videos and allow interaction with the program.

My initial thoughts were that I didn’t need it. I had no application that areqired it and I did not need yet another video display system on my computer. I already had Windows Media Player which could handle video streaming. I already had JavaScript and ActiveScript (Microsoft’s name for its JavaScript interpreter in Internet Explorer). I already had Adobe Flash Player. Wy did I need Silverlight?

I managed to do without Silverlight all through the first version, which was released in 2008. However, in early 2009, I finally had to install it — it was required for one of my new applications.

Continue reading What is Microsoft Silverlight?

Reader Olle wrote to ask a remote access question:

Hi! I read your article about editing videos remotely with GoToMyPC. I\’ve tried doing that but it doesn\’ work. I cannot even play a vidoe and see the video remotely. But I can do everything else like trabsfereing files and more. Is it a setting issue? I would Like to ask you kindly to guide me on this issue. I appriciate an response.
Thank You Kind regards Olle

Remote access to your own PC, or to other PC’s you manage on your own home network, can be a great way to do many tasks.

On my home network, since I use firewall programs on each PC (all are using Sunbelt Personal Firewall) and the home network is segregated from the Internet by my cable/DSL router (a Linksys BEFSR41), I don’t hesitate to use non-encrypted remote control software within my network. I use the free versionn of RealVNC to do this.

On the other hand, for remote access across the Internet, I think you’d have to be crazy to do that with an unencrypted connection (which possibly could be monitored by someone else!). For remote access across the Internet, I’d choose GoToMyPC because of its speed and encryption. You can try a 30 day free trial of GoToMyPC (for one PC) or GoToMyPC Pro (for multiple PC’s). There are also paid versions of RealVNC that include encryption, so they’re another option.

Continue reading Remote Access Software Question

A reader wrote me to ask if I would use a web proxy anonymizer service. I wrote back to tell him that my answer was a simple “No.”

It boils down to two things: (1) if you’re afraid of a web site operator knowing who you are, you shouldn’t be going to the web site, and (2) think of a web proxy anonymizer as handing all your web traffic to an intermediate stop on the way to and from your web destination.

I know nothing specific about the particular proxy service he mentioned. My comments below are general comments about the capabilities of proxies, even ones providing their service to anonymize your web surfing, and are not an accusation of improper behavior by any of them or any particular one.

In normal Internet use, different data packets to and from your computer and your web destination can take different routes from your computer to the destination.

Continue reading To Use a Web Proxy Anonymizer or Not…

I answered a question from reader Glenn Wilkes, who wanted to know how to capture images that were in a PDF file and copy them into a Microsoft Word word processing file. This week, several readers wrote about alternate ways to accomplish the same thing.

Longtime subscriber and frequent commenter Janusz Lukasiak wrote:

Hello Terry,

There is a simpler way:
In Adobe Reader click on the ‘Select’ tool and draw a frame around the image (or diagram, or text or…). The selected area will be highlighted. Then right click and select ‘Copy image to clipboard’ (that’s the only option anyway). Now go to Word document and paste….

Continue reading Reader Comments — Copying an Image from a PDF File

Reader Peter wrote me about his cable Internet access:

Well, I finally made the jump to cable broadband (after some very good help from all you people). Everything works great, and I’ll never go back to dial-up. I do have one question, though.

After I turn off the computer for the night, should I also turn off the power to the modem and to the router? I’ve had them for almost a week now and haven’t turned them off. On the same note, should they be turned off if I’m gone for an extended period of time, say a weekend or a whole week?

Continue reading Disconnecting Your Cable Internet Access

Opera was the first web browser to offer its users multiple tabs, so that we could have multiple web pages open within one browser window. Well, I think it was the first — it was certainly the first one I found. I loved that feature.

The latest browser to add tabs is Internet Explorer 7, which has implemented tab functions similar to those of Opera, and only a small portion of the functionality that Firefox has.

In IE7, if you hover over a link or bookmark and click your mouse’s scroll button, the new link will open in a new tab. That’s the same thing that happens in Opera. It also happens in Firefox, but Firefox can do more, too.

Continue reading Using Multiple Tabs in Firefox

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