Hi folks,
First of all, my thanks to this forum.
In a way, this thread is based on an earlier thread:
http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/vi...sc&start=0
"defragmenting your computer"
hence the link.
So here's my/our problems and questions:
My friends and I are having problems with our computers. As we’d like to see if we could get help for free—before paying some expert-and because we are novices at computers, some of you might be both able, perhaps easily able, as well as inclined to help out.
Your comments would be quite appreciated.
(1) First the comparison
I used to go to a cyber café. There was a computer I’d frequently used there. On its Kaaza, I’d download 2 000 songs and over 100 videos—including TV shows.
I’d visit all sorts of weird and/or wonderful sites. I even checked out a few porn sites—and not the Playboy/Sports Illustrated variety. I mention this because they seem to be notorious for pop-ups, “circulars,” and all sorts of annoyances.
Goodness knows what kind of crap I got into the computer—how many cookies I got. It’s as if I worked in many quarantines bare-faced and bare-handed, I was perhaps so vulnerable to viruses. Yet for the most part, everything seem to work. I could open 16 Explorer windows: having to wait only a few seconds, perhaps a few 10’s of seconds.
Occasionally a virus would come in and wipe out all my files, but that happened about every 4 months—giving me ample time to download onto floppy disks and CD-W’s.
To be honest, some of my more recent written CD’s from there don’t have all the 80 minutes used up, and a few songs were scrambled, and after about a year “rot” has set in; but my older ones are full and fine. Besides, the cyber café proprietor told me the particular burner wasn’t a particularly good one.
(2) I have a friend. Call him “B.”
(a) B’s computer has about 38 Gigabyte capacity and we have used, at most, about 7 of them.
The way I figure it, if we were to pack in 2 000 songs--at about 3 Megabytes each, we might use another 6 Gigabytes.
I didn’t, nor, to my knowledge did he, trawl cyberspace. He has a few select sites he frequents and has a coterie of cyber pals who E-mail each other.
True, I downloaded a Kaaza program to his computer from some site and got about 20 files from it.
Since then, his computer is painfully slow.
So we eliminated all sorts of files—including Kaaza, and while there is a little improvement, it’s still slow.
We tried disc cleaning and defragmenting, but it’s still slow.
Nor is this for internet stuff, but for all functions on his computer: “My Computer,” “My Documents.”
I mean the way I figure it, 32 Gigabytes is a heck of a lot of memory. I compare it to a big swimming pool. I suppose a 64 or 128 or something-like-that Gigabyte would be like an Olympic sized pool; but still, 32 Gigabytes impresses me as a good-sized memory.
Okay, he says he gets “limited high-speed,” but I see a telephone line.
I suppose that’s like, not filling the pool with a fire hose, not even a garden hose, but rather with a drinking straw.
That would explain why it takes so long to download.
It would explain why, if I were to fill that bucket with a straw, I’ll be waiting a long time.
It doesn’t, however, explain why I can’t get that same bucket, walk down the steps and down the incline of my 5% filled pool and scoop out a lot of water from there—taking at most a minute or two.
There is a lady we all knowed.
She said it’s all the cookies.
Yet the cookies seem to take up memory in the kilobytes--mostly single digit kilobytes.
This “Intel chip” thingee—processor?—he has is recent and I understand in the 3 digits of megabytes.
So what the heck is going on?
(b) He also gets this “Smiley Emoticon” ad that’s annoying, as well as some tune that comes on randomly—a few seconds of some techno music.
How do we get rid of them?
(c) He also says that when he E-mails friends, those whom he E-mails to can’t get any of his attachments.
(3) Yet another lady we know is connected by phone line—which can simultaneously still be used as a phone.
She has this “media player”—"Microsoft Media Player" I think—the one with the bull’s eye markers—or, if you know what I’m talking about that thing you’ve might have seen on some ELO records (Out of the Blue, Discovery).
I downloaded a few non-RIAA tunes and put them in the “Media Library”—thinking they were there at our disposal.
But when I turned on the computer again, I try to play them and they seem to take as long to “buffer” as to download.
I thought I’d download a 3-minute video (MP3) from a website—but the computer said it would take about 8 hours.
Perhaps in time we will try it anyway, and see how long it takes to play from the library (as compared to downloading), but for now, based on my earlier examples, it doesn’t bode well.
(4) I was given a used computer. I tried to spark it up. It said “inset disc and press key.” I re insert discs (floppy and CD-Rom) and press key. It says “CP Backup” or something that I need a new disc—I wonder if that would help.
(5) I have an old computer that uses DD discs containing Word Perfect 4.5 files. How can I convert them into Write or Word files?
(6) How can I get fancy characters, fancy forms of writing (such as “Script”), and foreign alphabets into my Word programs—and perhaps for a computer in general.
(7) I understand that with MP3’s, you can compress music to 1/10th the memory without appreciable loss of quality.
But then, I see the videos.
Dear me, my old videotapes are better.
Are there any players that play a better quality music and/or video even if it takes more memory?
(8.) If it comes to it, how do I get paid help and how much should I pay?
Again your help--one and all-- is appreciated.
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Originally Posted by Vanion
