TechTrix Ireland: 2013

Thursday, 28 November 2013

How to play life guard and save your laptop from drowning

Keyboard closeup (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It doesn't matter how it happened or why or who's fault. All that matters is you act as quickly as possible.

As soon as the liquid is dropped onto the computer turn of the computer by pressing the off button. Assuming you weren't the one who spilled it ignore the perpetrator. Quickly unplug it if it wasn't already and flip it so it rests like a tent with keyboard and screen facing down. Quickly grab some kitchen roll and cleans away the liquid that comes out of the keyboard. If you have a blowdrier grab it and blow the keyboard, be sure to put the temperature to the lowest but the blown on it's highest. Remember to blow the back of the laptop where the battery is as well. Do this until you are sure it's dry, leave it to rest for a few minute then turn it back the right way and hope it will turn on.

Thursday, 21 November 2013

5 More Laptop Saving Tips

In my previous article I talked about some simple ways to make your laptop last that little bit longer. Seeing as it was such a hit I decided to create round two.
Read previous article on here

In my last article I talked about things like knocks and bruises and overheating but what about how older laptops slowly get slower?

Image representing Soluto as depicted in Crunc...

Image by None via CrunchBase

Praise the programmers of Soluto
I am sure you have noticed that as the years go by just like us humans our laptops slow down. There is nothing I hate more than having to wait ten minutes for the computer to turn on and be ready to use and I may be patient but a slow computer is a computer edging it's way toward becoming spare parts. A computer is usually slow on start up because too many programs are trying to launch themselves. Soluto is a brilliant little program that allows you to pause these programs before they can start slowing you down. You can let the vital stuff run and leave the accessories in the dust while you speed off into your work!

Do I really need this?
Now I know that there are many amazing programs for us to use and I myself full prey to the download bug. I convince myself it is part of my job to test out these programs but really I've been bitten by the techbug. I force myself to go through my programs once a month and uninstall all the things I don't need because otherwise I will slow my computer up with all sorts of unwanted programs. Go into the control panel now and have look at all of the programs you don't use and give them the chop!.

This is not the kitchen
I have a strict ban in my house of food or drink within a ten ft radius of my laptop. This is especially important if you have children in the house, if you can teach them not to let food near the laptop than they will be less likely to have any accidents with their capri suns. Remember you have to obey the rule too, no coffee in front of the screen!

Clean hands
Greasy fingers are a no no for the good laptop user, I keep a little packet of baby wipes right next to my computer to clean my hands and my keys

Tidy Work Space
It might sound silly but having a nice clear desk to put your laptop on rather than balancing it on your lap while you lounge on the sofa is a good idea. Having a defined work space and place for your laptop makes it less likely for you to forget where it is and reduces the chance of accidents happening.

They were just a few more simple tips to keep your laptop safe!

Thursday, 14 November 2013

5 amazing apps for google chrome

Here are just some of the great extentions for google chrome that I honestly think you should try

FVD VIDEO DOWNLOADER
I love this extension since it takes most videos from anywhere except youtube but we all know to use clipconverter.cc for youtube anyway so that isn't really an issue is it? I love this extension because it is free and non invasive. It's not the most well known app but it really deserves to be the first on this list.

Zemanta
This is a bloggers best friend. I am sure you've probably noticed the little zemanta logo on all the pages. Zemanta is a little intelligent app that reads what you are writing on a blog and fetches pictures to do with your topic ans supplies articles for you to read while you do research. It really is one invaluable tool. It works withing blogger but it can be used for school work by simply preparing your essay within blogger and than copying your work to word.

Auto refresh plus
This does exactly what it sounds like. It's simple free and does what it's told, it simply refreshes pages for you and you get to set how long between refreshes. It's good for forum threads.

Adblock Plus
This is one great app for sure, it gets rid of those pesky adverts like nobodies business!

Finally
Stealthy
This little app allows you to get into websites restricted by country restrictions. It's brilliant for checking out websites like bbc.co.uk and the like hut really we all just love it because of the name.

Thursday, 7 November 2013

Short Guide To Connecting your laptop to your to an external display

Lets face it, laptops are taking over for everything from DVD players to gaming devices. We all know that laptop screens can be pretty small don't we? So how do we solve this problem? Well providing you aren't on the move with your laptop than why not wire it up to the TV? You'll need to buy a cable for this assuming that you don't already have one. You will have to check what sort of port your television has it will more than likely be a HDMI or a DVI. When you have figured out which is which the process should be pretty simple.

All you have to do is plug the wire into the tv and the laptop. Remember that you are plugging it into your laptop's OUTPUT slot, it won't work if you put it in the INPUT slot.
Your computer should automatically pick up that it has been plugged in to something new and ask what to do. Simply choose the option you want.
Before you get cracking you might want to do some tweaking to adjust the screen size and such. If this becomes necessary simply right click an empty area on your desktop and click 'personalize'
Sit back an enjoy!

Thursday, 31 October 2013

5 Fantastic Ways You Didn't Think Of To Make Your Laptop Last Longer

Here are just a few easy tips on helping your laptop last just that little bit longer!

No laptop in bed
Now I'm sure everyone at some point or other has taken their laptop to bed with them. Once or twice is not really going to cause any serious harm but make it a regular thing and you will have some trouble on your hands. You see laptops have small fans and having the laptop on top of you're lap on the duvet allows that fan to suck up any fluff from the bed into your machine. This accumulates and eventually will clog the fan or other such components within the laptop. This can cause it to overheat or simply cease working. If you really must take your laptop to bed with you I recommend purchasing a tray to put it on so it is not directly resting on top of the covers. Or if you have a big enough book you could rest it on that just keep that fan away from that fluff.

Overheating
This is a big killer of our darling laptops. We tend to be in touch with technology pretty much twenty four seven and we certainly work our large array of gadgets pretty hard. Poor laptops only have small fans inside them because they are compact. These fans can not always last for long periods of time and leaving the laptop on for days on end or other such behavior will cause them to burn out. If your laptop feels hot to touch underneath you know it needs to cool down. Don't cool it down too quickly, putting it in the freezer is not a good idea! Just allow the laptop to rest and it will cool to room temperature.

Extreme temperature changes
This goes for all gadgets, Extreme temperature changes in a short space of time is a killer for any kind of device. If you are in a cold place and you take your laptop to a warm place and turn it on straight away you are risking the formation of condensation within the laptop. This is an easily avoidable mishap, all you have to do is give it a few good minutes to reach room temperature before you use it.

Covering the keyboard
Try as you might, I am sure that you will find the task of keeping ones keyboard completely clean virtually impossible. Even if you are careful not to eat or drink with ten feet of the computer and chase the cat away when he comes to sit on it there are still many ways for dirt to work it's way inside your machine. For instance look down now, do you see any of your hairs floating around in your keys? Or perhaps an unidentifiable animal hair? Whatever it may be there are lots of ways to prevent the build up of dirt in your keyboard. There is a type of keyboard putty you can use to remove the filth but why go to the hassle when you could simply buy a plastic covering for your keyboard that will keep the dirt ever getting in?

Get it in the bag
A laptop bag is a great item for keeping your laptop safe. It's padded interior keeps it from getting any nasty bangs and such and it is also a safe place to put the laptop while you are not using it. It keeps the laptop clean and makes it more portable.

I hope that you find these simple tips helpful, be sure to try them out and why not comment your own tips below?

Thursday, 24 October 2013

Saving Power on your laptop and smartphone

Español: Logo WiFi Vectorizado (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wi-Fi Signal logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

iPhone 2g, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 (Photo credit: reticulating)

Unhappy with how long your laptop can go without needing to be plugged in and charged. Perhaps you are using too much power and maybe you aren't aware how much power certain applications use.
The same goes for smartphones which I think we all know have a notoriously bad reputation for their battery life. Well here are a few tips that I have thought up to help you.

Now I am going to start with the most obvious thing. When you are not using it you don't need it on standby. Now I know that you can't always turn off your phone or laptop but do take a moment when you are about to leave your laptop on the coffee table and ask yourself 'Do I really need this on while I'm gone?' People often ask me how I keep my smarphone from dying during the day and I answer quite honestly that it is usually off during the first half of the day except when I turn it on briefly to check for messages. Now I know not everyone can simply switch off their phone but if you are an antisocial like me than you'll find that it is the quickest easiest and by far the simplest way to save battery.

Cut down on the Wifi!
Wifi really is a killer on the battery I must say, My phone barely can stand an hour on wifi without losing all of it's battery. It isn't just Wifi either, any sort of wireless connection like bluetooth can also be equally draining. Also Wifi tends to heat up your phone if you leave it too long so why not cut down on those nasty wireless connections?

Adjust the brightness.
The brightness on the screen is a killer for the battery on any device whether it be your laptop, phone or handheld gaming console. You can dim the brightness of the screen, on most laptops this can be achieved by pressing F4, if you care to look you should see a symbol of a sun with a doen arrow next to it. On the phone you have to go into display settings to adjust the brightness.

Background data traffic.
This one is mainly for the phones, if you will notice on a smartphone you get email notifications and facebook notifications and so on. This requires a background internet connection that not only costs a lot of money to maintain but also eats up your power faster than pretty much anything else.

Video and pictures.
Taking pictures on the phone and using the camera for any measurable amount of time will absolutely demolish your battery. The same is true for watching videos or using skype. So if you are trying to save the power don't use that too freely. The same goes for playing music on your device (which I am guilty of every morning but you don't have to be!).

Gaming... I don't think I have to go into detail about how much power this uses.

That's about it, really it comes down to a little common sense and as long as you are careful you should be able to extend your phone and laptop battery immensely.

Thursday, 17 October 2013

Keyboard shortcuts Continued

Image via CrunchBase

After the success of the first keyboard shortcuts article I thought I would show you some useful free course that'll help you learn them.

These are all free and supplied by the website memrise. This will help them stick in your head for sure. This website is like a giant learning come memory game machine and it uses srs to help you remember items. It is definitely worth a try so without further ado...

Image via CrunchBase

For you firefox users we have a nice course to learn the firefox shortcuts
http://www.memrise.com/course/93356/firefox-keyboard-shortcuts-fixed/
Having used it I find it to be a pretty good course since it has a little introduction and walks you through in easy neat stages.

For Google Chrome users we have this wonderful course. It's a bit longer and a little harder than the firefox one but just remember that ate the end of it you'll be a scholar of the shortcuts!

Logo used from the start of the Chrome project until March 2011 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

http://www.memrise.com/course/155924/google-chrome-windows-keyboard-shortcuts/

Thursday, 10 October 2013

Keyboard Shortcuts

ctrl (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now there's one thing that really sets apart the pro from the rookie when it comes to computers. How many keyboard shortcuts do you know?

Personally I find the most useful to be 'ctrl z' which undoes whatever you did last. It has saved me many times but here are just a few more you can use on most computers!

Ctrl F: This brings up a box for finding words on the page. It is really useful for research as you can type in what you are looking for and it will find all the sentences with the words you have typed in. Honestly writing articles would take twice as long if it wasn't for this little gem.

Control Keys (Photo credit: pasukaru76)

Alt F: This one opens the menu of whatever program you are running at this moment. For example if you are running google chrome and you press Alt F right now it'll bring down that menu in the top right corner next to your search bar (The one that is three horizontal lines).

Ctrl A: This one selects all the text on a page, it's pretty good if you are writing an article and have multiple word pages open and you want to combine them into one. It is a great time saver to be honest and I would hate to live without it.

Ctrl X: This is a shortcut for the cut tool. It will cut what you have selected. I discovered this by accident and thought I had deleted all my work but fortunately I still had ctrl z! This is a pretty handy short cut but I still think that Ctrl C (which is copy) is just as useful.

Ctrl V: There isn't all that much use copying something unless you are going to paste it is there? That's exactly what ctrl V does: Paste. This is probably one of my favorites since i no longer have to right click to paste and I haven't since I learned this nifty little trick.

Ctrl P: this one prints the page. probably at it's most useful in a word program but can be pretty useful when surfing the web. It is really just a time saver but it's a good one and I can safely say that I have never gone the long way about printing something since learning it.

Home (Photo credit: Daniel*1977)

Two other useful ones for typing anyway are 'end' and 'home'. End will take you to the end of the line you are on and home will take you to the start. they have their own buttons usually located on the far right of the keyboard. Also Ctrl home will take you to the start of your document and ctrl end will take you to the end!

And if you ever get really stuck and you are using a windows computer the help button is F1

These are just a few of the hundred of keyboard shortcuts out there. If you are really determined to learn them all I will leave some links below where you can go to read up on them.