How to Save Cash, Ink and Paper when Printing

If you’re shocked by the costs your printer incurs then this information is for you. Learn how to reduce printing costs by making some simple and free tweaks to your printing routine and print settings.
Printing costs, especially if you have an inkjet printer, are astronomical.

You do have the option to save an article or document as a file, email it to yourself, and read it on your computer, tablet or smartphone screen.  But if you must print, think about adjusting your printer's output settings:

1. To reduce the size of the print job, use the File menu or Print menu from which the program you're printing.  Use the print preview button to make sure you’re not printing blank pages at the end of the web site you’re about to print off. If you’re not using the print preview you’re just asking to end up with all sorts of extra pages out of the printer. When you preview you can see if the document will look the way you want on the page and you can also see if the last page will, for example, be nothing but the web site footer and an advertisement.
2. Start shrinking your print size. Can you shrink to fit the page and still read it?   Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Word, and most major document reading and editing applications support shrink to fit and scaling the page before printing.
3. Switch to draft mode as the default setting. Depending on your printer the actual title will vary. Some companies call it “draft mode” others call it “toner saver”, “print saver”, “economy” and so on. Regardless of the name it’s a setting or series of settings that allow you to reduce how much ink and toner you're using. For simple things like articles and basic documents you’ll likely not even notice the difference. If you do notice it won’t likely decrease your ease of reading. What it will do is radically cut down on how much ink and toner you're using on the paper.
4. Print only the selected text.  Before you print, use your mouse pointer to highlight the area on the screen you wish to print.  Then bring up your print window (usually File, Print in most programs) and choose the option to print the selection.  Selective printing is an aggressive approach where you edit prints before they are sent to your printer saving yourself a bundle in the process. A variety of solutions exist to help you conserve ink and toner by selectively printing.
5. When printing from the web, PrintWhatYouLike.com is a great resource for on-the-fly web site editing. By either plugging in the URL to their web site or launching their bookmarklet—you can quickly and easily edit a site and pull out the content you don’t want. Want the article, a few of the how-to photos you might need to reference, and that’s it? Go ahead and click on (and delete or resize) all the elements you don’t need. You can adjust the font size, selectively edit, and otherwise reduce the footprint of the document. (source: www.howtogeek.com)

Happy Clicking,
Betsy
The PC Teacher
www.thepcteacher.com

Use Email to Text

Note: Sending an email is always free, but the person that receives the message will probably be charged for a text message according to their text messaging plan. Keep that in mind when using this.

Do you sometimes want to send out a quick text message but you are at your computer and can't use your phone? Maybe you are at work or in a location with a weak cell phone signal.  These instructions show you how to use your email account and get that message out using the SMS Gateway addresses shown below.  SMS, short for Short Message Service, similar to paging, SMS is a service for sending short text messages to mobile phones.
To get started enter the SMS Gateway address in the same way that you would with an email address, compose your message, and then click send.

In a short time your family, friends, or coworkers will have the new SMS show up as a text message on their mobile phone.


To use the SMS Gateway addresses shown here, substitute where it says "mobile-number" below with the 10 digit mobile phone number for the person you are sending a message to in front of the appropriate address (i.e. 2015551212@carrier.com).  Use the address where it says MMS to send a picture via text message.
Note: SMS Gateways shown here are for U.S. carriers only 

Alltel Wireless	mobile-number@message.Alltel.com (SMS & MMS) mobile-number@text.wireless.alltel.com (SMS) mobile-number@mms.alltel.net (MMS)
AT&T Wireless	mobile-number@txt.att.net (SMS) mobile-number@mms.att.net (MMS)
AT&T Mobility (formerly Cingular)	mobile-number@cingularme.com mobile-number@mobile.mycingular.com
Boost Mobile	mobile-number@myboostmobile.com
Cricket	mobile-number@sms.mycricket.com (SMS) mobile-number@mms.mycricket.com (MMS)
Metro PCS	mobile-number@mymetropcs.com
Sprint (PCS)	mobile-number@messaging.sprintpcs.com SMS) mobile-number@pm.sprint.com (MMS)
Sprint (Nextel)	mobile-number@page.nextel.com (SMS) mobile-number@messaging.nextel.com (Rich Messaging)
Straight Talk	mobile-number@VTEXT.COM (SMS) mobile-number@mypixmessages.com (MMS)
T-Mobile	mobile-number@tmomail.net (MMS)
U.S. Cellular	mobile-number@email.uscc.net (SMS) mobile-number@mms.uscc.net (MMS)
Verizon	mobile-number@vtext.com (SMS) mobile-number@vzwpix.com (MMS)
Virgin Mobile	mobile-number@vmobl.com (SMS) mobile-number@vmpix.com (MMS

Click & Drag? Not the only way...

Many people may know that if you're using a word processor program such as Microsoft Word, you need to select the text first before you can change the look of it. And many of those people have only been taught to select text using the Click & Drag method which can be frustrating especially if you text extends across multiple pages.




Here are some tips and tricks for selecting text using two different mouse pointers, the Selection Bar Pointer and the Text Pointer.



Selecting Text with the Selection Bar Pointer



In Word, place your mouse pointer in the left margin. Your mouse pointer should change to a white arrow and it points toward the right corner of your screen.



1. Single click- selects the entire line.



2. Single click and drag straight down-selects multiple lines



3. Double click-selects the paragraph



4. Triple click-selects the entire document



Selecting Text with the Text Pointer



In Word, when you float your mouse pointer in between the characters of any word in any paragraph in your document your mouse pointer displays the Text Pointer which resembles a capital letter I.



1. Single click-cursor flashes so you can type text



2. Click and drag-selects any amount of text



3. Double click-selects a word



4. Ctrl and click-selects the sentence



5. Triple click-selects the paragraph


As always,
Happy Clicking,

Betsy
The PC Teacher
http://www.thepcteacher.com/
bcoyne@thepcteacher.com

Keep Your PC Up To Date

 

On of the time consuming tasks about Windows computers is updating software. While Microsoft does a good job keeping the operating system updated, other software inevitably falls through the cracks. If you look on your Windows screen down in the bottom right corner, called the system tray, where the clock is located, you may see some of the icons shown here.

 

 For example, the orange icon with the cup of coffee represents a program called Java which works in the background when you are browsing internet pages. Many people are not keeping their Java software up to date. As a result, bugs in the older versions are a very popular way for malicious software to install itself. If you are prompted that there is a Java update available, take it but read each message and make sure as you install the upate it doesn't give you any new programs (such as Open Office) or tooblars if you don't want them.

To keep your operating system up to date, there's an easy, free way to help keep your PC safer and running smoothly. It's called Windows Update. All you have to do is turn it on, and you'll get the latest security and other important updates from Microsoft automatically.

Click the Start button, click All Programs, and then click Windows Update or go to http://update.microsoft.com

Windows Update helps keep your PC safer—and your software current—by fetching the latest security and feature updates from Microsoft via the Internet.

In Windows 7, Windows Update is now part of Action Center, which makes updating your PC even more convenient. To check for updates, just click the Action Center icon (resembles a tiny white flag on a pole) on the taskbar.

To watch a video about the Action Center in Windows 7, Click here http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/action-center

Sending a Vacation Reply Email from Outlook

It's great sending and receiving emails, but when you leave for vacation and you may not have access to your email account wouldn't it be great if you could have an automatic reply sent for you?

In Outlook you set rules and using a template can have an Out of Office reply or "I'm on vacation" reply sent for you.

Create an an email which is used as the reply template

1. Open a new Outlook message.
2. In the message body, type whatever information you'd like to appear in your custom reply.
3. On the Office menu, click Save As.
4. In the File name box, enter a name for your reply template.
5. In the Save as type box, click Outlook template, and then click Save.
6. Make note of where your template is saved.
7. Close, the email, and when prompted to save, click No.

Create a rule to send an automatic reply

• Click on the Tools menu, select Rules and Alerts.
• In the Rules and Alerts dialog box, click the New Rule button.
• In the Rules Wizard under Start from a blank rule, click Check messages when they arrive, and then click Next.
• Under Which condition(s) do you want to check?, click to select the Sent Only To Me check box or any other check box that you want, and then click Next.
• Under What do you want to do with the message, click to select the Reply using a specific template check box.
• Edit the Rule Description, click the underlined phrase a specific template.
• In the Select A Reply Template dialog box, click the template that you saved previously and then click Open.
• Complete the Rules Wizard instructions, click Finish, and then click OK
• Give the rule a name (for example, vacation reply)
• Check off that the rule is in use when you go on vacation and anyone who sends you an email will be sent your automatic reply.

Happy clicking,

Betsy
The PC Teacher
www.thepcteacher.com

How to Use Google Site command

If you do a lot of "Googling" these days you may want to know how to use the Google Site command.  When using the Site command, Google gives you a list of search results all from the same website.  Here's how it works:

1. From the Google Search box, type your search keyword(s). (For example, as shown above, if you're looking for apple pie recipes, type apple pie).
2. After the last keyword in your search, type a space then type the word site followed by a colon (i.e. apple pie site:)
3. After the colon (no spaces please!), type the website from which you would like all the results. (i.e. apple pie site:www.foodnetwork.com)
4. Press Enter or Return on the keyboard or click Google Search.
5. The list of results is shown.  Notice in green under each result the website you specified in step 3 above is part of every link.

This is a efficient way of searching the internet.  Try your own example using a different website and search keywords.  Leave your comments below on your findings!

As always, happy clicking,

Betsy
The PC Teacher
www.thepcteacher.com

How To Use Labels in Gmail

1. Gmail is Google Mail.
2. If you don't have a Gmail account, click here then click on Create Account in the lower right corner of the screen.
3. Gmail refers to labels like folders.  They are a place where you can organize and store emails so that you can refer to them in the future.
4. To create a new label, look for the Create New Label link on the left side of the Gmail screen.
5. You may need to click 'More' to see the link.
6. The New Label window appears.  Type a label name and click OK. (for example, if you want to keep all of your store coupon emails in one "folder" then call the label: store coupons.
7. The new label will be displayed on the left side of the screen.
8. To apply the label to an email, from your Inbox, click the checkbox next to the email.
9. Click the Move To button at the top of the screen.
10. Select the label from the list and the email is moved to that "folder".  To find the email, click on the label name on the left side of the screen.

Happy clicking,
Betsy
The PC Teacher
bcoyne@thepcteacher.com
For a class on Google and Gmail, check out The PC Teacher calendar of events.

2011

New Year.  New technology goals.  What are your technology goals for 2011?  I taught many people during 2010 who had set a goal related to the computer.  There are beginner computer users who set a goal of learning how to send and receive email, log on to a website, and understand what all the features are used for on their Dock (Mac users) or Start Menu (Windows users).  Some had decided to learn how to use their digital camera and then transfer the pictures to their computer.  Others had mastered the transfer but had the challenge of learning how to organize all of the pictures that had landed on their computer over the months or how to use their printer/scanner with the hopes of converting many of their developed pictures into scanned images.  I meet many people who are looking for a new job who quickly find that most of the job postings require a knowledge of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access and even Outlook).  And then there are all the technology extras.  Some want to learn how to attach a file to an email, open a PDF, save to a flash drive, tweet or post their status, communicate via Skype, start a website or even write their own blog.

This year one of my tech goals is to blog at least once a week.  Why blog?  It is the easiest way to capture my technology tips in one place and archive them by date.  My blog is accessible from any computer with internet connection.  You can even search the blog for particular topics such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Google, Twitter, Facebook, iPhoto, Picasa, and more.  My blog entries will be short and sweet but filled with a specific technology tip.  A 'how-to' blog entry pertaining to a website or software program that you can follow along at your own pace.

Stay tuned.

As always, happy clicking,

Betsy

The PC Teacher

bcoyne@thepcteacher.com

Music

I love listening to music on my computer. I've taken my entire CD collection and imported it into iTunes. No iPod required. I can sort by artist, album, song name, genre and more. I can even make playlists. That means I can take songs from different CDs and put them on one CD together. Then I can play that CD in the car or at a party.

Here's my latest CD purchase:

Shopping online: The Amazon Shop

You know I much I enjoy the show, Glee.
Well, there is a Christmas album coming out and I ordered it on Amazon.com
Here are some quick picks from my Amazon shopping list: