All About DVDs

With the wide variety of DVD types, speeds, disks and burners available these days, it is understandable that people are bewildered by the choices available to them. What is dual-layer? What do the speeds like 8x or 16x mean? What is the difference between +R and -R? Fear not, for we have the answers to these and all of your other DVD questions!

With the amount of information available about DVDs, it doesn't make sense for me to write about everything because this story would be the size of a book. Instead, I'll point you to a couple of excellent resources on the web that should answer all of your DVD questions.

DVD Demystified

DVD Demystified's FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page has an incredible list of questions and answers about DVDs. The list covers DVDs in general, including ones about stand-alone DVD players.

The great thing about this site is that it is constantly updated. There is a Recent Changes section, but it isn't listed in the index. To get to Recent Changes, click on [0] Where can I get the DVD FAQ? and scroll up. You'll see all the latest changes (new questions and answers) which are spread throughout the FAQ. The latest entry at the top of the list as of this article is the amusing "Format unification talks still underway". As consumers, we could only hope for one single, easy DVD format!

Here are a few of my top picks from the FAQ:

[1.18] What is a dual-layer disc? Will it work in all players?
[1.27] Why does playback sometimes freeze for a second?
[3.12] How long do DVDs last?
[4.2] What are the features and speeds of DVD drives?
[4.3.6] Which recordable DVD format should I buy?

DVD Demystified's FAQ list is a great resource for most of your DVD questions.

digitalFAQ

digitalFAQ is a site that covers more than just DVD questions. It also has more detailed information on related digital media, such as video editing, DVD copying, and buyer guides.

If you've ever gone into any major electronics retailer to buy blank DVDs and wondered which of the many brands you should pick, check out their Blank Media and Quality FAQ. It describes the major brands, who makes them, and the relative quality. I just learned that my stack of 200 new BenQ DVDs are 4th Class Media, "Pathetic garbage media, landfill material"!! This page alone could save you considerable headache.

I've had many people ask me about converting their old VHS videotapes to DVD. This process is called "capturing", because you are playing a VHS video stream and "capturing" it onto DVD. They have a good section on capturing.

The one downside to digitalFAQ is that I had problems loading some pages.

These sites are a good start for learning about DVDs. Where can you find more information? Check the FAQ of course!

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Keyboard Shortcuts for Internet Explorer

If you use Internet Explorer, there are a number of handy keyboard shortcuts to make your browsing experience faster and more efficient.

TechRepublic is a web site used mostly by techies and computer professionals. But it also contains some very handy keyboard shortcuts for many applications, including Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). Take a look here for their download, "30+ Keyboard shortcuts to move faster in Microsoft Internet Explorer". When you click on the download button, you'll have to register an account on TechRepublic first. Alternatively, as I mentioned in a previous article, you can use BugMeNot if you don't want to register an account just to check out the keyboard shortcut. I still recommend signing up, I've been a member for years and only get the email newsletters that I've requested - nothing more.

Some keyboard shortcuts they have listed are:

• Ctrl + B Organize Favorites
• Ctrl + E Open the Search bar
• Ctrl + H Open the History bar
• Ctrl + O Open a new Web page, document, or folder
• F11 Switch between full-screen/normal view
• ESC Stop downloading a page

TechRepublic also has more keyboard shortcut downloads for other programs too.

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Free Tech Support!

Updated on April 20, 2007: now includes Neowin.net and Ask Me Help Desk.

Although my company makes money by helping people and other companies with technology, it is without hesitation that I bring you some information on free tech support!

With free tech support, you get what you pay for. But if you have a question or a small problem that has been annoying you for a while, these four sites might be able to help. I don't have any connection whatsoever with any of these web sites and bring them to you as a public service.

For the sake of a quick comparison, I'll be using an example of needing help with Microsoft Word. For any of these sites however, your question could be about any computer help.

All Experts

According to the blurb on their web site, "Allexperts.com is the oldest & largest free Q&A service on the Internet". They use volunteers to answer questions. You fill out a web form with your question and they answer it. The first place to look (on any site) is to search their archive to see if someone has already asked the question. AllExperts has an alphabetical question archive for topics, including Microsoft Word. They are not limited to computer questions, and have experts on pretty much anything you can think of, from accounting to zoology.

After an expert answers your question, it is posted for everyone to see and people can rate the helpfulness of the answer on a scale of 1 to 5. They also list related articles in case you want to find out more information.

The only big downside to this is that if you weren't clear enough asking the question, or didn't understand the answer, you may not get the answer you are looking for, and you may need to repost your question on the web form. You also choose a single expert to answer your question, so you will not see the benefit of alternate answers from others.

Ask Me Help Desk

Ask Me Help Desk is a general help community that works by signing members up to their forums, and has their members and experts answer your question. The forum is for members only, thus you must sign up to read answers or post questions, but membership is free. They have 60,000 registered members, with dozens or hundreds that are regular helpers, depending on the subject area.

Computer Hope

Computer Hope uses multiple tools to help. They have a dictionary, tips pages, question & answer pages and a public forum. Although you could start by using the general search feature, I suggest clicking on the Free Help menu item. The general search does not report forum search results and the advanced search wasn't working as of the writing of this article.

In the Free Help area, you can start with a search of the main database. If you don't find what you are looking for, by all means try searching the forums. Usually the forum is the best place for obscure problems. If you do not find the answer you are looking for, you can go to the forum index and ask your question in the relevant forum. Register yourself a username first so people can identify you.

Computer Hope is a good site with a lot of answers and help.

Free Tech Support

Free Tech Support is a web site with free support on a wide range of computer topics, and they also include support for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems too. Their support comes in three flavours: live chat, forums and email.

The live chat feature is great when someone is there to answer, but sometimes you'll find the icon says "Leave a Message - Live Help Offline". This type of support opens up a little window where you and the tech support person type live messages to one another in real-time. Many professional tech support departments use this and it works very well.

The forums are not nearly as active as Computer Hope's, but the range of help appeared to be both prompt and knowledgeable. As with Computer Hope, you aren't required to register but I recommend it, especially if you ever come back for more questions.

They also have support by email if you don't want to use live chat or forums (or if they're down). They mention that this is the slowest method. I recommend using the forums so that others who have the same problem might be able to search and find a quick answer. I didn't notice any Microsoft Word questions on the site but perhaps they may answer most of them through their live chat system.

Free Tech Support is also another good resource for help.

Google

The last (and perhaps most valuable) of the free tech support sites is none other than the Google search engine. Most computer technicians I know use this daily for a quick reference. For instance, let's say you want to learn how to set the margins in your Word document. You are using Microsoft Word 2003, so you'd go to Google and type in this search term: microsoft word 2003 set margin. Take a look at what Google finds here!

Instant answers from multiple sources. You don't have to wait for someone to answer, and you have a choice of hundreds of answers. When you use Google (or your own favourite search engine) to search for tech support questions, make sure you include the full name of the software product and the version number so you don't get an outdated answer.

Neowin.net

I have been a member at Neowin.net since April 2006, and their forums are free to sign up for and use. A membership is not required to view the questions and answers as with some other services. Their focus is on computer technology. The one thing that attracts me to Neowin.net is that the level of expertise is very high, with such topic areas as hardware overclocking, computer programming and database development for instance. Their forums and forum search feature are a little slow, but the results are worth it, as Neowin.net usually answers your question quickly and thoroughly. It is one of my favourites.

Conclusion

Hopefully between these four free tech support sites you can find the answers you are looking for when you get stuck! Google is my personal favourite. If you have your own favourite let us know!

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Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta Extended

The Microsoft AntiSpyware product was set to expire this month, but with the latest update, this has been extended to December 31, 2005. This is good news for users because the free anti-spyware product is pretty good. Remember to always use at least 2 anti-spyware scanners!

If you don't have it, grab it here.

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Download: Iconico EasyRead

A fair number of my customers have a hard time reading the small fonts on web sites. For some the vision problems are due to age while for others it may be due to a smaller monitor or resolution settings. Microsoft Internet Explorer has a feature to change the font size, but it doesn't always work. An innnovative software development company by the name of Iconico has a free utility called EasyRead that magnifies web pages.

This little gem works in Internet Explorer only and adds two buttons to your standard toolbar: a plus [+] button and a minus [-] button. As you can guess, the plus button slightly increases the size of the web page and the minus decreases it. I even tested it on a Macromedia Flash site and it worked with that too. It would have been nice if there was a button that returned the page to its original size.

When you click on the "Download EasyRead" link, it takes you to a page where you sign up for the Iconico mailing list before you download EasyRead. This is optional however, as Iconico graciously allows you to not bother with this if you don't want to be on another mailing list.

I tested EasyRead on a spyware-free system and after install I checked again for spyware. Microsoft AntiSpyware, AdAware SE Professional and Spybot Search and Destroy detected no spyware in EasyRead, and I found no popups either. The program runs clean and is a small quick download.

If you or anyone you know has a problem reading small fonts on web pages, EasyRead is a great little utility for Internet Explorer.

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