Ask DACS
May 2011

Moderated and reported by Jim Scheef.

AskDACS is a Question and Answer session before the main presentation at the monthly General Meeting. We solicit questions from the floor and then get answers from audience members. My role as moderator is to try to guide the discussion to a likely solution to the problem.

Q – To get things started, I asked about a problem I have with a virtual machine running in Microsoft Virtual PC on 64-bit Windows 7. The guest operating system is 32-bit Vista Business (only 32-bit guest operating systems are supported) and the problem is that the ‘Integration Features’ do not stick when they are enabled.

D – There was no one in the audience using virtual machines under Microsoft VPC; most members present used VM Ware products.

Q – Has anyone tried the new Cloud Player service from Amazon? I purchased an album from Amazon and was then offered this service with as much as 20GB of space.

A – There was discussion about the service. According to CNN:
“The new Cloud Player service adds a new "Save to Amazon Cloud Drive" button for saving MP3s to the cloud, as well as an option to upload music from a hard drive to a user's Cloud Drive.

Users are given 5 GB of free storage, but can get 20 GB if they purchase an album through Amazon. It's $1 per GB after that.

Cloud Player comes in two flavors, an app for the web and an Android app counterpart. Both players allow users to upload their music, create playlists and organize their music. “

There is also an iOS app (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch). One member said that he has used the service and that it works as advertised.

Q – I use Firefox on XP to access my Yahoo Mail account. When I am viewing a long email message and try to print it, the printed message is cut off after a page and a fraction. I use the classic version of Yahoo Email.

A – We tried viewing some emails in my Yahoo account and were able to duplicate the problem in print preview even though I use the more modern current version of Yahoo (there is also a new beta version). It turned out that the questioner was clicking the browser print button rather than the print button within Yahoo Mail. The former prints the entire web page including the menus and advertising; the latter just prints the email message. The member had not tried the print button in Yahoo mail. In the Classic version of Yahoo Mail, there is a link to print an email on the upper right just above the message itself. In both versions the button or link is only visible when the message is open. There is no print option when reading a message in the reading pane of the regular Yahoo email web interface.

D – Another member suggested using a Firefox add-on called “Print Edit” which “Allows editing of the web page content while in Print Preview mode. Editing the web page prior to printing can compact the layout and remove unwanted content such as adverts, sidebars and blank pages. Any element can be formatted, hidden or deleted.” This seems ideal for times when the website does not provide an option for a printable version. While not an exact solution to the problem at hand, this add-on could be quite useful.

Q – In Microsoft Word for Macintosh, when I click print, I get a small status window saying the document has been printed but never see the print options dialog where I can choose the printer or change settings.

A – Without a Mac for demonstration, we had to approximate using Office 2007 on a PC. What the member was seeing is the same behavior as “Quick Print” in Office 2007, where the document is sent directly to the default printer. Along with Quick Print, there is a menu choice for regular “Print” that opens the printer dialog. Another member with a Mac said that the print dialog was set to display a “compact” or abbreviated version and by clicking a small triangle, the full dialog will open.

Q – Does anyone know a good, free web design program?

A – There were several suggestions. SeaMonkey is a Mozilla project that includes: “SeaMonkey's powerful yet simple HTML editor keeps getting better with dynamic image and table resizing, quick insert and delete of table cells, improved CSS support, and support for positioned layers. For all your documents and website projects, Composer is all you need.” Another suggestion was Amaya from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) billed as an open source equivalent to Dreamweaver. A third suggestion was Microsoft WebMatrix: “WebMatrix is a free web development tool from Microsoft that includes everything you need for website development. Start from open source web applications, built-in web templates or just start writing code yourself. It’s all-inclusive, simple and best of all free. Developing websites has never been easier.”

Q – When I try to record video on an HP Media Center PC, I get a lot of jitter. Does anyone have suggestions on how to get better recordings? The goal is to produce videos suitable for You Tube.

A – First we did a round of follow-up questions to determine that the computer has a properly installed video capture card and that composite video was the best means available to get the video signal to the computer from the VHS player. One suggestion was to check that the video capture card is configured correctly in Windows so there are no resource conflicts. It is also possible that the card is defective. Another suggestion was to go the HP website and check for software updates to anything from the device drivers to the recording software. The HP website makes this very easy so long as you know the HP product name and model.

Q – Is there a store in the area with a showroom where I can see a complete setup like I have at home with Charter, TV Tuner, sound system, etc.? Something better than Best Buy or P.C. Richards.

A – The first suggestion was a trip to Los Vegas in January for the Consumer Electronic Show. If you want to see Charter cable in the mix, then you must go to a store located in Charter territory. Danbury is Comcast territory so all stores will have Comcast cable. Someone said he had seen a Samsung showroom in Manhattan. After some discussion, the only local showroom remaining seems to be Carston Stereo in Danbury.

Questions for the upcoming meeting can be emailed to askdacs@dacs.org.

Disclaimer: Ask DACS questions come from members by email or from the audience attending the general meeting. Answers are suggestions offered by meeting attendees and represent a consensus of those responding. DACS offers no warrantee as to the correctness of the answers and anyone following these suggestions or answers does so at their own risk. In other words, we could be totally wrong!