Month: June 2017

June 22, 2017     Presented by Ron Fugazzi

Attendees: 20

Documenting Your Trip With Photos

Ron shared some very helpful tips and strategies for taking and saving remarkable photos during a vacation.

The bulk of Ron’s presentation will focus on using one’s smartphone for taking pictures.

If you are one of those people who takes pictures and then goes through and edits them one by one, a new practice might be to follow a few tips and take better pictures and avoid virtually all of the time editing them later.

To reduce, and possibly eliminate, worry for the potential loss of vacation pictures, find and utilize one of the many cloud services for saving those pictures. All it takes is an internet connection with your phone and those pictures will safely and securely flow to the cloud for safe keeping. Dropbox, iCloud and Google Photo are three of the most popular services.

Ron found a new device that is a flash drive that connects directly to your smartphone. Connect and save photos right on the spot. The brand Ron found is called On The Go flash drive or OTG. Reasonably priced in the $30 range.

Composition of a photo is really critical for taking those remarkable and “wow” pictures. Take a few moments to review the presentation for those tips.

Please feel free to open the presentation to see the other slides talking about these basics of photo taking.

An “off the cuff” assignment was to find the User Guide for your specific smartphone and read the section pertaining to the camera. This will greatly help you discover some of the very easy and fancy features for picture taking. Use a Google Search (or Bing or Yahoo) and type”User Guide for [your smartphone model]. Example “user guide for iPhone 7 Plus” or “User Guide for Galaxy S6”.

 

 

Presented by Aaron Bird. Owner, Oakley PC    June 8, 2017

Attendees: 23

Aaron shared his experience of repairing computers in our local area. In fact, many of our club members have taken their computers to Aaron for a fix or upgrade.

The very young, yet experience fellow likes in Oakley with his wife and 3 daughters, the oldest of which is 20. His shop is on  his property and all you need to do is give him a call and share your situation and he’ll either come to you or you can go to him. Aaron says half of his calls are in the home.

Here are some of his insights and thoughts about how you can greatly improve your computer experience.

When it comes to computer reliability, Aaron’s experience shows that desktop computers are more reliable. Although they might not be as convenient as laptops or tablets, desktops can breath allowing electronic components to keep cool, thus last longer.

Apple and Windows computers are all good but Apple computers are more expensive. They are very good in terms of quality. Aaron works on both! Oakley sells computers also. He specializes in business quality computers like Dell. Check things out.

If you are thinking about  making your computer faster, Aaron says the hard drive can be the culprit and strongly believes upgrading to a “solid state disk” (SSD) can dramatically make your computer go faster. Give him the brand and model of your computer and Aaron will tell you what he can do.

Adware and viruses are a big deal these days as he gets a large number of calls about problems related to these pesky things. Aaron strongly recommends Windows Defender that comes FREE with Windows 8 and Windows 10 and Microsoft Security Essentials for Windows 7 and earlier. In addition, Malwarebytes (www.malwarebytes.com or www.malwarebytes.org) is another FREE program he uses and you can use too. However, if a virus or malware has taken control and you need help, give Aaron a call.

And lastly, if you don’t have a backup of your valuable data/information you keep on your computer Aaron says make a change and protect yourself now. It is extremely important to have a backup but NOT just on your computer. Use the cloud (internet) and another, external drive. Get in the habit and let the backup run behind the scenes so you can forget about it and forever be safe. Aaron has external drives for sale at very reasonable prices. Give him a call.

Aaron’s support is very reasonably priced in his shop or at his home so give him a call. However, he says that email or phone support is absolutely FREE so take advantage!