Carputers News and Computer Tips

During their recent Load and Help campaign, SoftMaker Software GmbH offered SoftMaker Office 2008 for Windows and Linux as a free download. 

If you missed this campaign, here’s another chance to get SoftMaker Office 2008 for free.  The German magazine Stern offers it on their website.  Click here for the translated download and registration page.  You have to provide them with a valid email address to get the registration code.

We’ve blogged about this office suite before.  It has also been ”rebadged” as Ashampoo Office 2008.

Besides its excellent compatibility with Microsoft Office, the other neat feature about the Windows version of this suite is that once you install it on a host computer it creates a start menu entry that allows you to copy your installation to a USB flash drive.

Cameron Chapman (who is one of our favorite writers about things online) recently wrote an outstanding article for the Webdesigner Depot website entitled How to Find Anything Online: Become an Internet Research Expert.  He notes:

…with the Internet, almost anything you could ever want to know is at your fingertips. You just have to learn how to access it.

We agree wholeheartedly and have found this to be the case.  We blogged three years ago this month about the American Library Association’s Best Free Reference Web Sites. 

Mr. Ms. Chapman’s article gives tips and sites that, while they will not make you an immediate expert at research, will enable you to expand and practice your search technique.  It is a definite keeper!

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 may, in some cases, fail to display some web pages correctly.  Microsoft addresses this issue in this Microsoft Support article, which states: 

 …you may experience any of the following symptoms in Internet Explorer 8:

 - Menus, images, or text are in the wrong positions on some Web sites.

 - Some Web site features do not work.

 - You receive script error messages on some Web sites.

 - Internet Explorer stops working or crashes on some Web sites.

Microsoft lists the cause for this as:

Some Web sites are designed for older browsers. You may experience compatibility issues on these sites until they are updated for Internet Explorer 8. 

There is a Compatibility View feature in IE 8 that will help these sites display and work as well as they can.  Here’s the “short attention span” version of how to turn it on: 

With IE 8 open, click “Tools” on the Command Bar, and then click “Compatibility View Settings” on the Tools menu as shown below:

Once the Compatibility View Settings window opens, click to put a checkmark in the box next to where it says “Display all websites in Compatibility View” as shown below:

Click the “Close” button, and you’re done.  We recommend you close and restart Internet Explorer 8 after making this change.

And, as always, if you need assistance or have a computer-related question, contact us!  We’ll be happy to help!

Here are two sets of picks for the best websites of 2009 - one from Time Magazine, and one from PC Magazine.  The latter also features a downloadable application that will add add all 100 sites to your IE Favorites (you can also export them to Firefox).

We’ll edit this post whenever more lists come out between now and the end of 2009.

Edit 10/30/2009:

techradar.com has a six page list entitled 95 Websites You Should Totally Bookmark Today that is worth a read.

Who says we don’t have a sense of humor? With a tip of the hat to XKCD…

Seriously, if we can be of assistance, contact us!  You’ll be glad you did!

We love GMail!  We’ve used it since it became available, and recommend it highly.  Recently, Google put together and posted a series of tips and a printable guide on becoming a GMail Ninja:

Learn tips and tricks to save time, increase your productivity, and manage your email efficiently. Start with the tips that are right for you, based on how much email you get each day.

Looking for even more tips?  Techradar recently featured 14 tips and tricks to buff up your Gmail skills.  If Gmail is your preferred client, these tips will help you get the best from it.

Is GMail not your thing? There are many other free email providers.  Here’s a comparison of free online mail services from the Freeware Elite blog. 

As always, we’ll be happy to help if you have PC-related questions or issues.  Contact us if we can be of assistance!

Edit 09/05/2009:

Courtesy of Lee Mathews and Download Squad, here are 11 useful Windows apps that tie in to your GMail account.

Edit 12/24/2009:

Here are 20 Essential Gmail Tips You Probably Don’t Use (but should!) courtesy of MaximumPC magazine.

Ashampoo Office 2008 is a “rebranded” version of SoftMaker Office 2008.  We blogged about SoftMaker Office 2006 last year, and noted that the freeware 2006 version did an excellent job with word processing and spreadsheets but did not include a presentation (PowerPoint-like) application.

Ashampoo/SoftMaker Office 2008 corrects this with a very capable presentation application that can also utilize templates originally created for PowerPoint.

Softpedia posted an article earlier this spring detailing how to buy a copy of Ashampoo Office 2008 for $4.99.  From that article, here is a direct link to Ashampoo’s offer.

The second link on the left side of that Ashampoo offer (the first black button) says “Download 30 days free full version HERE”  Clicking that link in turn takes you to a CNET download.com page where the installation file can be downloaded and saved.

According to the Planete Beranger blog, A full license key to turn this 30-day version of Ashampoo Office 2008 into a full, non-time limited version can be obtained from Ashampoo by filling out this form using a valid email address.

Once you’ve obtained your key from Ashampoo via email, go ahead and run the installation file you downloaded from CNET download.com.  Enter the name, email address, and serial number you received from Ashampoo in their reply email when prompted.  After the installation is complete, download and install SoftMaker’s service pack from here, which will make sure your Ashampoo/SoftMaker Office 2008 installation is fully up-to-date.

Here’s how to make this very capable office suite save files in Microsoft Office (.doc, .xls, .ppt) formats automatically. You’ll need to do this in all three (TextMaker 2008, PlanMaker 2008, and Presentations 2008) programs.

After installation, click on Tools, Options… in the menu bar…

…and and then click on the Files tab at the top of the Options window.

The drop-down menu labeled Default file format (as shown above) allows the default file format to be set to your choice of Microsoft Office-compatible formats.

TextMaker documents will then be saved with a .doc file extension, PlanMaker spreadsheets will be saved with a .xls file extension, and Presentations will then be saved with a .ppt file extension automatically by default so they can be shared with Microsoft Office users.

Hopefully these links will all last.  Either deal - free or five bucks - is pretty hard to beat for what you get.  Take advantage of it before Ashampoo does away with it.

Edit 07/19/2009:

InfoWorld says:

“ SoftMaker Office 2008 shows superior compatibility with Microsoft Office formats, while OpenOffice.org 3.1 falls flat”

The For Free On Internet blog also has a recent post about how to get Ashampoo Office 2008 for free.

Edit 10/12/2009:

Here’s a video review and tutorial for Ashampoo Office 2008 courtesy of infopackets.com:

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Edward Mendelson writes for PC Magazine:

Even though OpenOffice.org… can’t do everything (Microsoft) Office can, it can do a lot, and it has some of its own tricks that even (Microsoft) Office can’t manage.

Mr. Mendelson’s article makes a nice addition to our series of OpenOffice.org posts.  Tip #5 in his article is a shorter version of our post on Configuring the OpenOffice.org suite for use in a Microsoft Office world… 

As we’ve said before - you can’t beat the price!

Cameron Chapman writes for Mashable:

Ever had one of those moments when you really wished you knew how to do something specific? If only there were someone you could ask…

Here’s a run-down of more than 60 great how-to sites and guides covering everything from building a mashup to being more productive, creating a website and more.

And, as always, if you need help or advice on computer-related issues, contact us!  We’d be happy to be of assistance!

We frequently get requests for help with using different software and applications.  For example, users changing to Microsoft Office 2007 from earlier versions sometimes find it difficult to locate familiar features and commands.

There are several good, free sources of just-in-time training guides and “cheat sheets” for popular software applications on the web. Here are our picks:

The University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business maintains a great, publically-accessable Computing Documentation Library full of handouts and ”cheat sheets” for many software programs.

CustomGuide is a software training company based in Minneapolis, MN. They offer several FREE Quick References for popular programs and operating systems.

OpenOffice.org user guides for Version 3 (their latest version) are available here.

As discussed in our Lotus Symphony posts, ”cheat sheets” in the form of reference cards are available here.

If you have any others to add, leave a reply below or contact us!