Timmy's 20 Second Tech Tips Tim Dunham

If you find something inaccurate or have a suggestion, question or comment, please feel free to drop me an e-mail at Tim@TnTBible.org

Date Title Description
Sunday May 23, 2010 www.DocuSign.com This product is something that helps me in my Real Estate career in collecting signatures without chasing people down to get pen to paper or even eliminating e-mailing then having them print, sign, scan and e-mail or fax back.  DocuSign is a e-sign company that allow you to sign digitally online without ever printing a page, scanning anything nor dealing with e-mail or fax.  I have had even the most computer illiterate tell me they found signing on DocuSign to be the easiest thing they have ever done with a computer!  Check it out, they have a free online demo and if you want to learn more about how this can help your business contact Josh Fishcher at 206-973-8183.
Sunday May 16, 2010 www.FakeChecks.org This site is a great site to check for scams and such.
Sunday April 11, 2010 Correcting your resolution I have found that many people will find that their new monitor's resolution makes the fonts and other images too small for them to read clearly so they alter the resolution setting to one that is not native to the monitor.  By doing this you will in effect make several pixels try to emulate as one and it can cause ghosting or a blurred effect which will over time create headaches or at the least eye strain.  Click the link to see how to fix this and find another solution to increasing the size of your fonts in a way that won't hurt your eyes.
Sunday April 4, 2010
Resurrection Day		 msconfig Back due to popular demand and because it is possible it is the best most simple tool one can use to take a computer from "ready to throw it away" to "it's back to new again" status.

Using this program within Windows operating system can help you speed up your computer by 2-10 times!  Computers fresh out of the store with no added programs by you are already bogged down with unnecessary programs... this tip will help you free up resources on your PC.
Sunday March 28, 2010 Restore deleted emails in Outlook When you delete an email in Outlook - it really isn't delete; it's only "marked" for deletion.  It's only until you compact your PST file that your email is permanently erased, and the empty space is reclaimed.

Unfortunately I had to learn how to do this over the past week... I accidentally deleted all the e-mails in my inbox and it was too tedious to sort through the thousands that were still stored on the server.  There are several ways to recover deleted e-mails from any folder within Outlook; here is the one I used. 

Here is another method I did not use, but is provided by Microsoft.
Sunday March 21, 2010 Save money on CMP bill Melody Groves shared with me that she has saved around $900 over the past 18 months or $50/month by simply unplugging electronic appliances and devices when not in use.  Apparently they continue to draw power when turned off!  Thank you Melody for this week's Tech Tip!
Sunday March 14, 2010 www.Trillian.im MUST HAVE tool for any social media geek.  I have been using this program for nearly 8 years and it manages ALL my instant messenger programs such as AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, Windows Live Messenger, Jabber, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Google Talk, Skype, Bonjour, IRC and even POP3 e-mails.  IRC is technology that will allow a network of computers if all running Trillian to automatically see each other and allow messaging between computers without any configuration!  Have fun!!
Sunday March 7, 2010 Rotate your widescreen monitor This tip is so important to me and it gets the most remarks from clients when they walk in to my office that I found it necessary to repeat.  If you have a widescreen monitor and are not using it for watching movies but for surfing the web or editing documents, this is a must have.  Read up on it and make the decision for yourself: Using a Monitor in Portrait style
Sunday February 28, 2010 Snipping Tool This is a fantastic Windows Vista and Windows 7 accessory tool that I use almost daily!  You can copy anything you can see on your screen and convert it to a image file.  Sorry Windows XP users... you'll have to wait until your next upgrade to your OS L
Sunday February 21, 2010 Back-up Outlook 2002, 2003, 2007 This FREE back-up add-in can be very helpful in protecting your e-mail data files.  Click the link to learn more and download this very tiny 160KB program.
Sunday February 14, 2010 Deactivate Add-ins Many programs such as Microsoft Outlook, Word and others can get bogged down because of third party add-in's that are designed to add functionality to your applications.  However, most people don't need or ever even use the add-in feature, and these add-in's bog down the application.  Recently I noticed my Outlook getting obnoxiously slow on start so after clicking: Tools, Trust Center, Add-Ins I discovered NUMEROUS add-ins (DYMO LabelWriter, Business Contact Manager, Stamps.com, Top Producer, and about 10 others that are more typical) that I never used running.  When I deactivated them, Outlook ran possibly 20-30 times faster!  Click the to learn more.
Sunday February 7, 2010 Drive Vaccine & Rollback Two very good programs that I have purchased licenses for every computer in my home and office.  Drive Vaccine is great for either a public computer that you want kept PERFECTLY clean with no ability to be contaminated with other people's data or even viruses, each time it reboots (or whenever you choose) the computer is swept clean like the way you program it to be.  My kids computers all have this and once a month or whenever it starts acting up, I just tell it to reset and it is better than new.  With Drive Vaccine, I don't even run virus protection... no need!

Rollback is for everyone else... most people would not want their computers swept clean COMPLETELY, you want to be able to save your files and data but perhaps need to restore your computer to a time before installing something or prior to being infected with a destructive virus.  Rollback will allow you to restore to multiple points in history and still restore files that you have done in the meanwhile.  Read up on them and see if they are for you.
Sunday January 31, 2010 Microsoft Resource Monitor Using the Resou.rce Monitor can help you very easily diagnose what is slowing down your Windows 7 machine.  All you have to do is click Run... and type "resmon". For Vista and XP machines, you can always use the task manager found with the CTRL/ALT/DEL command, but it is not as detailed as the new Windows 7 resmon feature.
Sunday January 24, 2010 Benefits of Dual Monitors

Using a Monitor in Portrait style		 This tech tip will show you ways to increase your productivity by using dual monitors as well as discuss the benefits of rotating your wide screen 90 degrees (no benefit if you don't have a wide screen).
Sunday January 17, 2010 Image Resizer This tiny little program will install possibly the most helpful tool you will never want to go without and make you wonder why Microsoft didn't include it in Windows to begin with!
Sunday January 10, 2010 FREE
Microsoft Security Essentials		 Virus programs can become a computer hog and take over.  Many such as McAfee and Norton can't even just be simply uninstalled because they imbed themselves.  Click to learn how to make the switch to FREE Microsoft Security Essentials.
Sunday January 3, 2010 www.MonoPrice.com This site has truly unbelievable prices on mostly technology cables but also many other tech items.  I have discovered some prices to be 10% of what I would pay at a local retailer and if not that much of a savings at least 50%.  If you ever need a wire (USB, HDMI, VGA, DVI, RCA, CAT-5/6 or any other, you need to check here first.
Sunday December 27, 2009 Using your data cell phone as a modem for your PC or Laptop This tip will show you how to eliminate the need for an Air card for your computer (usually an extra $50-$100 every month) so long as you already have a data phone with a data (hopefully unlimited data).
Sunday December 20, 2009 msconfig Using this program within Windows operating system can help you speed up your computer by 2-10 times!  Computers fresh out of the store with no added programs by you are already bogged down with unnecessary programs... this tip will help you free up resources on your PC.
Sunday December 13, 2009 xobni
(inbox spelled backwards)		 A must have application that integrates in to Microsoft Outlook and tracks all your e-mails, contacts, facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, Hoovers and even Twitter.  FREE or you can opt to pay for a Plus version for around $30.  This is one of my very favorite applications and am sure you will agree.