Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
November 26, 2006

Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter
http://www.terryscomputertips.com
A computer tips newsletter for users of PC's.

Volume 2, Number 24 — Sunday, November 26, 2006

Part 1  | Part 2  | Part 3 | Part 4

IN THIS WEEK'S ON-LINE ISSUE:
   1.   HOWTO: Writing Files to CD's with Windows XP
   2.   Updates Last Week
   3.   Web Browser Bug -- IE and Firefox
   4.   Reader Feedback
   5.   IE7 - Problems Accessing the Internet
   6.   My Computer Security Software Recommendations
   7.   HOWTO: Changing Program Icons
   8.   Recommend my Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter to Your Friends

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1.  HOWTO: Writing Files to CD's with Windows XP

Windows XP, unlike earlier versions of Windows, has the built-in ability to write files to CD's.

What does this mean? If you want to copy some files to a CD, you don't have to buy a special CD burning program like Nero Burning ROM (the one I use), Roxio's Easy CD Creator, NTI or others. You can do basic CD writing with Windows XP itself.

Of course, you can't do the complicated things that the other packages do, but Windows XP's CD-writing capability means you don't even have to open those more powerful programs when you want to copy a few files to a CD.

So, how do we do it?

The first step is to open Windows Explorer, the built-in Windows file manager. The easiest way to do this is to right-click on the Start button and pick "Explore."

Then, click on the icons below the File / Edit menu, click on the Folders button (which doesn't really look like a button). This will give you the much more functional two-pane view in Windows Explorer.

Windows will show all of your drives -- floppies, hard drives, CD drives, DVD drives and flash drives (if any). If you have a built-in flash card reader, which will let you read the memory card from your digital camera or PDA, Windows Explorer will also show those "drives" even if you don't have a memory card plugged in.

Just find the files you want to copy to the CD (if you're like most people, they're in "My Documents."

Then, in the right-hand pane of Windows Explorer, select the file(s) you want to copy, right-click on them, and drag them onto the CD-writer in the left-hand pane. In my case, it is labelled "DVD/CD-RW DRive (E:)"

Windows will make a temporary note that these dragged-and-dropped files are to be written to the CD. It will also give you a popup balloon by the Windows Status Bar to tell you that files are waiting to be written to the CD.

When you've dragged and dropped all the files you want to write, you can initiate the actual process of writing to the CD.

Put a blank CD into your CD writer. Then, right-click on the CD-writer icon. The popup should look like this:

 

2.  Updates Last Week

Microsoft (operating systems, email, web browser, office suites):
No updates this week. Microsoft releases almost all updates once per month, on the second Tuesday.

Firefox (web browser, http://www.mozilla.com, free):
This week, Mozilla.org released an update to the 1.5 versions. Firefox v1.5.0.8 was released to handle significant security issues. They also posted the following statement: "Firefox 1.5.0.x will be maintained with security and stability updates until April 24, 2007. All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 2." Firefox v2.0 was released on Tuesday, October 24th.

Opera (web browser, http://www.opera.com, free):
No update last week. Current version 9.02 was released during late September.

Netscape (web browser, http://browser.netscape.com, free):
No update this week. Version 8.1.2 was released during the week ending September 30.

US-CERT issued a press-release on November 8th that recommended that Netscape users turn off JavaScript. (Mozilla Firefox, SeaMonkey and Thunderbird were subject to the same issues, but new versions were released on November 8th to solve the problem.)

SeaMonkey (web browser, email, HTML editor, newsreader; http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey; free): No updates this week. Current version 1.0.6 was released on November 8th. This is a seruity update.

Eudora (email, http://www.eudora.com, options: paid, sponsored or free/lite):
No update last week. Version 7.1.0.9 was released October 11, 2006. This was announced as to be the last commercial version before Eudora becomes open-source in the first half of 2007.

Mozilla Thunderbird (email, http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird, free):
Thunderbird version 1.5.0.8 was released November 8th. This is fixes a significant security problem.

OpenOffice (office suite — spreadsheet, word processor, presentations, graphics, web design; http://www.openoffice.org; free):
Version 2.04 was released on Friday October 13, which was also the 6th anniversary of OpenOffice.org. What's new?

Part 1  | Part 2  | Part 3 | Part 4

Volume 2, Number 24 — Sunday, November 26, 2006

Copyright © 2006 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.