Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
October 28, 2007

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

Volume 3, Number 20 — Sunday, October 28, 2007

Part 1  | Part 2

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IN THIS WEEK'S ON-LINE ISSUE:
   1.   The Last Supper — at 16 Billion Pixels
   2.   Updates Last Week
   3.   HOWTO: Change File-type Program Associations
   4.   Identifying and Changing Default File/Program Associations
   5.   My Computer Security Software Recommendations
   6.   Recommend my Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter to Your Friends

Welcome to the on-line edition of my Terry's Computer Tips newsletter.

My emailed newsletter is sent weekly to individuals who have subscribed to the newsletter. Click here to subscribe. It's free!

Are you subscribed to my weekly email newsletter? If you are, and are not getting it, check your Bulk Mail and your Spam folders. If you find my newsletter there, please reclassify it to normal email.

Yahoo, in particular, is doing a bad job of classifying my newsletters. Other free, online email systems are also having the problem.

If you find an email in your Spam folder or Bulk Mail folder that you really want to receive -- be sure to click on their button to reclassify the email in their system. It will help you and it will help others.

1.  The Last Supper — at 16 Billion Pixels

On Saturday, October 27th, HAL9000 S.r.l. added a 16 Billion Pixels (16 Gigapixel) image of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper to their amazing HALTADEFINIZIONE web site.

I saw the announcement earlier this week that it was coming and was able to visit their web site before the release. That was very fortunate — I recommend that you make a note to visit the site, since it was overloaded now. Earlier today, the site was responding slowly, but now it appears to be completely overloaded.

The site visit is definitely worth the time just to see the amazing detail of this and the other high-resolution gigapixel photos they have available. You can click, scroll and zoom into the pictures in real time (when the site's not overloaded, of course).

In addition to the image of the The Last Supper fresco, they also have scrollable, zoomable photos of Vita de Cristo by Gaudenzio Ferrari (8.6 gigapixel), Gloria de Sant'Ignazio by Andrea Pozzo (9.8 gigapixel) and the Cupola de Novara (a mere 300 megapixel).

The artwork is amazing. The display technique is almost equally amazing — this is not just one of those sites that gives you a one-zoom level magnifying glass.

Want to read more about Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper? Learn more at Wikipedia.

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2.  Updates Last Week

Microsoft (operating systems, email, web browser, office suites):
Microsoft releases almost all updates once per month, on the second Tuesday. This week did not include Patch Tuesday.

Firefox (web browser, http://www.mozilla.com, free):
New Version! Version 2.0.0.8 was released on October 18, 2007. This was primarily a security update.

Opera (web browser, http://www.opera.com, free):
New version! Version 9.23 was released on October 17th. This release is a recommended security upgrade.

Opera 9.50 beta 1 became available on October 25th. Based on the changelog, there are a lot of changes coming to Opera. But, bewware, if you're using OperaMail, this is a one-way upgrade as it will change your mail storage system.

Netscape (web browser, http://browser.netscape.com, free):
New version this week! Version 9.0.0.1 was released this week. I imagine that many Netscape users had already upgraded to the Release Candidate version. This is the official release.

SeaMonkey (web browser, email, HTML editor, newsreader; http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey; free): New version! Version 1.1.5 was released during the week ending October 20, 2007.

Eudora (email, http://www.eudora.com):
No update last week. Version 7.1.0.9 was released October 11, 2006. Eudora is now free, with no ads and no "paid mode" option.

The first beta version of v8 (v8.0.0.b1) was released several weeks ago and is available from http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope_Releases .

Mozilla Thunderbird (email, http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird, free):
No new version this week. Thunderbird version 2.0.0.6 was released on August 1, 2007. This is primarily a security update.

OpenOffice (office suite — spreadsheet, word processor, presentations, graphics, web design; http://www.openoffice.org; free): Version 2.3 was released during the week ending September 22nd. This version includes new features as well as bug fixes.

3.  HOWTO: Change File-type Program Associations

I've done it. I'm sure you have, too.

We've all installed a program that arbitrarily grabbed certain file extensions (such as .doc, .jpg, .mp3) and changed Windows' settings. Now, the new program is the default for opening that file type.

Sometimes, it's our fault — many programs that can handle multiple file types will give us an option during the program's installation. We'll get the chance to select (or deselect) which program types will default to the new program. If we pick wrong, or decide later that this wasn't really what we wanted to do, it seems like we're stuck with the new program.

Fortunately, Windows has a couple easy ways for us to change the default program that is opened when you double-click on a file or an attachment.

For this example, let's assume that we installed the graphics program Irfanview, which gives us the option to make it the default for a lot of different types of images. Without thinking, and forgetting that we really like Windows XP's Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, we set IrfanView to be the default for JPG images.

First, let's look at the easiest way to solve the problem...

Open Windows Explorer, the Windows file management program, and find one of the files that you want to open with a different program.

Next, right-click on the file. In the image below, I've right-clicked on the .jpg image file.

The popup Context Menu has the option we need — it's "Open With..."

In the fly-out section of the Context Menu, we will see various programs that the Windows installation on our computer thinks may be appropriate. If the program we want is not listed, we can use the Choose Programs... option to browse the computer and select the program.

But, wait, we want to open the program in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer and we see it listed — so we click on it. The image opens in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. All is right with the world, right? Not quite...

There's only one problem with this approach — we have to do it each time for each image we want to view. By selecting the program in this manner, we do not change the default.

In order to change the default, we need to pick the Choose Program... option. When we do, we will get a helpful dialog box that shows those options and more.

Now, we can pick Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, or any of the others or even browse to find another program, and we can put a checkmark in the box that says "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file "