Today was a special edition of the show as we helped our local public radio station raise money for their operating costs. We want to greatly think Lynette, Kate, Bill, and Martha who stepped up to the plate and donated! You can click here to donate on their web site and still help the cause. No amount is too low, and all amounts are appreciated! During the course of the hour, we talked about some important issues like comptuer security and some fun issues like digital cameras, movie making, and Google Android. Enjoy!

We'll be back with our regular edition of the show on October 15.

This Friday there will be a special edition of the Castellini on Computers Radio program on our local public radio station, KAFM. Anyone can listen from any where by listening to the live web stream at the KAFM web site. Like all public radio stations, they host an annual fund raiser to keep the air waves open. The KAFM management asked if we would be willing to do a special edition of the show during the fund raiser, and we said, "Yes!". 

Tune in this Friday, October 3 from Noon-1pm for the special edition show. In addition to tuning in, we would really like to see your support for the show and our new home at KAFM in the form of a donation to their fund raiser. You can click here to donate on their web site, or better yet, let's flood there phone lines on Friday during our show and let them know how

As you know, Zoho is my favorite Web 2.0 company. Their CEO, Sridhar Vembu maintains a blog and wrote an interesting article about the bailout, Wall Street and other interesting aspects of our economy from his vantage point. Click the Zoho logo or here to read his article.

Many moons ago, I shared with you a tip on how to create a desktop icon to shutdown Windows XP instantly. It's about time that I share with you the same tip applied to Windows Vista. Here's how it is done:

1. RIGHT Click on a blank part of your desktop
2. Click New --> Shortcut
3. Type the following phrase EXACTLY as shown in the box (or better yet, Copy and Paste it):    %SystemRoot%\System32\shutdown.exe /s
4. Click Next
5. Type a name for your shortcut like Shutdown, It's Over, Time to Go...you choose
6. Click Finish
7. Now RIGHT click on the new shortcut you created
8. Click Properties
9. Click Change icon (you might get an error message, just click OK)
10. Click an icon you want to use for the shutdown
11. Click OK

You can see all these steps in action in the video below AND get a bonus tip of how to change the action of the little power button on the start menu.

Skype ranks as one of my all-time favorite web programs. For those who have never heard this name or weren't sure what it is about, Skype allows you to make voice and or video calls from your computer to another Internet connected computer anywhere in the world for free. Skype also offers extremely low pricing for making computer to land line or cell phone calls as well.

I use Skype to communicate with my brother in Arizona, but over the past few months we have noticed a significant change in the quality of the calls. Neither of us has changed our Internet service or computer setups, so Skype is definitely the culprit. We both noted that Skype usage seems to be climbing. At almost any time we use Skype, we note that between 10 and 13 million other Skype users are online. Whether the vast number of users contributes to the problems we experience or not, it still makes a mind boggling statistic.

It used to be that we could make our video calls and talk for anywhere from 15 minutes to 90 minutes and not have any problems with call quality, dropped calls or video problems. However, over the past six months our calls are frequently dropped, suffer from extremely poor audio, or one of us will lose the audio from the other. Every fifth or sixth call, we will experience good quality again, but good quality calls are quickly becoming rare.

We both are using the current version of the Skype software and try not to run any other programs in the background as we talk...except maybe our browsers. We both fill out the How did we do? surveys after a failed call, but the problems continue to exacerbate.

I would love to hear from other Skype users out there:

How often do you use Skype? Are you experiencing good quality calls, poor quality calls or both? If poor, how often and what type of problems do you have? Are you a Mac Skyper, Linux Skyper, or Windows Skyper? How fast is your connection? Do you have any tips for making better use of Skype?

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think of Skype and please answer some of these questions as well. I'm curious.

Some good questions this week, but some of them could be found already just by using the search engine right here at HelpMeRick.com.

Episode 14 of my email series is brought to you by questions from Darla, Rose, Anne, Barbara, Sharon, Jerry, Peter, Dick, Toni, Joe, and the number 700,000,000,000.

Prevention is the best medicine when it comes to avoiding illness in ourselves. Prevention in the computer world is no different. And like a newborn baby, a newly purchased computer is subject to many terrible diseases and problems if not properly cared from the moment it is taken from its cardboard box. I follow these steps when setting up a new computer system for my clients, and recommend this methodology for all new computer setups: