Power Outages and Your Computer and Related Equipment

Late last year late one night I had a power outage. It was not a common area outage, or caused by an event such as a storm – mine was the only property impacted. It was repaired the next morning; it seemed to me that the cause was old cables which you think Energy Australia would monitor as part of any ongoing maintenance of infrastructure program. There was no explanation from Energy Australia other than the fault external to my property was repaired and my electricity was back on and my appliances all connected.

The problem was that the outage had blown two pieces of equipment a Netcomm ADSL Router as well as a Netgear Rangemax Wireless Router . I contacted Energy Australia and they advised that I must complete a Network Investigation Report for any compensation claim. I immediately did so. Several weeks later although Energy Australia had advised a far earlier response I received a form letter stating that myclaim had been rejected without any explanation.

Although my equipment is connected via an Anti-Surge Power Board, this still not on this occasion stop the problem and through no fault of my own I was up for a few hundred dollars to replace my ruined equipment.

It should be noted that occurrences like this may be covered under your Home Contents Insurance as long as part of your policy includes Fusion cover.

In conclusion all your equipment should be connected using a Surge Board, and you should look at your current insurance cover.

Although, these things are not in my experience regular events, they still do happen. It is my considered opinion that companies like Energy Australia should compensate customers when such events occur. People pay a high enough and in future increasing tariff for electricity and should be entitled to a reliable level of service and if something goes wrong to pay any cost associated with in this example affected equipment.

Australian PC Authority Magazine “Reliability & Service Awards 2007″

The full results are now available online from http://www.pcauthority.com.au/awards2007/

Domayne 12 cent digital prints

Until Christmas Eve 2007 Domayne is offering a special promotion to get 12 cent 6×4 digital prints (limit 200). After 200, the price reverts to their standard 25 cent per print charge.

No doubt post Christmas and into the new year there will be other specials offered by other retailers.

Geejay will keep you posted.

Exetel ADSL Broadband Settings – Order Exetel, Customer Login (User Facilities), Modem/Router and Email Settings

GJ’s Computer Services is an Exetel Agent (S297), providing to customers the ordering of broadband (ADSL1, ADSL2, Naked ADSL, Wireless) and telephone services from Exetel as well as installation and ongoing support.

If you are changing Internet Service Providers (ISPs), moving from Dial-Up to Broadband, or getting the Internet for the first time via Broadband and have chosen Exetel when completing the online application form to order the service please quote AGENT CODE S297 in the “Exetel Agent Code” field as shown below:

Please find some settings below to get you working with Exetel.

Customer Login:

Go to http://www.exetel.com.au.

Enter username ten digit phone number (including area code) e.g. (02 for Sydney) 0212345678@nsw (or vic etc).exetel.com.au.

Enter password which is the ten digit phone number plus (in capitals) the first two letters of your street name, for example 0212345678PE (for Peter Street).

In the Exetel User Facilities you will see all the options relating to your account on the left-hand side.

The first time you log in you should select the Second Tab (Account Details), Select Change Password and provide your own password to replace the default password provided by Exetel when you signed up for a Broadband Account.

In the Member Facilities you can also view and check your broadband usage, athough I prefer a standalone usage meter (refer to my earlier blog https://geejay.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/exetel-usage-meter-windows-vista-gadget-exetel-usage-meter-windows-xp-from-the-toids-world/), change your payment details, add or delete email accounts (up to a maximum of 20 unique email addresses), add spam monitoring to individual email accounts (an additional $2.00 per month charge per email address), purchase and/or amend services you have with Exetel (once out of contract period, if applicable), Send SMS messages from the Web (with each account now having a $1.00 credit per month = 20 SMS at 5 cents each) by selecting the ninth Tab ‘SMS Via Email’/Send SMS from Web, a new Exetel service, the tenth Tab, ‘Email2Fax’ (for 3 cents a fax for up to 10 pages)and check invoices (under the third Tab Billing Details) etc. 

Modem/Router Settings:

Login to your ADSL Modem/Router.

Enter username ten digit phone number (including area code e.g. 02 for Sydney) 1234567890@nsw (or vic etc).exetel.com.au.

Enter password which is the ten digit phone number plus (in capitals) the first two letters of your street name, for example 1234567890PE (for Peter Street).

Generally, the rest of the Modem/Router settings do not need to be amended.

Restart Modem/Router to save settings that you have entered.

Email Settings:

Username: yourname@exemail.com.au, not @exetel.com.au

Password: whatever you have chosen as your password.

Incoming Mail Server: pop3.nsw.exemail.com.au. N.B. If in Victoria for example substitute vic for nsw.

Outgoing Mail Server: smtp.nsw.exemail.com.au. N.B. If in Victoria for example substitute vic for nsw.

Uploading Your Images to Print

An activity that I often get asked about is how to order hard copy prints of customer’s digital photos (taken via a digital camera, received via email, or scanned). This is particularly an activity/hobby that many Seniors involve themsleves with. It is an interesting generational observation regarding digital photos that younger people generally do not print their digital photos and then place them into photo albums. Rather they view and share them on their computers and online. In contrast older people generally prefer to have hard copies of the photos they take.

The procedures for doing so are fairly straightforward, which I outline further down this page.

I generally do not recommend printing your own photos at home. Although fun to do and immediate gratification from a cost viewpoint it still remains a more expensive option (including the hardware cost, time and cost of photographic papers) than using professional photo labs (offline or online).  Plus, if you are printing photos to keep for a long period of time home printing (depending on what sort of printer and print technology you are using) do not generally have the longevity of professionally printed photos. If you do decide to print photos at home it is better to use a dedicated photo printer rather than an inkjet printer.

Retailers such as Harvey Norman and Dick Smith offer in store photo kiosks. These days prints cost around the 15 – 19 cent mark. From time to time these stores offer special deals, typically with some minimum or maximum number of prints, for a lower price. On this basis it is worth saving up the photos you wish to print until one of these specials are promoted.

Personally, I prefer to arrange my photo prints from home via an online company such as GetDigital (http://www.getdigital.com.au) currently offerring prints for 10 cents each (with no minimum/maximum). There are many companies offerring such online facilities. All require some form of signup. Although it can be quite a laborious process, I prefer it to waiting in queues to first select the photos at one of the machines and then to wait until my order is then processed. Depending on how busy the store is at the time this can take some hours to complete! Whereas, at home I can do other things whilst, for example, my chosen photos are being uploaded.

They all generally work the same way. You upload the photos you wish to print from a location on your computer (typically the default is the My Pictures subfolder located in My Documents). It is easiest and quickest to batch upload the photos, rather than singularly adding them. Once all your photos are added you are then presented with choices such as matt or gloss, print size, the ability to do some basic (but often important fixes) editing to improve the look of individual photos. Once done you checkout at which point postage and handling are calculated on your order.

Step-by-Step:

1. Open Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.
2. Select the attachments you wish to save (I would suggest at this stage choosing all). In Outlook Express right click over a photo, select Save All and Save.
3. Select the first image by single left click the image (this will highlight it in blue), then scroll to the last image and whilst holding the SHIFT key select the last image and now all images will be selected in blue.
4. Press CTRL C or right click over the selection and left click select copy.
5. Go to Start/My Documents/My Pictures and press CTRL V or right click in a blank area and select paste. All photos you selected from the email should now be copied into this My Pictures Folder. In this folder you can also Create a New Folder by selecting it from the left-hand side of the screen and give it a name e.g. GetDigital, and instead of saving it into My Pictures you will be saving the photos into My Pictures/Get Digital (a sub-folder of My Pictures – much like a filing cabinet).
6.Once you have copied and saved all photos from emails that are then stored in the folders go to the GetDigital Website at http://www.getdigital.com.au.
7. On the home page Click Top Banner Order Online 10c a Print. A New Page opens. Click Order online. A new page opens. If you already have a username and password enter those details, otherwise select BECOME MEMBER. Fill in form on the page that opens up.
8.When you have signed up and logged in, select third tab ADD PHOTOS. You may be prompted to add a third party software, which will be a yellow box at the top of your web browser beneath the Internet Explorer toolbars at the top. Click on it and it will ask permission to download the Active X Program. Say yes and allow. This should not take long and only has to be done once.
9.You now have a window which displays a listing of folders on your computer. Click on the left hand side until you find the folder you saved the photos to, e.g. My Pictures. Once it is selected all the photos present there should be displayed. You can select all, select individual ones. Drag and drop them into the box pane below by holding the single ones with the mouse holding down the left mouse button as you drag and let go.
10. Once you have selected all the photos you want click the button UPLOAD at the bottom of the screen. All the photos you have selected will now be uploaded to GetDigital. (N.B. The larger size the photo the longer this process will take). Once this is done a new page will open which will give you various options, such as number of copies, matt or gloss, size options etc. After you have reviewed your selection and made any changes follow the prompts which include providing credit card payments.

What do you do with your digital photos?

Full training about digital photography, editing digital photos, scanning old photos and all things photo related – available from GJ’s Computer Services on an hourly basis.