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Toward a Better Computing Experience |
Smart Computing magazine |
Almost everyone has at least an old cell phone or two lying around the house. Donating these older gadgets will both declutter your home and help someone out. Many organizations, including women's shelters, provide reprogrammed phones to people in high-risk situations. Secure The Call (www.securethecall.com) is a nationwide organization that collects phones and programs them for 911-only purposes. If your old phone is totally kaput, recycle it. Best Buy, for example, has collection bins for cell phones, inkjet cartridges, and rechargeable batteries in the front of each of its stores.
Use the Beach/Snow mode on your digital camera when you're in a situation with a lot of glare: the sun reflecting off snow, sand, water, or even shiny metal, for instance. Ordinarily, the camera's light meter would react to this glare by sensing more light than is actually there, thus underexposing the shot. Beach/Snow mode counteracts that tendency. The trouble is, though, these are often the trickiest conditions to shoot under, so the camera may still be fooled. Examine your shot, and if it still looks dim, try another with your exposure compensation set to +1.
f your wireless router drops the connection to your home computers, there are some things you can do to try to solve the problem. Your wireless router assigns an IP (Internet protocol) address to each of the computers on your network. If your computer drops its wireless connection and doesn't produce any error messages, you can probably reinstate the connection by reassigning an IP address via router. Routers generally use DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) to automatically assign IP addresses, so you'll want to release the router's DHCP assignments and then force it to assign new IP addresses.
To force a DHCP release, enter your router's firmware menu and look for a DHCP Release feature. Your router's manual or the firmware's support documentation will help you find the feature. Many routers feature DHCP Release and DHCP Renew buttons that let you quickly complete this task.
Reprinted with permission from Smart Computing. Visit www.smartcomputing. com to learn what Smart Computing can do for you and your user group!