Tech Table Monday, March 3, 2014
March 3, 2014
Justin: Welcome to MPA’s Tech Table. I’m Justin.
Diana: And I’m Diana.
Justin: And we’re your hosts. We’ll be serving up a heaping spoonful of all things tech.
Diana: We promise, it’ll be easy to digest.
Justin: It’s Monday.
Diana: Yeah, it’s Mail Monday.
Justin: It is Mail Monday here at the Tech Table and this is where we look into our mailbox, our inbox. So maybe a little sound effect…
Diana: We do need a little sound effect.
Justin: Absolutely. The old one would be that ‘you’ve got mail’ sound.
Diana: You’ve got mail.
Justin: But inboxes don’t have sounds anymore. Yeah, they don’t. Anyway, we look into our mailbag here and see who wrote in and what they had to say. And this time we have Tyler. He actually called us. He called us recently with some computer issues. Oh, dear. It’s Monday and I can’t speak. That’s typical. Anyway, Tyler called us with some computer issues and of course we let him talk to Donny at the office because Donny has…a lot of people call him with common issues and things. This is some obvious stuff, that you think is obvious but people, this happens. Things like maybe it’s not connected to the internet or maybe the computer’s not printing or the virus protection’s not working, or a pop-up telling you something is wrong or the Action Center telling you to back up your computer or alter something else.
Diana: Yeah, things come up and show you…
Justin: There are all sorts of things.
Diana: …make a decision.
Justin: I mostly ignore those things…
Diana: Cancel.
Justin: …until one of the techs comes and he’s like, ‘Why have you been living with it like that?’ and they push a few buttons and it’s all fixed. But I just kind of ignore things until…
Diana: You don’t want to do something wrong.
Justin: Exactly, yeah. So what do we do when these things happen?
Diana: These are all things that can happen to a computer and if you don’t act upon them properly they could have negative effects. So the fact that you avoiding making those decisions, like ‘okay, yes, go ahead and do that scan’ or whatever, it’s not a terrible decision. There are worse things you could do. Many people see a problem and they don’t fully understand it, they go ahead and just say ‘Okay’ or try to get in and fix it but what you should really do is stop, think about it. Do you understand what it is that the computer’s asking you to do or that it wants to do that you’re giving approval for? So don’t click unless you really understand what it’s going to be. Many times you click on something it might change a setting internally; it makes it hard or difficult to get on the internet and then you try to revert what you did, go back and fix it again.
Justin: Makes it work.
Diana: Yeah. So take a moment. You can even Google what that pop up is.
Justin: Absolutely, absolutely. Googling is not a bad idea in this situation unless that’s part of your problem. Absolutely Google it. Also just call a friend that maybe knows more about computers than you feel like you do. Or call a professional on computer repair or business or something and they can give you the best advice.
Diana: Right. And Donny made a really good point; he said, sometimes less is more. I think you can apply that to…thinking about applications and add-ons and skins. Remember all those things we used to do to our web browser, toolbars and stuff.
Justin: Right. And people do this to their phones and I make fun of them. People do all these fancy things with their phones like customizing all of the desktop or whatever you call it of your phone and you have all these different looking things on your screen that are set to… custom, what you want to see. Sometimes less is more. Sometimes less is more.
Diana: Because those extra fancy can sometimes bring problems with them.
Justin: Absolutely. Still to this day my Blackberry has the factory pre-set stuff on it. Everyone laughs at me but my Blackberries last forever because I think I don’t mess with them. It’s interesting. What’s that address, Diana?
Diana: Send us your questions to questions at askMPA dot com.
Justin: That’s right. Until next time.
Diana: Take care.
Justin: Tech Table is brought to you by MPA of Bloomfield, Iowa and God’s Country Radio. You can visit us online at askMPA dot com.
Diana: If you have questions or comments please send them to questions at askMPA dot com. That’s questions at askMPA dot com.
Justin: And thanks for listening.
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