The Savvy Boomer

External hard drives

A boomer friend of mine recently asked for my advice about buying a new PC.  Since I knew his was only a couple of years old, I asked why he was replacing it.  When he said that he wanted a larger hard drive, I was a bit shocked that he hadn't considered just adding a USB hard drive.  The problem was, he didn't know about them and since he has a laptop, thought that it would be expensive or impossible to install a larger hard drive.

The price of external hard drives that you can connect to any computer through a USB port has dropped drastically over the past few months.  I have seen them as low as $100 for 1 terabyte  (1,000 gigabytes) of data.  That's 1/2 of what I paid for a 250gb drive 2 years ago.

You should consider whether or not you want the external drive to be portable.  If you do, you can buy a drive that only needs a USB port for its power.  (If your computer is more than 3 years old, you may have 1.1 USB ports.  These drives really need 2.0 to function properly.)  These are more expensive than the physically larger ones that also require a standard AC adapter and the hassle of needing to plug it in.  Of course, if you don't need portability, then you can buy the latter.  I have both on my laptop and find the size of the portable one to be very handy when traveling with my laptop.

So if you need extra storage, look for one of these 2 types of units.

External drive with AC power-about 6"x 10"

Portable external Drive (no power required) about 3"x 6"

Is your printer lying to you?

We've all experienced the surprise of a message popping up on our monitor warning us that our printer is about to run out of toner or ink.  Some printers even stop working until you replace the cartridge or toner.  I'm fortunate enough that neither of my printers stop working and I usually extend the life of the cartridges/toner by shaking them and ignoring the messages until I really do see a marked reduction in print quality.

There is a great article on Slate on this subject which provides a lot of background, tips, time and money savers, ink replacement clones etc on this whole subject.

A Firefox add-on that can save you money

First of all, if you don't use Firefox, you should (you can download it by clicking on the Firefox button in the column on the right in the Software download section.)  It's faster than Internet Explorer, less prone to unwanted advertising and has thousands of things called extensions or add-ons you can choose from that will make your web browser easier and faster to use.  I found an extension a couple of months ago called "Retailmenot" which will give you coupon codes you can use if you happen to be looking at buying something on a site that participates in the program.

What I really like about it is that I had forgotten that I had installed it because I didn't go to to many shopping sites.  But when I did so before Christmas, up popped a little information box that said that there were coupons available for a site I was looking at buying something on.  I clicked on one and ended up saving 15% on my purchase.  Then recently, I went to a music site called Amiestreet to download some music someone told me about and up popped a coupon that gave me a $5 coupon which basically paid for the music download.

Basic Windows and Internet jargon

One of the things I think frustrates a lot of boomers and seniors new to the world of computer and internet technology is all the jargon that is used.  I try not to use buzz words too often but when I read over some of my posts, I realize I frequently use terms that some readers may not understand.

I just found these fairly straightforward explanations of a lot of terms you may hear when people are discussing technology.  You may want to bookmark them so that the next time you read some "geekese" like "Be sure to clear your cache when using wifi to access your ISP's imap email client", you can figure out what they mean, or not.

The internet jargon is explained on Tucows here and the Windows jargon here.

10 Tips for improving your wireless router connectivity

It seems wireless connectivity is becoming the standard for internet connection.  It is especially useful if you have a laptop that you may want to use in various locations in your residence.  But sometimes, there are problems getting a strong signal.  Here are some tips from Microsoft to help out.  While some of these are more technical in nature, about 1/2 of them are very easy to implement.

Every keyboard shortcut you'll ever need

and probably many more that you'll never need can be found on KeyXL.  After all, a boomer memory only has a capability to remember just so many of these right?

Thanks Lifehacker

Countdown timer in your browser.

Here's a great little timer you can set up in one of your browser tabs if you want to set time limits for your browsing, blogging, goofing off or whatever.

If you need a stopwatch function try this site

30+ ways to find Wi-fi hotspots

If you have bought a laptop in the last couple of years, chances are good that you have the ability to get a wireless connection.  As boomers travel more, we still want to keep connected and this list from Mashable will help you find either free or fee based connections all over the world.