Image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop is great, but the price tag of over $1000 puts this software out of reach for most home users. However, there is a fantastic open-source image editing package called The Gimp. This is quite an advanced package and has many of the functions of higher-end packages such as Photoshop. At the time of writing, the latest stable release for Windows is 2.0.5. Previous users of The Gimp 1.0 may have been dissuaded by the somewhat cumbersome interface. However, the developers have made some massive improvements in the latest releases so I encourage you to take another look. The Gimp website is available at www.gimp.org, but be aware this site only distributes the source code for The Gimp. You will need to download a pre-built binary version for Windows. I use the version available from gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html. This site makes available The Gimp in a Windows Installer package. Make sure you download and install the GTK+ 2 runtime environment (available from the same website) before installing The Gimp, as this is a required package. (more…)

Recently I upgraded from dial-up to broadband ADSL. I have a few questions regarding the ADSL connection:
1. Should I physically turn off my ADSL modem when the computer is turned off?
2. Will the ADSL modem still access the internet even if the web browser is not open?
3. When the computer is on and being used for word processing or spreadsheets, with the ADSL modem on, will it still access the internet?
4. Is it enough to exit the little ADSL icon on the taskbar situated on the bottom right hand side of the monitor?
The reason behind these questions is the usage rate limitations on my plan. I have tried several supposed ‘informed people’ but I seem to be getting different responses to my questions.
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When attempting to run a DOS based program, the following message appears: ‘C:WINDOWSSYSTEM32AUTOEXEC.NT. The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications. Choose Close to terminate the application’. Can you help, as two programs I want to access are very important and I want to use them regularly. (more…)

When Windows starts a message appears saying ‘Cannot register with sm56 driver. Press OK to exit’. The problem only began to occur after installing Norton Antivirus 2005. The computer is running Windows XP. (more…)

How do I setup Outlook Express to send an automatic reply to any emails that contain certain words? I have tried using Mail Rules, but when the reply is read it is full of codes instead of words. (more…)