| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| 1029usr078198 |
Posted - February 12 2011 : 09:22:53
Listen now. or Download the archive.
Question: Jordan says, "My laptop's mouse quit working. What can I do about it? I've tried turning it off and taking the battery out, but it didn't help."
Answer: Great question, Jordan. Windows can be operated without a mouse, believe it or not; but it's a tough slog. Since you have a laptop, it sounds like you're talking about a touchpad mouse. You've rebooted the system, so it's not a driver crash. Taking the battery out with the computer off resets the hardware, so that's not it. By the way, those are great first steps to take, and I would have done them too. If you have another mouse you can plug in, you can try uninstalling and reinstalling the touchpad driver in Device Manager. But before you do that, try this: in the olden days, 3 years ago, that touchpad wouldn't have had a button to switch it on and off. But more and more, current laptops have a button to turn the touchpad on and off. If you have one, it's generally located somewhere between the top of the touchpad and the spacebar. It often has a light to indicate whether it's on or off. If you see something like that, push it and see what happens. If that doesn’t work, try the uninstall/reinstall with Device Manager.
Cool Site: StoryTimeForMe.com: This week's cool site is storytimeforme.com and for our listeners that have small children, this site will be great. I've got a little one that needs to start learning to read soon, and I think he's going to like this. Storytimeforme is a site that helps teach kids to read by reading story books to them. The story books are animated, but the animations are just enough to hold the child's attention rather than distract. The books are read aloud and the words are highlighted as they're read. On my laptop, the highlighting lagged just slightly from what I thought it should, but overall was good. The stories center around three characters Ben the mouse for readers typically 4 to 8 and Fern the fox for readers 1 to 4. A character called Flame the dragon has one story aimed at 1 to 4 year olds but is likely a new character with more to come. You click the character you want to read about and the next page lists the stories, a very brief synopsis, category, intended age group, episode number and running time when the story is being read to the child. Stories can be read to your child but you or they can stop the reading and read the books themselves. Turning the pages is automatic when the books are being read aloud, but when you're reading them yourself, you turn the pages by clicking on a corner and dragging the page over. The books are read right inside your web browser and requires flash.
Cool Gadget: Chew Chew Train: This week's gadget may not be a high-tech gadget, but is definitely cool, especially for toddlers. The Chew Chew Train looks similar to Thomas, just without the face. It disassembles into a cup, plate, bowl, small tray, spoon and fork. It's good plastic (as in without those bad chemicals we've found about lately), you can put it in the dishwasher, and also comes in a pastel pink/purple combination as well as the more typical blue/red combination. It runs about $20 from vat19.com.
It's All "Geek" To Me: Shareware: This week's term is Shareware. Computer software is licensed and distributed in several different ways. The one we're most familiar with is commercial, where you have to buy the copyrighted software and you get a disc. With few exceptions, you can't legally copy it or give it to others, even in your own household. Freeware is copyrighted, but free forever. It may be feature-limited with a paid version offering more features. Shareware is copyrighted software that is full-featured and unlike commercial copyrighted software, you can give copies to anyone you please, but the author asks that after a reasonable time period, if you find the software useful, you might pay them something. Sometimes an amount is suggested, other times it's totally up to you. So shareware is software that you can share freely, but should pay for if you use it regularly.
Links
Tech Tip Friday's Show Notes RSS Feed:
http://www.daconsult.com/downloads/rss.xml
StoryTimeForMe at MakeUseOf:
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/storytimeforme-interactive-reading-books-for-kids/
StoryTimeForMe:
http://www.storytimeforme.com
Chew Chew Train at Craziest Gadgets:
http://craziestgadgets.com/2011/02/10/chew-chew-train-transforming-dinner-set/
Chew Chew Train at Vat19 (buy it here):
http://www.vat19.com/dvds/chew-chew-train-dinner-set.cfm
Shareware at TechTerms:
http://www.techterms.com/definition/shareware |
|
|
