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How to add album art to iTunes

February 20th, 2010, 7:46 am by

Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org. And don’t forget to stop by the Gadgetress’ home for the PC Club, at ocregister.com/link/pcclub, to find out how to ask a question and read past answers.

QUESTION: I ripped CDs to my PC and they are all in the WMA format. Many of the CDs ripped brought with them album art which shows when the folder is viewed in Windows Explorer.  I downloaded iTunes and it found and converted the music to iTunes format. What’s missing from the conversion is the album art from the CDs that were previously ripped to the PC. Is there any way to convert or get the album art loaded into iTunes music? I’d like to do this before loading music on to an iPod.

PC CLUB: First of all, ripping a CD is another term for extracting the music tracks from the CD onto your PC. Even though the common term is to rip or extract, nothing is removed from the CD. I can’t tell from your question how you ripped your CDs but you most likely used the Windows Media Player (WMP). WMP does download album art as soon as you begin the ripping process. iTunes, on the other hand, does not. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Music • Stump the PC Club • • • • • | 1 Comment »

How to view giant e-mailed photos without scrolling

February 13th, 2010, 1:00 am by

Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org. And don’t forget to stop by the Gadgetress’ home for the PC Club, at ocregister.com/link/pcclub, to find out how to ask a question and read past answers.

QUESTION: When e-mailing a photo, everything seems to work OK, except that the picture comes out so enormously big that no one can reduce it to a reasonable size, so basically no one can look at it. This also happens when a friend sends me a picture. But it doesn’t happen with every friend. Some of them are received and printed in normal size.Camera

PC CLUB: I get this question a lot. Let’s start off with some theory first and then we’ll discuss the solution.

Let’s assume that the pictures we’re discussing were taken with a 10 megapixel camera. The first thing you should do when you purchase a new camera is set it up the way that suits your needs which may change from time to time.

For example, if you plan to print the pictures taken with your camera, you could set it up to take the largest size and highest quality pictures. However, if you plan to only e-mail your pictures you should use a smaller size picture. Read the rest of this entry »

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How to move your fonts to a Windows 7 PC

February 6th, 2010, 1:31 am by

Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org. And don’t forget to stop by the Gadgetress’ home for the PC Club, at ocregister.com/link/pcclub, to find out how to ask a question and read past answers.

QUESTION: Here’s one that should have strong general application. I do editorial work using XP, and have built up a useful stable of fonts. I just got a new computer using Windows 7, and want to move the fonts over to it, but can’t make anything work. Is there a way to do this?

Fonts!PC CLUB: Before we get to the punch line, let’s start with some font facts:

  • Windows 7 ships with 235 fonts, versus 191 in Vista and 133 in Windows XP. PrePressure.com offers a handy  list of typefaces that ship with Windows 7 (link: bit.ly/windows7fonts).
  • The more fonts that you install, the more computer memory (or RAM) is used. Your system must load all fonts at boot-up and this may extend your boot time. This is not as critical with newer PCs since they have faster processors and more RAM but it’s something to keep an eye on. Read the rest of this entry »

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Where are my Contacts in Windows 7?

January 30th, 2010, 2:46 am by

Hi folks! PC Club is moving to Saturday publication with this post. Thanks for reading!

Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org. And don’t forget to stop by the Gadgetress’ home for the PC Club, at ocregister.com/link/pcclub, to find out how to ask a question and read past answers.

QUESTION: I notice that the Contacts folder in Windows 7 does not match the Contacts in Windows Live Mail, however, in Vista the Contacts folder does match the Contacts in Windows Mail. What happened?

PC CLUB: The Contacts feature built into Windows has changed with each new version of Windows including XP, Vista and now, Windows 7. This is related to how the built-in support for e‑mail has changed. Windows XP uses the term Addresses and subsequent versions use the term Contacts but the terms are interchangeable. The implementation in each version is as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

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What’s the real capacity of your hard drive?

January 19th, 2010, 3:15 pm by

Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org. And don’t forget to stop by the Gadgetress’ home for the PC Club, at ocregister.com/link/pcclub, to find out how to ask a question and read past answers.

QUESTION: I have a PC running Vista Home Premium.  I have a 500 gigabyte hard drive with an actual capacity of 455 gigabytes. When I look at “Properties” for the C drive, it shows that I have used 444 gigabytes with 11 gigabytes remaining. However, when I use Windows Explorer and add up the sizes of each directory (e.g. Documents, Windows, Program Files, etc), I end up with 400 gigabytes used.  I have a gap of 44 gigabytes between what Properties says and what I added up.  What is in the hidden 44 gigabytes and how can I see what it is?

PC CLUB:  This is a common question since there’s a lot of confusion regarding advertised disk capacity versus the capacity reported by Windows. This confusion stems from the fact that 1 gigabyte is actually 1,073,741,824 bytes, or 230.  Therefore, if you open My Computer (or Computer in Vista or Windows 7) and examine the properties of a hard drive by right‑clicking it, you will see 2 numbers. Assuming the disk is advertised as a 500 gigabyte disk, the numbers will be listed as follows:

Capacity: 500,096,658,212            465 GB

This confusion led to a lawsuit several years ago resulting in disk drive manufactures having to place the following or similar statement on their packaging:

One megabyte (MB) = one million bytes, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Computers • Stump the PC Club • • • • • • • • • | 6 Comments »

How to fix a computer that has lost its sound

January 13th, 2010, 3:02 pm by

Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org. And don’t forget to stop by the Gadgetress’ home for the PC Club, at ocregister.com/link/pcclub, to find out how to ask a question and read past answers.

QUESTION: The speakers that I have connected to my computer system stopped working a couple of weeks ago. Other than taking my system to a computer repair shop I don’t know what to do. For example, I can watch a PowerPoint presentation, but don’t get any sound, i.e., music. Any suggestions?

PC CLUB: There are several explanations for losing your sound from the very simple to an actual hardware failure. Here are some possible problems.

Connection Problem: Although it may sound obvious, the first thing I usually do in is check all of the connections to the computer. Most speakers use an AC adaptor that plugs into an outlet and have a cable that plugs into the green jack on the rear of the PC. After checking the connections, the next thing I do is try another set of speakers or even a headset if possible.

Hardware Problem: To see if you have a hardware problem you can open your Device Manager and check the sound hardware. Follow these steps:  Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Computers • Stump the PC Club • • • • • • | 1 Comment »

All about iPods and organizing music, Part 2

January 11th, 2010, 2:34 pm by

Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org. And don’t forget to stop by the Gadgetress’ home for the PC Club, at ocregister.com/link/pcclub, to find out how to ask a question and read past answers.

This is Part 2 of a 2-part article on iPods and managing your music, pictures and videos. This covers copying of music, pictures and videos to and from your iPod. Read part one: “All about iPods and organizing your music library, Part 1.”

How to copy music to your iPod

There are a few ways to get music on an iPod. Here are two methods:

Use the iTunes library

  1.  
    1. Open iTunes and click File, Add Folder or Add File to Library
    2. Browse to any location on your hard drive or external hard drive and click Add Folder (or select files)
    3. Plug in your iPod now or prior to step 1, it doesn’t matter
    4. Select the Music link under your Library
    5. Create a new Playlist if desired and drag the newly entered songs to the new or existing Playlist.
    6. You can now drag songs from the Library onto your iPod. You may want to create a new Playlist first. Just right-click you iPod icon and select New Playlist.

The above method assumes that you are managing your iPod manually.

Skip the iTunes library Read the rest of this entry »

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All about iPods and organizing your music library, Part 1

January 5th, 2010, 5:10 pm by

Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org. And don’t forget to stop by the Gadgetress’ home for the PC Club, at ocregister.com/link/pcclub, to find out how to ask a question and read past answers.

This is Part 1 of a 2-part article on iPods and managing your music, pictures and videos. Here is Part 2: “All about iPods and organizing music, Part 2.”

QUESTION: My question is a little complicated but here goes. I want to store all my music on my new external hard drive.  It can hold up to 250,000 songs. It has a FAT32 file system. I also want to be able to pull music out of it and put it onto my iPod. My computer is running Windows XP.

My friend has a MAC and has put onto my new external drive 13,000 songs. I have 20 songs on iTunes, 20 songs on My Music and I have 500 songs on my iPod another friend gave me. I want to put all of the songs on the new external drive. iTunes shows that it will erase all the songs that I did not buy.  Also, I have downloaded a program called Media Widget.  What do you suggest?

The new skinnier iPod nano. Image from ApplePC CLUB: Let’s review some of the tasks that you can perform with your music collection:

1. You can back up all of your songs to an external hard drive or to any hard drive
2. You can place any songs from you external hard drive, or from any folder on your PC for that matter, onto your iPod
3. You can copy songs from your iPod to your PC. This does, however, require third-party software such as Media Widget which is currently available from www.bootstrapdevelopment.com for $24.95. There are other utilities that perform this function also and some are free.

As far as the FAT32 is concerned, some external hard drives have this type of file system to ensure maximum compatibility between PCs and Macs. A more secure and robust file system is the NTFS file system. You can reformat an external hard drive to be NTFS but you will lose all of the data. You can read more about file systems at The Elder Geek’s “FAT32 or NTFS: Making the Choice”  (link: bit.ly/BlYXS).  This decision is not crucial but should be made before you start using the drive. Read the rest of this entry »

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