Other computer issues - Family History & Genealogy Message Board

Re: Organizing Photos and Documents on computer

Janet_Parmer — 2013-05-16 19:45:49Z

I totally agree with this post. However read all the information that you can about the external hard drive you want to purchase.
I recently lost over thirty years of research and picture when I took an external hard drive to Michigan with me to show things to family members. I did not know that that perticular type of drive was not ment to be moved often, no matter how well it was packed.

Hope this is a false alarm. Malware?

Smilebird — 2013-05-10 21:12:45Z

I recently experienced some problems with my computer and I ran a malware scan. It identified a "Backdoor" virus (not such a good thing).

I am not a computer expert, and maybe I've got this all wrong, so do NOT impute any guilt or veracity to my results.
The log shows the virus was extracted from my Pro-ethe--e folder.

If anyone is more knowledgeable about these things, please don't hesitate to advise us.

Re: Tablet Specs Needed for Ancestry

DAbernathy4973 — 2013-03-10 16:27:40Z

Since Ancestry runs on a Website, all I see that would be required is a browser that supports HTML3 or better and javascript.

Tablet Specs Needed for Ancestry

marhenders — 2013-03-09 14:51:12Z

I am shopping for a tablet with Wi-Fi capability that I can also use with Ancestry. I am wondering what specifications are needed for it to work well with Ancestry and if anyone has experience in this area to share. Thank you for any info. P.S. I have no experience yet in using a tablet.

Re: Recommendations for portable scanner??

abogada2 — 2013-02-15 03:48:18Z

I have a Flip Pal, and I really like it. You can scan large things in pieces (it comes with stitching software that is really amazing), and you can remove the cover and even scan things on the wall. It only scans in JPG, 300 or 600, and I've found that it's best to keep some spare batteries.

Recommendations for portable scanner??

knittingnana — 2013-02-14 04:09:06Z

Looking for a portable scanner to take with us when we visit relatives to scan their pictures and also to take to other places to scan documents, eventually to upload to Ancestry.com.

We bought one at Best Buy but not sure it's the best one. It's a little distorted. It's a VuPoint Magic Wand, Model PDS-ST415-VPS. It will do both jpegs and pdfs although I'm not sure if I will ever need to scan pdfs while doing genealogy work, will I? The Magic Wand got excellent reviews but willing to pay a little more money to get better results.

Re: Recommendations for portable scanner??

MrMarkSH — 2013-02-13 18:56:25Z

600dpi should be enough for most printers, and, at a one-to-one viewing ratio, since screens are less than 100dpi, great for viewing.

With a digital camera (but not a cheap point-and-shoot), the resolution is many, many times higher. If you need to examine documents, or digitally repair old photos, higher is better. IF, of course, a camera is permitted.

With these glowing reviews, I'm going to have to try out a Flip-Pal!

Re: Recommendations for portable scanner??

ovington1_1 — 2013-02-13 13:38:32Z

Whilst I would agree with the reports that flip-pal is an excellent bit of kit and very versatile

You don't store images to a memory stick but to an SD card (which is supplied along with a usb SD card adapter)

Images can be scanned at 300 or 600 dpi and the flip-pal also comes with stitching software so you can scan overlapping images of a large picture, then stitch them back together again

Flip-pal uses 4 AA batteries and is stand alone

I also use a digital camera but the flip-pal gives superior reults

Re: Recommendations for portable scanner??

Brownrichardm — 2013-02-13 09:19:19Z

I don't have a portable scanner. I use my digital camera after getting permission to use it.

However, there are favourable reports for the Flip Pal scanner which is a stand alone piece of kit. Scans are stored to a USB memory stick.

HTH

Re: Recommendations for portable scanner??

MrMarkSH — 2013-02-11 18:21:31Z

I haven't tried a portable scanner yet, but have had much success with a digital camera. Just be sure to set the resolution on the highest settings and get close enough.

When working in an archive, I've been permitted to use a tripod, set up so it's looking down at a table. Canon T1i

Chrome won't allow scrolling on nexus 7 tablet

babyjas79 — 2012-12-13 15:53:05Z

I am trying to view a public tree using Chrome on my Nexus 7 but for some reason I cannot move the tree around the screen. I can scroll up and down on the Web pages but I cannot figure out how to manipulate and move the tree around. Normally you would use a mouse and when you click to move, the hand turns into a fist to simulate grabbing the Page. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to make it work. Has anyone come across this problem previously? And if so, is there a fix?

Thanks,

Jas

The best technique for digitally archiving documents?

danielmarkwalder — 2012-11-27 14:18:24Z

Hi to all ! I'm planning to read, translate and write (from old German to new German), scan and index about 500-600 original personal Letters from second world war from 1939 to 1946, mostly between several German couples which were on duty. My goal is to have the whole data digitized and indexed, with as much searchable attributes as possible. Here my Questions:
Which resolution (size and dpi ?) and file format (tiff, jpg ?) should I use when I scan the letters ? Or is there an international standardization for scanning and archiving documents like these ? I'm not planning to do OCR, it's just for storing the letters in digitized form which also should be readable for the next Generations.
Which Scanner should I buy ? I just can't believe that the cheap nasty scanners included in the mfc's are good enough ..
Are there any Software-Solutions on the market which would be able to cover my requirements, so that I do not have to write my own database (Access, SQL) ?

Re: Fill in forms for email and posting

nancymottba — 2012-10-10 03:45:09Z

That is an excellent idea, maybe I can get all the info I need and the code right. lol

Thank you!

Re: Organizing Photos and Documents on computer

2101bob — 2012-10-04 10:42:41Z

I have to agree with the other two replies (use the folder names to organise and get an external hard drive to back up all such data anyway). Whatever viewer you use to look at thumbnails and add tags etc will only ever work for a relatively short time; think ahead twenty years and that software won't be around and probably won't work on whatever computer you have then! The folder-sorting is most likely to remain, however.

Also, there is no chance of getting it "right" first time. Life just isn't like that, alas. The best you can do is decide upon some overall scheme of organising, and keep it simple enough to accommodate all the exceptions which will come along ... as they will! The same principle would apply to designing a cupboard to take all your clothes, with drawers, hangers, racks etc in various sizes: what you have now will change over the years, so make it as flexible as possible.

Re: Fill in forms for email and posting

2101bob — 2012-10-04 10:30:02Z

As you have websites, why not use the old but still useful formmail method? This starts out with a line like (for [ ] read the correct characters):

[FORM action="http://www.mydomain.me.uk/cgi-sys/formmail.pl" method="post"]
[input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="me@mydomain.me.uk"]
[input type="hidden" name="subject" value="My Family"]

and continues with labelled boxes something like:
[TR]
[TD]Last Name:[/TD]
[TD][INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="SURNAME:" SIZE="25"][/TD][/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Forenames:[/TD]
[TD][INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="FORNAME:" SIZE="50"][/TD][/TR]

with the usual checkboxes/radioboxes to help along the way and ending up
[INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT" VALUE="Send"]
[input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="http://www.mydomain.me.uk/thankyou.htm"]
[/FORM]

This way they just email direct from one of your sites, without having to print and send. Any form will take a few attempts to get right, of course!

Re: Fill in forms for email and posting

RayburnClipper — 2012-09-08 18:25:41Z

Nancy,
You can use something like Adobe Acrobat 9 or 10 to make forms to fill out as pdf's.

Rayburn

Re: Organizing Photos and Documents on computer

RayburnClipper — 2012-09-08 18:22:28Z

Genealogy aside, please buy an external drive anyway. I am speaking from experience. As an IT consultant, friends often come to me when their computers have died or have viruses/malware. The first thing they ask me is if I can save their photos. Most of the time it's not a problem, but when a drive fails, there isn't much I can do that isn't going to cost them a lot of money. Restoration and retrieval of data off of a failed drive costs thousands of dollars. An external harddrive at best buy is under $100. SO please buy a drive and keep a second copy of your picture on it also. I personally have 2 small drives I keep my backups on, but I live in Louisiana and Hurricane aren't very nice to pictures.

Re: CD background noise clean up.

beedan — 2012-06-21 22:27:10Z

Thanks Stewart I will give it a try.

Re: CD background noise clean up.

Stewart_Ritchie — 2012-06-20 21:02:19Z

Are you (or do you know anyone) a bit techy.

There's a free program called 'Audacity', that should be able to do the trick. But it will take you a bit of time if you've never attempted this sort of thing before.

http://www.deeplysimple.net/2006/10/removing-hiss-with-audac...

Re: Organizing Photos and Documents on computer

RichardPetersen76 — 2012-06-17 18:35:15Z

To quote from an earlier post of mine on this subject:
". . . I try to always give it a good descriptive file name. If you have multiple pages or photos all connected, put them in their own folder, also with a descriptive name. That way if for some reason you don't go back to finish the project, someone else will know what it is. I have a lot of photos un-captioned, but the file and folder names tell most of the story."

For genealogy, I set up folders with the surnames of my great-grand-parents. That is 8 folders plus a Misc. Then you can add sub-folders or special topics as needed. I don't depend on a particular program to keep track of the files, just Windows. That way, also, these files are automatically backed-up with everything else. No extra steps needed.

You could always copy the genealogy stuff on to a thumb drive or memory card to take with you, if you can't lug the whole computer around.

Organizing Photos and Documents on computer

1981val — 2012-06-10 20:39:49Z

I am in the process of trying to store all my photos on my computer. But I am having a problem deciding how to set up a filing system on my hard drive. I purchased Photoshop Elements 7 and have played with it some. Love how you can tag each individual in the photo, but do not like the fact that if the photo gets moved, the info is lost. Since I am working on an older computer, my concern is what if I have move all of my info to a new computer? Would like to get this right the first time. Have even kicked around the thought of buying an external hard drive, and using it to only store my photos, etc on. Does anyone have any input, ideas, software, or just would like to tell me their system that they have set up? Thanks for the help.

Fill in forms for email and posting

nancymottba — 2012-05-31 16:12:18Z

I just found some cousins from one family line. We started a facebook group and I want to get all their family info, so I can add it to my tree. I can't find a good way to do this, other than posting a form, having them print it out and mail it to me.

Is there someway to post a form for people to fill out online? I have several websites, I could post the form to. There will be lots of info to fill out.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Nancy

CD background noise clean up.

beedan — 2012-05-25 12:43:18Z

I have a CD that contain a family interview with my great grandmother,Margaret Conder (nee Chapman)1874-1970. The recording was done on a reel to reel tape in 1965 and transfered to CD in 2008. There is a lot of background noise which makes it very hard to hear what is being said.It is possible to 'clean out' The background noise from the CD and ifso where in Australia.

Re: browser hangs.

Smilebird — 2012-05-24 20:53:22Z

Whoa, I may have an answer. I tried everything. My Winsock turned out to be OK.

Here's what I did. I'm using the latest version of Firefox. Go into about:config. Don't mess around in there if you are not a knowledgeable computer person. I certainly am NOT. There is a function in there called network.prefetch.next that is set to true by default. This gets all the links on the loading page to pre-load in preparation for being used. We all know how many links an Ancestry page is liable to have. So Kaboom! I toggled this function from True to False. Zipping along quite well now. No, hangs no double fire loading.

Re: browser hangs.

Smilebird — 2012-05-23 18:34:52Z

Thanks people. I can see from an internet search that this problem seems to affect an awful lot of people. Problem is that there are tons of different answers. I've removed one of my two anti-malware programs, and that seemed to help some.

From what I can see I may have a corrupted Winsock registry, but the fix from MS does not seem to work. Anyway, I plod on, and if I find anything definite, I'll let you know.

Re: browser hangs.

mi2early — 2012-05-23 13:45:28Z

Have you tried normal PC maintenance? Clear the cache on all your browsers, run disk cleanup, defrag, and error check.

Re: browser hangs.

AGHatchett3rd — 2012-05-22 14:04:10Z

What Operating system are you running and how much Ram do you have? How old is your computer?

Andy Hatchett
www.fhiso.org

browser hangs.

Smilebird — 2012-05-22 12:44:19Z

Anybody else have this problem? Whichever of the three major browsers I use, I have problems with the system hanging when I move from page to page: pick a new person, start a search, click any of the buttons. The screen goes white as if starting to load, then nothing--complete hang.

How do I get around it? I have to click the "x" in address window, which sets it back to the loading data rotational arrow, and then I click the download arrow again, and boom, the required page loads within a few seconds. Any ideas? As the night gets later, I more and more hate performing three operations to get where one should get me, not to mention the wasted time. Could I have an add-on or setting that is not correct?

Re: Recommendations for portable scanner??

knittingnana — 2012-02-16 21:46:15Z

Thanks jmdt, we did buy it. Still learning to use it. We have a Mac so there are more hoops to jump through. Had to wait to talk to them on the phone and kept playing phone tag--they are a small organization. She walked me through the steps of finding my scans which I had been unable to do.

Now I'm just starting to play with it. The small pictures are perfect. On two that needed stitching, it worked great. On two others, I get an error message in the middle of the stitching that they weren't able to find an overlapping image. They aren't huge--one and a half scans would have worked--maybe that's the problem. I'll figure it out or call them back.

But this truly is an amazing tool. Can't wait to hit the road and copy relatives' photos and historical societies and copy their documents. We are so hooked on this. Anyway, thanks again for the recommendation. Your rec will serve to let others know they should buy it.

It

Re: Recommendations for portable scanner??

jmdt1129 — 2012-02-16 21:31:54Z

In case you haven't already made a decision, I would also recommend the flip-pal. I've had mine for over a year now. I've taken it to people's houses and scanned photographs with very good results. I've also had good results scanning photos mounted in old photo albums, newspaper clippings and post cards. In addition to genealogy I do digital scrapbooking and have used the flip pal to scan buttons, ribbons and other flat items.

Re: Recommendations for portable scanner??

knittingnana — 2012-02-02 23:00:20Z

Thanks Andrew. Looks like a good one but I think the one Bryan recommended will be better for our needs. Really do appreciate your responding, though. It helps to know what is working for other genealogy people.

Re: Recommendations for portable scanner??

knittingnana — 2012-02-02 19:38:42Z

Thanks Bryan for recommending the Flip-Pal. I read some great reviews on it. When I Google reviews for flip-pal, I get lots of great ones but it's interesting that when I just Google portable scanners, this one never comes up. Hmmm. Most of the reviews were from people who were doing genealogy work and they seemed really happy. Only one person says it doesn't work if the photo is in the frame under glass and I fear I might find that when visiting relatives. But it sounds like a great little machine. Thanks for the tip.

In case anyone else is reading this looking for a good portable scanner, one of the nicest features is that you don't need to turn off the scanner, hook it up to the computer, find the icon, check it, then unplug it and go back to scanning. It has a little SD card which you can either put directly into your computer or into a little flash drive looking device which is really a USB--stick your SD card from the scanner into that, plug the little USB into your computer and there it is. It also has software to edit it and also if your document is larger than the scanner, it will stitch it together once on your computer. The Magic Wand I first got and will return does not have that feature, nor does it have editing software that works on a Mac.

Re: Recommendations for portable scanner??

AJAskey — 2012-02-02 03:07:43Z

I bought a Canon CanoScan LiDE 110 last year and it works great. Powered by the USB cable. I put it in my backpack with my computer and take it to reunions. Only weighs a couple pounds.

Re: Recommendations for portable scanner??

BryanMehn — 2012-02-02 00:27:30Z

I've heard good things about the flip-pal. It runs about $150 and doesn't need a computer at all to work. I don't personally have one and have gone back and forth on if I really need one or not.

As for PDFs, I use them just as much as I do photos. I scan all of my documents as PDFs, it makes it easier to keep them all together if there is more then one page. This works well for wills and probates and such.

Re: Microfilm reader price

djf863000 — 2011-11-18 12:54:18Z

What people think of the Scanpro 2000? I don't want anything big like we see in libraries.

Microfilm reader price

djf863000 — 2011-11-17 20:23:56Z

I wasn't sure what category to post this. Since it is very hard for me to have access to a library near by open on days when i am available, I am thinking of of maybe trying to buy my own microfilm reader for my home. Mostly looking for a used one that doesn't take much room and i could connect to my pc. Something like a used SCANPRO 2000 or equivalent, but not expensive. I am not ready to spend thousands of dollars. I am not made of money. $200 would be the most I would pay for one.

Do some of you own any readers at home? How is it like?

Does LDS rent microfilm readers to common individuals?

Re: Microfilm reader price

mi2early — 2011-11-17 20:06:07Z

Which is it? -

"I am ready to spend thousands of dollars."
"I am not made of money. $200 would be the most I would pay for one."

It is not possible to point you to a source for readers since commercial messages are not permitted on the boards. Suggest using your browser to search for one in your area or on an auction site.

Contact your nearest LDS library to find out if they rent them out or if they have an old one available to sell.

Re: Scanner Recommendations

mi2early — 2011-10-02 16:57:08Z

Every scanner should come complete with the software that will allow you to port image and text files into whatever software applications you're using.

Scanner Recommendations

namssob1 — 2011-10-02 16:00:31Z

Couldn't find a "Genealogy Hardware" thread....

Anyone have a suggestion on a decent flatbed scanner that integrates well with common applications (MS word, etc), as well as possibly directly into FTM?

What are the best printers for banner printing ?

unclegareth1 — 2011-09-10 23:44:47Z

Can anyone suggest any good printers for banner printing very wide family trees ? (several metres wide, and 30-60cm high).