How to Choose a Tablet

Thinking about buying a tablet?  These may be some of your reasons:

• portability – easier on the shoulders and back than a laptop
  
• larger display – easier to see what’s on your screen than on a smartphone
• access to the Internet – most come with at least 1 way of getting on the web
• extended battery life between charges – works longer than a laptop on a single charge

Tablets may be used for business reasons - checking e-mail, browsing the web, video calling, video conferencing, note-taking, presentations, creating, viewing, or editing documents or basic spreadsheets – or for personal reasons - reading, watching movies, listening to music, viewing photos, or playing games. 

Whether you need a tablet or you just want one, you should consider these 6 topics:

1 – The Operating System

At the moment it’s really about Apple iOS versus Android.  But don’t forget RIM’s QNX for the Blackberry Playbook and later this year Microsoft’s Windows 8 OS.

Are you taking the necessary precautions to keep your data and identity safe?  You may think so, but at a recent conference I listened to a security consultant, John Sileo, talk about his personal experiences – yes, there is an “s” at the end of experience – with identity theft and found out how easy it is to have your identity and data stolen. 
 
John began by telling us about his experiences.  The first time his identity was stolen, his credit card number was stolen.  He went on to tell us how he found out about it and how long it took to re-establish his good credit.  The second time his identity was stolen, he found out about it when two FBI agents came to his door to question him regarding the embezzlement of his clients’ funds (his business partner and best friend - so he thought - was the culprit).  Two years and thousands of dollars later, he successfully cleared himself of felony charges.  Because of these incidents, John became an expert and shares his knowledge with others on how to prevent identity and data theft.
 
John discussed 5 approaches you may encounter when asked for personal information:
1.      Trust me (a good nature bias)
2.      It’s for your safety (security bias)
3.      We need to hurry (rush bias)
4.      If you do this (bribe bias) or if you don’t, then (fear bias)
5.      I just need a little more of your information (sharing bias)
 

A typical thing we might ask Users for when helping them with a technical support question is to get a copy of the screen that they are looking at.  On Windows this is done by pressing the "PrtSc" button on the keyboard, and then pasting the image into the MRSware Attach field and emailing it to us.

The Mac doesn't have a print screen button, so how is this accomplished by Users that have MRSware installed on a Mac?

How to Print Screen to the Clipboard on a Mac

Command+Control+Shift+3 (hold the first three keys and then press the number 3)

  takes a screenshot of the desktop, and saves it to the clipboard so that it can be pasted into the Attach box for sending (or pasted anywhere else for saving).

Command+Control+Shift+4, then spacebar and click a window

  takes a screenshot of just the window that is clicked on (this is like holding the Alt+PrtSc on a Windows PC).

A screenshot is a great way to reinforce your description of a technical question that you are sending to support.

When an image is pasted into the Attach area of a MRSware Email, the User will be prompted with the "would you like to compress the image for sending" prompt.  Selecting "Yes" is generally the best response, so that the email being sent is smaller and easier to work with.

Both Firefox and Internet Explorer have the ability to spell check text that you enter on web sites you are using. This is particularly handy when you are typing out information in an online e-mail web site, or using a tool like this social.MRSware site.

In Firefox, starting with version 2.0 spell checking is built in and enabled by default. Type something incorrectly and watch the red line appear underneath it. In some cases, you might have to right-click in the text field and choose "Spell check this field" from the menu.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

To enable spell checking in Internet Explorer, you have to take an extra step and first download a free plug-in that performs the spell checking for you.

http://www.iespell.com/

Once installed, you can right-click on text fields in your web browser window and select "Check Spelling".