Q. I enjoyed reading your recent Binary Beat article on the new Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system. I upgraded myself as well, and think it is the best OS I have ever used.
I wanted to give you a tip. In your article you stated: “And I remain irritated that the Mac operating system and software use print that is quite small and thus evermore difficult to read for American’s aging masses.”
However, Apple has provided a solution for this problem. In the system preferences, there is a control panel “Universal Access” in which a user can zoom in up to 20 times normal! Although two to four times should be plenty for most people with normal, aging eyes. I hope this improves your experience with Mac OS X, and thank you for your excellent coverage.
Craig Chepke, M.D.
A. Thanks for the advice, Doc. Not long after I read your message I got a note from another fellow asking for help because he couldn’t see his Outlook e-mail. So let me use your note to explore the issue further for both Mac and PC users.
After all, with more Baby Boomers experiencing the middle-age curse of nearsightedness, people need to know how to make both Macs and PCs display type large enough to read. I’ll add a thought about Macs in a bit, but first let me tell you that I often find myself helping Windows-afflicted office mates with this same woe, and the fix is simple. Move the cursor arrow to the desktop and give a right-click, and pick Properties in the menu that comes up. In the Properties menu select the Settings tab. There you will find a slider bar that can either lower or increase the screen resolution of the computer. Low resolutions mean larger letters, and most of us need to slide the bar to the 800-by-600 mark.
Let me hasten to add that it’s important to remember how to undo this move because computer users can encounter times when they need higher resolution to fit stuff across the screen. Wide Web pages and lengthy spreadsheets come to mind.
The magnification feature you cited is intended as a service for users with serious vision problems, and using it takes something away from the experience for other users. It’s better to change the resolution of the screen just as one can do with PCs.
This is done by going to the Preferences tool under the Apple menu that you mentioned. Click on Displays and look for a list of possible resolutions. Try it out until you get something you like.
Hopefully PC-makers will find ways in the future to let us enjoy the full benefits of high-resolution video, while the actual wording throughout the computer accommodates the minions with changing eyes.
Q. When I try to send an e-mail or reply to an e-mail, there are many times when it will not send and I get an error message. SBC Yahoo says it is a Microsoft problem. I have talked to Microsoft support twice about this, totaling about three hours, but the situation has not been resolved.
I have the latest edition of Norton and I also just recently had my entire hard drive cleaned up. Can you help me with a solution?
Mike Probst@ameritech.net
A. Welcome to the bipolar world of computer communications, Mr. P. I’m going to both tell you how to fix the problem on your own machine and also discuss an emergency way to work around the problem temporarily if worse comes to worst.
Your problem stems from the fact that e-mail accounts of the type you use need to employ one server for acquiring incoming mail, called a POP (post office protocol) and a different server for outgoing mail, known as SMTP (simple mail transport protocol).
There are several settings that can go awry to create a problem like this. Maybe you specified the wrong server computer, maybe your computer is incorrectly set to use a port other than the one designated for SMTP, or maybe you didn’t correctly fill out your user name and password. Many ISPs require customers to specify user name and password for each SMTP they use to prevent outsiders from using the ISP’s servers to forward spam.
In Outlook you need to click on Tools and then E-mail Accounts. Pick the View or Change button and you’ll get a list of mail and news accounts currently onboard. Pick your troublesome account. This brings up a box where the POP and SMTP servers are designated. Since we know that your incoming mail works fine take a look at how it is described. Sometimes this will be along the lines of “mail.ispname.com” or “pop.ispname.com” or “pop3.ispname.com.”
The outgoing SMTP server is listed just below the POP server. You need to make sure the designation is of the same type as for as the POP. If the server uses POP or POP3 in the server address, try “smtp.ispname.com.”
If this doesn’t fix your problem, you need to check the port designation. To find this, first click on the More Settings button and then click open the Advanced tab on the menu that pops up. It probably should have 110 registered for the POP server port and 25 for the SMTP. Make changes if needed.
Finally, click on the tab marked Outgoing Server, and make sure the box is checked to authenticate each message. Here you need to type in the correct user name and password required for your Internet service. If this is filled in, double-check the name and password and then type it in again.
You can get a step-by-step look at these procedures by checking out the help screen set up by Google to show folks how to use Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express to read their accounts at Google’s free Gmail service. Just open Google and type in the search field Outlook gmail.com. Open the Gmail Help item that comes up at the top of the list of returned Web sites.
This will present screens that show each of the settings I just covered. As to that emergency workaround, you can simply sign up for a Gmail account at http://gmail.google.com and then set your computer so that it uses gmail.com as the SMTP server in the Outgoing Server tab.
Q. I can’t tell you how many times you have helped me overcome my sophomoric knowledge of computer skills.
Down to the nitty-gritty: I read your article about hiding “favorite places.” It sounded like a good idea. Your instructions were correct and it hid everything. Now that they are hidden, how in the world do I find them?
I was hoping to select only a few of my “favorite” folders to hide (financial sites & personals) but they all went bye-bye. So I tried reversing the process but, lo and behold, the “star” to indicate favorite places is gone and I don’t know where to click to bring them back.
Jan Kopis @comcast.net
A. I’m scratching my head, Ms. K., but I do know how to recover that Favorites folder that holds the Web addresses that the browser uses as bookmarks. The Search tool built into Windows XP is designed to find files and folders whether they have been marked as hidden or not. So click on Start and then Search. Look for the Files and Folders option in the pane on the left of the screen and type in Favorites. Click OK.
When the hidden file comes up just give a right-click on its entry in the search results box, and you’ll get the menu to check or uncheck the box to make the folder and all the files in it visible once again.
To review for other readers, the issue was how to make the listing of Web favorites disappear when other folks click on Favorites in one’s Web browser. The solution is to find the Favorites folder and use the right-click maneuver to check or uncheck the Hidden box. To find the Favorites folder, click on Start with the right mouse button and then pick Explore.
In the display this summons, look in the right-hand panel for the heading Documents and Settings, then open the folder under the heading labeled Owner. In that display, you will find the distinctive star icon labeled Favorites.
Give it a right-click and pick Hidden to make the Favorites stop displaying in the browser.
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Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at jcoates@tribune.com or via snail mail at the Chicago Tribune, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column. Add your point of view at chicagotribune.com/askjim.
