Q. My question involves using digital cameras while on the road. I’ll be traveling abroad for an extended period and won’t have a personal computer.
I will have access to public computers, but none that will allow me to download digital camera software. I want a digital camera that will allow me to send photos from the camera through an e-mail program to a recipient here in the States. After speaking to several camera manufacturers, they all respond with the same answer: “To utilize the photo e-mail function, you need to download our software.”
My question is how do I send these photos from my camera through an e-mail program to someone else?
— Doug Evans @hotmail.com
A. It’s true that most Internet cafes and other public places offering Web access won’t let folks come in off the street and load software on their computers. Yet many of them will let users connect portable memory card reading devices to the USB ports on their machines.
That’s all you need, Mr. E.
Your fix is one of the many devices on the market that have slots for various types of memory cards on one end and a USB connector on the other. You remove the memory card from your camera, insert it into the card reader, then click open the My Computer icon to find it.
You then use e-mail software to transfer the files as attachments.
For example, if you were using a typical Web-based e-mail program such as the Yahoo, Hotmail or Google offerings, you would open a message, address it and add whatever text you wanted to send along with the artwork. Then you would use the Attach File feature of the e-mail program to open the My Computer icon on the public computer and look for an icon called Removable Drive, which will be your memory card.
Open the card and then select the picture you want to send.
Web-based e-mail programs let users add multiple attachments to a message one at a time. But be advised that high-resolution digital picture files tend to be in the 1 million byte range and above and can take quite a while to move, especially on the sluggish connections that one often finds at public Web access services.
If you are certain that you only want to share pictures as computer files rather than make prints, it’s an excellent idea to set your digital camera to make small low-resolution files designed for e-mail.
When you pick a camera, make sure that it stores images on removable memory cards rather than in internal memory. Keep in mind that some cameras store a few images in internal memory before moving the rest onto the card. Make sure your pictures are on the card rather than the camera’s own memory.
I use an inexpensive 8-in-1 card reader called the ImageMate — about $30 from SanDisk — that accepts all of the commonly used memory cards for cameras, digital music players, PDAs and other devices.
The Windows XP and Mac OSX operating systems recognize these readers when they are plugged into the USB port and require none of the software that camera makers provide to directly connect to computers.
Q. Can you suggest a simple way to restore sound to my Presario 700 laptop? After several viruses disabled the system, I reinstalled Windows XP Home and regardless of what I try, there is no sound.
— Connie Brewer, Birmingham, Ala.
A. There are things more irksome than finding that some kind of gremlin has rendered one’s computer mute as a marshmallow, Ms. B., but not many things.
Windows XP hides the audio on/off, volume, left-right balance and sound source tools behind the Control Panel icon when one clicks the Start button. You know the Start button. It’s the one you use to turn off the machine. To turn on the machine you must push a button on the case.
But I digress.
Click on Start and then Control Panel and then open the icon called Sounds and Audio Devices. This brings up a set of tabbed menus holding the tools that got out of whack when you did the reinstallation of Windows.
First of all, look under the General tab in that menu and put a check mark in the box to place a Volume Control icon in the system tray in the lower left hand of the screen. It will then be visible at all times. You can then click that icon in the future to call up sound settings.
For now, though, click on the Advanced button in that General menu in the Control Panel. This pops up a long string of sound devices and slider-type volume controls for each.
Make sure that there is no check mark in the Mute box in the control at the far left of the display, the one called Master Volume. Also make sure the volume slider is pretty close to maxed out. In the unlikely event that there is a check mark there or the volume slider is at the bottom, your problem is solved.
But read on even if that happy event occurs.
You will note that each of the tools for sound sources to the right of the Master panel also includes a volume slider and a mute button. The most likely cause of your problem is that some program you used or something you played in the past — a DVD, perhaps, or a CD or even some sound-equipped Web site — needed to mute one of these other sound sources to do its stuff.
Most often the device that gets muted is the Wave setting that plays sounds from software and Web sites. Make sure it is not muted. Now look across the row of controls and you will find settings for stuff like the SW Synth and each of the speakers attached — front, right and subwoofer. There also are settings for CD and DVD, the microphone and other potential sound sources.
The microphone should be muted but everything else needs to be activated with the volume cranked up. You can make adjustments later should the sound blow off your socks.
Odds are huge that your problem will be fixed at this point.
If not, you must make sure that the computer’s sound card is set correctly and registered to operate. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds.
Click on the Hardware tab in the Sounds and Audio Devices Control Panel and then look at the list of sound-capable devices. Right below the CD and DVD drives will be your audio card.
Give that line a click to highlight it and click on the Properties button just below. Make sure that the line is selected to enable the sound card rather than the one to disable it. I’m sure you won’t need to go this far but you and other readers now have the whole Windows sound shtick on paper.
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Got a question on personal technology? Send a note to Jim Coates at askjimcoates@gmail.com. Questions can be answered only through this column.
