ASL Computer Services has moved into new office premises

ASL Computer Services has just moved into new larger office premises. Below is a photo of the new Office in Rugby. 

Chris Moody
ASL Computer Services

How to open Office 2007 documents using Office 2000, 2003, or Office XP

Having problems opening Office 2007 documents because you still have an older version of Office? By installing the Compatibility Pack from Microsoft in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007. The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats. For more information about the Compatibility Pack, see Knowledge Base article 924074.

 The MS compatibility pack can be downloaded here.

Chris
http://www.aslcomputerservices.co.uk/

A couple of interesting IT questions and answers on Freshbusinessthinking.com

I receive a couple of newsletter style emails every month from www.freshbusinessthinking.com and one of them recently contained a “computer questions and answers” section.

 You can see the Questions and Answers on their website. The second and third questions were both very good questions and probably are relevant to the majority of small businesses. So it’s worth taking a look at these questions and the authors answers.

This got me thinking.  ASL Computer Services could run a monthly or weekly question and answer article on this blog.

How would it work? Small business owners send in their questions to me by email . I will then publish the first three received with an answer every month, or if it becomes popular every week. So let’s give it a try. Send us your IT questions by email and we will publish the first three received with answers (the questions will be published as Mr W from Daventry or Mrs T from Rugby to protect peoples identity).

Chris Moody
ASL Computer Services

Google Calendar

This is a web based on-line calendar. You can enter details of appointments and then view them in daily, weekly, and a number of other formats. But it really starts to get useful when you have a number of people on Google Calendar. You can set up authorisation for specific people to have view / update / or full control of your calendar. You can book meetings with other people and they can accept or reject these appointments. At the click of a button you can overlay calendars on top of each other.

It is a really powerful product, with similar features as Microsoft exchange, but without the associated high costs that go with Exchange.

Worth a look at by all small business owners needing a computer based calendar.

Why not see what it can do by visiting the “Google Calendar tour” website:

 

http://www.google.com/googlecalendar/tour.html

 

OpenOffice - An alternative to MS Office, and totally free

The Microsoft office suite has become the De Facto standard amongst PC users. Everyone expects documents to be in Word format, speadsheets in Excel, and presentations in Powerpoint. But, with every new release of MS Office the price has increased, making it a very expensive proposition for both small businesses and home PC users.

But now there is an alternative, OpenOffice.

• Openoffice will read and write Word excel and powerpoint documents
• It is easy to use
• Download OpenOffice completely free of any licence fees
• Install it on as many PCs as you like
• Use it for any purpose private, educational, government and public administration, commercial…
• Pass on copies free of charge to family, friends, students, employees, etc.

OpenOffice contains

Writer – a word processor you can use for anything from writing a quick letter to producing an entire book.

Calc – a powerful spreadsheet with all the tools you need to calculate, analyse, and present your data in numerical reports or sizzling graphics.

Impress – the fastest, most powerful way to create effective multimedia presentations.

Draw – lets you produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations.

Base – lets you manipulate databases seamlessly. Create and modify tables, forms, queries, and reports, all from within OpenOffice.org

Math – lets you create mathematical equations with a graphic user interface or by directly typing your formulas into the equation editor.

Why not give OpenOffice a try. It could save you a lot of money.

You can download it free from the Openoffice.org website

 Chris Moody
ASL Computer Services