Connect with Friends and Family Online

Email and Messaging

How many times a year do we make that extra effort to get in touch with friends and family for a friendly greeting? This year, with the entire world's mind seemingly focused on things related to the economy, why not consider these alternative and inexpensive options to get you through? 

Reach out and touch someone. So, you've got family from west coast to east coast and everywhere in between and on just about every continent. And if you're not careful, the chatty Cathy in your house—or Carl respectively—and that might be you—will have your phone bill rivaling that of the national debt.

Luckily, you can contact everyone you know on every continent and you can do it for FREE. How, you ask? Through this wonderful little thing I like to call "the Internet". Here are some wonderful ways to call, chat, video conference, etc.:

• Instant Messaging (IM). What's so cool about IM? First, it's free to get the software, free to chat with friends, and if you've got a Webcam and a microphone, you don't even have to type. You can look at your friend or family member and chat just like you would in person via video conference. But with this option, unlike in person, you have the added benefit of not having to share your holiday cookies.
• Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP). The name sounds more complicated than it really is. There two VoIP options—you can go and purchase a monthly service plan and use your normal phone—or you can got the totally free route over the Internet with a microphone. That means you can talk with anyone, anywhere on earth, as long as they have a connected computer. How awesome is that? Catching up on the last 20 years (or more) with your best friend from grade school? Talking with Mom, Dad, uncles, aunts, cousins, sisters, brothers... and without fear of going broke? Priceless!

Free e-cards

To find e-cards simply type "free e-cards" or "e-greetings" into your favorite search engine—or you can try out one of these:

• Blue Mountain
• Hallmark—yes! They do e-cards too!
• American Greetings

Say goodbye to stamps and hello e-greetings. Unlike "snail mail", electronic greetings or e-greeting are customizable and are another way to say, "I'm thinking of you". And it's super simple whether you're a novice or expert Internet guru. All you need is your list of email addresses and you're a few clicks away from sending your friends and loved ones personal greetings that are funny, cute, touching and interactive. And you can schedule the time when they go out—today, tomorrow, three weeks from now, whenever.

The mother of all family newsletters. If you're a newsletter writer, there is nothing better than having access to a computer with a good word processing program. With so much available (free) clip art options, along with your own photo library of digital images, you can create a newsletter that's the ultimate show-and-tell as to where you've been in the last year. Not only that? You can email it to friends and family members, no stamp required.

Even better? Consider creating a photo blog—simply send a link and they can point, click, and see and read the wonderful things you've been doing all year long.

If you are looking for a new computer to do all these wonderful things with, consider laptop and desktop PCs with Intel Inside® and stay connected.

10 Cool Things to Do with a Laptop

Desktop or Laptop?

• Productivity Tips

Some of us take our laptop computers with us everywhere: to work, to school, to the local coffee shop, and even on vacation. With computing power available to us at all times, it's tempting to work even when we should be enjoying the beach or taking a well-deserved break at home. With a little bit of thought, however, there are plenty of things you can do with a laptop that will actually end up improving your leisure life instead of draining it away. In this article, we'll introduce you to a few ideas that can help you get the most from your laptop.
1. Watch movies while traveling. With a DVD drive on your laptop, you have everything you need to take movie entertainment with you when you travel, on your work commute, or out on the porch. Just buy or rent a movie you like, and pop it into the drive. The movie will start automatically. Just remember to wear earphones to avoid annoying your fellow passengers or others in the vicinity.
2. Connect to your wireless network. Being able to access the Internet as well as printers, shared files like music or video, and other resources at home is a great convenience. The combination of a laptop and a wireless network is all you need. See our article "Build a Home Network" to learn how to get started building the network and "Share Files Between Computers" to learn how to share printers and files over the network once you've built it.
3. Play games anywhere. Computer games are a great pastime, and laptops let you take them with you. Laptops are certainly not the only way to play games on the road, but they're a great option, and there are plenty of choices for every taste, from puzzles to shoot-em-up adventures. See "Your Many Options for Mobile Gaming" for more information.
4. Catch up on the news. Using an RSS (rich site summary) newsfeed reader, you can subscribe to free news services and other Web-based content that will automatically download to your computer so you can read it at your leisure. Depending on the RSS reader you choose, downloading can occur even when you're not connected to the Internet, so you can catch up whenever you have a spare moment. For more information, see the RSS Primer at www.whatisrss.com.

5. Answer email on the train, plane, or passenger seat of a car (don't try this while driving). Most people who work in an office environment get so much email that it's challenging to keep up with it all. Reading and responding to those messages on the go helps get that task out of the way, and with most email programs you don't even need to be connected to the Internet to respond to messages. When you press the Send button, the message will go to your emails outbox and send automatically when you're connected later.
6. Do maintenance wherever you are. OK, this one is boring, but most of the maintenance jobs you really need to do on your computer take quite a bit of time unattended. In other words, the computer needs a lot of time to do the job, but you can be doing something else while it churns away. For more information about the kinds of regular maintenance you should be doing, see "Regular Computer Maintenance".
7. Build music playlists on the go. If you use an MP3 player to listen to music while you're in the car, exercising, or even at work, you already know that playlists make your world better, because you don't need to manually select songs or just listen to whatever comes up in a random "shuffle" mode. Being able to make playlists when you have some spare down time while traveling, commuting, or wherever is a great convenience, and you can load them to your MP3 player on the spot.
8. Download pictures from a digital camera or digital video camera. When you're on vacation or at a family event, gathering everyone around the tiny viewfinder screen on your camera to look at the pictures or video you just took isn't a very good experience. By synchronizing the camera with your laptop, you can share the pictures and videos much better, and even email copies to other people on the spot. A laptop also comes in handy when you run out of space on your camera or digital video camera. Traditional laptop hard drives store much more information than a memory card so you can download your photos, erase your memory card and start over.
9. Work from the backyard. Ah, the good life-sipping lemonade (or your beverage of choice) while you catch up on work, browse the Web, or play a game is a great way to take advantage of a nice day. Stay in the shade, though, because laptop screens are notoriously hard to read in direct sun. And be careful by the pool!
10. Give presentations on the road. Using a program like Microsoft Office PowerPoint or OpenOffice Impress, you can create great-looking presentations to show clients, students, and others. This is a great capability for salespeople, realtors, public speakers, teachers, or anyone else who needs to create dynamic presentations.
For unleashed computing, look for laptops with Intel Inside®.

Reasons to Go Wireless

• Wireless

For years, wires have been holding us down. Want to make a phone call? Go to the room where the phone is. Want to show someone your new vacation video? Better burn it to DVD first. Have a fun new song to share? Again, burn it to a CD.
For many people, all those hassles are a thing of the past, and they could be for you, too. The solution: Unleash yourself from wires completely. That's right—go wireless.
Wireless networking at home
With more people moving to laptops instead of using bulky desktop computers, the wireless home network is becoming quite easy to accomplish. With all your computers getting wireless Web access through a router, you're no longer tied to a particular spot. Now, if you want to email someone from the couch, you can. Want to bring the laptop to the kitchen so you can try out that new recipe, or browse sports scores in bed? It's easy.
But you don't just get Web access throughout the home—you get access to all your peripherals. Share a printer. Share files. It matters less and less where your "stuff" actually is when you can access it from wherever you are.
The most common example of this is probably the wireless entertainment system. Using a computer set up as a media center (connected wirelessly to the home network) and a Bluetooth remote control, you can download and stream videos, music and photos from your computer to your television and stereo.
One reason to go wireless not yet mentioned is probably the most obvious advantage: no wires! Your office and desktop will be that much neater and simpler.
These aren't all the reasons to go wireless, of course, but hopefully this has been enough to whet your appetite and introduce you to the possibilities going wireless has to offer. So take the chance. Cut yourself free from the cords and cables holding you in place. Go wireless and experience the freedom. You won't look back.