Windows Media Player - Controls

Windows Media Player that comes with Windows Vista is a functional program for playing movies and music.

Along the bottom are several tools for playing your music or video.

The left most icon shows what you are currently playing, along with the title of the media clip. Then is the current time that has been played.

The center section of the bottom of the Windows Media Player are the basic controls that shuffle, repeat, stop, to the beginning, pause/play, to the end, mute, and volume control. Each list respectfully from left to right.

Windows Media Player - Burn CD

Windows Media Player has been around since Windows 95. A crude form has been around since Windows 3.1. Today, Windows Media Player has a lot of tools that at value to the Windows Vista operating system.

Next to playing music, most intermediate computer users, want to burn files to CD's or DVD's. This can be done in Windows Media Player.

In the top menu is a link labeled, Burn. This opens up two windows on the right side of Media Player. The top window is the status of the CD in your burning optical drive. The bottom window is where you can drag in the files or music you want to burn.

Once you have the music or files you want to burn in the burn list window. the Start Burn will darken, then all you have to do is left click on it. The CD will start burning.

Outlook 2007 - Junk Mail Filter 2

Outlook has a quick way you can send email to you Junk Folder or block an annoying email. The process is not one of rocket science.

All you have to do is right click on the email you want to start blocking. Then select Add Sender to Blocked Senders List by left clicking on it. Then anymore email from that email address will go into your junk email folder.

What Is Going and Coming From Your Computer

Gas prices are on the rise. Money is getting tight. More and more people are turning to the internet for their shopping. Many are looking to the World Wide Web for their movies, music, along with free applications. This gives criminals a larger opportunity to make money.

Other than email scams, there are programs that hidden in screen savers, and news channel software that will take over your computer to relay information. You may say that you do not have enough money for any criminal to go after. Well your computer may help them gain access to your bank's database.

In the Windows operating system is the Task Manager. The Task Manager has a tab for seeing your network traffic. This is the amount of one's and zero's that go and come from your computer.

I personally use something that gives me little more detail. It is called Net Meter. I keep in in the sidebar of my screen. Periodically, I will glance at it to see if there is an unusual amount of uploads (displayed by yellow) and downloads (display by red) from my computer.

You don't need to know every little item that uses the internet from your computer, but if you see a drastic increase is it time to be concerned.

Outlook 2007 - Junk Mail Filter

In Windows Vista, there is no Outlook Express. Instead Microsoft renamed it to Windows Mail. However, if you get or have Microsoft Office 2007 Pro you will have Outlook.

Outlook has it's own junk email filter. It is a little more extensive. You can even add third party email filter to Outlook. Considering the vast amount of virus infections that come through email, it would be a good idea.

I use Avast along with Outlook's filter and Windows Defender. This works quite well for me.

Windows Mail - Phishing

Phishing spelled with PH is where you get an email where the sender wants to buy something or click on a link in the email. In other words the email mail is a hook. If you bit then you may not lose your life, but you bank account will be definitely smaller.

Fortunately, there is a large data base of some of these scams. Windows Mail is connected with that phishing filter. You can elect to have the known phishing email moved to a junk email box where you can review them before deleting them.

Reviewing what is in your junk email box is good. Just in case a business you do business with gets classified as bad, by some disgruntled customer.

Windows Mail - International

Even if you do not regularly send or get email from other countries, this filter will help cut down on the amount of junk email you get.

It has long been known that Russia and Nigeria are the two biggest sources of spam or phishing email. This is where you can disallow email from certain countries from putting email in your inbox.

Top-Level Domain's refer to blocking email from countries that you would have no reason to receive email.

I periodically receive an email from a bank in England. When I investigate it the email originates from Russia. So to keep from getting that type of email again, I block any email that orginates in Russia.

Blocked Encoding List refers to email from people who use other languages. If you do not want to receive email from people of other languages who use special character of that language, would be a good thing. This will prevent some malicious program being placed on your computer.