Recommended internet speed for Zoom

Keep in mind that the recommended minimum internet speed for an online video conference is only about 4.0 to 5.0 megabytes per second - not very high by today's standards.

A technical guide posted here by Zoom, shows that you'll need a stronger speed for a group session, as opposed to a one on one video call. An audio call should be possible at 100 kilobytes per second, and screen sharing only requires about twice as much speed ~200 kbps.

The University of Chicago Data Science Institute conducted a test to measure the amount of bandwidth required for Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom video conferences and determined that they averaged about 1-2 mbps download, and 0.75-1.4 mbps upload. Teams tends to take up more bandwidth than the other applications.

Not much difference. However on a small local network when multiple video calls are active, choosing Zoom over its competitors can make a decisive difference.

Teams also took longer to recover from an interruption in a WiFi signal than Zoom or Meet.

The study also found that systems may give priority to the first call that is initiated.

Find keywords quickly by getting a list of spelling errors

If you want help getting a list of last names or other proper nouns which may be keywords in a long text excerpt, you can make use of the below Visual Basic macro which will generate a list of words that MS Word will identify as possible spelling errors.

If you simply plug in the code in a new module in Visual Basic:

. . . the macro will review a Word document:

. . . and output a list of the words which are not in the spell check dictionary:

Thanks to Jay Freedman for posting this macro here. [Copy the text from the post on the Microsoft site, or remove the extra blank lines that result when you paste this code into Visual Basic to make it work.]

Sub ListSpellingErrors()

Dim inDoc As Document

Dim outDoc As Document

Dim er As Range

Set inDoc = ActiveDocument

If ActiveDocument.SpellingErrors.Count > 0 Then

Set outDoc = Documents.Add

outDoc.Sections(1).Headers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary) _

.Range.Text = "Spelling errors in " & inDoc.FullName

Else

MsgBox "There are no spelling errors in this document."

Exit Sub

End If

For Each er In inDoc.SpellingErrors

outDoc.Range.InsertAfter er.Text & vbCr

Next er

' optionally, to sort the output,

' remove the quote mark from the next line

' outDoc.Range.Sort

End Sub

HP 600 Series Printers - troubleshooting blowbacks with faded ink

If you happen to be using printers from the HP 600 series, HP M601, M602, M603, M604, M605, M606, M607, and so on, and the printer is sending out blowbacks for which the ink is too faint for legibility, consider that there may be a mechanical problem with the printer that a layman can fix.

Today, when I sent jobs to my HP M601 printers, I consistently got print-outs for which the ink was very faded. So for example, I was getting print-outs of the quality of these on the right, rather than those of the more standard quality on the left.

Under printer preferences, on the Paper/Quality tab, if EconoMode is selected, try unchecking this box and attempting to print out additional pages and see if you get a better result.

If this doesn't help, check and see if your HP printer includes an option under Printer Preferences on the Services tab under Device Servies to clean the printer.

. . . if no such option is available, open up the front of the printer and remove the ink cartridge. Check and see if a roller bar like that in the below photo is loose. This padded roller bar with the light blue cog and a black piece of plastic on the left side, has a tendency to become misplaced when the printer is moved. If it is not in the correct position, printouts may come out too light.

Without any special tools, you should be able to position this roller back in place like this:

Slide the knob at the right end into the slot in the white bracket affixed to the printer, and then place the opposite end with black piece faxing down.

Tonight, I shifted this roller bar back into positition, and the HP 600 series printer printed out hard copies at an normal resolution.