Tip of the week
Tips and Tricks
Each week, we're going to post a little tip for our SmartCAT users. Some are about getting the most out of SmartCAT, some about being more comfortable in Windows, and some are about knowing your hardware.
Check out this week's Tip of the Week on our Facebook page
- May 10th, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- When importing TurboCAT files, don't forget to unarchive first. After they're unarchived, you can easily import them into SmartCAT.
- May 2nd, 2013
- Is your job menu suddenly looking unfamiliar? Are all of your include files missing? You may have wandered into a different directory. To get back to your main Work Directory (Green Cheetah face), press "Ctrl-D," then "Esc." We call it the Ruby Slippers trick (there's no place like home).
- Apr 25th, 2013
- When you're buying a new laptop, make sure it runs Windows 8 Pro. Windows RT can't run most programs, including SmartCAT.
- Apr 18th, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Happy Backup Day!
- Apr 11th, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Never forget to eject your devices. It doesn't happen very often, but occasionally failing to eject your USB drive or SD card can cause all the data to become corrupted. Better safe than sorry.
- Apr 4th, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- I thought I'd mentioned this before, but I can't find it. We've finished our extensive tests with SmartCAT in Windows 8 and are happy to say that SmartCAT will work as well with Windows 8 Professional as it does with previous versions of Windows. For more information on running SmartCAT on a Windows 8 computer, check out the CATChat on our website!
- March 28th, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip --There are a bunch of free cloud storage solutions out there. You could even convert your audio files to MP3s and keep them on google Music Manager.
- March 21st, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Happy Back-up Day!
- March 14th, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- The internet is a great place to shop for things if you want a good deal on something specific (like 2GB SD cards, or a USB to serial adapter, or even a bluetooth kit) and long as you don't need it right away.
- March 11th, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- even though SD cards can hold a ton of data, they have more in common with floppy disks than they do with a drive. Expect to replace them every year or so, at least. It's a good idea to have always keep a spare waiting!
- February 25th, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Too much working and eating making your keys stick? Get some compressed air to clean your keyboard, the little nozzle lets it go under most keys.
- February 15th, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- February is always *way* too short! It's already the third week. Happy backup day!
- February 8th, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- A few of my favorite keyboard commands: Use Alt-Tab in Windows or Command-Tab in a Mac lets you toggle between open programs. In many programs, like Notepad, Wordpad, and Word, Ctrl-Home takes you to the top of the document and Ctrl-End takes you to the end (though in SmartCAT, it's Ctrl-PageUp and Ctrl-PageDown respectively). In most web browsers, Home will take you to the top of the webpage and End will take you to the end.
- February 1st, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Is there something you want SmartCAT to do that it doesn't? Our development is based on your requests. If you have an idea to make SmartCAT better, we alway want to hear it.
- January 24th, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Happy Back-up Day! Now is the perfect time to start the good habit of backing up your essential files every month!
- January 17th, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- If you record audio, having a drive with removable storage (a USB hard drive) can really help with backups and you can use it to store your older cases. The start of a new year is a great time to move some of those old jobs out of your Work Directory and make it less cluttered.
- January 10th, 2013
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- It's been a few weeks (I took a long holiday vacation) but now that the holidays are over it's time to get back to work. One way work smarter, not harder, is to define some useful briefs, and SmartCAT's autobrief feature can help you easily create briefs while you are in Realtime.
- December 20th, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Everything gets so busy around the holidays that it's easy to let things slip (like updating the tip of the week). That's why I'm reminding you to backup, so you can think about anything but work over the holidays!
- November 29th, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Now is a great time to get a new laptop running Windows 7. There are a lot of great laptops on clearance at stores an on line. Windows 8 is still new, and many of your devices may not be compatible with it (most USB to Serial adapters in particular). Pick up a Windows 7 machine while they're on sale!
- November 29th, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Now is a great time to get a new laptop running Windows 7. There are a lot of great laptops on clearance at stores an on line. Windows 8 is still new, and many of your devices may not be compatible with it (most USB to Serial adapters in particular). Pick up a Windows 7 machine while they're on sale!
- November 15th, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Sending an attachment can be an easy way to share files with someone else. To send an attachment, open up your email client and compose a new email. Enter the recipient's address in the "to" field, the subject in that field, and write your email. Then click on the attach button (it may say insert a file or add file) and browse for the file you want to add. Once it's added, just send the email.
- November 9th, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Restoring your computer to factory settings can damage your SmartCAT license. Make sure you call us so we can hold on to your license if you need to restore to factory settings.
- November 2nd, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Made a bunch of changes to the first part of a multi-part transcript but forgot to use a job dictionary? You can export your global table to another job! This can be helpful in a single day you've split into two parts or in a multi-part trial.
- October 29th, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip - Cheetah International offers a laptop purchasing service. We will purchase the computer, install your software, load your personal work files, and optimize the Windows environment. When you receive your shiny new computer from us, all you have to do is turn it on and you will be off and running!
- October 19th, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Happy Back-up Day!
- October 11th, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip - It never hurts to go back to basics. Restarting your computer can help with a number of problems. If your computer is slow, or if you are having hardware problems, sometimes a restart can really help. In fact, it's one of the first things to try if there's a problem with your realtime connection.
- October 4th, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- SmartCAT Version 4.1 is here! After months of testing, we're very proud to offer you this latest SmartCAT update - which includes a new, super easy to use, all-in-one import notes menu, and a bunch of other features as well!
- September 28th, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- It can be really nice to see what you're writing on your writers screen. We can make the changes to the file to make everything show up nicely. Either send us your dictionary (or if you're feeling really nice, save it as an RTF/CRE dictionary file and send that) and we will convert it for your writer.
- September 20th, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Wow! It's already the third Thursday of the month. Happy Backup Day!
- September 14th, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Waiting to buy a computer until Windows 8 comes out? Most techs will tell you that a new OS is a little less stable right when it comes out. I would actually suggest *not* waiting. You will have a more stable system. Wait a little longer and pay a little more and upgrade to the new OS after the Service Pack.
- September 6th, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Is your job menu feeling a little full? A lot of our users find it easier to put their completed jobs in a separate folder. Check out our facebook page for more detail.
- August 30, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- A good keyboard can be a lifesaver. Even if you're using a laptop, it can be worth it to plug in a good keyboard when you know you're going to spend time editing.
- August 23, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- Thinking about a new laptop? We can help you purchase one and configure it. That way, when you get your new laptop, it's already configured for Realtime and ready to go.
- August 17, 2012
- This Week's SmartCAT Tech Tip -- The third Thursday of this month totally snuck up on me! Happy backup day!
- August 9, 2012
- This week's SmartCAT tech tip -- Having weird problems with your computer? Do they only happen sometimes and make you wonder if you're going crazy? When hardware wears out, the problems start out infrequently then happen more and more often. So, if strange things are happening more and more often, it's a good indicator that hardware is wearing out.
- August 2, 2012
- This week's SmartCAT tech tip -- Have way more work than you can handle? Check out our list of SmartCAT scopists on our website. Not enough work? Ask us to put you on our scopist list.
- July 26, 2012
- This week's SmartCAT tech tip -- Phishing, scams that steal passwords and financial information by email, are common. Emails that look official can contain links that take you to incredibly realistic fake sites and, if you enter your user name and password, the people running the scam then have it. To keep safe, avoid clicking on links in emails, unless you know the source *and* are expecting a link from them. If a bank, your credit card, or any other official looking email asks you to click on a link, it's best to go to their website yourself (by opening your browser and searching or typing in the URL)..
- July 16, 2012
- This week's SmartCAT tech tip -- Happy Backup Day!.
- July 12, 2012
- This week's SmartCAT tech tip -- Antivirus programs often come with a lot of extra features. Many of them are more annoying than helpful. Avoid installing the extra features, stick with the most basic antivirus. We're always here to help if you want to figure out what features will work best for you.
- July 05, 2012
- This week's SmartCAT tech tip -- BIOS updates used to be practically unheard of, but more and more hardware manufactures are doing them regularly. If your computer prompts you to do one, call us first; they can alter your computer's identity and harm your license.
- June 28, 2012
- This week's SmartCAT tech tip -- ASCII is a standard, English character-based encoding. Because ASCII is a very basic form of text, it can be read by pretty much everything. An exported ASCII is a way that your .job can be read by a bunch of other programs and pretty much look the same.
- June 21st, 2012
- This week's SmartCAT tech tip - Miss TurboCAT's spellcheck? The batch spellcheck works almost exactly the same way.
- June 14th, 2012
- This week's SmartCAT tech tip - Happy back up day! Don't forget to back up your files and folders once a month. For more ideas on what to back up, you can check out the "SmartCAT Emergency Kit" webinar.
- June 7th, 2012
- This week's SmartCAT tech tip - Sometimes, the best way to avoid trouble is to just avoid trouble. Increasingly blogs, video sites (and not just naughty video sites) have ad content that can take you to places you don't want. Be careful where you click and try to avoid social media and games on your work computer.
- June 1st, 2012
- This week's SmartCAT tech tip - Need storage that's accessible anywhere? Some companies offer free online storage -- here's a good article about a couple of them. Also, for those of you with google accounts, google drive is out now and offers 5 free gigs.
- May 24th, 2012
- This week's SmartCAT tech tip - Quick Keyboard Tricks Having trouble managing all your windows? Hate using the mouse to switch programs? A few of our favorite Windows keyboard shortcuts are up on our facebook page!
- May 18th, 2012
- We recommend making the third Thursday of every month back-up day. Because I was off yesterday, I couldn't remind you. Still, Fridays work as a back-up day too. If you take the time to backup today, then even if you spill coffee on your laptop while doing your weekend web browsing, your jobs and dictionaries are safe.
- May 10th, 2012
- This week's SmartCAT Tech tip - PDFs (portable document format) are a type of file that can be read (and not edited) by a wide range of programs on a wide variety of hardware. If someone wants a copy of a transcript to read on their smart phone, or ebook reader, or ipad, use SmartCAT's PDF creator to make one.
- May 3rd, 2012
- It's a good idea to periodically clear out your cache in your internet browser. If you ever notice that your internet is slow, this might be why! For browswer specific instructions on clearing your cache, check out our facebook page.
- April 26th, 2012
- Netbooks can be useful for editing, but can give you problems with realtime. Most netbooks don't have enough power to their USB ports to sustain realtime and can randomly shut themselves off while you're writing!
