Speeding up Word 2011 for Mac
If you’re running Microsoft Word 2011 on your Mac, it probably started out stupendously quick (by comparison with Word 2008 or earlier). However, for no obvious reason, it may now be slower to start up than watching grass grow. It seems to make no sense whatsoever.
Fortunately, there’s often a simple explanation and a quick fix that goes with it: duplicate fonts.
Mac OS X allows you to install more than one copy of any given font. You may have done this accidentally, and it’ll slow the system down. Here’s the basic steps to fix it:
1. Close Microsoft Word
2. Open Apple’s Font Book.
3. You’ll see a yellow triangle identifying an issue with a font and if you click on the font you’ll see the message ‘Multiple copies of this font are installed’.
4. When you click ‘Resolve Automatically’ Mac OS X will disable any duplicates, keeping just one active, or you can find the offending font in the Finder if you prefer to completely delete it. This is usually the best idea, as fonts that are kept hanging around on the hard drive get reactivated in various circumstances.
5. Restart your Mac. This will trigger it to rebuild the System font cache.
You can also run the command ‘Select Duplicated Fonts’ from the Edit menu, followed by the command ‘Resolve Duplicates’ from the edit menu.
It’s usually best to run with all your fonts enabled all the time. This is because every time you open Word, it compares its own cache with the System cache and will rebuild its own cache if they’re not the same, causing a significant lag at startup. If you’re switching fonts in and out using font sets, or dynamic fonts, Word will encounter discrepancies on a regular basis and this will frequently slow it down.
Security, scams, phishing: even major corporations can become victims
Just when you think you’ve seen them all, another online scam comes along demonstrating a remarkable level of creativity, and victimising the clients of a company without even directly breaching their own security!
Realestate.com.au is one of the largest real estate web sites in Australia, trusted by millions, and the go-to site for just about any form of residential or commercial real estate in the country. Thousands of reputable real estate agents use the site every day to list the properties they’re handling, and renters search the property listings with a sense of security knowing that, on the whole, the property listings are legitimate and being handled by a professional, licensed estate agent.
However, they’ve just been hit by a similar scam to one which is played out every day around the world via reputable web sites such as Craigslist or eBay. The devious ploy actually involved two scams in quick succession, and went a bit like this:
1. The scammers first did a tricky “phishing” exercise with legitimate real estate agents around Australia:
It has been brought to our attention that a number of real estate agents were targeted via a phishing scam which resulted in their realestate.com.au account login details being revealed to a third party. This enabled the third party to access agents accounts for the purpose of sending fraudulent emails to users of realestate.com.au
2. They then used the stolen credentials to create genuine-looking listings. The only hint that these were fakes (and I’m not sure whey they made this so obvious – perhaps to have people desperate to secure the property) was to have brilliant looking apartments listed at rental rates well below the going market rate – e.g. a fantastic 2 bedroom apartment in Melbourne CBD for only $250 per week.
3. When an interested party enquires via email, they receive a response indicating that you’re now dealing directly with the owner who has, due to a corporate promotion, had to move to Rome/London/wherever they feel like dreaming up for this one.
Hello,
Firstly I would like to thank you for your reply. I really appreciate that you’ve taken the time to answer me. I am the owner of the apartment with two bedrooms and two bathrooms located in 8 Bligh Pl, Melbourne, Vic 3000. It is still available for rental at $250 p/w, including utility bills, and is available for as long as you need it. The apartment is in excellent condition and is well equipped. I bought it in 2008 and lived there with my pet until last month. At that point I received a promotion which meant I needed to move to Rome/Italy.
The apartment has the following equipment and services: fridge, freezer, washing machine, tumble drier, iron, oven, toaster, coffee maker, vacuum cleaner, wide screen TV, cable TV with basic level access, ADSL internet and WiFi. There is a parking space for one car. I have spent a lot of money refurnishing the apartment, and would like to request that you treat it as if it was your own. I’m not trying to make a lot of money from renting the apartment. What I really want is to find a tenant who will take good care of it until I return. The minimum lease period is six months.
My contract in Rome runs until October 2015.
The fastest way to complete this rental agreement (within two working days) would be to use a worldwide delivery company, TNT ( www.tnt.com ). Working with them means you will be able to visit and view the apartment before I receive any payments from you. The keys are currently with me in Rome.
I’m hoping we can arrange a viewing as soon as possible and finalize the rental agreement.Looking forward to hearing from.
Robyn Spinley
00198 Roma (RM)
Corso Trieste 61
spinleyr@gmail.com
Naturally, the name provided has been randomly picked from a real person’s identity who is blissfully unaware their name is being used in connection with an Internet scam. They’ve also picked TNT to try to hide behind a legitimate business which people may feel a sense of trust in.
4. Once you reply to this email asking how to proceed (if you haven’t already heard the alarm bells ringing), you receive another email:
This is how using TNT as an agent would work, and how it would protect us both.
Firstly you need to pay one month’s rent plus the deposit (a total amount of $2000)
1. You should send me your full name and address so that I can fill out the lease agreement and start the transaction.
2. I will send the keys and the signed lease contract using TNT two day delivery service. They will then email you to let you know they have received these.
And providing they have received the payment from you they will release the keys and the lease contract to you.
3. You can then check out the apartment.
4. If you like it, all you need to do is instruct TNT to release your payment to me.
5. If you don’t like it, you should return the keys and lease contract to TNT and they will refund the payment you have made.
I hope that you’re OK with this and we can close the deal.
Thank you,
5. At this point, they’re now ready to start fleecing you of your personal information and, although we haven’t spoken to anybody who’s been ‘taken’ by this, we imagine they’d also send you a spoofed email appearing to come from TNT with banking details to deposit the money.
As you can see, this is a very clever ruse which plays on people’s emotional attachment to an apartment they could otherwise only dream of affording, and leverages the legitimacy of recognised names and sites including realestate.com.au, TNT, and the names of genuine real estate agencies.
Have you been a victim of something similar? Or is your company at risk of being ‘used’ in such a damaging way? We’d love to hear about it!
New online store
Techeffectiv are proud to announce the launch of our new online computer products & electronics store at www.techeffectiv.com.au.
The store offers a broad range of computer hardware and software products from major vendors including HP, Lenovo, Acer, Fuji Xerox, Cisco, and many more – with 1500 products already available, and more continually coming online, we look forward to supplying all your corporate and personal IT needs.
In addition to competitive pricing and prompt delivery from distribution centres in Melbourne and Sydney, our goal is to offer you a level of care that you don’t normally experience when shopping online. With our experienced network engineers and computer technicians, we are able to provide not only phone assistance but also onsite installation and support as required. We believe that our customer is paramount, and we’re always here to help you. The online store is designed to be an added convenience to our existing service-oriented business model, rather than the only method of dealing with us.
We’re conscious that there will be areas of the web site that will need to be refined and improved, and not every product you want is currently listed online. We therefore encourage you to contact us with any feedback and requests. We continue to provide our corporate clients with an Account Manager who will work with you to provide a quote on any custom requirements, and to advise and assist you in selecting suitable hardware and software.
As an introductory offer, we’re also giving away free USB memory sticks to anybody who ‘Likes’ our Facebook page and signs up for our ‘Hot Deal Alerts’ emails (limited to Australia only, until 14 December 2011). We encourage you to ‘Share’ this (via the Facebook page) with your Facebook friends so that they can also claim their own free USB memory stick.