Monthly Articles
Computing 101: How’s Your Memory?
I run into this bit of confusion almost every day – people deleting files to give them more “memory”. Deleting files may give you more hard drive space, but it won’t give you more memory.
Let’s start with the hard drive. The hard drive in your computer is your filing cabinet. This is where Windows and all your programs are installed. ALSO, this is where ALL your documents, music, photos and movies are stored. Your hard drive is your storage in the same way that you may have music CD’s or DVD’s stored on a shelf, or your important papers in a filing cabinet. Getting a bigger hard drive simply gives you more storage. A Terabyte hard drive can hold the equivalent of 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. No one listen’s to all their music at the same time, or looks at all their photos or movies at the same time – we take what we want from “storage” and use the particular item at the time we want to. That takes us to memory.
Memory is made up of small chips inside your computer. They work kind of like an old calculator. Turn off the power and it goes blank. Turn on the power and you start filling it all over again. Memory is what your computer uses when it’s actually working on something. The processor inside your computer (probably by AMD or Intel) is what actually does the thinking. Because memory chips are MUCH faster than your hard drive, the computer pulls what it needs at the time into memory FROM the hard drive.
Let me put it into non-computer terms. You have a wall in your office filled with filing cabinets filled with papers; this is your hard drive. You have a desk that you work at that’s 3 feet wide and 2 feet deep; this is your memory. YOU are doing the thinking and working with the papers; this is your processor. What happens when you have more papers to work with than desk space? You start shuffling papers around, maybe putting them into stacks and moving stacks around – this slows getting your actual task done. If you had a bigger desk, you wouldn’t waste time shuffling papers. This is where more memory comes into play.
So deleting files from your hard drive doesn’t speed up your computer any more than throwing away papers in your filing cabinet helps you get the task at your desk done.
When your computer wants to use more memory than it actually has, it does what we do when we get more information than we can remember – write it down! We use paper; the computer uses the hard drive. To “add” to its memory, the computer uses unused space on the hard drive to “extend” its memory. The problem with this is writing to the hard drive is MUCH slower, your computer slows down. The solution, close programs that are running you don’t need OR buy more memory. The good news? Memory is cheap! Sites like www.crucial.com will peek inside your computer, tell you what you have inside and what you can upgrade with. The Windows Task Manager will tell you how much of your memory you’re using. If you’re using 80% or more, you’ll be noticing a dramatic decrease in speed. Installing memory isn’t hard in most computers, but if you’re not comfortable call a professional.
Goodbye Windows 2,000! On July 13th, 2010, all versions of Windows 2000 and Windows XP RUNNING SERVICE PACK 2 will reach the end of support. Microsoft will no longer be updating these products. If you have a system running Windows 2000, it’s time to move that machine up to XP. If you’re still running Service Pack 2 in XP, you need to download Service Pack 3 to continue getting updates. Go to http://www.update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate to get Service Pack 3, or consider upgrading to Windows 7. Windows XP with Service Pack 3 will continue to be supported by Microsoft through April 8, 2014.
Until next time….
Laurie Scott / Tek-Chic Systems
“Because Everybody Needs a Geek in Their Life”®
Posted in Monthly Articles | Tags: memory upgrades, slow computers, speed up computer, Windows | 
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Don’t Waste Your Money “Speeding” Up Your Computer
Maybe you’ve seen them on TV, the commercials for “FinallyFast.com”, “MaxMySpeed.com” or “MyFasterPC.com”. And online you’ll find even more like “SpeedUpMyPC”. They all promise to make your computer MUCH faster. All you have to do is download and run their “free” product. Of course, after you run it, the program finds all kinds of problems with your computer, and offers to fix it for you. All you have to do is BUY the product at this point, and $30-$40 later, your computer is (maybe) a LITTLE faster. But it doesn’t stop there; they then offer to sell you other software to fix other “problems” that may exist with your computer.
What do these programs do? They do what you can easily do for free. Mostly they delete temp files, cookies and unnecessary registry entries. Deleting temp files and cookies won’t have any noticeable impact on speed, but if you want to you can easily do both yourself. To delete your temp files, click on the “Computer” icon on your desktop or “Computer” in your “Start” menu. Right click on your C: drive and choose “Properties”. Right there you’ll see a button that says “Disk Cleanup”. Click the button, check the boxes, click on “OK” and you’re done. Cookies can be deleted in the Tools/Options menus of your web browser (personally, I don’t spend time worrying about cookies.)
I don’t recommend you mess around trying to clean-up your registry (the registry is a VERY LONG list of settings telling your computer what programs are installed, where you like your icons, the color of your background, etc.) If you know what you’re doing and know how to back-up the registry before making changes, then you probably stopped reading long before now. If you don’t know how, then just leave it alone. Using a registry cleaner MIGHT make your computer start ½ a second faster, but you risk making a change that can make your computer impossible to boot, in other words “don’t try this at home.”
So what is REALLY slowing down your computer? After years of use, your Windows machine starts to use more and more memory. There are things like neat little tools that give you the weather or news on your desktop, printer software, camera software, instant messaging programs, etc. In addition, there are programs that came with your computer when you bought it that you may not even use. Programs like AOL, Quicken or Microsoft Money, the manufacturers “support” program, trial software and others. Many of these have small parts of them that start up each time you start your computer. With enough of these little “starter” files running in the background, the memory (not your hard drive) runs out and soon your computer starts slowing down.
The best thing you can do (and those paid software programs can’t) is remove the programs you don’t need and/or use. If you use Windows XP, go to your Control Panel and look for the “Add/Remove Programs” icon. This will show you a list of all the programs installed on your computer. For Windows Vista and Windows 7, the Control Panel now calls it “Programs and Features”. You need to be careful to remove only programs you’re SURE you’re not using – don’t go crazy with it.
The two biggest things that make a difference are best left to a professional. There are entries in the registry that can be manually deleted to stop programs from starting up with your computer. Also, adding memory is easy and cheap, but you need to be sure you’re putting in the right type for your computer.
Speeding up your computer doesn’t have to be expensive. If you are going to spend your money, spend it on the right things, you can take care of the easy stuff yourself for free.
Next month we’ll cover the basics of your computer’s memory and hard drive (how they affect the speed of your computer) and we’ll say goodbye to Windows 2000.
Until next time….
Laurie Scott / Tek-Chic Systems
“Because Everybody Needs a Geek in Their Life”®
Posted in Monthly Articles | Tags: defrag, memory, registry, slow computers, speed up computer, Windows | No Comments »
Do You Like Free Software?
Hey, everybody likes free software – just be careful what you get. Enter anything you want into a Google search with the word FREE and all kinds of things will show up. If you’re not careful, you can download a FREE VIRUS – how’s that for a deal?
For you readers, here are a few of my favorite free software choices that won’t get you into trouble:
For Windows machines, I like Picasa for doing simple editing and cleanup of photos. It’s from the folks at Google and you can find it just by going to www.Picasa.com (note that it’s Picasa ending with an “a” and not Picasso like the painter with the additional “s””. Do you shop online and like to keep the receipts? Rather than printing them out and storing them in a filing cabinet, use CutePDF to “print” your receipts (or anything else that can be sent to a printer) into a PDF file that you can save on your hard drive. I buy a lot online and CutePDF lets me store all the receipts into a folder on my hard drive that makes life much easier at tax time for my accountant (which is this month if my calendar is correct.) You can download CutePDF at www.CutePDF.com, just download the CutePDF Writer. It installs as if it were a printer and you’re ready to go.
For the Mac, Anxiety is a useful to-do list manager to (hopefully) reduce the stress in your life in getting all the things you need to get done, done. It works with iCal and Mail. You can download it at http://www.anxietyapp.com/. Carbon Copy Cloner lets you backup your entire hard drive to another, allowing you to boot to the 2nd drive should the first one fail completely (and it happens more often than you know.) Download it at http://www.bombich.com/.
Stay away from sites offering free music or movies (like LimeWire), this is an excellent way to contract a virus. If you think you’re getting something that costs money in a store for free online, it’s probably going to cost you more than you know by the time you get your computer cleaned up.
Be skeptical and be safe. One of the best places to go for free software is http://sourceforge.net/. You’re not going to find Microsoft Office for free, but you might find a program that does something close. Want Photoshop but don’t have $400 to spend, then check out Gimp. There are a lot of genuinely nice people developing programs because they enjoy doing it. Some will ask for but not require a donation, that’s only fair. If you like a program, throw a few dollars their way to encourage them to keep improving their program. If you can say “I wish I had a program that ……..”, then you’ll probably find something at SourceForge.net that meets your needs.
Until next time….
Laurie Scott / Tek-Chic Systems
“Because Everybody Needs a Geek in Their Life”®
Posted in Monthly Articles | Tags: CutePDF, free software, LimeWire, Picasa, SourceForge.net | No Comments »
Have You Been Phished?
Phishing (sounds just like fishing) is what thieves on the internet do to get your personal information. In fact, it is just like fishing – they use bait (and you are the fish.)
What does phishing look like? It can look like an email from your bank. They tell you that there has been suspicious activity with your bank account, and in order to avoid having the account frozen you need to click a link and verify your information on their web site. If you click the link, it will take you to a web page that looks just like your banks login page. You enter your username and password, you may then see a page saying thank you for validating your information, or you may see an error page that says please try again later. The problem is you didn’t actually go to your bank’s web site; instead you just gave your login information to the bad guys.
Another scheme frequently seen at this time of year is an email from the IRS and SURPRISE, it’s good news! You are eligible for a tax refund, and all you have to do is click on the link and submit your tax refund request. And oh, if you don’t respond within 48 hours they will assume the refund in invalid and it will be suspended. You’ll be in for another surprise when you later find out that it wasn’t really the IRS, and you gave your personal information, including your social security number to the bad guys.
Who are these bad guys? How come they don’t get caught? Well, you’ll find them in China, eastern European countries and Russia. That’s why you’ll often find these emails filled with poor or awkward grammar. They buy lists of email addresses and send them out by the millions. There are lots of “phish” in the ocean, but you only have to catch a few to make a lot of money.
How do you protect yourself from phishing attacks? First and most important, NEVER click on links in email. Even if you get an email from a friend, are you sure they intentionally sent it? Many viruses will scan through an address book and then send an email to everyone with a generic message like “this is so funny, check it out” or “did you see this video of you online?” If you’re not expecting the email, DON’T CLICK. The same goes for attachments. Don’t fall for fake messages from UPS, FedEx, etc. Ask yourself “did I give them my email address?” You probably didn’t, so you can be sure they didn’t send it.
The Internet is a big world filled with gleaming cities and dark alleys. As long as you’re aware that there are bad guys who are trying to steal from you, simple precautions and common sense will keep you safe.
Until next time….
Laurie Scott / Tek-Chic Systems
“Because Everybody Needs a Geek in Their Life”®
Are You Broadcasting From Your Home?
You Might Be and Not Even Know It
Laptop computers have made computing mobile and very convenient. Wireless routers in our homes have made it possible to use our computers anywhere in the home, and not just where the connection comes into your home.
If you have a wireless router at home, then you are using one of three possible levels of security, 1) none, 2) poor and 3) what you SHOULD be using. “None” is real simple, open the box, plug in the router, connect to the Internet. With this connection, ANYONE within range, meaning your neighbors, passersby and that annoying teen-age kid down the who likes to hang around your house in the evening can use your wireless network to access the internet or worse, access your computers at home. Also, any illegal activity over the Internet is going to be traced back to your home, not to the person or computer that may have done it.
I often tell the story of the time I moved here to Austin from Sacramento 5 1/2 years ago over the Thanksgiving holiday. I stayed overnight with a friend in Flagstaff, Arizona at her parents’ home. Lots of relatives were there and they all smoked (and smoked a lot). Even though it was 35 degrees outside, I went and sat in my car for an hour just to breath fresh air. While in my car I powered up my laptop and discovered a completely unsecured network within range. I connected to it and took the opportunity to check my email and do some web surfing. Then the good Samaritan in me decided to do them a favor. I figured they hadn’t changed the default password on their router, and sure enough I was right. I logged onto their router and took a screen shot of it. Since they were also using the default name for their computer network, I changed mine to match and could see that they had a computer turned on with one of their hard drives shared (no, I didn’t peek at it.) I also saw that they had an Epson printer connected to it, so I downloaded the printer driver and installed it on my laptop, opened Microsoft Word and pasted the screen shot of their router into it. I also included instructions on how to keep prying eyes out of their network, thanked them that I was able to check my email, and then I PRINTED the document out on their printer. Keep in mind I have no idea which house I had connected to. I imagine if they were home that they were a little shocked to have their printer start all by itself and print a note from a complete stranger. Lucky for them I wasn’t someone who wanted to copy their files, plant a virus or lock them out of their own network.
The two levels of security that are usually displayed with a padlock symbol are WEP and WPA. WEP falls into the “poor” category of security. WEP will keep honest people out of your network, and will prevent someone from accidentally getting connected to your network, but WEP was “cracked” several years ago, and nowadays it only takes a laptop and 60 seconds to break into a network secured with WEP.
What you should be using is WPA (or WPA2) to provided a connection that (with a good password) can’t be cracked in a comfortable lifetime. Log into your router (usually at http://192.168.0.1 or http://192.168.1.1), go to the wireless security settings and set it for WPA. Then change your laptops and other wireless devices to match.
There are many different routers on the market, but there are a few standard rules to follow: Changing the security settings on your router should always be done with the computer attached to the router via a network cable – don’t change it over a wireless connection. If you make a mistake, you won’t be able to get back in to fix it. In the wireless security settings on your router, you will see WEP and SHOULD see WPA as options. If you don’t see WPA as an option, your router is probably several years old. Go to the manufacturer’s support page on their web site and look for updated “firmware” to download. Download the firmware and update the router per the instructions provided by the manufacturer. If the latest firmware doesn’t provide WPA encryption, then it’s time for a trip to Best Buy or Fry’s for a new router. ANY new router will provide WPA encryption. At Fry’s you can pick up their house brand router for $20. Next use a strong password. A strong password should be at least 12 characters long, feel free to make it a lot longer – the longer the better. Be sure to use upper and lower case letters, use numbers AND use special characters like # * ( } [ @ ! &. Write it down and put it in a safe place. If it helps, use 2 or 3 non-related words or numbers that you know but no one is likely to guess. Something like maybe the city you got married in with the year of your first car and the name of your brother’s daughter. It might look something like Dallas@1989!Samantha#. Even people you know you won’t guess this. Be creative and have fun, but MAKE IT STRONG!
Until next time….
Laurie Scott / Tek-Chic Systems
“Because Everybody Needs a Geek in Their Life”®