Space… The Not so Vast Frontier

So now that you’ve got your computer back up and running at least better than it bad been. It has to be running at least a little bit faster than before and you are now putting off the idea that you’ll have to buy a new one soon. But there is one small problem now. You’ve cleaned out all the junk information that you don’t need with the programs that I talked about earlier and you’ve gotten rid of all those nasty spy-ware programs but you still don’t have quite enough space.

Well the best thing to do in cases where you are running out of space is to, of course, start getting rid of files that are no longer needed. Maybe you have some games or programs installed on your computer anymore that you don’t really need or use anymore that you can easily part with. I think we’ll talk about uninstalling programs in tomorrow’s blog. For now we should talk about the importance of a some sort of mobile storage device that could hold information that you really need but don’t need it taking up space on your hard drive.

These mobile drives go by different names: Flash Drives, Thumb Drives, Stick Drives, USB Drives. This thing by any name is still the same thing. Go into any office supply store or tech store, chances are someone will know what you’re talking about.

There is one name that people might use that is technologically wrong. The name “memory stick” is not the same thing as a “flash drive”. A memory stick means a stick of memory that goes inside of your computer to make it go faster. A flash drive is a device that connects to a port usually in the front or back of your computer that provides an extra “drive” for you to save your documents, pictures, or music on.

So what kind of a flash drive should you get. Well in the case of mobile storage, it might be best to go with name brand. SanDisk is one of the best known for mobile storage. There are lots of brands out there to chose from. As I’ve said before, though, when it comes to devices like this, just like programs, it is best to read reviews before you actually buy one. You wouldn’t buy a car unless you knew what it could do and how well it could do it first.

Price ranges on flash drives are sort of up and down. When you buy a drive you must think of how much space you actually want. The more space you require or want the more it’s going to cost you. For the student who just wants to be able to save files from class to class, a 2gb (gigabyte) flash drive should be fine. If they / you are saving things that tend to use up a little more space such as videos, you might want to get something up to 10gb.

The mother of mobile storage are the new External Hard Drives. These are pretty much the same thing as a flash drive just built bigger and are meant to be connected to your computer most of the time. External hard drives plug into your computer and when you’re done saving whatever it is you’re saving, you can unplug them, take them to your work computer and plug it in there and have all the files you need. Beware though, there might be some flash drives that need for you to have administrative rights on the computer before you can use them. Which means that you have to have the rights to do whatever you want on your computer before it will actually work. If you’re working in a big corporation, chances are you don’t have this kind of access. You might want to talk to your tech person at work to see if you can slip them a 20 and get rights for your computer.

Some of you are going to go shopping and find this new letter when it comes to the amount you can store. It’s called a Terabyte.  A Terabyte is 1024 GB. This is the new size of drives that just started coming out late last year. If you’re thinking about getting a terabyte external hard drive and your computer doesn’t hold that much itself, I would recommend that you save your money and build yourself a computer that has the ability to save up to 1 TB on it’s own. I will talk about how you would go about shopping around for a new computer in tomorrow’s blog. For now, enjoy your shopping!

Browsin’ For Browsers

Some of you as probably wondering what exactly I mean by this new title. For those of you who aren’t then you’re one step ahead of the game. That big blue “E” that you use to get to the internet, also known as Internet Explorer, is what we call an Internet browser or more commonly known as just a browser.

The best thing for you to do when you go looking for any kind of software that you plan to use a lot is make sure you read reviews. The better the reviews are for a certain program, the better the chances that you will enjoy using the program yourself.

You’re probably wondering, “What’s wrong with Internet Explorer that’s already on my computer?”. Well it’s fine for the most part if you use it just once in a while. The problem is over the past few years there have been several security holes that always get found in Internet Explorer because it’s incredibly easy for PCs to get viruses. I would say that 99.99% of all viruses ever created are targeted at PCs; specifically Windows users.

If you read my last blog about spy-ware and found out that you have been the victim of this kind of violation of privacy, then you know why people are really careful about what they use to look at pages on the Internet.

There are several FREE browsers floating around the Internet that are better than the one that comes with Windows. You can use this link to Downloads.com to view the ones they’ve tested and like. Most of these will have reviews by users that have been using them for years and like them.

Download.com's list of browsers

Over the past few years I’ve used a couple of browsers. One that I used for a really long time that I absolutely loved was a browser from a company called Flashpeak named SlimBrowser. I downloaded it based on a suggestion from a TechTV show called The Screen Savers. SlimBrowser was my browser until just the latter part of last year.

At first glance, this browser looks a like Internet Explorer. Infact, it’s built right off of Internet Explorer in the sense that their creators wanted it to be incredibly user friendly, keep the same ideas as I.E., but fight the power that is the Microsoft Corp. The thing I loved most about it were the tabs. Tabs can be your best friend while viewing the Internet if you know how to use them the right way. SlimBrowser would open a new tab if you typed in a new address in the address bar and also if you were to click on a link that took you to a completely new website. That was really helpful.

My only problem with it was that because it was so much like I.E. it still kept some of I.Es problems. I was constantly having to make sure I wasn’t getting infected with spy-ware that got past me somehow. SpyBot came in handy during those years and I never did mind doing a little clean up since that’s what most people should do anyway from time to time.

But when Mozilla released FireFox 3 last year, I slowly started to feel the power. I was a little hesitant at first, but slowly started to accept it more and more. It didn’t have the same functionality with the tabs that I had grown used to from all those years using SlimBrowser, but I would eventually get over it since that was basically my only complaint about it.

Mozilla is one of the best browsers when it comes to customization. If you’ve always wanted your browser to be able to do certain things for you and not anything you didn’t want it to, there is basically an add-on for you. Add-ons add to the functionality of FireFox. From themes, to being able to capture YouTube videos, to better organization of your favorites, Firefox can do it all. As a writer, I love dark colors on my screen because bright light hurts after a while of looking at an ultra-bright monitor all day. I love the darker themes for Firefox and it helps my eyes just a little more.

If you’re asking for a recommendation from me about which browser you should get and start using on your computer, I would have to say, hands down, Firefox 3. Functionality, security, and price (free) give it all the great things a browser should have. It’s definitely something you should try out and keep spy-ware at bay.

Bonus Entry - What's with the Name?

The name of the web site actually is part of a tech horror story, but it's very fitting for this type of a blog.

A man calls in to his computer manufacturer to get some tech support. The technician takes his information and finds out what kind of computer he has and asks him what his problem is.

The man calmly tells the tech, "My cup holder is broken." This leaves the tech wondering but thinking perhaps he didn't hear him correctly.

"Excuse me, sir, but can you repeat that?"

"My cup holder is broken!"

The technician, scratching his head and pondering furiously, can't wrap his head around what the man is talking about. "Sir, computers don't come with cup holders.", he explains.

"You must be some sort of an idiot. Of course computers have a cup holders!"

"Sir, what exactly are you using on your computer as a cup holder?"

"Every morning, I turn on my computer, push a button and a tray pops out where I put where I put my coffee cup through. But now it's not working!"

The technician is horrified at the man's explanation and tries to keep from banging his head on his desk from the man's idiocy. "Sir, that's not a cup holder. That's a CD-Rom drive. You put CDs in there to play music or install programs."

That's one of my all-time favorite tech stories.

The Spy who Tracked Me

I've been having lots of fun with my titles. Anyone reading my blog who has a somewhat good deal of knowledge of computers will know what I'm planning to talk about today with little effort.

So today, ladies and gents, we will be talking about spies. No, not Pierce Brosan or Sean Connery. We're talking about spies that secretly get installed on your computer most of the time without your consent or knowledge.

These little spies are known as spy-ware in the tech community. Their job is to sit on your computer and gather information about what web sites you are are viewing. Why would they want to do that? Well, TO SEND YOU POPUPS OF COURSE! Think of spy-ware as real time junk mail senders. If you go and take a look at something that has to do with shoes, spy-ware captures your search terms and browsing information, sends it back to a remote server that catches that information, and then the server tells the spy what pop up to send you. Thus making you incredibly annoyed and slowing down your browser.

Regular spy-ware is pretty much a nuisance. However, there are other types of spies that aren't so nice. Ad-ware is is spy-ware's big brother. Ad-ware doesn't try to hide on your computer.  The program gets installed from programs that are ad supported which make them free. There are way too many programs to list that contain some sort of ad program inside of them. My suggestion to anyone who is interested in downloading free software, especially free games, is to make sure you read reviews from other people who have downloaded the program before. Sometimes third party software, such as tool bars for your Internet browser, contain ad-ware and you would not know it until you suddenly see the signs.

So now that you know that the Internet is out to destroy your computer slowly, how do you go about fixing it? There are several ways to fix and prevent these programs from doing any harm to your machine. One would be to change your Internet browser (for those of you using Internet Explorer) or you can download FREE software to get rid of it. THAT'S RIGHT! THERE'S THAT MAGIC WORD AGAIN! FREE!

We'll talk about browsers in another blog. For now, lets talk about these free pieces of software that you can download. The most famous free software is called Spybot - Search and Destroy. Just the name gives me chills!

Download Spybot - Search and Destroy

The other one doesn't have such a fantastic name, but it's also a great program to use to get rid of spy-ware or ad-ware. This one is also free and is called Ad-Aware.

Download Ad-aware 

These programs have their databases of known spy software updated pretty regularly. I would recommend donating to the Spybot people for their wonderful software.

(Remember: Writing script for software isn't exactly easy. If you can spare at least $10 out of your pocket to save you $100 in the long run after your computer breaks, you might as well give it to someone who is providing you something for free to help you.)

The one bonus piece of advice that I will give you now that I've told you about these spy-ware removal items is that you should run them both together. By that I mean, after you run Spybot you should run Ad-Aware also. You're probably thinking that this is a little over kill, but in actuality it isn't. I'll explain it to you in the old saying "Two heads are better than one." Spybot is a great program, but it isn't perfect. The same goes for Ad-Aware. One program might catch something that the other might not and therefore it is best to run both of them to make sure you're catching everything that could be hiding on your computer. It is better to be safe than sorry. After your computer is running fine again, then it will only be necessary to run which ever you want and uninstall the other.

You have your homework. Go ahead and download those programs and clean up!

Temporary Internet Files ... Say hello to E-Junk

I guess e-junk would be a great term to call your T.I.F.s or Temporary Internet Files. These files are created every time you surf the Internet. They save a small piece of information on your computer so that when you go and visit the same website again, the page will load a little faster. This would be great if you have a slow connection like dial-up (ewwwwwww), but we're living in the Broadband age of information transfer so to keep these files isn't really necessary.

There are a couple of ways to get rid of these files on your comp. You could delete them manually, but that would take some time and skill. Also that would be incredibly BORING! Luckily, Windows XP comes equipped with a program that will clean up all the unnecessary files on your computer. My only problem with it is that sometimes this program crashes on me and it takes quite a while to finish. Also I don't really know if it does a fantastic job of cleaning up for you. If you don't really care, go ahead and use this program located at:

Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup

When you start the program up, it will check your system to see how many files you really don't need on your computer that are just taking up space. It won't delete your personal files so don't worry about that. Once it shows you how much space you're about to get back, go ahead and tell it to clean up the files and be prepared to wait a little while.

Now if you want something a little better and a lot more colorful, there is a program out there that will do the same thing as Disk Cleaner but SOOOOOO much better. My recommendation to you: CCleaner.

Download CCleaner 

First thing you should know about CCleaner is that IT'S FREE! That's right, free. Even the program updates are free.

The program is incredibly user friendly and pretty much idiot proof. There's really only one button that you should have to push and that's the clean up button. This will find every useless file on your computer and clean it up for you and MUCH FASTER than Disk Cleaner. It will also tell you how much disk space you will get back after you clean up all those files. If you've never cleaned out TIFs before then you will probably get back a good 100mbs. That's great if you're already seeing that you're running out of space.

I wouldn't recommend using the registry cleaner, however. Not that it's bad, but because if you're not really comfortable with computers then you really shouldn't be going anywhere NEAR your computer's registry. Your registry is basically like the instruction manual that only your computer understands. If you mess with its instructions, then it won't know what to do when it has to do something. I don't recommend playing with this section of the program unless you know what you're doing. We'll talk about your registry in the future, but for now, don't really worry about it.

After you've cleaned up all these files that you don't need, you should definitely run your defragmenter program. If you don't know how to do that, check my blog from yesterday. If you take a close look at the bars after you analyze, you will see that you will have a little more white space now that you've deleted files.

That's all for today, folks. Happy Cleaning!

To Defrag or not to Defrag ... it's not really a question.

For those of you who have messy desks all cluttered with papers and notes everywhere, you should know that your computer doesn't have a great sense of organization when it comes to saving data. So yes, your computer really is like you!

Just like some of you who take notes and just leave them on the desk because you know exactly where they are, your computer does something sort of the same way. When you save a piece of information, your computer sort of scatters the information all over the hard drive. All the data that makes up a file on your computer gets placed in random places and your computer has to work hard to put those pieces of information back together when you ask for it to open up.

So how do you fix this? Well, when your desk gets cluttered with papers what do you do? You reorganize your desk of course! The process of your computer of saving in random spots is called fragmentation and the way it reorganizes itself is called De-Fragmentation.

So how do I de-frag my computer? If you're running Windows XP like I am, then it's incredibly simple. Follow my map below and you'll find the program you need

Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter

Once you've got this program open you can hit the analyze button and it will show you the status of what your hard drive looks like. If you've done this for the first time since you bought the computer and it's been a year or so, it's going to have a lot of red bars.

RED BARS BAD, BIG BLUE BLOCKS GOOD!

Once you see the status of your hard drive, you can then hit defragment and let your computer do its job. Now, the key to this is leaving the computer alone while it's doing this. It would not be a good idea to go browsing the Internet because you would be adding more files that it would have to organize. I'll talk about Internet files later.

When your computer is done, it will tell you that it's done but some files couldn't be fixed. Don't worry about that unless you really want to see fancy numbers. Now, defragment 2 more times. YES I SAID TWO MORE TIMES! DON'T ARGUE WITH ME! Doing this 3 to 4 times will make sure things are in order really well and you'll definitely notice your computer speed up some, especially when you're trying to start programs or open files.

That's all for today. Give your brains and computers a rest. :)

Fixing Your Computer - Made Simple

For a long time I've been asked the question, "Can you fix my computer?" No one really knows that after a while this question can get INCREDIBLY ANNOYING. It's one of those things that people will constantly ask you once they know you know your stuff.

I volunteer in a high school where there really aren't enough technologists to go around and fix the small problems of the everyday user. Most of the time, the problems that they have are really simple and they would rather fix them themselves.

I'm sure there are tons of people like the ones I work with who have a computer at home and can't seem to get it working again. Right now with all the economic hardships, most people don't have the money to take their machines to a professional and get them professionally fixed for simple problems.

So for those trying to find some relief without spending money, I've got the answer for you. This blog will be dedicated to the novice computer user who just wants to get his / her computer running with not so much of the technical lingo.

My posts will be helpful to not only fixing your computer but also keeping it that way. I'll show you how you can fix that old computer that computer that's nearly new that suddenly doesn't work as well as it used to.