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Rick

External hard drives need USB 2.0

A few years ago the speed of USB ports moved from roughly 12mbps to 480mbps. In order to get the new speed, you much have USB 2.0 ports.

USB 2.0 comes standard on all computers on the shelf today, but if your computer is three years old or older, you may need to add USB 2.0 ports to your computer if you are running a high speed device.

Important devices to run on USB 2.0 ports are MP3 playes – like the iPod, external hard drives, or large flash drives packed with a lot of information. Scanners also work much faster on USB 2.0 ports.

In order to reach the full benefits of USB 2.0 both the device and the port much be designed for USB 2.0. 

The Trouble with Macintosh Computers

I received a call from a nice woman today who had a Macintosh computer that was on the blink. She made comments about how tough it was to find someone to work on her computer and thought I wouldn’t work on them either. I told her that I could look at it, but if it needed hardware work, we would have to find someone who could work on it for her since I didn’t do that. Sounded as if her disk needed initialized (Mac speak for formatting the hard drive and starting over).

Apple makes great computers and they have the best designs of any computer on the market. Overall, they are stable machines and there is not argument that they are safer to use on the Internet than Windows computers. My only reservation about Macintosh computers lies in their number of users…less than 3% of all computer users use Macintosh.

Moving from AOL isn’t always easy, but it’s worth it

I am currently helping two clients make the move off of AOL after many long years of being AOL customers. While each client is having a few problems making the adjustment, each has stated that they small issues are worth it to get away from AOL.

There are a few things that you need to get ready for when making the switch from AOL. 

1. There is no easy way to backup your address book and move it over. You can print it out and then manually add each address to your new email program. The best way I have found to do it, though, is to send emails to everyone in your AOL address book with your new email address. Ask for each person to send a reply to your new address. Then, as people reply you can click "add sender to address book."

Get rid of Atwola

Atwola is a nasty little spyware cookie. Here is how to delete it if you get it.

You can follow these steps to block this cookie from your computer:

  1. Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Internet Options.
  2. Click the Privacy tab, click the Website button or Edit button in Website group box.
  3. In the Website box, enter Atwola.com and click Reject button to add this website to block lists.
  4. Click Ok button to save the changes.
  5. Open the file "%WinDir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts" with a text editor program.
  6. Add the following lines to the end of the text file.

    127.0.0.1 ar1. atwola .com
    127.0.0.1 ar2. atwola .com
    127.0.0.1 ar3. atwola .com
    127.0.0.1 ar4. atwola .com
    127.0.0.1 ar5. atwola .com
    127.0.0.1 ar6. atwola .com
    127.0.0.1 ar7. atwola .com
    127.0.0.1 ar8. atwola .com
    127.0.0.1 ar9. atwola .com

Successful Searching of the Internet

All too often I hear comments like "I can’t find anything on the Internet" or "I’m afraid of getting viruses from the Internet" or "Where do I start". In today’s meetings, we discussed some tried and true methods of searching the Internet successfully and easily.

Google is the current king of web searching and should be your first stop to start any search.

Boolean searching is probably the single best methodology to learn to improve your searching skills. Here’s how it works in a nutshell:

10 Things you can do with Broadband Internet

Thanks to lower prices and increased availability, broadband (high speed) Internet is starting to over take dial-up services in the United States. Dial-up Internet served us well for the first 10 years of the Internet, but to really take advantage of the Internet today, a broadband connection is a must.

Here are 10 things that you can do with a high speed connection today that you can’t do (as easily) with a dial-up service:

  1. Keep up to date with Windows and Internet security updates automatically
  2. Google Earth
  3. Download music (legally) at sites like Napster, iTunes, and Rhapsody
  4. Receive and make phone calls while on the Internet…without an extra line!
  5. Watch online news or information videos or listen to online music or news casts without waiting and without the choppiness and stuttering of a dial-up connection
  6. I know many people don’t think that speed matters…but with broadband, the Internet becomes much more of a resource tool than a novelty.
  7. Upload pictures to printing services to either be picked up or mailed to you.
  8. Watch movie trailers
  9. Save time…you can do four times as much research or work with a broadband connection in half the time.
  10. Make free or extremely inexpensive phone calls and video phone calls.

Admittedly, many of these functions can be carried out with a dial-up connection, but studies and my experience have shown that people don’t do these things. The reason? Time. For example, a broadband user can download a song in under 3 minutes. The same song takes nearly 25 minutes with a dial-up connection. Services like Google Earth can take up to 10 or more minutes to start with dial-up.

Nothing is by the book

There are two things that make the businesses Rick and I run different from running a computer shop or working as the IT guy in a big company.

1. We see dozens of computers each week and no two of them are the same in any way.

2. Rarely is anything done by the book.

Every person has their own preference for desktop wallpaper, word processing program, Windows version, printer, antivirus, digital camera, web browser, etc.

Everyone is an expert….

I put gas in my truck every week, but I’m not a car expert. We raised some goats from ‘kids’ to their adulthood, but I’m not a farm or goat expert. It always strikes me as funny when some folks who merely ‘use’ computers think they are computer experts.

Today, a client of mine illustrated this point perfectly. He has a widescreen Compaq laptop (not the typical almost square monitor). The icons and text on his monitor looked a little squashed and blocky. He wanted me to look at it because a friend of his told him that that was indication that the hard drive was going to crash soon and he should be careful.