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Your hard drive is meant to hold stuff

Every week I’m out making my rounds, I hear this expression; “My computer is really slow it must have too much stuff in it and needs to be cleaned out.”

Your computer can never have have too much “stuff.” Your hard drive is designed to hold tens of thousands of documents, pictures, music and more. The number of files you store on your computer has next to nothing to do with your perceived speed of the computer.

Computer speed directly relates to how much RAM (temporary memory, not storage/hard drive memory) it has, how fast the processor is, and most importantly how clean your computer is. By clean, I’m referring to physically clean and what types of files are stored on the system.

I use a Mac, therefore I am

Ya, don’t ask me to elaborate too much on the title of this post, I didn’t mean anything too deep by it.

I picked up my new/old Mac that a reader gave me. It is an older system, but It does a great job. It’s a dual 867mhz G4 with a gig of RAM, 10GB hard drive and Leopard OS. While it may seem a little dated by Mac standards, it is every bit as fast as my dual core Pentium that I typically run XP on.

I haven’t used it for any digital photography stuff, but I didn’t want it for that. I wanted a mac so I could use it exclusively for a few weeks and learn how to help my Mac clients adapt to “the switch” from Windows.

Brain transplant

If I could impart one aspect of my computer knowledge to everyone who uses a computer, it would be the ability to understand file management.

File management, in the computer world, means how information (files) are stored and utilized on a computer system. Understanding file management, means understanding:

How to backup using SecondCopy – Video Tip

One of my favorite programs of all time is SecondCopy. SecondCopy offers a flexible and easy to use automatic backup program for any Windows computer user. You need to have a spacious backup drive that will hold what you want to backup like an external hard drive, flash drive, etc.

I recommend using this product for automated daily or weekly backups, but I still think it is imperative that you copy the backups this program makes to optical media (CD-R or DVD’s_ that can’t have electrical or mechanical failures on a regular basis as well.

Watch this short 3 minute video to learn how to use this great data saving program, Second Copy:

Backup…yes, again

I’m late in writing my daily Shotgun report because I have four computers sitting in my office in various forms of failure. Fortunately, at some expense to the owners, I was able to extract some valuable data from two of the machines. The other two machines didn’t fair as well and nothing was salvageable.

Today’s lesson? BACKUP!!!!!!!

I just searched HelpMeRick.com and found no less than 15 articles and tips directly related to

How to fix Windows Mail when you can’t delete messages

I ran into a problem today with a Windows Vista machine that apparently isn’t unique. This tip only applies to Windows Vista users who use Windows mail.

Problem: Can’t delete any messages in Windows Mail…which also prevents new messages from being read.

Symptom: When you try and delete a message in Windows Mail, you get an “Internal Error” message then have to restart the program.

Solution:

Deep Cleaning Temporary Files in Windows XP

Temporary files are used by our computers to provide behind the scenes speed and function. When we use any program from Solitaire to programming a database, our computers are performing hundreds or thousands of duties behind the scenes…creating, modifying, and sometimes deleting files.

The files left behind are known as temporary files. Temporary files are just that; temporary and expendable. Thousands of them can stack up over time taking up valuable space and slowing your computer.

Since Windows 98, Microsoft has provided us a great little tool called Disk Cleanup. Disk Cleanup can delete Temporary Internet Files, Temporary Windows files and more all in one easy to use utility. Disk Cleanup can be found by:

1. Click Start
2. Click Programs (All Programs)

10 Phrases that we never thought we would utter

I know I’m missing some awfully good phrases, but I wanted to write some of them down. Leave a comment and tell me some other strange, modern tech phrases that would be so out of place 15 years ago and before.

  1. “How much RAM do you have in the PC?”
  2. “Send me a text message on your cell.”
  3. “Do you have an optical or laser mouse?”
  4. “Does this hotel have free wi-fi?”
  5. “I need to defrag my hard drive after I run the disk cleanup.”
  6. “Did you google your that?”
  7. “I shopped on eBay, Craig’s List, Amazon, Newegg, and ecost and still can’t find it.”
  8. “If you don’t have an optical or laser mouse, you have to clean your mouse’s ball so it runs smoothly.”
  9. “Should I buy an 8 megapixel or 10 megapixel camera?”
  10. “Which smart phone is the best, the Treo, iPhone, Razr, or Blackberry?”

These are 10 that I came up with, but I would love to hear tech phrases that you come up with that would have sounded ludicrous in the 20th century…so leave a comment!

Reconsidering extended warranties

I think that electronics aren’t as well made as they used to be. Correction: I know that electronics aren’t as well made as they used to be.

Not only are products more fragile and flimsy but repair costs are rising. Both of these facts have caused me to reconsider my opinion of extended warranties.

Not all extended warranties are a good deal, but I used to feel that they were almost always a waste of money. Lately though I have had to help people with products that were just barely out of their one year warranty.

Adding an additional year onto most products costs less than $100. A dead hard drive, motherboard, processor or video card in a computer’s second year of life can easily cost more than $100.

Computer longevity

One huge misconception in the computer community is that computers are obsolete as soon as you buy them…or computers need to be replaced every 3-5 years.

Both of these statements are patently false. I stand by my claim and philosophy that a computer is only outdated when it can no longer perform the functions you need it to OR it mechanically fails. Today I saw a customer that demonstrated this theory well. He had two old computers (486 25mhz) computers with 2 GB Hard drives (they were upgraded in 1997). The original machine is circa about 1991 or 1992. The computers still server their purpose for him, but he needed a new application that won’t run on those machines. And this gentleman runs a multi-million dollar business with these 15 year old computers!