Wireless networks are pretty much ubiquitous these days in that virtually every business and every house has one. My wife and I just went on a trip out to a little town virtually on the border with Mexico and Texas named Terlingua, population 58 as of the last census in 2010. Even the motel there we stayed in had free WiFi. The problems these days are how far you…
One of the biggest annoyances facing typical computer users today is spam. You know what that is, all that junk email you get every day that makes it difficult to get to the email you really want. Some people I know suffer through a hundred spam emails for every one they actually want, or more. The vast majority of these are trying to sell you something, the rest are…
The overwhelming majority of businesses I work with use Microsoft Office to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Not to mention to manage their email. I too use this software and have for many years. The problem is that it can be expensive, particularly for small businesses where every dollar counts. Fortunately there are alternatives to Microsoft Office, many of which are free. Here we will explore many different versions…
Windows 10 is getting close to being a year old, and Microsoft is really pushing hard to get it on to every Windows PC it can. Since the upgrade is free for most Windows 7 and 8 users on their personal computers (the free upgrade does not apply to larger businesses, government or educational users) people are always asking me if there are any reasons they would not want…
Cryptolocker and other ransomware is the single biggest threat to your data today. If you are a business, it is doubly as big a threat. I have seen people lose years of their family photos on their home PC, and multi-location corporations all but shut down. This is nothing to take lightly. So what is ransomware and how does it work? Ransomware is a type of malware (unwanted software…
The Chromebook came on with a bang, and then seemed to quiet down just as fast. Now you hardly hear much about them at all, but they are still there. So what is a Chromebook anyway? They are computers, predominately notebooks, that run on Google’s ChromeOS. This OS is a variant of Linux. A Chromebook differs from standard computers in that they run mostly off the internet. They are…
I am constantly amazed at how many people have no backups of their data. Some people seem to think data loss won’t ever happen to them, through ignorance or arrogance I couldn’t tell you. Other people honestly do not think their data is that important until they lose it. The really scary part is backups can be very easy and inexpensive to do. Let’s take a look. Let’s start…
The vast majority of problems computer technicians run into on a daily basis is the problems of pop ups, slow downs and redirected web pages. These are generally caused by either malware or PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs). Let’s discuss PUPs first. PUPs are pieces of software you probably did install, but did not really pay attention to. For example if you downloaded a free screensaver, included in the installation…
A lot of people today think that security software such as antivirus is not as important as it once was. We reviewed that idea in another post so if you are interested take a look there. If you do decide to run a security package, which one should you choose? In the past, starting with the MacAfee for DOS days, antivirus packages have swapped places as far as detection…
There are a couple of reasons you should use an SSD instead of a standard hard drive. Before we get into that, we need to understand both types of drives. A standard hard drive consists of one or more platters spinning inside an enclosure. Each platter has multiple heads that read and write the data to the platters. Think of a record player and its needle (showing my age…
