May 2008 Archives

One of the most common computer problems users complain about is that their system runs slowly. Slow start-up, slow internet, slow file access, or just plain "slow". If this sounds familiar, the problem could be that you simply have an old system, or if it once ran faster, it may be another problem. The following are some of the most common causes of a slow-running computer and what you can do about them.

Programs have built up over time. Over the last several months or years, you've probably downloaded programs to track stocks, watch the weather, instant message, play music, whatever. Often these programs are set to run automatically in the background which results in a slow-down in your system. To disable programs that you no longer use, click Start > Run and type "msconfig". Then click on the Startup tab. This procedure produces a list of the programs that start each time Windows starts. Most of these programs are unnecessary and can be prevented from starting automatically by simply un-checking them in the list and rebooting.

Temporary files. Through the course of browsing the internet, a variety of temporary files are created. You don't need most of these files for everyday use, so delete them. While on the internet, go to Tools > Internet Options > Temporary Internet Files.

Full hard drive. You can check how full your hard drive is by right mouse-clicking on your "C" drive and selecting "Properties". To alleviate the load, try defragmenting on the Tools tab. For a detailed description on defragging, check out http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question548.htm.

Not enough memory. If your computer can run older programs fine, but struggles with newer programs, then you may want to upgrade the memory (RAM). This is fairly easy to do and may well be worth the additional investment, but may not always solve the problem depending on the age of your system.

Adware and spyware. Adware and spyware enter your system while using the internet, generally as a component of another program, and usually unknown to you. Once in your system, adware serves up a constant stream of advertising (i.e. pop-ups) while spyware, on the other hand, gathers information on your use of the internet usually for advertising purposes. Removing adware and spyware is no easy task, but is highly recommended. There are a variety of products available to help remove these nasties that are worth a try, such as Spybot and Adaware.

Viruses. A virus is programming that is installed on your computer without your consent or knowledge, and is generally designed to replicate itself. Viruses most often enter your system via email attachments or downloads. At the very least, these nasties negatively impact your computer's performance; more sinister versions change, erase or capture your data. To prevent viruses in the first place, install anti-virus software such as Norton or McAfee and keep it up to date, exercise reasonable caution when opening email attachments, and turn off File Sharing. If after all of this your PC still becomes infected, you may need professional help, but first try one of the commercially available virus-removal programs.

For more information visit http://www.ergonomics.org/ or www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/computerworkstations/.

In the last several weeks, our repair center has seen a spike in failed mother boards, power supplies, modems and the like.  Troubleshooting showed that in all cases, the devices were plugged into surge protectors, yet when lightening struck, the surge protector failed to prevent damage.  Lightning can strike often and with great force this time of year in Colorado, and it pays to be prepared.  Computers depend on a steady stream of power to function properly.  Power spikes and surges can easily overwhelm the power supply causing lost data or damage.  Just as problematic are blackouts and brownouts.  Fortunately, there’s help. 

Surge Protectors

The cheapest form of protection is a power strip equipped with a good surge protector.  While nothing except unplugging your system will protect against a direct lightning strike, a surge protector will handle normal fluctuations in current and the serious spikes that occur when power returns after a blackout.  When a surge or spike occurs, the protector diverts the excess electrical current to a grounding wire.  You can purchase this form of protection for as little as $5, but we’d recommend you spend more to get a protector that carries a guarantee, has a sufficient “joule” rating (the higher the rating, the better), includes line noise filtering, and a phone jack.  Modems are particularly susceptible, as phone lines are just as sensitive, if not more, to changes in current.  Plug the modem (or other device) into the surge protector phone jack, and run another cord from the protector to the wall.  Finally, be sure the unit has a light to indicate whether the device is turned on and whether it’s still offering protection. 

Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)

For better protection against electrical problems, use a UPS.  As described by Wikipedia, a UPS is a device that maintains a continuous supply of electrical power to connected equipment by supplying power from a separate source when utility power is not available.  When power is interrupted, the device will keep the computer or electronics running for a bit giving you a chance to properly shut down.  A good UPS will also protect against surges, filter out line noise, and maintain the voltage at the proper level during brown outs.  For about $40, you'll find units that will keep a standard home PC and monitor running for a few minutes or so during typical brown-outs.  If you need power for an extended power outage, you’ll need to upgrade to a back-up generator.   

Caution, a UPS should only be used for the monitor, PC and your internet connection.  You should not use the device for cell phones, printers, etc., which draw down the UPS battery more quickly making it less effective for your more critical components.  Finally, be sure to test your UPS regularly, as they do wear out over time, using the built-in test mechanism. 

Tired of spam and the avalanche of unwanted emails?  Eliminating all unwanted spam can be nearly impossible, but there are a few things you can do.  The first step is to understand how others get your email address in the first place.  Hate to say it, but the problem often begins with you.  Many legitimate sites that you’ve given your email address to make their email lists available to other companies.  From there, your address could go anywhere.  More often, though, the fault lies with an email worm that crawls through websites, message boards and other sources picking up email addresses along the way from unsuspecting users (that would be you).  There are several steps you can take to cut down on spam.  

First, become an active user of the email filtering features offered by your email provider.  Take the time to understand the features included, and actively use these features to reduce unwanted spam.   

For additional protection, set up a second email account.  We recommend maintaining one private email account that you give to only trusted family, friends and business associates.  Then, establish a second address with a free service (such as Hotmail or Yahoo) that you use whenever asked to give your email address online.  Remember, when you do submit your email address online, take care to uncheck the box that asks if you want to receive email.   

Another nifty trick is to use disposable email addresses, also knows as DEA’s.  DEA’s are best for situations when you don’t intend to have ongoing correspondence with the receiver.  There are generally three types of DEA services: No registration required, registration required, and pay for use.  Conduct a search of “disposable email addresses” to find one that works best for your needs.  Depending upon the service, the account expires within a set amount of time, or you have the option of cancelling the address at any time.  Also, as Wikipedia explains, when you create a disposable address, you’ll link it to a real email address, so that the emails are forward to you.  Most services will also indicate in the subject line that the emails are forwarded so that you can easily identify the offending emails in your Inbox.  And herein lies the beauty of this trick.  If you’re weary of a website, sign-up using a disposable address, then sit back and watch for spam.  If you receive nothing, you can return to the original site and enter your true email address, or simply let the temporary address expire if it’s been misused. 

And finally, if you maintain your own website, be sure to disguise your email address.  You can use special HTML characters instead of a traditional email address.  Spiders that look for the “@” sign will not recognize the string of characters as an email address.  In the code, replace the “@” with “&#64”.  Most browsers will convert the HTML code back into the “@” sign so your visitors won’t be confused.   Unfortunately, many spiders are smarter than this.  So, you may instead want to consider hiding your email addresses with JavaScript.   If you don’t maintain your site yourself and don’t know how to implement these measures, ask your webmaster for help.  Or, email us for help. 

If you’re thinking of building a website or improving a current one, we’ve assembled eight tips to ensure a successful site for small businesses or hobby enthusiasts.   

1. Start with a clear objective for your site.  Do you want to simply provide basic facts about your business?  Do you want your customers to be able to access their account?  Or do you want to increase sales?  Once you’ve established your objective, lay out a plan for building the website to accomplish your goals, even if it’s through phased releases over a series of months. 

1. Once your site is up, make sure people can find it!  Use an easy-to-remember domain name (URL).  If you can’t obtain the URL you want, keep trying until you come up with something easy.  Also, start including your URL on all communications.  Finally, study the logic search engines use to list sites in their results.  To learn more about how to improve your position in Google’s search results, visit http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34432.

1. Ensure you present a clear and unclutter site.  Within 30 seconds, a visitor should immediately understand who you are and the intent of your site.  Don’t waste their time with needless paragraphs, cluttered graphics, and the like.  Keep the site simple, well organized and use lots of “white space”.  Also, it is always better to use a white or light background with dark text.  And be sure to proof and test your site carefully to remove broken links, broken images and typos.

1. Provide relevant, fresh content.  Your visitors may come once and poke around, but they won’t return unless they find the information useful and at least partially new each time they visit.  Original content is preferred over endless links to other sites.  Give visitors reasons to come back time and time again.

1. Ensure the navigation is easy to use.  It may make sense to you, but does it make sense to the average user?  Start by using established website conventions, don’t try to be clever.  Little things like putting navigation bars on the left, underlining links and so on, go a long way towards making visitors feel at home.  Have friends or family work their way through your site while thinking out loud as they surf.  Where do they get tripped up?

1. Make sure the site loads easily.  Not all your visitors will have broadband.  Ensure you have optimized the graphics and html.  Balance the bells and whistles with load times.  It’s more important for visitors to get to what they want quickly than to be dazzled by eye candy.

1. Make your site interactive.  You can certainly start with “brochureware”, but be sure to continue to add interactive functionality, such as shopping carts, surveys, and tools for user-generated content such as blogs and forums. 

1. Finally, avoid annoyances.  Pop-ups, intrusive advertising and disabled back buttons only frustrate users.  You want your visitors to look forward to visiting your site, not to avoid it due to needless annoyances.

Ever struggle to put together a business plan, a schedule for a special project, or an invitation for a party?  Wish you could easily whip out a decent website for your business or a lease for your rental?  All of these tasks can be accomplished fairly simply if you start with a pre-designed template.  And fortunately, there are many professional templates available for a variety of tasks, including marketing and business plans, legal forms, web pages and even advertising materials.  You just need to know where to find them, and that's where we come in.  We've come up with some of our absolute favorite sources for free templates.  Take a look!

For basic needs, you may need to look no further than Microsoft's template homepage located at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx.  You'll find a lengthy list of templates for virtually every personal and business need including brochures, budgets, stationery, schedules, newsletters, invitations and resumes.  Click on any category, and you'll be presented with a range of options.  The templates download in Microsoft Word, Excel or other commonly held applications, so you need not worry about having special software.  They're customizable and easy to use.  Check out the expansive list and do some experimenting!

If you own a business, you might be looking for a bit more in-depth help.  For the more common needs, Score, operated by the Small Business Administration, offers a variety of helpful templates including business plans, bank loan requests, competitive analyses and a variety of templates to help build financial models and statements including balance sheets, breakeven analyses, and cash flow statements among many others.  Visit http://www.score.org/template_gallery.html.  Again, the templates use commonly held programs in Microsoft Office and are easy to use and professionally built.

If your concern is a legal matter, there are again a variety of sources on hand.  One example is http://www.legal-forms-kit.com/freelegalforms.html.  The site is loaded with useful options including bills of sale, last wills, leases, powers of attorney, sales of a car and on, and on.  Be sure to consult with your attorney before executing the final document, but the site can be helpful in saving you a great deal of money on basic agreements. To give your hobby or business the jump start online, you might want to consider using free templates to build your website instead of using costly web site designers.  We found a couple of interesting sources, notably http://freelayouts.com.  The site offers hundreds of free html, CSS style sheets and flash template pages.  You'll also find code generators for making a variety of helpful enhancements for your visitors such as topbars, navbarts, drop-down menus, etc.  If you're new to this sort of thing, you'll also find articles and tutorials to help.

And finally, now that you've got your website, you'll want to put out great advertising without a lot of expense.  A great source for advertising templates is www.stocklayouts.com, offering a variety of professionally constructed advertising templates.  The majority of templates carry a fee, but there are a few that can be downloaded as a free trial at www.stocklayouts.com/Products/SampleLayout/SampleChoice.aspx.

Read this special article before you consider joining or paying for a "Get Rich Quick Program".

Of course, everyone would like to make a ton of money with very little effort while working from home. Who wouldn't want money flowing into their bank account working just a couple hours a day at home. No boss. Plenty of free time for family. Perfect.

Here is a link to the Honest Business Reviews report.
http://www.gotechtrek.com/

Whether it's real estate investing, selling by classified ads, stock market investing, internet affiliate marketing, or something else, we've all seen the fantastic claims people make about making tons of money, AND how they can show you to do the same thing. I can tell you right now that 99% of these people are total frauds. You may even have fallen prey to one of these scam artists, selling you their latest "get rich quick" program, me too! I've bought so many of these programs that I can't even recall how many. I don't know why, but I tend to find the "good" in people, and I was sold by these marketing schemes time and time again, even after being scammed by another. Finally, after so many disappointments, I got FED UP. I decided to get to the bottom of this fascination we all have with get rich quick programs, and find out if there really were any LEGITIMATE programs for making money.

I literally contacted the administrator of every get rich quick website I could find. Posing as an investor, I managed to convince the owners that I was seriously interested in purchasing their entire website and business. That way, once the dollar signs flashed in their heads, they would give me free access to their members areas to review what I would be "buying". Well, I was disgusted with 99% of what I found. Many of the owners actually boasted about how many people bought their useless programs. I repeatedly found:

• Outdated information
• Non-working links
• Links leading to other sites that asked for more money
• No help section
• No real email support

I quickly realized that these so called Get Rich Quick programs were totally useless. And the owners knew it, yet they were laughing all the way to the bank! Needless to say, I didn't respond when they asked if I was still interested in buying their websites. Surprisingly, while sifting through all the scam artists' websites, I was able to locate a couple of individuals that actually ran legitimate programs.

Here is a link to the Honest Business Reviews report.
http://www.gotechtrek.com/

The owners were everyday people like you and me that found a way to make extra money working from home on their computers. Their membership areas were impressive, with a good amount of quality information on how to make $100-$200 per day on your computer doing very little work. I even chatted with a few of their customers in several online forums, and they verified that they were making extra money through their sites. It was like I found a few diamonds in the rough. But don't take my word for it visit the site below to read a report on Honest Business Reviews and see what you think.

They do charge a minimal fee for access to their program, which is to be expected for any legitimate company that actually has people on staff who are dedicated to helping you get started. Anyway, if you do decide you are interested in any of the programs listed on the page below, I advise you to join quickly, as the owners informed me that they are getting so many new members by word of mouth referrals, that they will be closing off membership completely in the next three days. They don't have a large enough staff to accommodate many more people, and they are dedicated to providing excellent service to each person.

Well, my search for legitimate Get Rich Quick programs has come to an end. I have to say I was thoroughly disappointed with most of what I found, and I strongly advise that you do not take chances joining any programs not listed in the Honest Business Reviews report. Whatever you do I wish you a healthy and prosperous year for you.

Here is a link to the Honest Business Reviews report.
http://www.gotechtrek.com/