MULLIGRUBS COMPUTER CLUB

Web Search Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:46:00 +0000

We have discussed web searching tricks in the past here. All good search engines and Google in particular offer lots of ways to customise your searches to filter out irrelevant information and hone in on just what you want to know.

I found a YouTube video today (via Digital Inspiration) that explains some of the basics.
(Being YouTube it should work with any connection but will be slow on Dial Up)

Saving images from emails

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 08:33:00 +0000

Joe asked me a question at the Mullies meeting this week.

Hi Matt

Further to our conversation at Mulligrubs, I have forwarded the email in question.

It was sent to me via Outlook Express and as you suggested this may not be suitable to on forward via Thunderbird. When I have sent this particular message previously in the same circumstances, the message follows the text as well as being sent as an attachment.

Joe’s email has an animated picture attached to it which is the punchline to a joke. The email is sent as html which is the same language that webpages are written in. So just like webpages can have embedded graphics, animations and the like the email can too.

The problem comes when the person opening the email has a different program than the person who sent it. As I discussed with Joe in some instances Thunderbird doesn’t show the email the same as Outlook Express or Outlook would. This is the same sort of program difference that causes poorly written webpages to look different in Firefox and Internet Explorer.

One solution to Joe’s problem is to save the email as an external file and then attach that file to an email for forwarding. This is often a good idea as it gives you a brand new clean email to write in without forwarding all those friends addresses, maybe to a spammer or infected computer.

To get the file and details out of a html email the easy way is to save it as a html file. Just open the email - the original one maybe attached if it has been ‘forwarded as attachment’. Drill down to the message with the joke and then:

in Thunderbird click File Menu - Save as - File – Html

In Outlook or Outlook Express Click File – Save As – Choose HTML under the File type pull down

Now you can send the html file you saved to your computer as an attachment to an email or view it in your browser (Internet Explorer / Firefox)

One of the problems with the email Joe received is that the image is an animated GIF. It's like a cartoon - a few different frames slightly changed that give the impression of movement/animation See more about GIFs here.

A lot of picture viewer programs won't show the image moving even if you save/extract it right. If you extract it right you should always see it moving if you open it in your browser (Internet Explorer / Firefox)

Hope this was helpful

Oh and here is Joe’s picture for you

Hearts of Gold - Overcoming adversity

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 04:05:00 +0000

OK – this isn’t really about technology but I though you might enjoy the photos on the following website.

Sports Illustrated - Beijing Paralympics

Earlier this year, Oscar Pistorius (a.k.a. the Blade Runner) came within a hair’s breadth of making South Africa’s Olympic team. The achievement was a clear demonstration that in time, double amputees may well outpace able-bodied competitors. And meanwhile, it’s worth remembering that there’s more than one games in town.

Earlier this month, SI Online posted a remarkable photo essay from the just-wrapped Paralympics in Beijing. Four thousand disabled athletes competed in the same Olympic venues we saw this August: the Indoor Stadium, the Bird’s Nest, the Water Cube. There were soccer games between teams of visually impaired players — all of whom wore blindfolds to even things out — and a shot-put event in which the athletes strapped themselves into wheelchairs before rolling onto the pitch. Army 1st Lieut. Melissa Stockwell, who lost her left leg to an IED in Baghdad in 2004, was a special favourite of the Americans. And Oscar Pistorius won three golds, setting three Paralympic records. As for the photographs — they’re as extraordinary as the athletes themselves.

Found via VeryShortList

Swimming around the Net

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:01:00 +0000

Here are some interesting articles/links from around the Internet

Web's Best 50 Free Downloads

Here’s a list of 50 free programs for you to download. In truth many of these you will already have or have heard of but you may find something new here. If anyone on dial-up would like some of these programs downloaded and burned to CD just let me know

The Cyber Crime Hall of Fame

Rules are made to be broken the same way networks are made to be hacked into. These are nine of the most infamous criminal hackers to ever see the inside of a jail cell.

Acronis True Image updated to V11 and going Cheap!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 05:00:00 +0000

G'day all

Have been a bit on the busy side with Apex and other community activities so the posts/emails haven’t been coming out

If anyone has anything interesting to share or questions to ask please send through as usual. In the meantime I thought I would send through this offer

We have talked about Acronis True Image before (see here)and Ian has even demonstrated it a couple of times

Right now at the Acronis site you can buy the full program for download for US$9.99 – about $13 Aussie. This program usually goes for over $60

Sometimes you can cheap offers for older or cut-down versions of programs but not here. This is the new full version 11 and is great value. The new version even includes a ‘sandbox’ feature – similar to Sandboxie I demonstrated at Mullies a couple of meetings ago

Here’s a link to a review of Acronis 11 at PC Authority.
Price says A$63 so we are saving $50!

If you aren’t doing full image back-ups of your PC now – buy this
If you don’t know if you are backing up your machine – you aren’t – buy this
If you have a less than legal copy of this program (like I used to) – buy this

Really it’s a good deal
And no I don’t get a commission or anything – wish I did :)

See you at the next Mullies meeting or if I see you on the internet be sure to wave and say hi

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:55:00 +0000

learning how to update just my status via ping.fm - I think

Static Electricity is Shocking!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:07:00 +0000

Hi Matt

Can you help me with "grounding" I wish to add RAM to my computer but whilst reading up noticed numerous references to "grounding" I don’t want to stuff it up, what's the easy way to eliminate the chance of a spike? Cheers Brian

Hi Brian – good question! Whenever we stick our hands (or heads) inside a computer case we should be very cautious about the possibility of zapping the components with a static electricity discharge. Static electricity can cause quite a lot of damage to sensitive parts, such as ram, inside your computer.

Professional repair shops probably have specialised equipment for grounding themselves and the simplest of these is an ‘earthing strap’ which is basically a little wrist strap you put on your wrist and attach to the computer case. This basically levels out the static charge between you and the components so you don’t zap them. Really professional operations might have grounding mats and all sorts of other devices including temperature and dust controlled environments.

I have been fiddling with PC bits for years. I have never used a strap or other device and to my knowledge I have never stuffed anything. Just be aware of course that once you open your computer case you do need to be cautious. No only could you damage the components but there could be residual current and you could injure yourself. I have scratched and cut myself on sharp corners in there and your blood will do nothing to lubricate the performance of your PC!

The only precautions I ever take is to have clean hands and to touch the case and power supply before touching any other parts like the ram or motherboard. Unless you have been running on the carpet and rubbing a balloon on your tummy this should discharge any static electricity difference between you and the PC.

Below I have linked a couple of articles that may give you some more information on the topic. The first link is the Google search I did to find the other sites.

Of course you know that upgrading your ram will probably be like getting a whole new computer. Win XP struggles with less than 512mb of ram but will really fly with 1G or more. Vista needs at least 2Gb but that's progress for you! Let us know how you go Brian

Google Search

What is the best way to ground myself to discharge static electricity?

Avoid Static Damage to Your PC

How To Upgrade Your RAM

How to Add Memory Modules To Your Computer To Boost Speed

Microsoft adds nagware to Windows - again

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:30:00 +0000

This article at Atomic suggests that there will be more WGA fun coming to your Windows machine – particularly if you are running Windows XP Pro. If someone is running a pirated version of Windows then they deserve these problems I guess but usually these sort of initiatives stop some perfectly legal PCs working too. Time will tell whether this is as annoying as the last WGA patch.

Any bets on how long it takes the internet hackers to circumvent the patch? My bet is a reliable workaround widely available in less than a week. I don’t know why Microsoft don’t work harder on making the system better and cheaper rather than wasting their efforts trying to stop it being stolen.

FOR THOSE OF YOU who come online to escape the nagging wife, bad news is ahead – Microsoft is introducing what can only be described as 'nagware' in an attempt to stamp out piracy of its beloved operating system.
The new Windows Genuine notification software will aim to stop the stolen and pirated versions of software being circulated using new Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) which comes into effect this week.
The WGA notifications will be delivered via Windows Update and will default the users background to black if the copy is deemed counterfeit.
A spokeswoman for Microsoft said that, "the update simply reconfigures the notifications experience to mirror notifications in Windows Vista SP1."
This annoying piece of inspiration will make it easier for Microsoft to detect stolen and pirated software as well as fake product keys.
The spokeswoman continued to say that, "Microsoft is making these changes to simplify the installation process (making it easy for customers to stay up-to-date), to increase the effectiveness of these notifications, and to align experiences across Windows XP and Windows Vista." – hmmm.
The nagware will be aimed specifically at XP Professional users for now, as Microsoft believes this is the most pirated edition.
XP users who don't have WGA notifications will be asked to accept an End User License Agreement which gives the users consent for the anti-piracy validation control to auto-update itself with fewer releases.
Microsoft thinks this irritant will take a couple of months to roll out – you have been warned.

Can you guess where my accent is from?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:13:00 +0000

http://www.languagetrainersgroup.com/accent_game.html

This is an online game made by a language training company. It shows short videos of people from all around the world reading part of the poem “If” by Kipling. You then have to pick via multiple choice where they are from. It is quite surprising and fun and very timely given the Olympics are on. Give it a go (sorry - may not work or will at least be slow on dial-up)

How NOT to speed up Windows

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:32:00 +0000

I just read this article at LifeHacker.com It’s about the myths around what works and what doesn’t work when trying to speed up Windows. You should check it out

http://lifehacker.com/5033518/debunking-common-windows-performance-tweaking-myths

Windows XP and Vista do a fair job of self maintenance, etc. A lot of these techniques originated back in the Win 95 & 98 days when users could squeeze a little more performance out of Windows with a few behind the scenes tricks. They simply don’t work much anymore.

Now I don’t agree with everything in the article. Here’s my thoughts:

Disabling QoS to Free Up 20% of Bandwidth

Yep – this has little to no effect for most people. Your connection rarely runs at 100%

Clean, Defrag and Boost Your RAM With SnakeOil Memory Optimizer

I absolutely agree. In every case I have seen these programs used they have made the situation worse not better. I think they may have had a use back in Windows 95 but even by Windows 98 they were useless

Cleaning the Registry Improves Performance

I disagree with this one. I think a good registry cleaner can make a noticeable difference. Just make sure you use a reputable program that makes registry back-ups. For a free product I find CCleaner very good.

Disabling Services to Speed Up the Computer

I disagree. Some services can be disabled and DO make a difference. Some programs install their services that don’t offer much functionality and can be disabled. For example iTunes installs a number of services including 1 to check for software updates, 1 to launch iTunes when you plug in your iPod, 1 to communicate across a network with iPods and iPhones and others. You don’t need all these processes running in the background and if you have a lot of unnecessary ones it will slow you down. So check out your running processes and carefully and selectively disable the ones you don’t need.

Refer this site for detailed information on each service BlackViper.com

OK so now we know how NOT to speed up our PC. Tomorrow I will send you my suggestions on what you can do that WILL speed up your PC.

If anyone has any suggestions or ideas please email me or leave them in the comments.

AVG Antivirus can corrupt HTML emails

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:13:00 +0000

As we have discussed here in the past AVG Antivirus is an excellent and free Anti Virus program. In fact because of the price (did I mention free!) and the small footprint (AVG doesn’t eat up much system resources and memory) it is one of the most popular AV programs around.

I have read recently (in the Windows Secrets newsletter) that the AVG can make a mess of some emails you receive. You see AVG has an email scanner built in – which is good. It checks emails and attachments for nasties like a virus or trojan when you send and receive an email. Great!

By default though what it also does is to add a little ‘certification’ to the bottom of each email to attest to the fact that it has been scanned. A few years ago this was pretty common practice for AV programs but it is rarely seen today. Here’s an example of what it puts on:

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com 
Version: 8.0.138 / Virus Database: 270.5.0/1556 - Release Date: 7/16/2008 4:56 PM

Frankly I find this pretty annoying but other people may like it, who knows?

Anyway it seems the adding of this text to emails you receive (and maybe send too) can garble the HTML code and mess up the email, even to the point it is unreadable.

But never fear I have a solution. From Windows Secrets:

To disable e-mail certification in AVG, click Tools, Advanced settings, choose E-mail Scanner on the left side of the window, and disable Certify e-mail for incoming messages. The steps are described in the AVG FAQ (scroll down the page to number 1376).

You may also want to disable “certify email for outgoing messages” too.

Please note – this does not turn off virus scanning of emails, it just turns off the last step of putting the certification on the bottom of each message.

So if you find some messages are coming in a little strange or, like me, you don’t want the little note on all your messages then just follow the steps to remove the certification. Easy!

Free Internet Security Suite

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:13:00 +0000

If you go to this page you (click the image) you can download a free internet security suite suite.

The offer is made thanks to Westpac Bank and you don’t need to prove you are their customer to download. I have taken advantage of a similar offer from ANZ in the past.

The banks take the attitude that if they can help you stay safe on the net then you are less likely to have your password stolen and your bank account details misused. A cynic might say that by offering this free they are giving themselves an escape clause when a customer sues and says their site doesn’t offer enough protection

Anyway what you get is a free 12 months license for PC Tools Internet Security Suite which includes:
1. Spyware Doctor with Antivirus 6 for Windows
2. Privacy Guardian 4.1 for Windows
3. PC Tools Firewall Plus for Windows

I have not personally used any of these programs so I cannot recommend them one way or the other. But at this price they may be worth a trial

PayPal-Only Plan Bites the Dust

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:09:00 +0000

Looks like common sense has won out in the eBay drama we discussed at our last meeting. Alternate payment methods like Bank Deposit and COD will still be allowed on eBay Australia. Every auction must include PayPal but can include the other methods too.

This makes sense to me. PayPal is a useful and convenient way to buy stuff all over the internet. A lot of stores allow or even encourage PayPal. And using PayPal on eBay gives you some level of buyer protection too. I just think that it shouldn’t be restricted to PayPal only. What if I find something locally I want to buy and go round to pick it up - I want to pay cash not have to do it all online.

The outcome achieved here is the best for buyers and sellers alike. Sellers can still nominate PayPal as their only allowed payment method if they want to and buyers can use PayPal to pay if they choose to. But there is no monopolisation of the process to feed eBay revenues.

I don’t believe for a moment that eBay changed their mind '”to end confusion” or because of the complaints of users. They were prepared to bully buyers and sellers however they want. It was the ACCC forcing their hand that sorted it out.

So strike up a win for our tax dollars at work – you don’t say that every day do you!

eBay Australia ditches controversial payment policy.

Giving in to unrelenting pressure from sellers and the competition regulator, eBay Australia has officially called off its effort to force members to use its PayPal subsidiary for transactions on its e-commerce site.

The announcement came a week after eBay said it would postpone enacting the policy until the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) had its final say.

"eBay has withdrawn its notification to the [ACCC] about removing other payment methods. Instead eBay will continue to allow all existing payment methods on eBay.com.au," the statement reads. "We have decided to withdraw the notification to stop any further confusion and disruption among the eBay Community."

eBay said it will continue to look for ways to foster a safer online environment for its users, but will do that "while still offering a variety of payment choices."

Sellers on eBay.com.au are still required to offer PayPal as at least one payment option, a requirement that took effect in May. Associated changes to PayPal Seller Protection and increased PayPal Buyer Protection remain in place.
Auctiva Article link

Wanna speed up Vista? Get Windows Search 4.0!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 11:55:00 +0000

I swiped this post from Jeff Alexander’s blog. Jeff is married to my cousin and is a top bloke. He works for Microsoft and this is a post about the new Windows search software. As I mentioned at our last meeting I have found the upgrade to version 4 has noticeably sped up my Vista machine. If you use Vista then you should definitely download this update.

One of the great features of Windows Vista is it’s integrated search engine which allows you to find all those bits and bytes on your computer. But in the last week I found this interesting little tidbit. Windows Search 4.0 was quietly released for free download for Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003. This one kind of came under the radar a bit so I thought I would give it a go and install. Well to my surprise my machine seems to be faster! And of course search is a whole lot faster. But in a nutshell this is what the new version has to offer.

Improvements in performance and stability of the indexer

Fuller complement of Group Policy settings, available on all supported operating systems

Fast sorting and grouping of results in Windows Explorer

Indexing improvements in online e-mail

Ability to index delegate mailboxes for online e-mail

Support for indexing (local file system) encrypted documents

Expanded ability to perform fast remote queries of file shares, including those on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. This includes automatic indexing of shared folders.

Item previews in Windows Explorer for Windows XP

So this is one of those things that kind of sits under the covers quietly plugging away but it’s nice to see the search team has made such an improvement.

Check out the download today! I’ve put it on all my machines!

eBay information and tips

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:25:00 +0000

As promised last week here is a link to download the article I compiled on eBay

Click here to download the file

It includes

General details on eBay and it’s origin
General details on PayPal
A description of how they both work
A schedule of fees and charges from eBay and PayPal
Articles discussing the current ‘discussions’ between eBay and the ACCC over eBay’s intention to limit the method for auction payments to only be through PayPal
Tips for buyers using eBay including discussion of bidding strategies and a link to an Auction Sniping tool, and
Tips for sellers including details on using Auctiva to create and promote your sales on eBay

Some of this is my own work and opinions but some is from other sites – please refer to the links for more information and details of the original authors

I plan to expand on the buying and selling tips again in future and will post this as a separate item here on the blog. So look out for updated details sometime soon.

But for now I hope you find this useful

How to Send an Email Using any "From:" Address

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:29:00 +0000

Details found care of Gizmo’s TechSupportAlert.com newsletter

Subscriber Richard Dent writes " Gizmo, here's a website that your subscribers might find useful. It allows anyone to send an email from any "From:" address without registering or logging on."
http://send.arrowmail.co.uk

This could be very useful if you were away from your home computer and wanted to send an email ‘from’ your own address and didn’t have access to your own email. Gmail users have the ability to send from multiple accounts from within Gmail itself although in my experience the email still arrives as being From: ’Other Address’ via ‘Gmail Address’ which is not so useful if you were trying not to show your Gmail address. Anyway – this site may be of use to some.

Always read the instructions – if you haven’t lost them

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 01:50:00 +0000

Have you ever lost a user manual or instructions for an item? Of course you have – I know I have!

It could be a TV or a DVD player, a food processor, an air conditioner or some other complicated piece of equipment. Or maybe you bought it second hand and the booklet didn’t come with it. And the frustration mounts!

There are a number of places on the web you can look for a copy of the user manual. An educated Google search can often turn one up and of course try the manufacturers own site too. But there are also some places on the net that accumulate the manuals for you and one of these is SafeManuals.com. Apparently they have over 800,000 guides saved and growing.

I have included their search function in this post – click the buttons below and give it a try. You might just find something you are missing!

Firefox 3

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:56:00 +0000

As discussed in the past I highly recommend Mozilla Firefox as the browser of choice. It has so many features over the standard Internet Explorer browser in windows to make it more secure plus countless extensions which make it more useable. I find the user interface – toolbars, etc – awkward on IE 7 after they updated and I don’t like using it. Firefox just makes more ‘sense’ to me plus has all the bonuses too

If you aren’t using Firefox yet then now is the time to switch. It has just updated to version 3 which is faster, slicker and just generally awesome. If you are using but haven’t updated yet then hop to it – you will be surprised how great the new version is

I participated in the ‘Download day’ for Firefox and helped set a new world record for downloads. Here’s my certificate :)

So give Firefox a whirl – you won’t be sorry :)

The evolution of the Mobile phone

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:11:00 +0000

I thought this was very interesting – especially the way the phones ‘morph’ into one another. The video perspective doesn’t really show you the changing scale of phones though. Those early phones were over 1kg – we have whole laptops that are lighter now.

I also noticed the time lag – we must get our mobiles here in Oz a lot slower than their release in the US, etc.

Check out the stats on the number of phones sold and messages and stuff. Amazing really.

Keep Windows XP fresh

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:41:00 +0000

Following is an article from WindowsSecrets.com regarding Win XP and how to keep using it for a while. Personally I like Vista and I won’t be going back to XP but then my laptop is new and fast and came with Vista pre-installed. Anyone who like me is buying a new PC or laptop should get a version of Vista on it and be good to go. But for your current machine I don’t recommend updating to Vista – stick with XP and follow these tips to keep it running sweetly.

In addition to these tips I recommend using a disk image program (like Acronis) which we have discussed previously and which Ian has demonstrated at our meetings. With Win XP SP3 out now it would be a good time to do a fresh install of Windows with an install of SP3 and then imaging it for archive purposes – you will never have to do a reinstall of Windows again!

When Windows XP was released, wireless routers were rare, few cell phones supported e-mail, and YouTube was just a gleam in some PayPal employees' eyes.
But like a fabled perpetual motion machine, XP keeps on going and going — and if you follow some simple guidelines, the OS will keep running in top condition until Vista's successor is ready in 2010.

XP is an operating system with serious legs

Microsoft may not have planned it this way, but XP could end up rivaling NT and 2000 as the version of Windows with the longest lifespan. According to recent news reports, Dell, Lenovo, and other computer manufacturers will continue to sell new PCs running Windows XP well past Microsoft's June 30 cutoff date.

PC vendors will do so by invoking a downgrade plan that lets them ship a system with Windows XP installed as long as the customer is also paying for an upgrade to Vista Business or Ultimate editions, either of which is included in each box.

Of course, computer manufacturers aren't the only ones looking for ways to extend XP's usefulness. One pundit has predicted that Microsoft itself is going to fast-track Windows 7 to get customers to leapfrog over the unpopular Vista and go directly from XP to the next version. In fact, according to the technology site Ars Technica, one major American corporation, General Motors, is considering doing just that.

Eight simple rules for keeping XP rejuvenated

If you're one of the many people who plan to stick with XP as long as possible, you need to take a few relatively painless steps to keep that aging OS perky. Here are my eight rules for extending XP's usefulness to 2010 and beyond.

Rule 1: The latest ain't always the greatest. As a rule, older operating systems were designed to work with older software. Unless you need some utterly indispensable feature found only in the latest Adobe Creative Suite or Microsoft Office 2007, stick to the preceding releases. Not only will the senior apps run faster, most of the kinks and bugs have already been worked out of them.

If your hardware and software work fine as is, don't bother upgrading any drivers, either. At the same time, driver upgrades often smooth out minor problems that you've just grown used to.

One way to check for out-of-date device drivers is to use the online scanner from Driver Updates. (Note that using this service requires running an ActiveX component in Internet Explorer.)

MATT’S note – don’t join this paid site – it’s a rip off! Just use the information they provide to work out what drivers need replacing

Should you discover that one of your drivers is out of date, go to the manufacturer's site to find and download the latest version available (but skip any beta releases). Remember to back up your system before installing the new driver in case it causes problems.

Rule 2: Make an exception for security. Set Rule 1 aside when it comes to your security software and services. Update your virus and spyware definitions frequently. Get the latest security updates for your browser and for QuickTime, Flash, and other media players as well. Some of the dangers of unpatched software are explained in the April 17 Top Story.

Rule 3: Stay young and beautiful. The last exception to Rule 1 is to make a cautious investment in a handful of utilities that improve and modernize XP. You'll find a number of free and low-cost programs that approximate or even duplicate Vista's best new features without having to invest in a whole new operating system.

For a guide to applications that give XP handy features of Vista's Business edition, see my July 12, 2007, column. To read about ways to add features from Vista Enterprise or Ultimate editions to XP, check out my July 19, 2007, column.

Rule 4: Shop carefully for new hardware. If your XP system needs a processor, memory, or other hardware upgrade to keep it from bogging down on your applications, there is no reason why you can't swap out an aging component or add some RAM.

However, since some new components are designed with Vista in mind, make sure the products you buy work as advertised under XP. Check the manufacturers' site for XP driver downloads before you make your purchase, and look for online reviews that mention the products' XP compatibility.

Rule 5: Don't let startup stuff slow you down. It seems like every program you install these days wants to start along with Windows. These auto-start apps are usually represented by an icon in your system tray (the area near your clock). Even if your system has oodles of memory, these little doodads can slow you down without offering any real value.

An excellent tool for finding what gizmos are starting up each time you log into Windows is Autoruns, available from Microsoft (originally from Sysinternals). Simply uncheck the item to disable it from starting, or select an entry and delete it to effect a more permanent removal.
If you can't figure out what a particular startup app does, right-click its entry in the Autoruns window and choose Search Online. This performs a Google search (rather than a Live search, which you might expect). Scour the results to find out whether the program has a legitimate reason for needing to run all the time.

If the Web search isn't helpful in rooting out a program's purpose, check the list of common startup applications maintained by Paul Collins to figure out what's getting started with Windows.
Finally, the free version of WinPatrol can warn you whenever a program attempts to add an item to your startup list.

Clear the clutter from XP's many cubbyholes

Rule 6: Save on disk space. A problem that plagues nearly all aging systems is the pack-rat syndrome. Just using a PC day to day causes an ever-increasing amount of data to be stored in ever-shrinking disk space. These tips will help you recover some of that precious drive capacity.

Eliminate hibernation files. XP's hibernation feature stores everything currently in RAM onto your hard disk, which allows you to return to your session more quickly after a period of inactivity. Unfortunately, hibernation needs about the same amount of disk space as your current amount of RAM (for example, 1GB of disk space if you have 1GB of RAM).
If you don't use XP's hibernate feature very often, you can save the space occupied by the hiberfil.sys file: choose Start, Run; type powercfg.cpl; click the Hibernate tab; uncheck Enable hibernation; and click OK.

Don't let iTunes make you hear double. If you use Windows Media Player to rip CDs to your computer in the Windows Media Audio (.wma) format and then decide to give iTunes a try, beware! iTunes will convert those songs into its Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format, resulting in duplicate files for every song iTunes manages. To avoid that, use a single music format (such as .mp3) that all media players can handle.

Store stuff online. Another way to save on disk space is to transfer files to an online storage service. You may already store your e-mail and photos online. Yahoo's Flickr service lets you store as many photos as you like, but unless you upgrade to a paid account, you'll never be able to see more than the last 100.
Google's Picasa Web albums provide 1GB of free storage. And if you're willing to pay, you can get a whole lot more storage space than that.
Of course, you don't need to limit yourself to mail and photos. A number of sites offer free or low-cost online storage. For example, Mozy gives you 2GB of free storage through its MozyHome service. MozyPro accounts start at U.S. $4.50 per gigabyte per month.
Many sites, including ElephantDrive, Omnidrive, and Box, provide only 1GB of free storage. Each service offers larger storage options at varying prices.
Finally, IBackup has economy plans that charge only $1 per gigabyte per month (and less for annual rates). By comparison, the popular Data Deposit Box charges $2 monthly for each gigabyte you use.

MATT’S NOTE – Box.net is great and free, has lots of features and is easy to use. Microsoft Live Skydrive is also good and offers a whooping 5Gb of free online storage

Offload files to a new drive. Even if you've purchased a new hard drive to expand your storage space, you may still be running out of room on your Windows drive. Fortunately, you can move your virtual memory paging file, Internet Explorer cache files, My Documents, and other system files to another drive or partition. For step-by-step information, see my column from the Feb. 28 issue.

Rule 7: Keep it clean. It makes no sense to hang onto useless junk files that Windows uses for its own purposes. Fortunately, Windows' own Disk Cleanup tool can clear out this system clutter. For details on how to customize Disk Cleanup for maximum efficiency, see Fred Langa's Mar. 13 column in the paid portion of the newsletter.
Disk Cleanup also removes the outdated restore points created by System Restore that you no longer need. In the Disk Cleanup window, click the More Options tab. Under System Restore, click Clean up and confirm that you want to delete all but the current restore point.

Unfortunately, Disk Cleanup misses certain temp files. To make a little batch file that clears these folders, open Notepad and type the following:
del /s /q "C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\Local Settings\Temp\*.*"
Replace yourname with the name of the account you've logged into and adjust the drive letter or path as needed. Save the file with a .cmd or .bat extension (for example, killtemp.bat) and put the file or a shortcut to it in your Startup group (Start, All Programs, Startup). This way, it will run each time you log in to your Windows account.

Rule 8. Do your chores. Joan Rivers described my attitude to PC maintenance when she said, "I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes, and six months later you have to start all over again."

Odious as PC housekeeping can be, get into the disk-maintenance habit: make backups, defrag your hard disks, and check them for errors. Fortunately, you can use XP's Scheduled Tasks utility (Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Scheduled Tasks) to automate or partially automate these chores by setting the program to give you a gentle reminder.

Link to the original article at Windows Secrets

SMS cost 4x more than data from the Hubble

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 04:01:00 +0000

I knew those phone providers were ripping us off!

A University of Leicester space scientist has worked out that sending texts via mobile phones works out to be far more expensive than downloading data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Dr Nigel Bannister’s calculations were used for the Channel 4 Dispatches programme “The Mobile Phone Rip-Off”.

He worked out the cost of obtaining a megabyte of data from Hubble – and compared that with the 5p cost of sending a text.
He said: “The bottom line is texting is at least 4 times more expensive than transmitting data from Hubble, and is likely to be substantially more than that.

Full article at Physorg.com

Best Free Programs to Help you start Touch Typing

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Sat, 24 May 2008 06:42:00 +0000

I found this post at makeuseof.com. Tracy and I have been talking about challenging each other to motivate ourselves to touch type. When you spend all day in front of a computer like I do it is silly not to use the keyboard well. It's like learning to drive by only turning left - sure you can get somewhere by going around the block but it takes longer! Along with the recommendations here I have been using the free program from Rapid Typing. Anyway try them out and if you want to brag about your typing speed put a comment on the post or email me. Which Mulligrubber do you think types the fastest?

If you’re spending considerable amount of time of your daily life in front of the PC then you should consider learning touch typing.

Although it may take anywhere from a couple of weeks to 2-3 month before you can master your keyboard it totally pays off in the long run. Plus there are plenty of free programs and websites that make it an easy and fun process.

Whether you’re a beginner or simply want to improve on your current typing speed, these free typing exercises can help you improve the accuracy and the overall typing speed. You will learn how to type fast, using all of your fingers, without looking at the keyboard. There is something for everyone here, from online games to excellent typing programs.

Practice Touch Typing Online

TypeRacer

TypeRacer is an online speed typing game. We have covered several online typing games before but this one is one of a kind. Here you can practice your typing accuracy and speed by “typeracing” against other people in real-time. The goal is to type-in the given text accurately and fast, and get your car to the finish point ahead of the others. Be warned, the game is quite addictive. Read more …

Keybr

This one has been my favourite online touch typing practice tool for a long time now. Not only does it help you improve on your typing speed but it also lets you learn to type without looking at the keyboard. This is one important feature that is not usually present in other online typing exercises. To get started, simply select the preferred keyboard layout and you’re good to go. Read more …

Free Touch Typing Software

My very first touch typing software is Bruce’s Typing Wizard. I used it to learn the keyboard layout. It can be used both by beginner and advanced level users. Depending on your present level you can start with typing lessons where you basically train your fingers to the keyboard layout or with Typing Practice to gain some speed. The program should work on any Windows machine.

Another good one is TypeFaster. Typefaster claims to teach you how to touch type within 20 dedicated lessons and one 3D game. FreeSoftwareMagazine covers it in detail here

2008 AVG Free Anti-Virus looks good and more

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:46:00 +0000

I have been keeping an eye on the reviews for AVG Antivirus 2008.

You will see in the past I have recommended AVG as a very good product available for free. The new version looks to be very good and includes:

A refreshed user interface. This just means it looks nicer :)
Link checker included
Anti-Spyware included
Improved scanning speed

Read the details below for more information. One of the things I really liked about AVG in the past was that it used so little system resources. This means on older/slower computers particularly those with low memory it still ran well and didn't bog the PC down like, say, Norton would. I haven't installed and run the new AVG myself so let's hope this still holds true with the update.

So if like me your machine has started flashing the ads asking you to upgrade to (the paid version) of AVG 8 jump over to the website and download the new free version.

Download available here

Review from Makeuseof.com

It’s one of the mysteries of the internet that I have never been able to get my head around - why anyone would want to pay through the nose for anti-virus software when there are perfectly good free alternatives out there. For the past five years, I have been using AVG from Grisoft and I have always been amazed at how great it is. The other day, they rolled out their 2008 free version and it blew my socks right off.

To give you an indication right off the bat of how good it is, a friend of mine has Norton Anti-Virus (for which he pays for) and it failed to detect a virus. On my recommendation, he downloaded AVG Anti-Virus 2008 - and it detected the virus immediately. My friend is now so disgusted with Norton that he has uninstalled it from his computer and he can’t stop raving about AVG 2008.

AVG does everything that a virus checker normally does - real time virus checking to begin with. When a virus enters your computer, AVG immediately flashes a warning sign on your screen with the location of the virus and it asks you what you want it to do. Obviously you want the virus moved immediately to the secure virus vault and once you make that choice, AVG moves away to do it and you can then continue with what you were doing before *cough* looking at naughty websites *cough*.

Secondly, AVG also scans your incoming and outgoing emails if you download your emails to an offline client such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird. It quarantines and zaps suspicious attachments, especially if it has a file type “exe”.

So far, nothing to make you go “WOW!”. It’s all fairly standard stuff so far. So let’s see what Grisoft has done to the 2008 version that has impressed me personally :

First of all, they have radically re-designed the interface. The designers have really gone to work on it to make it aesthetically pleasing. I like companies that go that extra mile to make their products look nice.

Secondly, they have introduced some new features. I can now tell it to remove malicious tracking cookies from my computer. This was not available in its predecessor (at least not in the free version of AVG). What it also does is real-time monitoring of malicious tracking cookies whenever you visit a website. So when you visit a site and that site tries to put a bad cookie on your computer, AVG will instantly flash a warning sign on your screen asking you what you want to do. You are given the option of looking up the cookie in the online AVG database for more information before deciding whether to nuke the cookie or ignore it.

Also, when I make searches on Google, AVG tells me if the search results are safe to click on or if the pages have spyware in them.

The green arrow indicates a safe site (I presume a bad site is a red cross). My only complaint about this is that the checking process can take a while (thereby slowing down my searching) so I may eventually switch this feature off in the AVG options.

The next new feature is that you can control the speed of the virus checking process. You can choose between “slow scan”, “automatic scan” and “fast scan” :

But regardless of this feature, AVG 2008 overall is MUCH faster than its predecessor. You will notice a much improved scanning speed. It’s like the older AVG on steroids. I don’t know what the AVG engineers are feeding their virus scanner to make it go so fast but it must be good!

If you have the older AVG, I strongly recommend you upgrade (you will need to uninstall the older version of AVG first). If you don’t have AVG, I strongly recommend you uninstall whatever it is that you’re using and you start using AVG instead because this little beauty is the King of the Anti-Virus Jungle.

Grisoft Rolls Out 2008 Version of Free AVG Anti-Virus | MakeUseOf.com

101 Free Games 2008 - The Best Free Games on the Web!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:20:00 +0000

Here's a list of free games to try.

101 Free Games 2008 at 1up.com

There are games under the categories of:

Action,
Adventure/RPG,
Arcade,
Fighting,
Puzzle,
Shooters,
Simulations, and
Strategy

These are all completely free and there is something here for all tastes

And if 101 games isn't enough how about last years list too:

101 Free Games 2007 at 1up.com

Best Software Tools for the Family Tech Support Guy

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Dell) — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:13:00 +0000

I thought this was interesting with some useful suggestions. See my suggestions too - MATT

Most of you reading this have encountered people asking you to solve problems on their computers - more than once. You’re an expert in their eyes, and they want you to solve the problems they’re facing with their PCs. They might be your family members, your colleagues or whatever.

If you frequently encounter situations like this, you can arm yourself with the following tools and make things easy for yourself and others when you’re working on a problematic computer system. Feel free to suggest your favourite softwares in the comments section below.

Anti Spyware

You gotta have one. Install Spybot Search and Destroy and/or Ad Aware. Both do a good job, but the former is a bit slow when compared to Ad Aware.

Don't forget Windows Defender from Microsoft. Free for XP and built in to Vista

Anti Virus

Avast! Free - That does a lot for being free, I should say. The On Access Scanner is the best part and you’ll have to leave it installed on the PC - the next time any of your closest ones click on a ‘Congratulations, you’ve won $$$’ banner, their PCs are protected for sure thanks to Avast’s on access realtime web traffic scanning.

Another good antivirus is AVG, does a lot of stuff, but still Avast! wins. You can read a comparison of AVG and Avast! here.

I have also read some good things about Avira Antivir free

Junk File Removers

You surely must have seen disks filled with nothing but junk. Sometimes they go up to a few GBs or more, and that’s the place where tools like these get handy.

CCleaner -That’s the best junk remover I’ve ever used. Has all that you might need in one place: a junk file cleaner, an uninstaller and also a registry cleaner. It’s more reliable than other such junk removers.

HijackThis - Scans the nook and corner and checks and reports to you. You can remove bad items from start up and take down other suspicious services. But beware - be sure of what you’re doing with this program.

I have a paid subscription to JV16 Powertools which is a good program but for free CCleaner is the go

PC Decrapifier

Rightly named, this tool removes the nuisances that come pre installed with your Windows PC. If anyone from your family has just got a new PC installed with Windows, you gotta run this program to cut the crap. Download it here.

If you buy a new PC like my Dell laptop they load it up with all sorts of custom applications. Some are useful but most are not. This program strips away all the excess rubbish and will usually make your new computer run faster as a result.

Partition Manager - GParted Live CD

Sure you’ve tried many partition managers else before, but I can’t resist myself by putting this up here. GParted is open source and is very very light. It can do copying, resizing, moving operations in around a dozen filesystems.

Ultimate Boot CD - Recovery Tool

It’s the ultimate Swiss Army Knife that comes packed in with tools that do varied jobs like memory tests, hard disk diagnosis, partitioning, system benchmarking and lots more. Definitely a must have. Get it here.

UBCD for Windows

UBCD4Win is similar to the above mentioned software, but runs directly on Windows.

I have used UBCD before and I have found it to be easier to use than some of the Linux 'Live' CDs

DriverMax

DriverMax lets you copy your current hardware drivers and reinstall them later if you don’t have the setup files of each of your hardware drivers.

Quite useful, but the person on whose computer working on must already have a driver backup that’s been done using this software.

There are a number of similar programs and that's because backing up your drivers is a good idea.

gOS

Ahh! You can ask why this is listed here, but what if you can’t get your PC’s OS to work? You want the internet to work and need something desperately done, but XP won’t start.

Not a problem if you have a Linux live CD in hand. Just pop the CD in, access the internet, send the email that you had to send or do whatever you wanted to get done. All without writing on to your hard disk and not damaging anything that’s already there.

I’m mentioning gOS here specifically because it has got quite good integration with Google services and pretty much works out of the box.

There are many other Live CDs available, you can check here for that. Make sure you download one and have it burnt on a disk for emergency uses.

Best Software Tools for the Family Tech Support Guy