Where discussions about computer issues will be stored
Recently subscribers to facebook have been receiving emails from people in their networks that at first glance appear to be legitimate invitations. However, if you should click on the link in the email it will take you to a site that will attempt to install a Trojan horse program on your computer. Should that happen…
Lately it seems like my money runs out before the month runs out and I have been looking for ways to economize. Being the geek that I am, I turned to the web and did some searching. Here are some interesting web sites that I think will help you save money and maybe even put…
I’ve been on vacation since Friday afternoon. Actually, I spent all of Friday afternoon and part of Friday evening driving the 482 miles from Orinda, California to Newport Coast, California down the El Camino Real, otherwise known as US Hwy 101. During the 7, almost 8, hour drive I had plenty of time to reflect…
Let’s talk about phishing. No, not fishing with a rod, reel and some bait, but phishing where hackers try to get you to give up some personal information by exploiting a weakness in your browser or email service. Here is how it works: This weakness allows malicious coders to create Web sites that look exactly…
Here is the Cliff Notes version for those of you in a hurry: You need one. Go get one. Stop arguing. Now for the rest of you, we’ll start with a little trip back through time. Back in the days when desk top computers were just starting out, they were stand alone computers connected to…
So one day you go up to your computer and it is doing something weird or it’s not doing what it should be doing or something is wrong and you just have no clue what to do. You’ve even rebooted, but the problem has not gone away. It’s now time to call tech support…or is…
Now I’ll talk about Error Checking (A.K.A. ScanDisk or ChkDsk) and Disk Defragmentation. These two programs are essential to the continued good health of your computer. Running these two programs is like changing the oil in your car and getting a tune up. They don’t perform the same functions, but if your forget to change…
Next up is Virus Scanning, so to start with let’s talk about what is a virus. If you go the McAfee web site, their glossary defines a virus as “A computer program file capable of attaching to disks or other files and replicating itself repeatedly, typically without user knowledge or permission.” This is probably as…
Moving on to some hardware issues now. We are living in dangerous times now here in California. (And if you believe the news, other parts of the country will have the same problems soon) I am referring to the dangers to computers from power outages. As mentioned yesterday, power surges are disastrous to electronic equipment…
I’d like to offer an alternative to blindly picking up the phone and calling tech support. There are some preventative measures that you can take, but you aren’t going to like them as you’ll have to spend a little money and a little time, but believe me, this is the better way. First and foremost,…
