You should check out my sister’s cooking blog. Carmel rolls
If you are like most people your have at least one old computer laying around not doing much of anything. How about turning that old computer into an internet and email appliance for the kids a relative or yourself? It doesn’t take that much work and it can be fairly rewarding. You can also learn about a new OS in the process. You will just need to set aside a few hours of your time and have a little patience. The first thing that you need is an old computer, almost anything will work. And by anything, I mean almost anything, a 486 with at least 64 MB of ram is sufficient. The second thing that you will need is an operating system, Google, light Linux and a host of OS’s that run on old hardware come up. to name a few DeliLinux ,DSL , Puppy Linux . These are just a few of the lightweight Linux distro’s that are available. You can run these from the CD or install them to your hard drive. They are small and responsive, some making your old hardware seem as fast or faster than the new computer that you are reading this on. The third thing you will need is a computer with a broadband connection to download the ISO file, these will range from under 100MB to 700MB and can take a few hours to download. Once you have your ISO you will need to burn it to CD, if you have burning software it will most likely take care of this, if not download http://www.imgburn.com/ and it will get you started burning your image. Once you have your CD just pop it in the drive on your old computer and fire it up, you can simply boot from the CD to give your new OS a test drive and most will let you install it quickly from the desktop, asking just a few questions. Happy computing and we will touch on some other ways to use that old machine soon.
Now that you have upgraded your memory and are speeding along with your old machine you may find yourself with a lack of space for all of your movies, pictures and music. There are a few different solutions to adding storage space to your computer. How do you decide which is right for you?
Well the first and probably the easiest is also the least wallet friendly, however that is relative. Simply purchasing an external USB drive is most definitely easy enough for even the most technically challenged user. You just plug it in and start saving your files to the removable drive. There are a few problems with this method however: 1. Portability, While a removable drive screams portable, if you are using a laptop it is something extra to lug around and it adds cords to your already crowded case. 2. Redundancy, Many times an external drive is intended for backup purposes, but if it is your primary storage chances are that you don’t have a second for backing up the information on the first.
If you have a desktop PC then adding a second drive is easy. Just open up the case and look inside. Do you have an open SATA Connection or an IDE connection? If you have a SATA connection this is the fastest and the easiest to hook up and the recommended way to proceed. When purchasing your drive make sure that you also get the proper cable and if you have a sata drive that you also purchase a power adapter if your power supply does not have additional connectors. Now that you have your new drive power down your PC, unplug it open the case and plug in your drive. Also be sure to secure the drive properly to prevent damage. Now close up your PC, Boot your PC (Make sure that the BIOS is set to auto find drives), and open MY Computer. You should see your new drive, most likely it will be D: or E: right click and select Format, you should then choose NTFS file system, and do a full reformat as opposed to a quick format. Your drive is now ready to use. You may want to set up folders and move some of your data over to the new drive, and maybe even create an image of your smaller drive to copy to the new one if you have room. Ideally at this point you would hook up an external drive and back up the new internal drive.
Now maybe you have a laptop, and you would like to move your data Windows and all to the new drive. When you purchase your new drive make sure to purchase an external drive enclosure and to get a drive that comes with imaging software (Western Digital drives generally have an excellent imaging software included with them). First you will want to remove your old drive, this should be easily accessible through a panel on the bottom of your laptop(always unplug and remove the battery), install your new drive, put the old drive in the enclosure that you purchased at the same time as your drive and plug it in. Now boot your laptop to the cd that came with the drive, and follow the instruction to copy the usb drive to the internal drive. After around an hour or two you should have computer that boots to the new drive and has all of your information on it. Now from within Windows you can format the external drive and use it to back-up your important files.
IMPORTANT! I know I have been harping on everyone to install a good anti-virus product such as Microsoft Security Essentials, but if you get a message from Microsoft Security Essentials 2010 it is a fake do Not install it simply close it.
There are great ways to maximize your current PC’s performance without spending a lot of money. The first and possibly the most affordable upgrade is memory. If you are running less than 1 Gb on an XP system or 2 on a Vista or Win 7 machine you are underpowered and probably not realizing your PC’s full potential. Memory upgrades are one of the easiest and cheapest upgrades available. To start with you need to find out what type of memory your system supports. System Information for Windows is a good place to start, or you can check out the user guide for your computer. Once you have that figured out then you just need to find some memory. If you are just surfing the web and doing some light work, you can probably go with a cheaper memory sites like newegg are some of the cheapest and more reputable sites, and the user reviews can be very helpful in determining if the product might be a lemon. If you use your PC for graphics intensive gaming or photo or video editing, then you may be well served by a higher performance memory, either way it can be found for less on-line in most cases. Next You need to install your new memory. To do this you will need to crack open your case, or remove the cover on the bottom of your laptop. MAKE SURE THAT YOUR POWER IS UNPLUGGED and if it is a laptop that the battery is removed. At this point before you open up your memory check that you are grounded to your system i.e. touching a metal part to prevent a static shock to the memory. You should keep in contact throughout the installation to protect your pc and the memory. Next open the clips and make sure that you line up the notch in the memory with the spot in the slot. Then press it into place firmly until the latches close and make sure that it s seated firmly you can burn up the memory and the board if it isn’t.
Now just put the cover back on and fire up your computer, you can right click on My Computer and go to Properties to see how much memory is installed. Now have fun with your computer that performs like new.
If your like most people you probably already have some sort of malware on your computer. Maybe you would like to find a way to get back some of that performance that you had when you first opened the box, maybe you would like get rid of some of the crap that came on your new computer.
To clean off a new computer one of the best programs that I’ve found is PC Decrapifier it doesn’t actually install on your computer. You simply download it, double-click the executable file and it runs giving you prompts and allowing you to choose programs and shortcuts that you would like to remove from your PC.
If you’ve had your PC for a while you may want to give it a check -up and find out if there is anything dangerous on your PC. For that my favorites are Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes . Download both to get rid of stubborn spy-ware.
Next you should make sure that you are running a secure web browser, think Firefox or Google Chrome , if you need to Internet explorer then it is time to upgrade from IE6 to IE8, 8 is much more secure and your web pages will show up better since many sites are dropping support for IE6.
Finally to keep your PC clean get a good anti-virus program. There are very good pay and free programs out there, one of the best of the free anti-virus programs currently is
If you are concerned about browsing the web and checking your email safely and securely without having to worry about what type of things are out there looking to infest your computer, then I have a solution for you.
Have you ever considered installing Linux on your PC? Most people get afraid when they hear that word (LINUX). But that need not be the case, there are versions out there right now that are very friendly to the user and involve very little use of the command line. I use Ubuntu and have had few problems with it. For the first timer there is Linux Mint, it comes with most plug-ins installed already including flash, and is an Ubuntu derivative meaning that it is connected to the Ubuntu repositories and is a Debian based Linux and it is similar visually to Windows.
So now you probably have some questions: What are repositories? What is Debian? Why would I want to mess around with a new operating system? What about my software?
First we will tackle Debian, because it is related to the other questions. Simply put it is a type of Linux that uses Debian packages, much like windows uses .exe files to install programs, Debian packages work easily and with little input other than clicking and entering a password on the part of the user. And to top it off there are many programs available as .deb files. You just download and double click to install.
Next we will look at the repositories. Linux uses package managers Ubuntu uses Synaptic. These make installing software a breeze. You simply search for the type of software that you are looking for inside of Synaptic and it returns a list of programs that will do what you need them to do. You click mark for installation and apply, then Synaptic downloads and installs the program. Not too bad right?
As for why would you want to mess around with another operating system? For me there are a few reasons. I like the availability of Open-source software and the freedom that goes along with it. For example; if there is a job that could be done on a computer then there is probably a program written to do that job, and if there is a program for that job then it is either open-source or there is and equivelant open-source program. I don’t worry that the content that I create is on something that I do not have a license to use commercially. Yes there is a learning curve but you had that when you started using Windows. The customizability is one of my favorite parts of using Linux, though by many standards what I do is very mild compared to what more advanced users do to their desktop.
Next time I will get into how to get started with a Linux Desktop. It can be very rewarding and the geeky wow-factor is pretty cool too.
Just to get this started I thought that we would talk about preventing malware attacks on your computer. If you use a Microsoft product then you are probably infinitely familiar with the problems that malware can cause. What you may not know is how to prevent your PC from being infected in the first place. So here is a list of steps that you can take to protect yourself, your data, and your identity.
1. Have an up-to-date Anti-virus app on your P.C. running real time protection. You can get some very good apps right now for free; AVG Free, Microsoft Security Essentials, Avira – just to name a few.
2. Practice safe email: Don’t open attachments unless you are expecting them. Don’t click links in your email, even from people you trust unless you are expecting it. Don’t even open email from people you don’t know. Regardless of how good your anti-virus program is this type of behavior can get past it if you don’t think before you click.
3. Safe browsing: Be careful where you go on the net. Your cookies are rarely the problem, many times it is the active X controls, and the pop-ups that cause problems. Never click OK on anything that tells you your system is infected, one of the biggest offenders at this time is Windows Antivirus Pro or one of its variants. Often this appears as a compelling system message- just Close it or if it won’t close navigate away from the page or close your browser, better to loose your place on the web than spend money and time trying to remove malware.
4. Be careful of storage media- scan new thumb drives and usb drives with your anti-virus before allowing them to execute any type of program. Yes new drives can be infected!
5. Be leery of any app on a social networking site, many of these can be infected and or harvest information from you or your friends. The best practice is – If you gave a site your bank or credit card info at any time, don’t allow an app to gain info about you … ie. don’t install it.
This list is far from complete but it should help to greatly reduce your chances of becoming infected.
If you have and additional advice please feel free to follow up in the comments.
I am going to attempt to write some-what technical blog, yes the internets are full of these but I would like to create one for the masses. One that will offer a little bit of advice for those with problems with their PC or wanting to do a basic website. Forgive me if my train of thought gets a little sporadic I will back up and try again, please just call me on it.