When I first started my company over 5 years ago, SOLFAN wasn’t used as much as it is now. For those just reading this for the first time, I named my company this after stressing out over a really cool technological sounding name. I finally settled on “Sick Of Looking For A Name“.

I’ve done remote support all over the world for clients and friends.  Primarily, I focus on on-site support in Granbury and the surrounding areas. Please visit my Services Page on my company website to find out more about the services I provide to my clients. Being in a rural area, it’s hard to list all the things I take care of.

Besides Computer Consulting, I also do Internet Marketing, SEO, and some small website maintenance.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy the new website!

Click Here To Visit SOLFAN Consulting

I’ve known it’s necessary for quite some time and could see how this might be useful, but I never figured I needed it. But, being that I like to try out new apps so that I can make the best recommendations for my clients, I try out a bunch of applications on a test machine I use.

It’s one of those download it, scan it, it found a load of “bad stuff” in my registry. Ok. Let’s clean it up… DOH! Gotta pay for it. Ok.. so I need to test this. I bust out the ol card and pay for RegCure.  It finishes up the cleanup. And I restart the system. It had a noticable speed increase on my system.  I was actually suprised. That was my test box.  I decided I’d try it out on my main system that I run CCleaner (Registry clean option and file cleanup) and other applications as well.

RegCure still found crap on there. So, I’ve got it. It cleans the registry. It does in fact make your system run faster. I didn’t have any noticable errors, but I’m sure it would take care of actual errors since they proved themselves in other claims.

With all that being said, if you want to check it out, get it over at RegCure Scanner.com

If you’ve found this post interesting, by all means, bookmark the heck out of it.

On older equipment, the different manufacturers have the device drivers archived off somewhere making it more difficult to find.

I recently found and began testing some Automatic Driver Update Software called Driver Detective that tells me exactly which drivers are out of date and with the click of a button, I can have it update everything for me. Shocking at how simple this actually is. I wish I were a developer because I’d have developed this a long time ago and been a billionaire by now!

I hope this software is able to help you out like it did me. It makes my life tons easier. I might require my clients purchase this!

Find it available at http://www.PCDriverDoctor.com - What driver are you searching for?

After a few weeks, I couldn’t stand it anymore and I bought my own. This nifty little USB device came in the mail packed nicely a few days after ordering online. One evening a few days after I ordered, I decided to check the tracking number sent to me. It was almost 10pm. It showed to be in my P.O. Box. I didn’t know if it would fit in my box, or if they’d put it in a bigger box and leave a key like they sometimes do, or if I’d be wasting gas driving the 7 miles to town to get it.

When I got there, it fit in my box. I opened it before I even left the post office.

I inserted it into my PC as soon as I got home. It automatically started loading software, went through a little update, and let me register and pick out a phone number and all that stuff.

After I got it all set up, it was time to make calls. I had no idea that my friends would ignore random calls at 11pm at night! But, they did. No one answered. Finally, I called a friend from my cell phone and they answered. I told them to answer when I called back from my new Magic Jack that I was testing.

The quality was great. No drop outs. There was a slight irritating buzz that my assumption is that it was created from my crappy headset or something. When I plugged a telephone into the Magic Jack, it worked like a charm. Since that time, I’ve called many people from 2 different systems and from the phone and headset. It works great!

To give you a little more insight, this device costs $40.00 and that includes the first YEAR of service. Each year after that, you can get the service for $20.00. There is a special offer at the time of purchase that you can get 5 years of service and the Magic Jack for $99.00 or something. Saves you 20.00 over the years.

What is the service?

Unlimited Phone calls on VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) to anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. That’s right! Unlimited! With services like this popping up, what will companies like Vonage do?

I would recommend this to anyone. It’s a great price for an unbelievable device.

Check out the Magic Jack on their official site http://www.magicjack.com

For many years, I was a Norton Anti-Virus fan. It was used at every corporate office I worked at. I assumed that they were the top, and at the time, I believe they were. However, now, they’re simply a long time brand name that can produce a crappy product and set it out on the market and people will still buy it because it’s Norton. Don’t ever assume because something has a big name that it’s the best. Do your research!

For a couple years, I tried several anti-viruses before I found one I could settle on. I tried NOD32 and it was awesome! I could scan clients systems in less than 20 minutes. Found out that was because it over looked a lot. I switched to Dr. Web. It was slow and missed things. I tried Trend Micro. I tried a couple FREE anti-virus products.

So now, I believe the best anti-virus is Kaspersky products. This won’t be the only blog you read this one. This won’t be the only place you’ll find this information. Kaspersky is consistently rated #1 in comparison charts.

More information on the best anti-virus, Kaspersky, can be found by clicking right HERE.

Here’s also another one of my opinions.. If you simply can’t afford to purchase an anti-virus, a free AV is better than no AV (but just barely).  With all the risks on the Internet, why take chances?

Hope you enjoyed this post.

However, I will tell you about a great alternative! If you can’t afford to spend a bunch of cash on MS Office, there is a great alternative available for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. If you’ve not heard of it, check out Open Office.

It has a pretty much the same applications that MS Office has. And the kicker? It’s actually pretty compatible with MS Office! That’s right. You can open Word Documents, Excel SpreadSheets, and more in Open Office.

Open Office is absolutely FREE. No cost. You can donate to the project and I’m sure they appreciate that. It’s open source, but they work hard to bring a killer product to the market.

I’ve been using Open Office for a couple of years now. It’s a great product. I’ve found very little that I can’t do with it. Definitely a nice alternative.

If you’re going to keep your system running inside of a desk, make sure that you either don’t have a back on the desk to allow the hot air to escape.

Another option would be to cut a couple of holes in the back or another hidden area to allow for airflow.

Your computer generates a lot of heat and has fans inside the case to exhaust this heat, but if you’re storing your PC inside a cubby hole slightly larger than the case itself, you’re not allowing the hot air to exhaust and this will keep the components inside getting very hot which can damage some of these components.

Yet another option is to leave the door open where the heat can exhaust out the front. As long as you leave room for airflow, your components should be safe from heat damage.

If you have Windows Vista and don’t have AT LEAST 2 GB, No.

More than likely, if you do much more than check your e-mail and open Internet Exploder (not a typo), you probably need 1GB of memory.

I say you need 2GB for Windows Vista because I’ve seen systems almost every day out of the box that have 1GB and most of that is being used up.

Random Access Memory (RAM) is used by your computer as temporary storage space for data. It has no moving parts like a phyiscal hard drive. It has higher bus speed.

When you fill your memory with programs your computer is actively using, it has no choice but to start writing things off to the hard drive and this slows down your system.

If you right click on your task bar (the bar that runs across the screen from the Start button to the clock), choose “Task Manager”. Next, choose the “Performance” tab. A decent measure for you to know if you should get more memory to speed up your system is to look at the “PF Usage” (on windows) and . If this number is very close to or higher than your physical memory amount, you need more memory!

Hope this gives you a good scale for choosing. Memory is cheap and easy to install these days. You CAN have too much memory, but it’s rare!

However, it really does serve more purposes than just being annoying.

First, i want to highlight the shortcuts I use on a regular basis…

1.  Windows Logo + M = Minimize all Windows
2.  Windows Logo + D = Show Desktop (almost the same, but show desktop will even show the desktop with applications that do not minimize.
3. Windows Logo + L = Lock Workstation (If you’re profile is password protected, it will take you to the login screen)
4. Windows Logo + R = Run Box (Same as clicking Start.. and then clicking “Run”.. only faster once you use it a bunch)

Here is a link to many more keyboard shortcuts on the Microsoft Website - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449

Enjoy a part  of your computer rarely used!

What do I mean? Computers have fans installed inside the case that are pulling air into the case as well as fans pushing air out of the case. These fans pull all kinda of dust bunnies into the system. This stuff builds up on components inside the case and causes air-flow problems. This stuff gets all over heat sinks, fans inside, down in fan bearings.

Over time, this buildup can cause a variety of problems. Bearings wear out faster causing fans to slow down and not have the RPM’s necessary to keep the components cool. Buildup on heat sinks causes air-flow through the fins. This causes components to over heat and can be damaging.

What can you do about this? Well. Nothing really. You can’t prevent the stuff from getting into your computer because it pulls it out of the air. However, you can clean it out on a regular maintenance schedule.

Depending on the environment where the PC sits will determine the physical maintenance schedule. If it’s a very dusty environment, you may need to do this monthly. If it’s a rather clean area, maybe quarterly will suffice.

Here’s what you do: Get yourself a can of compressed air from your local walmart or staples, open your case (by following directions in the manual), and blow all those components out (Might want to do this outside).  Just blow off all those fans, blow off all the dust you can see right out of that case! Blow out the power supply as well.

Many cases just have a couple of screws holding a side panel on. Some cases these days just have little releases that allow you to remove the side panel, or somehow it will separate.

Hope this helps you allow that system to run cooler and longer!