http://jameskoliver.com A Guide To A Well Protected System Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:34:39 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Today, I found out about a site kinda like Squidoo or Hubpages. It's called Knol by Google and a Knol is a unit of knowledge. To test it's effectiveness, I've created a knol entitled "Why Update PC Drivers?" to see how quickly it gets search engine results. If you're reading this, ... http://jameskoliver.com/2008/07/23/knol-by-google/ This is a plug for my company where I do on-site computer repair in Granbury, Glen Rose, Stephenville, and Cleburne, TX. 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 ... http://jameskoliver.com/2008/07/16/solfan-consulting-computer-repair-networking-it-consulting-in-glen-rose-granbury-cleburne-and-stephenville/ RegCure is an application that scans your registry and cleans out all of the "crap" in your registry. This could be links to files that are missing. Perhaps you uninstalled something, and reminants were left in the registry. This application cleans all that junk out. I've known it's necessary for quite ... http://jameskoliver.com/2008/07/16/regcure-scanner-review/ I used to spend hours and hours updating drivers on my own and clients systems. Sometimes, it's difficult even on newer systems to find the appropriate drivers. There are applications that can help you know exactly which equipment is attached to your system to help locate the appropriate drivers. On older ... http://jameskoliver.com/2008/07/04/programs-to-update-my-pc-drivers/ This has been a long time coming. A friend asked me to look at the Magic Jack for him to see what I thought. I checked out the site and was intrigued by the device. I told a few other people about it and finally someone broke down and ... http://jameskoliver.com/2008/06/09/what-is-magic-jack/ In my computer consulting business, I've had the opportunity to see many anti-virus products. I've seen free ones. I've seen paid ones. I've seen some that the customer thought was free, bit it wasn't :) For many years, I was a Norton Anti-Virus fan. It was used at every corporate office ... http://jameskoliver.com/2008/05/22/best-anti-virus-software/ No, sorry guys. I'm not about to tell you how to steal Microsoft Office. 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 ... http://jameskoliver.com/2008/05/21/office-package-for-free/ Many people love to hide their tower inside their desks. Have you ever opened the door on the front of your desk and just felt the heat flow out of your desk? While it's nice to have somewhere to put the PC hidden out of site, you might consider making ... http://jameskoliver.com/2008/04/25/pc-cooling-issues-inside-desk/ If you have Windows XP and don't have AT LEAST 512MB, No. 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 ... http://jameskoliver.com/2008/04/12/do-i-have-enough-ram/ First, what in the world is the "Windows Logo Key"? It's that little key most people never use usually located between the Ctrl and Alt key on your keyboard. Go head.. Press it. What happened? The start menu popped up! That's annoying when you hit that key instead of Ctrl ... http://jameskoliver.com/2008/04/12/windows-logo-key-shortcuts/