Many people get caught up in the software system maintenance side of things, but rarely consider the physical maintenance.

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!

Recently, I’ve been working with Peter Dunbar from www.pcaholic.com on some video tutorials to show folks how to use different aspects of social marketing to drive more traffic to their websites.

Our first combined effort was our “HubPages Video Tutorial” series and was a massive hit! We launched these videos as a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) in the Warriors Forum. It was an instant hit!

We launched www.tutorial-videos.org as a release avenue for our different tutorial series.

Through our efforts, we met Todd Gross, who has been a great resource of information and he’s agreed to launch our latest series we’ve entitled “Social BookMarketing”.

This series was brought on by the questions we received about bookmarking websites. We wanted to show folks how we use bookmarking sites to drive traffic to our websites, blogs, hubs, lenses, etc.

If you’re interested in learning more about driving FREE targetted traffic to your websites, check out our “Social BookMarketing Video Tutorial Series“. (will open a new window)

Via that link to Todds website, you get a special webinar with Todd Gross, Myself, Peter Dunbar, and Dr. Ron Capps A.K.A. the Niche Prof on May 7th at 7pm CST. Also, another special bonus located at http://MarketingTutorialVideos.com

Don’t Forget to BookMark this post! 

Many of us don’t even think about the security of data that we store on our flash drives. They’ve become cheap enough that if we lose it, we just replace them. At least I do.

However, what happens when you put sensitive data on your flash drive and it falls out or your pocket, you leave it in a public computer on accident, you leave it in a friends computer.

I’d like to mention a free method of encrypting the data on your flash drive so that it’s rendered useless to others. Check out TrueCrypt for an encryption process for your flash drives. Not only does it encrypt your flash drives, but you can encrypt your operating system drive as well. You can also encrypt individual files.

They have a section on their website that gives you a beginners tutorial.

Hope you find this helpful.

This is kinda Jeopardy Style

1. It was a device that at one time had a cord plugged into it like a tail with a roller underneath it. You would move it around on your desk to move your “cursor” around on your “monitor”. Then you’d press buttons on it to execute commands on your computer.

2. It was something plugged into your computer that would display the output from the computer. It was in 2D. They were bulky, but got lighter when the “flat panels” were created. Holographics was only in the movies at the time.

3. It was a device that we would use our fingers to press buttons that allowed alpha-numeric characters to print on a “monitor”. There were also classes you could take to improve your efficiency using this device.

4. Well, back then, no one really cared about trees. They would chop them up into little pieces and press them together and create something called “paper” (just like at the museums). This device would output onto the sheets of “paper” with “ink”. School children even used paper to write out their schoolwork on using archaic devices called “pens”

5. Well, it was the part of a computer that held all the components. It was the size of a transporter engine. At one time, it would take up as much room as a domicile. Apple was the first to engineer something much smaller for their computer systems.

6. For entertainment, people would sit for hours and play these. There were a variety of these. Some as simple as a yellow circle with a mouth eating dots! Some could be played via the internet with people all over the world. You would control a graphic on the “monitor” to do a variety of tasks in a somewhat 3d world!

7. People actually payed for a service that would transfer your voice to someone else. Everyone had their own identification number which when entered, would sound a noise at the other end signaling the other person to activate on their end. The early versions used small wire, and then improved to a now obsolete fiber optic cable.

8. People would use small devices to conduct business and for entertainment. Before the government assigned “Personal Wireless Activity Units” which monitor your Internet activity, people could do almost anything and remain anonymous without government intervention. This was when a computer could be called a “Personal Computer”

9. It was a software application installed on a persons Personal Computer that detected and removed “viruses” which could destroy data, steal information, and render computers useless. There were people with expertise in this arena who actually were paid monetary units to install and use these software packages. This was until Kaspersky led the way to abolishing viruses for good.

10. It was a huge company that dominated the archaic operating systems. It was expensive, and it was costing people millions of dollars in “Identity Theft” and software. The flaws in their operating system eventually led to programming groups banding together to create an operating system called “Linux” which led to what we use now.

One thing often overlooked when setting up a system is the Surge Protection or UPS.

A UPS offers some protection against surges, but it’s still a good idea to plug the surge protector into the wall and the UPS into the surge protector. Worse case, you’re saving the surge protector a few surges.

A UPS offers a battery backup system. When setup properly, it will gracefully shut down your computer system after a pre-determined time period. This prevents your system from just turning off like it was unplugged during power failure. In order to get the best results from a UPS, you should plug in limited equipment into it. Perhaps only the PC and the Monitor. This way, the UPS will give you time to shut

When a computer just loses power (power failure, coming unplugged, etc) it’s hard on many of the components of the system. It can cause power supply failure over time, motherboard issues, hard drive problems, data loss, and more. It’s a great idea to spend a few bucks at your local electronics retailer or online for a good UPS.

Lightning Storms

In all honesty, the best thing to do if you are near the computers and you know a lightning storm is approaching, is to unplug the power, and any powered devices from your computer. This includes phone lines, network cables and printers. If you have ensured there is no power to any of these devices, they could remain plugged into the PC.

If lightning sends a surge into your home through phone lines, and your DSL modem is plugged into the phone line, it could fry the modem, send the surge on to your network switch/router and then to your computer. It’s important to protect your equipment. The only fool proof way is to make sure everything is unplugged from every source of power.

More Information on Surge Protection:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/surge-protector.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surge_protector

More Information on Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS)

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question28.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply

The following will be helpful to broadband users:

Step 1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return.

Scroll down and look for the following entries (it’s in alphabetical order):

• network.http.pipelining
• network.http.proxy.pipelining
• network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Step 2. Alter the entries as follows:

• Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true” (by dbl-clicking)
• Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true” (by dbl-clicking)
• Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. (This enables it to make 30 requests at once.)

Step 3. Lastly right-click anywhere in the whitespace and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0. (This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.)

By default, FireFox will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining, it will make several requests at once giving it a major performance boost.

You should see a MUCH faster response from FireFox now!

For more visual help, see the video tutorial in the members area of PCSetupGuide.com

In the early part of 2007, a friend of mine was one of the speakers at the MySQL convention in Las Vegas (I believe). While attending, he was able to listen to speakers from companies like Google, Yahoo, etc.

Hope this information is beneficial to you guys.