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 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.

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 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.

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 sure you have proper airflow.

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 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 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!

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 or Alt!

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!

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