Tech Tips

Small Office – Home Office

Dont Pay A Computer Guy 100′s Or 1000′s Of Dollars! A Top IT Pro Breaks His Silence & Reveals The Secret Techniques To Keep Your Home/Office Computer Screaming Fast, Free Of Spyware, Viruses & Hackers, And 100% Backed Up! Click Here! to get your copy of Computer Secrets Unleashed now!

Introducing a New eBook on Home Automation, Security & Networking – Click Here! To Learn How to Automate and Network Your Home

If you are a home user, an Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Firewall and Security Software product can be downloaded and installed for free. You will only suffer a small bit of advertising.

• Free Microsoft Security Essentials
• Free AVG antivirus for your home computer
• Free Avast antivirus for your home computer
• Free Avira AntiVir antivirus for your home computer
• Free security scan from Trend Micro for your computer
• Free Spam Filters for your computer
• Free Spybot-S&D anti spyware for your home computer
• Free Malwarebytes removes offensive malware
• Free 2GB Online Backup – Mozy, use referral code F2YX90 when you sign up.

Home users can also obtain free automated repair software. IObit Freeware, the little sister of Advanced Systems Care Professional, is simply the best free utility software product that I have ever used. It’s best described as the tool to force Windows to work correctly over time. It repairs all of those pesky small glitches that forever plague Windows users, and increases the performance of your Windows PC.

For home users, installing “IObit Freeware – Care For Your PC” in conjunction with a free antivirus product will provide you with years of trouble free computing and no more calls to the Geek Squad.

Stamp Out Computer Bugs!

Automated Computer Repair Software

I have two rules when it comes to repairing desktop or laptop computers.

• First, confirm that an Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Firewall and Security Software product is installed, licensed and updated. Scan the computer and allow it to automatically “clean” the system.
• Second, install Advanced Systems Care Professional. Confirm that it is updated, then scan and allow it to automatically repair the system.

This process will avoid 95% of your most common service calls for desktop or laptop computer problems. It places you in the envious position of never calling the local computer repair guy.

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack

Are you having difficulty sharing, emailing and reading the new files in Microsoft Office 2007? Download and install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats here. By installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able to open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007.The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats. For more information about the Compatibility Pack, see Knowledge Base article 924074

HP Learning Center

One of the better learning resources I’ve found are free online classes from the HP Learning Center. HP offers a variety of free, online classes for both the Home & Home office and Business customers. Enjoy the self-paced lessons, expert instructors and active message boards. Enroll today!

Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Firewall and Security Software

• NOD32 is consistently been rated as the best protection against zero-day outbreaks and attacks. The drain on your computer’s resources is remarkably low.
• Easy-to-use Trend Micro Internet Security 2008 fully protects your home or small office network, identity and online activities from the latest known and unknown web threats.
• Norton Internet Security 2008, Symantec Norton based brand of products is the worldwide leader in consumer security and problem-solving solutions.
• CA Internet Security Suite Plus provides comprehensive protection against Internet threats that can jeopardize your privacy and diminish PC performance. It also helps ensure your important files, photos, music, and PC settings are safe, by letting you easily back them up, restore them, or transfer them to a new PC.

Sales and Communications

Free customer relationship management and sales force automation software

How to make a great presentation on the web.

Hardware

• When you need those hard to find PDAs, Scanners and other unusual peripherals; or your’re just looking for a great electronics deal, Buy.com is a great place to start.
• Hewlett-Packard printers, servers, computers and Proserve networking equipment is nothing short of fantastic.
• Dell Business never fails to save us money and time. Dell hardware with four year warranty and four hour onsite service cannot be beat. The Dell Business website makes purchasing and tracking personal computers and peripheral hardware very easy.
• Or, try our favorite laptop, the ThinkPad from Lenovo
• Use EZtradein to dispose of your old hardware. You will be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to remove the liability of toxic old electronic equipment.
• Don’t forget to destroy the data with DiskDeleter, on old computers before you dispose of them. DiskDeleter will securely delete hard disk data on your computer to protect your personal information.

Great Advice For All PC Users

Reprinted in part from “Five Ways to Stay in Your Help Desks Good Graces” 13-OCT-2006, By Deborah Rothberg at eweek.com

1. You should know how to save and back up your work. – Almost every person with a personal computer has a tendency to assume that it will never die, yet every computer sooner or later does just that.”That general assumption is what drives all the stupidity that happens around simple things. Most IT emergencies on a daily basis are because someone’s laptop dies on the same day they need a proposal or report into someone. It always comes down to backup,” said Jeff Reed, chief technology officer of global technology provider Logicalis, in Seattle. Reed noted that many people wrongly assume that they have no role in the backup or recovery process, and are often surprised to learn that their work isn’t automatically backed up for them. “Educate yourself on how your company backs up and recovers PCs. Reading the manual could save you two weeks’ trouble. It’s pretty easy to save your work to the network or any drive where it can be backed up,” said Reed. In addition to understanding the different places that their work can be saved, workers should also understand the difference between “Save” and “Save As.” “If you are collaborating with someone, or even working on your own, it will help you to keep a legacy of your work, versions A, B, C, etc., until you come to a final document,” said Tomlinson.

2. You and you alone are responsible for knowing your passwords. – No matter how friendly they appear, IT professionals are never happy to hear that your forgotten password needs to be reset.”You should know how to create, remember and change secure passwords for all personal accounts, applications and resources on the network,” Richard Tomlinson, director of records and registration and assistant professor at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, in Harrisburg, Pa., told eWEEK. Better yet, if you need to write down your password, you should do so in a way that does not announce to all passers-by your low opinion of the importance of network security. “We see people with their passwords on a sticky note on their monitor all the time. ‘Because I wanted to remember it!’ they’ll say. But what they meant was they didn’t want to be inconvenienced by having to look it up,” said Tomlinson.

3. You should know how to e-mail effectively, securely and efficiently.- It may seem common sense to not respond to an e-mail phishing attempt or spam, or to not click on an attachment in an e-mail from an unknown source, yet as long as these security threats exist, someone will inevitably, either by accident or because they were markedly misinformed, fall for them. The results could cripple an entire data network.Beyond the obvious “big bads” of e-mail security are the effective managing of the quantity and information contained in electronic messages. Unnecessary messages should be deleted, sent and deleted items shouldn’t be used as a saved items repository, and folders should be created to organize saved items, said Tomlinson. “There are users that absolutely don’t know how to manage their e-mail or storage space. Their mailboxes end up filling up and they can’t receive mail anymore. The more users you have that don’t understand that, the more storage space your IT department requires,” said Tomlinson. And most gravely, IT pros told eWEEK, don’t send a piece of chain mail to 20 people that you know. “E-mail was meant to be short, concise communication. Before you forward something, just assume that you’re really not that great of a source of information. You’re not a journalist. You send something to 10 people who each send it to another 10, and it’s a huge drain on resources,” said Ken Colburn, president of Data Doctors Computer Services, in Tempe, Ariz.

4. Do your part to secure your workstation.- While the onus of the daunting responsibility for securing a corporation’s network falls predominantly on the IT department, there are no shortage of things that employees can do to ensure that their computer is not the station that waves the bad guys in.Among these, not opening risky attachments or downloading spyware-ridden programs and screensavers are near the top of the list. Not much further down, however, is the need to lock your workstation when you are idle or walk away from your computer, especially if your computer is not set up to do this automatically after a set period of time. More so, don’t assume that because you are not handling classified information that your computer is not vulnerable to attack. “People have said to me, ‘But I’m just using Word! I’m not doing anything risky.’ But any time you are logged into an enterprise network, you are doing something that poses as a security risk to it,” said Tomlinson.

5. You should troubleshoot before calling for help.- In the case of the stranger (cough) who hit the panic button and called for help when his computer seemed to be broken, any number of troubleshooting techniques may have averted a help desk ticket.John Baschab, co-author of “The Executive’s Guide to Information Technology” (Wiley 2003) and president of the management services division at Technisource, a provider of information technology and engineering services in Little Rock, Ark., gave a few examples: “Things that could have saved a call: Is the computer plugged in? Are the lights on the printer on? Is there paper in the paper tray? Is the right tray selected? Is the network cable plugged into the wall as well as your computer? Is your monitor turned on and is your docking station locked in?” Another item that any worker can easily check for is repeatability. “Is the printing problem in more than one program? You can quickly figure out if it’s a printing issue or an application issue,” said Colburn. On the more technical side, but still a potential timesaver, is to learn the basic first-response tasks that any help desk worker would try first. “There are really simple commands [they] could [use to see] if they have a network connection, or [workers could learn] to use Ctrl-Alt-Delete to see on the task manager what’s stalling them so they can shut that application down instead of rebooting the whole machine,” said Tomlinson. But without question, the most basic, elemental and primitive triage workers should be able to perform on their computer is the good, old-fashioned flick of the power switch. “It’s amazing how many people don’t reboot before calling for help. It solves a million problems,” said Colburn.